I’ve just read an interesting article about women in web design. And I’m stunned. It’s been 22 years since my (female) manager was ‘demoted’ to non-manager following the birth of her child, because she needed to reduce her hours to 40/week. It’s been 33 years since my summer job at a state law enforcement agency—where [...]

This week, I’ve written my first guest post, Freelancing—Dream or Reality? for the new blog Freelance & Create. My post covers the differences between my youthful vision of freelancing and the reality today. As a companion read, I highly recommend reading Manda’s full post, 10 reasons Freelance Designers Get Screwed. Below is an excerpt. I [...]

I had the pleasure of spending several hours today with my family (each on separate computers) doing a search for college scholarship and grant monies for our two oldest children. One of the things that totally frustrated and annoyed me was the complete omission of certain web usability features that would make the funding search [...]

I just completed a small job for a new client. And I think it was quite a lesson for us both—in a good way! The Highest Bidder Wins! This client went seeking a new web designer on oDesk. As you may be aware, oDesk is a guilty daily pleasure of mine—a love/hate kind of thing, [...]

PNG files (Portable Network Graphics) are one of the image file formats used by web designers for modern browsers. See 10 Best Browsers in 2009. It’s a wonderful format, because it allows the designer to place an image w/o the “box” of JPG or the single color limitations of GIF. It’s classy, high end, the [...]

I had the good fortune of attending my first WordCamp this weekend. And though I was reluctant to give up two days of mid-September gardening, I knew I should give it a go. But I had reservations about how I’d fit in. It turned out to be a totally interesting crowd of very diverse people–and [...]

At the Movies My husband and I just saw “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince” at a discount matinee and nearly empty theater. Many things have changed about our family’s experience of the HP events. (And events, they were!) Our 3 children are roughly the same ages as the Hogwarts bunch and have grown [...]

There. I said it. May the design gods smite me down where I stand. But really, I can’t take it anymore! Seems everywhere I look there’s another blog espousing the ‘wonders’ of H and other “classic” fonts. The ones they could happily be stranded on a desert island with. Really? As if you wouldn’t be [...]

As a freelancer/small business owner, do you ever have to nag your client–you know, to get the content, the feedback, the sign-off, the whatever you need to keep their project on track? Of course you have. I just hate nagging. (Yes–even as a mother–though that hasn’t stopped me!) I figure that since I’ve spelled almost [...]

The State of Oregon is going to rename and refocus the Economic & Community Development Department. New name: Business Oregon. And since they’re going to need a new website, they’ve put out this RFP. Gotta love it! They’ve got a $90,000 budget for this baby. Quite a piece of change! However, read page nine, section [...]

That’s short for Web Design and Do It Yourself Recently, I lost a prospective web client. Bummer. Doesn’t want to spend the money or thinks he cannot afford to spend the money for a custom site. OK. That’s cool. But, stop and think for a minute. Imagine you’re highly skilled & educated in your field. [...]

I’ve just completed a job through oDesk. And if you’re unfamiliar with me, check out this earlier post. I can get pretty passionate about some topics! Anyway, thought I’d share my evaluation of oDesk. When you close out a project, they let you give them feedback. Note that this is my feedback of oDesk–not my [...]

I’ve just begun work with a new client for a complete website overhaul (copywriting, design, navigation–the works). And this client had some very good questions about what to expect about how the workflow process would proceed. For those of you with similar questions, let me share the conversation… Client: Could you map out for us [...]