This past week I had a chance to speak at the Front-End Design Conference down in steamy St. Petersburg Florida. I had a great weekend that included meeting tons of awesome people, lots of tasty drinks, salsa dancing and plenty of air-conditioning.

My talk was titled “Design is in the Details” and it went pretty well even though I was nervous. I made sure to include lots of good design guidelines in my talk as well as jokes and lots of plaid references. You can take a look at my slides below. Not sure if anyone got a video or audio recording of the talk.

Also just wanted to say a quick thanks to everyone that helped put the conference together, the speakers and all the attendees! You guys are AWESOME!

Design from different perspectives is a series of short video interviews detailing the different kinds of jobs and environments that are available to designers and the pros and cons of each situation. In this video I chat with interview Chad Engle about his experiences working as a designer at an advertising agency. Stay tuned and grab the RSS feed for more interviews with other freelancers, creative directors, in house designers & more!

More About Chad

Twitter: Chadengle
Website: thechadengle.com

I am a designer & creative consultant. I work on projects large and small. I am also the editor for Fuel Your Creativity.

I created a little thing called Design Community Twitter Hours which, would not be possible without several people. I spend most of my time designing and creating. I try to find interesting and creative things on the web as well as apps that are well designed and fun to use.

What do YOU think?

Do you work at an advertising agency? Wish you could? Want to be interviewed? Feel free to chime! I’d love to hear your take on some of the same questions I asked Chad!

Check out the other videos in this series

Design From Different Perspectives Part 1: Kevin M. Scarbrough – Freelance Designer

Design From Different Perspectives Part 2 – Stephen Olmstead – In House Designer

Design from different perspectives is a series of short video interviews detailing the different kinds of jobs and environments that are available to designers and the pros and cons of each situation. In this video interview Kevin from Robot Monster Ghost shares his experiences on the the good, the bad an the ugly of freelancing and running a small studio. Stay tuned and grab the RSS feed for more interviews with other freelancers, creative directors, in house designers & more!

A bit more about Kevin…

Twitter: @RMGco
Website:RobotMonsterGhost.com

Kevin’s Scarbrough in 2 paragraphs or less:

I’ve designed for a steady diet of unusual clients (a fashion designer in Italy, a Bolivian wine bar, a New Zealand boat manufacturer, a Russian hosting company, etc.). I’ve learned project management the hard/best way.

I’ve hiked to the bottom of the grand canyon, I briefly owned a snarky t-shirt company based on mad science, I helped set up a rave to raise money for Unicef, as a kid I used to try to improve ads on the radio and TV, and on vacation I make up wild stories about who I am.

What do YOU think?

Do you freelance full time or run a small design studio? Wish you could? Want to be interviewed? Feel free to chime! I’d love to hear your take on some of the same questions I asked Kevin!

Check out the other videos in this series

Design From Different Perspectives Part 1: Kevin M. Scarbrough – Freelance Designer

Design From Different Perspectives Part 2 – Stephen Olmstead – In House Designer

Design From Different Perspectives Part 3 – Chad Engle – Agency Designer

Nick Snyder recently sent me an email with a question he’s been dealing with at his full time job. “Is it ok to show and code unused designs in your portfolio” I thought answering the question here in order to shed some light on this frustrating topic and hopefully help others out as well.

Niki,

Thanks for your time and keep up the sweet tweets
—Nick Snyder

Hey Nick –

Thanks for emailing me and asking. I’ve definitely been in your situation before and understand the frustration of dealing with designs that veer away from your original intended design (thats a huge topic to address in itself!). The first thing I would do is ask your employer about showing work in your portfolio. You have every right to show the work you’ve done, but its always nice to give them a heads up and credit where the work was created. I would even bring up showing the first round designs. If they are ok with it you are in the clear and everyone is happy. If they aren’t ok with it you could just show them during an in person interview – or on a special portfolio page that isnt public.

I would also say that showing the first design and then showing the coded result isnt a bad thing. I’ve seen situations where a designer shows their intended design but then notes that the live site has been altered by the client or they host their coded version of the site. Again I would ask/inform your employer of what you want to do just to be in the clear. Most design agencies or even those that work with designers understand that things change and clients don’t always give the best design direction.

I hope that answered your question Nick – thanks again for asking!

Do you show unused designs in your portfolio?

What would you do in Nicks situation? Have you been in this situation yourself? Leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Also – if you have a design question you want answered feel free to shoot me an email and ask away!

Photo Credit Pak Gwei

Just a quick question and challenge for you guys – Are you pushing yourself to learn? I have felt kinda blah these last few month in terms of my motivation and creativity as a designer and developer. I think this was because I wasn’t pushing myself to learn new things. So I just recently decided to learn how to build sites in ExpresisonEngine and give myself a geek-ee challenge. It’s been frustrating and fun at the same time but I can say for the first time in a while I’m actually EXCITED about learning something and im actually doing something! (instead of putting things off).

So I’d like to challenge you guys to push yourself and learn new things! Leave a comment and let me know what you are challenging yourself with!

Design O’Blog reader Dan Crowbar sent me an email recently asking about including process work and sketches in your portfolio. In this video I’ll share some thoughts & tips as well as show some of my process work on a recent project.

What Do You Think?

Do you show process work in your portfolio? Why or why not? How do you (or would you) present your sketches? Chime in and let me know what you think.

The design community is a two headed beast. You have the online design world that is filled with lots of prolific designers, writers, and twitterers. On the other side you have the offline design world filled with lots of events, meetups, conferences and tweetups.  As a web designer who primarily works online I find it extremely easy to exist solely in the online design community and neglect the offline community. This can lead to burnout when work and play, as well as socializing take place online. I’ve found that often times the solution to this burnout is human contact. (remember humans… those people behind the twitter names and avatars?)

But I’m Shy!!!

I moved to Boston just about two years ago. After a few weeks of job searching I was hired at a small design firm and ramped up my freelancing career. This life situation wasn’t exactly conducive to making friends or living a balanced life… I knew I needed to get out of my comfort zone and go out and meet people.

I’ll admit that I’m not the most social person in the world, or even the most outgoing for that matter. In fact I’m really geeky (well what web designer isn’t…) and kind of shy at times. I’m slowly realizing that no matter how great the online design community is – it’s no substitute for face to face contact with REAL HUMAN beings…

Taking Action!

I’ been attempting to attend more local events and meet more people – even if I’m terrified to do so.  Ive recently been attending some local design and development meetups. So far I’ve managed to make it out to a few AIGA Boston events, Refresh Boston, Build Guild Salem as well as BostonEErs. I just want to encourage everyone who reads this to get out and get involved in your local design community – you never know who you will meet and how you can learn from them! I’ve meet some incredibly cool people at these events including @unruthless, @mkivikoski,  @jasonrobb,  @inkpixelspaper as well as others.

I’m looking forward to attending more web/design events and meet ups and continue to make new friends. If you are in the Boston/new england area and we haven’t met in real life connect with me on twitter @nikibrown or shoot me an email hi at nikibrown dot com and say Hi – I’m game for making new friends and more nerdy webby learning!

Resources In Your Area

AIGA http://aiga.org/

American Institute of Graphic Artists – AIGA has lots of local chapters around the country and most likely in your neck of the woods. This group focuses mostly on graphic designers and is (at least in my experience) heavy on print designers.

MeetUp.com http://www.meetup.com/

Meetup.com is a site that lets individuals organize and host group activities – this isnt focused solely on design, but everything from knitting to cooking to web design! Do a quick search for design or development in your town and get involved!

Build Guild http://buildguild.org

Not sure how many build guilds exist outside of the Salem, MA area – but if you are around the New england/north shore area you should check this event out. Its held at a bar in Salem and filled with lots of good geek talk and beer!

Refresh (insert your city name here)

http://refreshingcities.org/
Refresh is a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical, & professional culture of New Media endeavors in the Boston area while promoting design, technology, usability, and standards.

Also consider starting an event in your area if there aren’t any!

Your Thoughts

Leave a comment and let me know what offline design events you attend or recommend others check out! Huzzah!

But I probably won’t get one just yet… But I AM extremely excited about what this means for the magazine and publishing industry. There’s so much potential with this device to extend and transform the way we consume media. I’m not even sure we know how people will be using the iPad in 6 months time from now. It’s all up to the app developers!

I almost feel like I’ve has first hand access to what this will look like all week…sorta.  I’ve been working on an iPad app site for Men’s Health  Magazine for the past few days at Brunello, Photoshoping screenshots into iPad photos, sprinkling jQuery here and there and getting the site ready for todays launch. So go check it out while you are at it: http://menshealth.com/ipad.

Now I’m curious what you think of the iPad - regardless of if you will buy it or not. What impact do you think it will have on the publishing industry? On computers in general? On your media consuming habbits (if you are buying one). Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

I had a reader email me and ask what they should show and not show in their portfolio. In this video I answer the question and take you through some of my current portfolio pieces and talk about what I would show, take out, and how many items I would present in a job interview.

Let me know if you have any other questions! I’ll be happy to answer via a screencast or video!

Congrats to Scarlett @ScarlettColey & Ralph @ralphsaunders! Hope you both enjoy Dribbble! Thanks to everyone who commented! Will let you know when I have more invites!

So I’ve been on Dan Cederholm’s sorta super top secret Dribbble site for a little while and now and have been enjoying it immensely! I know tweeting about sneak peaks on Twitter have probably been driving everyone nuts. But I have some good news! I have been granted the ability to draft a few players. So here the deal – post a comment with a link to your best piece of work and I have a looksie and draft those I see fit!

Let the games begin!