Tim Ferriss

This guy is amazing! I won’t go into all he has achieved here, but I was lucky enough to receive his book ‘The Four Hour Work Week‘ as a gift and I’m currently working my way through it. Most of the points in the book are superb and really get you thinking about the way most of us work. One of the main points that jumped out at me was Tim’s idea of having mini retirements instead of gearing your whole working life towards one big retirement. I’m not sure how feasible this might be, but I certainly like the idea (and can see the benefit) of taking three or four breaks during a year.

I’d also highly recommend you check out Tim’s blog and watch a few of the video entries he records with Kevin Rose of Digg. A favorite of mine is a video where Tim and Kevin talk about their top 5 favorite books.

Jason Fried

As I’m sure many of you know Jason is the guy behind 37 Signals, the makers of web apps such as Basecamp and Campfire. I don’t really know that much about Jason and 37 Signals, but this article I came across is a great insight into some of his personal beliefs about running a business – ‘The Way I Work: Jason Fried of 37Signals‘.

If you’re familiar with Tim Ferris (who I mentioned above) then you can see some overlap between both of their ideas and key philosophies regarding work – for example the elimination of meetings. Both guys believe in hard work, but go about achieving it in different ways from the normal 9-5′ers (Tim being the more extreme of the two in his ideologies).

You also might want to check out 37 Signals second in command David Heineimeier Hansson’s ‘Unlearn Your MBA‘ audio podcast and Jason’s video interview on the O’Reilly Community website. Pretty interesting stuff.

Leo Babauta

I can’t say that I’m an incredibly healthy, focused or organized person, but whenever I find myself wanting to try and better different aspects of my life I always find myself coming back to Leo’s blog ‘Zen Habits‘.

All of the articles are well written and the majority will get you feeling excited about trying to simplify your life, which is the main premise of Leo’s blog. If you really want to live a simpler life you can even try reading the Zen Habits book ‘The Power Of Less‘

Alan Sugar

Business Zone asked Sir Alan Sugar (star of the BBC’s The Apprentice) to answer a few questions about running small businesses, preparing business plans and the personal traits you need to have to become successful. I only just came across these short videos earlier today, but found them to be very helpful none the less.

I’m still not 100% decided what to make of Sir Alan, but you can’t argue the guy has been successful and knows a thing or two about business.

Your links…

If you’ve bookmarked a few articles you think might be beneficial in supporting this post then please by all means post them in the comments below. I look forward to reading them!

What was big in 2009

I think its pretty safe to say that 2009 was a really big year for the iPhone and mobile devices in general. The iTunes App Store now has more than 100,000 apps that have been downloaded more than 2 billion times!

From Authentic Style’s point of view, I certainly saw a great increase in the number of inquiries I’ve had requesting quotes for iPhone app UI design, or just advice in general. I’m certain that 2010 will continue to see the growth of applications but also be a year where more people start to realise the importance of optimising their websites for mobile devices.

Anyhow, here are my goals for the new year.

My Goals For 2010

Release a Wordpress Theme – this is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but not set aside the time to complete. Its high on my priority list this year so I’m hoping to get around to it.

Blog Regularly – going freelance in April 2009 was a decision which I haven’t regreted at all. Luckily I’ve had the chance to work on a number of projects with the majority of my inquiries coming through this very website without the need to do any marketing elsewhere. To ensure this keeps happening I know I need to keep things fresh, so I’ll be trying to add more posts in 2010.

Take the last Friday of each month off – whilst being a freelancer is really great, its easy to start working even harder / more often than you did when you were employed. I think towards the end of 2009 I fell into that trap slightly. A resolution of mine this year is to take the last Friday of each month as a day off and start to remember again that I am my own boss and can ultimately control how much I work.

HTML 5 – Being really busy with freelance projects I regret to say that I’ve not dabbled with HTML5 or CSS3 as of yet. I’m definitely keeping one eye on the progress these technologies are making, but I know I need to set aside some time to start getting my hands dirty.

Personal Project – I want to create a new website offering a service. Thats all I can say right now, so you’ll just have to wait and see when / if I get around to creating the website for it. I’ve thought long and hard about the idea and I think it could be interesting to try it out and see what kind of interest it gets.

Looking back over this list as I’m writing it seems a little daunting in terms of the work associated with some of my goals. But where’s the find in just sitting back and letting opportunities pass you by? I’m kind of hoping that now I’ve publically posted these goals it means I’ll be more committed to seeing them through to completion.

So, what are your goals this year?

Anyhow, thats enough from me and what I want to achieve this year. Now I’d love to hear your goals for 2010 in the comments below.

New Challenge

Designing for the iPhone has been such a great experience and one that I’ve enjoyed so much. Its nice to take a step back from designing websites and look at over coming the new challenges of designing for a much smaller mobile device.

iChampi Design

Below you can take a look at two of the screen designs for iChampi. If you like your mushrooms and you’re French, then this app might come in handy! In essence it allows you to tag your location when you’re out picking mushrooms and also informs you about the various types of mushrooms species and whether they are edible or not. So, quite handy if you’re into mushrooms in a big way. Although there are a few minor design issues with the finished app, which are likely to be due to some things in the development stage (I was responsible for only the design), on the whole I’m really happy with the final outcome.

I’m currently working on the designs for a new iPhone app for a luxury French hotel, so stay tuned for more information and screen shots on that once its complete! Having said that, I couldn’t resist using a screen shot to accompany the iChampi design in the main image for this article though.

Thinking about creating an iPhone App?

If you’re interested in having Authentic Style work with you on your next iPhone application then please do get in touch!

iPhone Application

One of the most interesting things I worked on this month was the user interface design for a new iPhone application. I can’t tell you what it is yet ( its pretty niche and will only be available in French), but it was very exciting never the less. For me there was definitely something about working on a totally new area of design that was so interesting. As much as I love designing websites it was nice to take break and create a design for something that I’ll actually be able to see on my iPhone in a month or so once its been developed.

Working on this project reminded me that its so important to keep learning and trying things outside of your design comfort zone. Saying that I’ve also been working with several new clients on new identities for their companies, a discipline which I feel like I am improving in, and creating some really nice concepts.

New version of Authentic Style

If you’re a fellow designer I bet you know how tough it is to design something for yourself, right? Well I’ve had a few ideas for a new version of this site, but with the way the current version was received I have to admit I am scared to change it. The trouble with the current site is that it comes across as a portfolio for a designer rather than a small design studio, which I guess is what I am now. Don’t get me wrong, I love my clients knowing that I’m a one man band – I think I can offer things that agencies can’t, but I want to push my services more and come across more professional. Anyway, I’m hoping that in my spare time I can get some wire frames together and then begin to create a layout.

Goals for the future

Its always a good thing to set yourself goals. If you don’t what have you got to work towards? This coming month I want to look at using Expression Engine with a view to using that for sites that require a more powerful CMS, and I’m also looking forward to trying out Perch CMS on a new project I’ll be working on.

Preparing for September

September is going to be another busy month. I’m gearing up to do some work for a university, a huge strategy, design and development email newsletter project and a few websites dotted in amongst those. I’ve also got a holiday (fingers crossed) to fit in, so its going to be another busy month I think. I’ll hopefully be updating my portfolio here soon, so stay on the look out for that too!

Thanks MacUser Mag!

I have to say that I did re-read the email a couple of times just to make certain what I’d read was correct. Thankfully Nigel Tipping was kind enough to send me a copy so I could get my hands on the real thing.

I just want to say thanks to MacUser Magazine for featuring me, and especially thank Nigel for being kind enough to send me a copy of the mag.  I had absolutely no idea of the feature so it was a real shock! It was great to be included alongside some other excellent portfolios as well, like Digital Mash, Jose Ortiz (recently redesigned), Will Pearson, and Robbie Manson to name but a few. If you’d like to see what they said about Authentic Style, here is the excerpt;

Web designer William Smith has one of the better single-page sites we’ve seen, because it has surprisingly thoughtful navigation. Some single-page sites provide links between sections that jump to the top of the page, but here you’ll find the full navigation bar. It’s a much better option, since you can seamlessly flow through the site in whatever order you prefer. Occasionally portfolios include a thumbnail and a link to the client’s site, which can be a frustrating situation if a site has subsequently been redesigned. Smith avoids this with Web 2.0 image previews of complete website designs and a link so you can sample the site’s interaction.

I’ll leave you with some more images of the magazine…

Get your price right

Deciding on an hourly rate was something I found quite tricky. I’d had some previous experience freelancing, so I knew roughly what the going rate was, and what the agencies I had worked at in the past were charging too. Armed with that information and keeping in mind the state of the economic climate, I was able to calculate what I should be charging for my work.

“Charge too much and loose out. Charge too little and strap yourself in for some serious work!”

The trouble with setting rates is that you can charge too much and consequently loose work, or charge too little and get so much work that you can’t handle it. So based on that I think its highly important for all freelancers to continually asses their rates and modify them accordingly.

If you’re taking part in work for companies overseas, you’ll have the pleasure of dealing with conversion rates. This is definitely an area I need to improve on myself as if you’re not careful you can find yourself loosing out slightly here. To prevent this make sure you outline to your client that your hourly rate is subject to change based on the conversion rate at the time of invoicing and specify that the price you quoted initially was an estimate.

Stay on top of every project

When you’ve got loads of projects on the go it can be tough to know exactly where you are with each one when you’re constantly switching between them. I found that a combination of writing to-do lists and using BaseCamp ensures that I know where I am with everything thats going on. My clients also like the fact that they can login to BaseCamp and see an overview of all the communication we’ve had about their project, grab all the files, and see the milestones we’ve set together.

Manage your time

When you go freelance you’ll be suprised how much of your time is spent being a project manager. Personally I don’t mind this too much as it breaks up the day, and I really love the fact that I get to manage my own time, speak with clients, and book in work. Paper work is always a bit of a pain, but when you know that its necessary and all beneficial for you and your business it becomes a lot easier.

When I started booking in work I chose iCal as my weapon of choice. But, after a few days I found it really tricky to use. I wanted to book out blocks of time, say 3 days at a time, and I couldn’t see a way of doing this (I’m sure you probably can, its just that I couldn’t figure it out!). Based on that and also that I was using Gmail for my emails, I moved over to Google Calendar and absolutely love using it. I can easily move projects about, block book, colour code confimed work and provisional work and so much more.

One golden rule for you that I’ve learnt the hard way already is – always allow time for unforeseen circumstances to crop up, and also the time it takes clients to feedback to you on projects.

Basically don’t cram work in so tight that you’ve got no breathing space to deal with paperwork, more amends than you may have expected, and extra little jobs that might get thrown your way from your current clients.

Up Sell

Another thing I’ve learnt is the art of the up sell. When you’re selling a product or service, its a great opportunity to drop into conversation other ways in which you can help their business. You don’t have to do this in a pushy fashion, in fact you should totally avoid doing so. For example, simply mentioning that you’re able to optimise a website and ensure that it receives targeted traffic after you launch it might just be enough to get a client interested in your optimisation services.

Once you’ve done this you can then explain in layman’s terms some of the ways in which this can be done and ask whether this is something they might be interested in. Before you know it you might be able to gain some extra work and help your new client out.

Find out how your perceived

With some clients its easy to tell whether you’re doing a good job. With others its tougher as they might be harder to read.

Something I’ve been trying to do with my clients is getting them to take 10 minutes to fill out a short survey that I have created. At the moment I’m doing this at the end of each stage of a project, and so far it’s given me a really good idea of the areas I need to improve on and the areas that I’m excelling in. If you’ve got 15 minutes free right now, why not head over to Survey Monkey (there’s a free option), set up a survey and start finding out the areas in which you can improve the operations of your company.

To sum up

I hope you’ve found this post useful. I think its clear to see that freelancing and running your own business is a huge step and there is a massive learning curve involved. Thats one of the reasons I decided to do it and one of the reasons why I’m absolutely loving it so far. As long as you put the effort in, you can reap the rewards. I’m in no position to preach on the subject, but I thought a post like this might help others when weighing up whether to stay in an agency or make a leap for freedom!

Giant Leap

Working for yourself is a humongous step. You need to be self motivated, keen to learn, have a passion for what you do, be able to manage your time effectively, and ready to make some mistakes. I feel like I’m ready for the challenge and am really excited to be able to call myself a freelancer!

Between my last job at Redweb and my current job at Atelier I freelanced for a month just to keep myself entertained, and I realised then just how much I loved it. There was something about having to hunt for work, speak more with prospects and clients, and manage yourself from day to day that made my work time so much more interesting. Only doing it for a month isn’t going to compare to doing it full time, but it was then I realised I really didn’t want to work for someone else for the rest of my career.

So after a hell of a lot of thought and reading I decided to hand my notice in at Atelier, (if you’re looking for a design job by the way, they’re a great bunch of guys) and go it alone. I’m definitely going to miss the people there, but what with all the twittering that goes on anyway I think I’ll be able to stay in touch!

Services

I’ll mainly be offering bespoke website design, content managed websites, ecommerce solutions and email newsletter design/build. But I’d also be interested to take on graphic design jobs and smaller projects, such as sprucing up existing sites and offering advice to small business about how to further improve their websites. I’ve also got experience in search engine optimisation having worked some successful website redesigns that focused heavily on improved SEO.

More blogging

Me going freelance is going to be great news for this blog. I’m a firm believer in how much a blog can help a business and create a helpful following, no matter how big or small. So with that in mind I’ll be trying to add more posts here to generate some traffic for the Authentic Style site and help spread the word about my company.

Lastly, hire me!

Its as simple as that! Check out my work, and if you like what you see use the form to get in touch with me. I’ll let you know my rates and provide you with a quote in no time. I’m looking forward to working with some very interesting clients. To sum up, I can’t wait to start!

Use a Fixed Width No Wider Than 600 Pixels

If you’re used to designing websites you’ll be optimising your designs for 800×600, or even 1024×768 pixel resolution screens, but its a bit different when it comes to email design. This is because most of your recipients will be viewing your email in a ‘preview pane’ rather than double clicking the message and viewing it full screen. Bearing this in mind your email design should be 500-600 pixels wide.

You’ll also want to make sure you use a fixed with, rather than percentage based layout. The name of the game with email newsletter design is simplicity in terms of structure. You shouldn’t let this make you feel limited in terms of design though!

Background Images

I think its a common misconception that you can’t use background images in your email newsletter designs or you should really try and avoid images all together. You most certainly can, but you kind of need to rig your HTML to do so.

Most email clients strip out your newsletters <head> and <body> tags and replace them with their own (because your email is displaying inside their webpage after all), which does make sense. So, as a result you can’t add your background images using CSS between your <head> tags.

What you need to do is wrap your email in a huge table thats 100% wide and 100% high, just like you would have done back in the day! Then I recommend using the old ‘bgcolor=’ and / or ‘background=’ to set your background color and image.

<table style="height: 100%;" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%" bgcolor="#000000" background="http://www.yoursite.com/images/image.jpg">

Use Inline CSS

This is totally frowned upon in web design, but in email newsletter design, its a necessity. Lots of email readers apply their own styles to emails to make them render in a particular way. By adding our own styles ‘inline’ we over ride these.

Here’s a quick example of some inline CSS styling a paragraph;

<p style="font-size:14px; color:#000;">My Paragraph goes here</p>

Sometimes I have found however that it is necessary to add some styles into the <head> section of your newsletter design. One particular instance of this is for reseting margins and I always add link styles here (as well as inline) just to be on the safe side.

Make your email is readable without images loaded

By default most email readers don’t load images, the user has to click a link to load them. Because of this you need to make sure the main message of your email is still readable with images turned off. The best way to do this is to descriptively label your ALT tags.

You can see in the above example from PixMania that the main message ‘£10 off when you spend a minimum of £200′ is still clear. This is why its so important that your whole email newsletter doesn’t just consist of images.

Use HTML Tables for Layout

If you’ve been around the industry for any length of time you’ll know that you need to revert back to tables for layout.

The guys over at Campaign Monitor recently wrote a blog post about how many tables you could nest inside other tables and your email still display properly. The generally consensus was that you can go 15 tables deep! This reinforces the fact that tables for layout in email newsletters is the best bet.

Test, Test and Test

Hotmail, Gmail, Thunderbird, Outlook, Yahoo – you get my point. There are a fair few email clients out there and you’ll need to make sure your email displays properly in all of the major ones. As long as you’ve adhered to the main points of this article you should have much to worry about, but its better to be safe than sorry!

Include a link to view in browser

What happens if after all your testing, for whatever reason your email looks dreadful? Most of the time It will get deleted. Thats no good. You need people to realise that they can easily click a link to view the same email in their browser window where it will definitely render how it was intended to.

My tip would be to always get into the habit of adding something like ‘Doesn’t look quite right? Click here to view this in your browser’, and you’ll be making sure that no one misses out on what you’ve got to say.

And finally, Follow the Campaign Monitor Blog

These guys know what their talking about. They run the hugely successful, (and bloody brilliant might I add) online email newsletter software ‘Campaign Monitor‘. Out of all the ways you can send HTML emails online, Campaign Monitor is by far the most intuitive and best I’ve used.

If you’re serious about creating and sending email newsletters then you need to subscribe to their blog. Lots of their posts address questions from the community and also announcements about new features their software offers, plus updates from the fight to introduce some form of standards to email newsletter design.

Conclusion

I hope this post has helped you, or maybe got you more interested in this medium. I know its something that interests me, and something that I’m always keeping my eye on. I’m sure one day these tips will become redundant, and I really hope that they do – but for now the way in which we build email newsletters is quite archaic to say the least.

If you fancy reading up I highly recommend you download this FREE HTML newsletter design guide from the guys at MailChimp. Enjoy!

You might also find these links useful

• Redesigning the Campaign Monitor Newsletter
  
• SitePoint: Coding Email Newsletters
  

That statistic for me is quite scary, considering the amount of designers/developers who are already prepared to stop developing with IE6 in mind. Anyhow, totally eliminating IE6 is probably just wishful thinking from the lay of the land right now, but who knows for the near future hey? Back to the point at hand: In this post I’ll take a quick look at the best new features Internet Explorer 8 has to offer us.

Speedy Gonzalez!

One of the best things about the new IE8 is its speed. Im yet to sample this for myself, but I’m told it loads sites with AJAX content much much quicker than IE7, and is much closer to its superior Firefox in overall usage speed. Speed is definitely the order of the day when it comes to browsers, and I think this should be the case. No one wants to wait to open a new tab, or be restricted to using only 5 or 6 tabs at once. The way in which we consume the internet makes it essential that browsers be very versatile in this respect.

Crash Recovery

Something Firefox has had for a while now, but has been missing in all previous versions of Internet Explorer. Yes, you can now re-open IE8 with the tabs you had open prior to the crash, and if one inparticular tab crashes, you have the option to kill only that tab without loosing the rest. Joy to the world!

Private Browsing

If you’re browsing habits are questionable (you know what I mean!) then you can rest easy and browse in complete privacy. The private feature basically allows you to cover your tracks by preventing a browsing history and not storing files in the cache on your PC. There are more legitimate reasons for using ‘private’ mode though – one of these being that it prevents passwords being remembered and stored and other such information you type into web forms,  so I guess it could be a pretty handy feature. Especially if you find yourself using a computer in a library, or other shared location.

Accelerators & Web Slices

These enable you to highlight a selection of text and perform certain tasks without having to leave the page you’re on. So, for example you could grab a selection of text and translate it into another language without having to visit a translation site. Or you could click for a map of a geographic location without having to open up Google Maps in another tab. Pretty neat!

Standards Compliance

It seems that with every release of IE Microsoft claim it to be more ’standards compliant’. As I haven’t actually got my hands on IE 8 yet, I can’t vouch for this, but this new compliance mode could be handy – for testing purposes at least.

As a result of this improved standards compliance some sites will apparently now break in IE8 because us designers and developers have had to use hacks in previous versions of IE to get our sites displaying how we want them to. Fear not though as IE8 comes with a ‘compliance’ button, which lets you select different rendering modes  eg. IE6, IE7 and the browser will behave as it does in that version.

All in all…

I think this will be a step in the right direction. Although I’m yet to try IE8 out I don’t think I’ll be running out on Firefox any time soon. The number one reason being all the plugins I use on a regular basis! If you’re wanting to find out more before you download, check Microsoft’s page out. Finally I’ll leave you with what Microsoft has to say about IE8…

Windows Internet Explorer 8 provides innovative new features that make browsing faster, easier, and safer than ever.

… I’ll let you be the judge of that!

1. I was once ranked 10th in England…

…at playing Squash! I started playing Squash when I was seven and soon took part in tournaments up and down the country on the weekends. I played for my county, region and almost country at Under 15 level. Yep, it was a few years back! I still play today, but just for fun.

2. I can Water Ski

A few years ago I was lucky enough to get water skiing lessons for my birthday. I’ve only done it the once, but it was awesome fun. I managed to get up first time as well! Something which I’d love to try now would be wake boarding. It just looks cooler doesn’t it?!

3. I love drumming

Music is a big part of my life, and although I don’t currently play in a band, drumming is a big passion of mine. I’m constantly tapping away much to the annoyance of the people around me! I tend to listen to Rock, Metal, Funk & Blues, so pretty much anything with interesting rhythms.

4. Just started getting into motorbikes

When I say motorbikes, I mean it in the loosest possible term! A few months back I purchased a mini moto to mess about on around all the dirt tracks I live near – thats one of the benefits of living in the middle of no where. From riding around on it looking like a complete idiot (bear in mind the bike is only about 2.5 feet tall!) I now having a burning desire to purchase a proper motocross bike.

5. I really want to do the Pamplona Bull Run

One day I’m going to do it I swear. If you don’t know, its the race through the Italian streets with hundreds of other participants and you being chased by Bulls. Check out this link if you want to find out more.

6. I’m obsessed with pixels!

When it comes to design I’m a really bad perfectionist. Not saying my designs are perfect – they’re not, but If I notice something that looks a pixel out I can’t help but move it. Even when I’m flicking through a magazine I’ll notice things and analyse the design. It drives me crazy!

7. I sold a hobby website for £900 once

Back when I was still at school I ran a website dedicated to making forum signatures for people who played games online. Yes, I was a bit of a gaming geek! Anyhow, the site was pretty popular. I wrote lots of tutorials, played lots of games and at the peak of our time we were receiving about 25,00 unique hits a month. Although the site was just a bit of fun, I’m really glad I started it, and especially grateful to the people that helped out with it as its what basically led me into web design.

Eventually I lost patience with trying to manage a forum with over 6k members and decided to sell the site on. It made just short of £900, which I was pretty chuffed with!

Tagging some people I respect…

Well, I hope that wasn’t too boring for you to read. Perhaps as this blog is new it might have given you a bit of a better insight into the person I am. Anyway, this is the bit where I’d better tag some people, so here goes.

• Mike Jolley – Developer Extraordinaire
• Anthony Brewitt – UK Web Designer
• James McDonald – Designer from bonney Scotland
• Joanna Klima – Freelance Designer from Australia
• Andrew Lindstrom – Love this guys blog – superb design!
• Rob Hawkes – Designer / Developer from Surrey, UK