In the spirit of trying to cram far more into the first quarter of the year that is probably healthy I’ve been learning AS3. Just completed (well make ready for initial release) my first AS3 application. It’s a file browser/selector for the php content management system I’ve been writing since January. The CMS has been pretty successful so far, clients have been very positive about it’s ease of use and the flexibility of the code means I’ve already re-purposed large chunks of it for other projects (mostly small budget web-template systems). There’s still a lot of functionality I’d like to add to it if time allows and I’d love to make it open source and more extensible but right now I don’t have the time.

The only horrible flaw with it was the file management system, although you could upload files, group them, add meta data and assorted other stuff, the act of including one in a content page (as an inline image, link or whatever) was a pain in the arse. It was mostly done through a plugin in TinyMCE which wangs up a popup with a list of all the files uploaded to the file library as clickable links. This is fine if you have 5 files and you know the filename of the file you are looking for but it becomes ungainly and irritating if you have any greater number of files. So for my first AS3 app I put together a nice file browser which gives you thumbnails all nicely paginated with a set of filters (alphanumeric, by file group and by file extension).

It has a couple of bugs which will need to be ironed out and I’d like to completely update the layout and some of the functionality to make it a bit of a smoother process. There’s a couple of flaws with the usability which I want to address BUT overall I’m pretty happy with it for a first version and a first AS3 project. I’ve integrated it with a couple of our client’s CMS systems and I’ll see what the feedback is like.

Click here to play with the online demo

Woo! One of my photos has been used in a photo guide of Prague (with my permission).

(I do still live, but very, very, very busy).

Here is a lesson by example. This is absolutely not how to deal with your designer. This is more common than makes me comfortable.

I’m off to stick my head in the oven.

A quick holding page that appeared to transform into something a little more flamboyant than expected. For Moonshine PR

Moonshine PR Holding Page

Hopefully Emily doesn’t beat me to death when she sees what I’ve done to her website. I very nearly animated it in flash but fortunately (for you and her) time is short tonight.

I have just launched the Shinytastic website v1.0 – http://www.shinytastic.com

Again I am not 100% happy with it, but I suspect it’s a case of being too close to be able to look at it properly. I’m going to be spending more time on it later in the week (hopefully). This month sees me hit ten years of doing this stuff for cash and this the first time I’ve had a website advertising my services. This is possibly the hardest site I’ve done in years. I think the homepage needs a good rehack and the template is possibly over-simple. I’m willing to take the risk on it. I’m not lacking work right now and (outside of this blog) I’m not going to be overly promoting it for a while so I’ve got a chance to hack it about and improve on it in the interim. To be honest I look around at a lot of my peers and they all seem to be as damn useless at their own websites as I am, regardless of the quality of the work they do for their clients. Am I just making excuses now? Possibly, but it’s two in the morning. Goodnight.

Shinytastic Screenshot

Quick design/mockup for my Dad’s new business. Needs a bit of tweaking and cleaning up but not bad for a couple of hours work.

InkyStuff Website Mockup

Rough advert concept…

Rough Ad Concept

So, true story: I’m in the middle of cooking dinner (8pm-ish) and preparing for an early night as I need to get up at 4am when the office phone goes. Might be urgent so answer it to a client who just reels off a very brief spec for a website and asks for a quote on the spot. Slightly flustered I am quite rude, explain my dinner is burning and tell him he needs to call back next week (I’m off on holiday) during sensible working hours.

Instantly feel bad. This was someone offering me work and I came close to telling him to fuck off. I’m a grumpy fucker at the best of times but particularly ratty when I’m interrupted in my personal time. I don’t like pissing people off, clients or not, but when hassled well outside of working hours for something I don’t really deem as urgent I tend to react badly. My fault? Client’s fault? Probably a bit of both.

Now many people have advised I have two sets of phones, one for work and one for personal, but I’ve never quite got round to it. Firstly, there’s the cost, no explanation needed there. The main problem is that SOMETIMES, admittedly rarely, it’s valid for clients to need to get hold of me at silly hours. The problem is that by allowing this I also allow them to hassle me at silly hours completely unnecessarily.

It’s a difficult choice for me. I chose to be a freelancer/business owner and I have to take responsibility for that decision. I’m always happy for new work, but at some point I need a break. If I allow my entire life to be run at the whim of clients I’ll have a breakdown. My job can be pretty full on at times and without the downtime I’m not going to be effective in my work. This isn’t the client’s fault. They don’t realise that it’s not just them that’s on my case 48 hours a day. I need to find a balance and I need to be firm but polite with those that overstep the mark. Generally I am, tonight I failed as I was caught completely off guard.

There’s also the question of which clients should be allowed to interrupt you at will. While it would be lovely to treat everyone completely equally that just doesn’t make good business sense. I have some clients who will regularly throw me well paid, well organised jobs, most of the quotes they ask me for go ahead and all is nice. But then there are clients who call me on a regular basis and ask for budget quotes for jobs that rarely (if ever) happen.

I hate the idea of telling a client to cease and desist from being a client and as yet have not gone that far but in reality it may well make sense. I’ve dealt with a couple of businesses (who I no longer deal with), who used to call me up and drag me out to meetings about new projects a couple of times a month. None of these projects ever happened.
This was time utterly wasted, and I quickly worked out they would do this until the end of time but I kept thinking that maybe they would eventually come up with a project they could go ahead with (and actually pay for), never happened, eventually they just drifted off and stopped calling (before I had to ask them to thankfully).

These days I need to be harder, it can be more of a risk to let someone eat your time than to just politely ask them to stop calling. Yes, they may one day come up with that big contract you need to pay your mortgage with, but it’s very unlikely. My Dad, who also has worked for himself most of his life, told me a story about a client who just kept wasting his time, turning up with stupidly last minute jobs and generally being a pain in the arse. Dad eventually got sick of him and told him to sod off. Explained to him that he was no longer Dad’s client and that he could no longer order from him. Six month’s later the guy shows up again a reformed client, no more time wasting a (nearly) model client. Take from that what you will. I believe if you do a damn fine job and show pride in your work you can, to some extent, have some control over your clients, oh, and no-one but an arsehole likes a yes-man.

So when is it appropriate to hassle your freelancer/small creative agency about a possible new contract (ongoing jobs and URGENT!11! server errors are another matter entirely)?

• Between the hours of 9-5.30 is absolutely fine. If you can’t contact them then you should be worred.
• Maybe up to about 6.30 if you have some actualy tangible work for them.
• Is it the weekend? Might be polite to email them first and see if they are available. You might be lucky.
• 11.45 in the evening is really a no-no. Seriously, I was asleep.
• 6.45 in the morning. Also, a no-no. Again. I was ASLEEP.
• So pretty much 9 – 5.30 monday to friday. Otherwise we may get all whiny on the internet about it.

BONUS ADVICE on getting quotes!!!!

If you require a quote for a new project we need a bit of time to think about it. 10 seconds is not enough time. It’s really not advisable to wait until you are in a meeting with your director/client before you let us know you were even considering a new project. We need to think about these things a bit, do a bit of research, etc.
Take this question:

How much for a 5 page website, with some photos of producsts on?

Sounds simple doesn’t it? Well it’s not that complicated but that’s not enough information to give an accurate quote on, yes there are some agencies that will quote on a per-page basis. We don’t. We prefer to build something appropriate for the client and this can be a little more involved. Here are some questions we may need to ask you before we can give you a rough price on the above query (these are just examples):

Will we be dealing with the entire project or working with another agency?

Will we be creating all graphics?

Is there existing branding we can use, will we need to create branding?

Will we need to supply copy-writing or is the copy already written?

What’s the deadline?

Will we be supply SEO?

Is this a static brochure site or will we be doing any sort of CMS system?

Will we need to source a server?

What can we do that makes this site a bit special? Will the budget/deadline allow us to do any research or give us a chance to try some new technologies out.

… and it can go on.

So give us a bit of notice, a few hours can be enough but for best results give us a day. The more information you can supply up-front the more accurate we can be. I personally prefer to take a client out for a coffee and chat through what they want to achieve with the project and get an idea of their expectations and requirements before I even think about a price. This doesn’t suit everyone but I think it gets the best results.

Sometimes it’s good to experiment and be a little intentionally difficult. Emily had the joy of being a test subject. It’s not the most challenging or original design ever but I liked the idea of a three column design with the navigation in the middle*. I think it works ok because the left column is very mimimal.

First version:
(The blackbird is just a filler photo while we choose the appropriate image, we’re probably going with nice nature/inspiring nice things so it was an appropriate holding image).

Moonshine PR website visual (version 1)

We’ve updated it a little to make it a bit more accessible, the contrast between the background and the body copy was a little low so we’re trying a white content background. Also removed the “Recent Projects” bit from the footer and replaced with a selection of logos from associate businesses (proper logos to come).

Moonshine PR website visual (Version 3)

* I make no claims to originality here, I’m sure this has been tried before.

Not entirely finalised but I doubt we are going to for for any more changes prior to the printing. These are the first two business cards I’ve designed, and really the first two proper logos. I may post a breakdown of the process involved in each if time allows. I’m pretty happy with the Moonshine PR logo and cards, although we went through far too many variants to get to this stage (entirely my fault). I can’t work out if I’m entirely happy with the Shinytastic cards, I find it very difficult to do things for myself/my own business. I think I achieved the desired end (intentionally over the top silliness).