Here are links to some of the resources I’ll be mentioning.

• Process - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/06/22/following-a-web-design-process/
• Git - http://git-scm.com/
• A Collaborative Workflow for Git - http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
• Twitter Bootstrap - http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/
• Dive Into Responsive Prototyping - http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dive-into-responsive-prototyping-with-foundation/
• Less CSS - http://lesscss.org/
• 960 grid system - http://960.gs/
• HTML5 Boilerplate - http://html5boilerplate.com/
• A Book Apart – http://www.abookapart.com/

And this is my favorite slide.

We sent our intern Elizabeth Gilmore to the Oregon coast for a bit of project research and she brought back some stunning photos.

Photo via Elizabeth’s Instagram.

There is so much wrong with The World’s Longest Invoice, it is difficult to find a starting point. (If you haven’t seen it yet, the invoice is a place where freelancers are posting money “held hostage by deadbeat clients.”) As of today, it has an untold number of entries totaling almost 14 million dollars.

Let’s just get down to it. First of all, freelancers are publicly shaming clients on this website. (Although names aren’t specifically being entered for clients, freelancers are finding a way to post client names right in the Services Rendered area. Some are adding website URLs and some are adding client names.) The Freelancers Union, the creators of this website, have a history of encouraging the public shaming of clients.

Clients and designers are collaborators and partners. Unfortunately, websites such as this create an us vs. them mentality. Describing clients as deadbeat and slimy as snake oil salesmen is doing harm to our entire industry. Although there might be individuals who do hire freelancers without any inclination to pay for their services, I’d guess that a number of these unpaid invoices come from fundamental miscommunications within the project. Nobody is going to get paid because they posted to this site. And, an exercise such as this does nothing to educate clients or freelancers.

Many of the individuals here appear to be working without reasonable contracts or failsafes. For example, there is a Chuck owed $80,000 in web design & copywriting. How does one rack up 80K in billing? Were there no iterative payments? No major milestones? Another gentleman, Patrick L., is out $2,000 because “client refused to pay once the idea of a contract was floated.” How is is that Patrick put in 2K in work on a project before letting a client know a contract was part of kick-off?

This site could have, at the very least, been a resource to help freelancers beyond the obvious venting session. Unfortunately, there isn’t even a section about how to make sure one does not loose out on revenue in the future.

Everyone wants to get paid for their work. Here are a few tips we have learned along the way.

1. Never work without a contract. (And, invest in a lawyer to create a proper contract for you.)
2. Your contract should explicitly state payment at milestones throughout a project (the first being a non-refundable retainer for a portion of the total project). Most clients who are willing to put down a retainer and sign a contract are going to go into the entire project in good faith.
3. Do good work.
4. Maintain good, clear communication with a client throughout the process. Make sure you are answering questions and are being clear about expectations. Document such communication.

Even with all of these failsafes in place, any professional will inevitably come across a situation where they do not get paid for work rendered. And, this can be extremely frustrating. This is the time to take a good look at your contract and consider making a phone call to your lawyer. However, if things go awry, remember that you are a professional. Do not go around badmouthing your client. Do not post to The World’s Longest Invoice. (And, for goodness sake, do not complain about them on Twitter. Ever.) These actions only serve to hurt you and your reputation.

Having spent time both working on computers and making music without having a lot of money to spare, I’ve often settled—and gotten quite comfortable—with subpar gear. My first computer was an Atari 400, a computer which had a “membrane keyboard” which was basically like typing on an iPad, but worse. My first musical keyboard was no better.

In fact, when I think about it, even the gear I’m using now feels rather anemic. Modern Apple keyboards are fashionable and functional, but force your fingers to do all the work. They’re like these small keyboards that only cover half the range of a piano, and have a flat feeling, leaving you wondering when you’ve actually struck the note.

A teeny tiny little keyboard, barely appropriate for either task.

There are clearly things missing from these keyboards… namely, keys. So the “pro” option, for most folks, is to get one with all the keys.

These ones have more keys, but are otherwise very similar.

But there’s still something missing. They don’t feel right. Luckily, this is a solved problem, and has been for some time. The “holy grail” of keyboards.

The best keyboards money can buy.

Now I can’t speak to the piano—I might need a bigger house—but you can buy piano-like keyboards to get a similar feel. As for the computer keyboard, the Model M Keyboard was manufactured for many years, and can be readily found on eBay. Since they’re so durable, it’s probably still a fairly good investment.

The Model M is also regarded as a timeless and durable piece of hardware. Many units manufactured since the mid 1980s are still in use today, while the computers and monitors of the day are obsolete.

That’s my kind of hardware.

Indeed, Das Keyboard makes a modern equivalent using the same internal hardware switches, but it’s so hideously ugly it makes the IBM keyboard look like a Calvin Klein model by comparison. I’ll have to pass on that one.

Others favor the Apple Extended Keyboard, somewhat an equivalent of the Model M. The problem is that this keyboard used a different kind of hardware switch, one that I never liked quite as much. However, it’s still a lot better than the “scissors switch” of the modern keyboards, so I might also give it a try. They can also be found on eBay for a reasonable price.

Apple's classic keyboard.

So now I just have to figure out how to get these old beasts to connect to my modern computer.

Meanwhile, if you’re interested in the topic, be sure to check out this delightfully comprehensive writeup by Shawn Blanc.

There’s no such thing as a creative type. As if creativity is a verb, a very time-consuming verb. It’s about taking an idea in your head, and transforming that idea into something real. And that’s always going to be a long and difficult process. If you’re doing it right, it’s going to feel like work.

If you’re trying to grow a business, it really helps to know what you’re doing right online. Many of our clients are surprised to find out just how many of their questions we can answer with analytics. These numbers don’t lie.

Let me use a simple example from our own website. You might think of the “goal” of our website as getting people to fill out our client survey. This certainly doesn’t guarantee income, but it’s the best metric we have of success, since we don’t actually sell anything online. Therefore, I’m interested in knowing how people get there.

To do so, I use the Funnel Visualization and Goal Flow views in Google Analytics. I choose the “Complete Client Survey” goal, and I can see the routes visitors take to get there. I can see what percentage actually complete the survey (could be better!), and where the most visitors come from who actually complete our survey (Google, it turns out). The page people are most likely to look at before they view and complete our survey is our work portfolio, which makes sense. If I want to get more clients, therefore, I probably want to improve our portfolio. (We’re on it!)

In our case, the answers are not very surprising. However, it’s very frequently the case that we start working with a client, and dig through their analytics, only to find that they’ve completely misunderstood their customers. Analytics provide a wealth of information, and we believe you should never redesign a website without first using them to understand what is and isn’t working about your current one.

Our Spring Newsletter has hit the stands.

When you’re flipping between pictures, notice that there’s a gap between them. It’s deliberate—and most people wouldn’t think to add a space there.

It’s totally unnecessary, but once you notice it, you realize that it looks so much better than letting the pictures bump up against each other.

For our latest production, the Ultimate Choice website, we were intent on designing an experience that would move beyond the usual brochure sites standard for local home repair companies. And when Nohra from told us we could be creative as we wanted, we were also resolved on having a bit of fun in the process. We think we’ve hit the nail on the head by creating a site that was both a blast for us to build and visually enjoyable—a long, single page with an illustrated house and landscape as a frame to Nohra’s craftsmanship.

Our first goal was to redefine the visual language of Ultimate Choice (the only item we couldn’t touch was the new logo). Below is this is the original website.

The fun for us starts in the sky, at the entrance of the site. As you scroll down the page, an airplane flies across your browser window, pulling behind it a banner with Ultimate Choice’s motto. As you scroll back up, the plane retreats back to its starting position. Similarly, the clouds in the sky around the house also move up or down as you scroll, as does the reflection of a tree on the windows down through the house’s several stories. Finally, once you’ve reached the bottom of the page, Nohra and his van roll into view.

All of this movement is directly tied to how far down the page you’ve scrolled. Using javascript, we can watch for where the page has been scrolled to and change values on those elements accordingly. For instance, if you look closely, you’ll see the clouds are each moving at different speeds. We can control this by using a percentage of the distance the window’s been scrolled for the distance a cloud has travelled. A smaller percentage means a slower cloud, and vice versa.

Another CSS tool we made heavy use of is called z-index. This allowed us to layer pieces of the site one on top of the other, creating the illustrations’s depth. Z-index creates 3-dimensional space along the z-axis. If the x-axis runs left-to-right, the y-axis runs top-to-bottom, you can think of the z-axis as running from the screen out toward you. You can see this most clearly at the base of the house, where the fence is running behind the house, a pair of trees sit in front of the window, and another pair of trees are behind the fence in the back yard. If you time your scrolling just right, you can also get a cloud to sit itself behind those trees in the back yard.

While all of this was fun for us to build and makes for an engaging and unique experience, the real focus of the site is Nohra’s craftsmanship. Examples of this are front and center in the page’s three slide shows: one highlighting detail and craft, another gallery highlighting all the great work he does, and a third filled with testimonials from happy clients.

According to a recent study, people don’t actually pay attention to cover images, profile pictures, or apps. That’s pretty big news. What they do care about is learning about your company history and how friends are interacting with your brand.

The take-away is that Facebook business pages are being seen as more of a relevant resource for finding information about a company’s information and history. This makes filling out the timeline important.

A Couple Quick Tips

Enter your founding date right away. Then, instead of the date you joined Facebook showing up as your first major milestone, your company’s founding will stand out. (This is especially helpful if you have been around for a while like Burberry.)

Start entering dates. The New York Times has entered headlines and key milestones dating all the way back to their founding in 1851.

Be strategic about posting images. You are able to associate a single image with a milestone. If you want that image in a gallery (or have already uploaded one previously), then be sure the image is up first. Otherwise, upload an image to a milestone directly. And, remember – size matters. The dimensions for milestone photos are 843 x 503 pixels. Given this, your images need to be at least this size to look good.

Here at Needmore, we have been digging through the archives to share a handful of web releases throughout the years on our Facebook page. Check in over the next week or so and see if you recognize any of these gems from the vaults.