You’ve probably all had a new inquiry come in whereby the client wants the content managed on their site, but perhaps doesn’t have the budget for a custom CMS, or where even using Wordpress could take a little too much time. For me, this is where Perch comes in.

Set-up

Perch is a fantastic little CMS that takes no time to set up and with the addition of a few tags in your HTML files, you can cms’ify areas of your website in literally minutes.

So here’s the ’skinny’..

• You pay £35 + VAT (can’t grumble at that) for a single license
• Download your copy of Perch from their site (beautiful might I add)
• Create a new MySQL database.
• Navigate to the appropriate address on your server and follow a really simple set-up process.

That’s it, Perch is up and running! All you do now is add some editable regions (more on that below), login and start adding your content.

Making content areas editable couldn’t be easier

All you need to do to be able to edit the content on a specific page of your site is add the following code at the very top of your HTML.
<?php include('perch/runtime.php'); ?>

Follow that with this little code snippet in place of the content you want to make editable and you’re done. ‘Main heading’ should be edited to best describe the type of content that will go here;
<?php perch_content('Main heading'); ?>

Once you’ve uploaded that and refreshed the Perch admin area you’ll see that region is now visible. Click it, assign it a template (anything from a simple content block to repeating news items) and you’re away.

Documentation & Support

The people behind Perch have recently updated their documentation, which takes no time at all to skim over. Take a look for yourself at how simple and easy Perch is to set up and use and maybe consider it for the next simply CMS project that comes your way.

I’ve now used Perch on several client sites and would highly recommend it.

Planning & Information Architecture

The first stage in any project is to ask questions. I needed to extract answers to a few key questions from my client in order to start thinking about what exactly needed to be included in the design, and to ultimately make this newsletter a success. Often the questions are simple, but they need to be asked nonetheless;

• What is the main purpose of this newsletter?
• What areas of your website / company do you want to promote with the newsletter?

From the answers to the above it was clear that this particular newsletter would need to include information about the choir’s latest news/events and also encourage people to connect with them on Twitter and Facebook.

Design

The important thing with an email newsletter is for it to be instantly recognisable as soon as it’s opened in the inbox. With that in mind the design had to have a strong sense of the LoveSoul Choir brand.

To achieve this I decided to go for a professional look whilst at the same time trying to inject a hint of personality into the design. I think I achieved this by using things like tilted images for the news thumbnails, laid back (even grungy style) social media icons, the hearts icon from the logo in the footer and also a nice banner image that hopefully projected a fun yet professional feel.

Having created the choir’s logo and company website previously, I knew that purple was the colour that distinguished LoveSoul from anyone else and made them recognisable. With that in mind I decided to create a solid purple block of colour near the top of the newsletter that doubled up as a brief overview of the new stories included in each issue. My idea was that this would enable people to open up the newsletter, see if a news story interested them, click on it and then be automatically taken down the page (by way of an anchored link) to read a little more about it. Then if they wanted to read the full story they could do so on the choir’s website.

The client was really pleased with the feel of the newsletter design, so we quickly moved on to developing it ready for send out later that month.

Implementation

This particular email newsletter was developed using MailChimp rather than Campaign Monitor as this was the client’s preference.

MailChimp didn’t really pose any real issues during the development stage, but I do have to say that my personal preference is definitely Campaign Monitor for a few reasons. Firstly its speed when making changes and sending out test emails – something which got quite frustrating with MailChimp. And also it’s really simple interface. MailChimp looks great yes and I do like their quirky approach, but I remember thinking ‘Blimey there’s a lot going on here!’ when I first logged into the admin area. I think they could cut back a little and make the design simpler.

Overall the implementation went smoothly and against all odds I don’t remember suffering any real set backs during the testing stage. There’s a first for everything!

The main areas of the newsletter were made editable so my client could easily update the content from month to month and I finished the project off by creating a screencast that acted as an instructional video showing them how to edit, add and remove news items.

Click here to view the completed design in your browser

Newsletter Development Tips

I thought I’d finish this case study off with a few things I’ve learn over the time in which I’ve been designing and developing email newsletters. You might know these already but I thought I’d share them anyway as they’re always handy to refer to when starting on a new project.

1. Display: Block
   Hotmail, and now I believe Gmail (as of a few months ago) can sometimes add mysterious spacing around some of the images in your newsletters. To combat this simply add the CSS declaration ‘display:block;’ as an inline style. Like this;
   <img src="images/nav-amended/research-grants-and-contracts.jpg" width="119" height="47" style="display:block;" />

2. Inline Styles
   Yes you can add CSS styles to the <head> of your document, but to make certain all email clients display things how you intended, you should add styles inline. Like this;
   <p style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#e14f23; font-size:18px; font-weight:bold; padding:0px 0px 9px; margin:0px;">

3. Watch your height and width
   When most people read their mail they might not have their email client open full screen, or the vertical / horizontal space might be limited in their preview pane. With that in mind it’s important to get some content above the ‘fold’ (hence the purple contents panel I talked about in the LoveSoul Newsletter). Regarding width, try and stay at under 650 pixels if you can.
4. Build the newsletter inside a table
   When you start developing your email newsletter its good practise to first create a table that the rest of your code will sit inside. Make this table 100% wide and 100% high and set the vertical alignment to ‘top’. With this in place you can effectively apply background colours to this table and they should show up.
5. Be careful with padding and margins
   Padding and margins can be read differently or not at all by different email clients. Take a look at Campaign Monitors Guide To CSS Support for more info.
6. Test, Test, Test
   There is no substitute for testing. You can’t guarantee that your email will display correctly in Hotmail, Gmail, Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, and Yahoo Mail without actually viewing it in all of these. Make sure you allow time to do this during and at the end of the development.
7. Include a link to view the newsletter online
   This is just a best practise really. If the worst comes to the worst and your email newsletter is unreadable to customer X, make sure you include a link to view the email in your web browser at the top of the email.

Background and Brief

Steve is vocal coach from the Salisbury/Southampton area and this project was one of many that he’s commissioned me to complete. Steve wanted a complete overhaul of his previous website and also for me to look at creating a new brand from scratch. The new website needed to look professional and encourage people to make contact. It also had to be updatable by Steve himself and include a blog. With that in mind the natural choice was to develop the site using Wordpress.

First Steps: The Logo

Before jumping straight into the logo design process I wanted to gather Steve’s thoughts and really find out what he wanted to achieve with his brand. After having a chat it became clear that the new brand needed to stand out, be unique and mix professionalism (considering Steve is one of only 36 certified speech level singing coaches in the UK) and simplicity. With that in mind I started knocking out some ideas in Photoshop as I find this quicker than Illustrator in the early stages of a logo design project.

These were some of the first ideas. You’ll notice I didn’t add any colours at this stage as there is a danger that a client may eliminate an idea based solely on its colours.

Steve really liked the device I created from his initials ’s’ and ‘g’, so the next step was to play around with colours, placement and the typography. There were several iterations in between and some debate on whether to go with a serif or sans-serif based font, but Steve decided he really likely the bottom version shown here, so we ran with it.

The Website Concept

Having finished up the logo successfully we moved on to the website design. I sent Steve a few links to various sites that made a big deal of photographs of the website’s owner. My thinking here was that if these images could portray Steve in a professional, yet relaxed and easy going manner it would hopefully encourage potential clients to make contact. Thankfully Steve was keen on this idea and was more than happy to get in touch with a professional photographer to get a shoot organised.

Armed with the photos, I set about sketching out a really rough wireframe for the homepage. I find it so important to include this step in my projects, because it doesn’t take long to sketch something out and it gets me thinking about other possibilities in terms of layout. After all you can just rub your lines out and start again.

After creating the wireframe and being sure that it included everything that was required, I booted up Photoshop and created the following concept. Thankfully Steve loved it and it was signed off with extremely minimal modifications. I also mocked up the design on an inner page of the website – in this case the blog page so Steve could see how this would look too.

Wordpress Development

The final stage was to build the site using Wordpress. I used widgets to allow Stave to have full control over the content on the homepage as well as having obvious control of the content on the inner pages of the site. The blog was an important part of the site, so I used some PHP to dynamically pull in posts from that section of the site and show them in the ‘From Steve’s Blog’ section on the homepage.

During this stage Steve expressed a desire to do something a little different than just have the contact form sit on an inner page template. I put forward the idea of having it potentially slide down from underneath the navigation bar and mocked up a concept to show Steve just how this might look. We went with it, and the final result was very well received. It also lent itself very well to the addition of a button to pay for a lesson via Paypal.

Steve’s Comments

As Will has designed for me on previous projects and I am fully aware of his abilities, he was the first choice for my own website. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted from my website at first, and so needed Will to create ’something from nothing’. I was more than happy to leave it entirely in his hands.

Initially, I was a little apprehensive about basing the site around pictures of me, as it literally meant; using pictures of me on my website. Funny that. But, one of my worries with this approach at first was that it could, if produced incorrectly, hint slightly towards narcissism. Thankfully, Will had a clear idea of what he wanted which avoided that problem, to produce a contemporary website that is both professional and personal.

Jack White (Co Director of Love Soul Choir) and I made a pledge after Will’s first project for us; we were so happy with Will’s work that we wouldn’t ever use another graphic designer. We won’t tell him that though, incase this invaluable status encourages him to put his prices up!

Many thanks for your great work again Will.

Busy, Busy, Busy!

I’ve definitely been suprised (and overwhelmed in some cases!) by the amount of inquiries I’ve received over the past year. So with that in mind I’d like to thank all the lovely people and companies I’ve had the pleasure of working with on some really great projects. I’m also really chuffed that several of those people and companies have chosen to come back to me time and again for more design work. I can see how repeat business is extremely beneficial for any business.

However, being rushed off your feet does have its down sides, although don’t get me wrong I definitely prefer being busy over twiddling my thumbs! What I’m trying to get at here is that when lots of inquiries are coming through your inbox it’s tempting at first to take everything on. Over the year I’ve been working solo I’ve learnt that to produce quality work I should only take on X number of projects per month. I’m not sure that I’ve got this nailed 100% yet, but I’m getting there.

Sense Of Accomplishment

I’d really recommend working for yourself and creating a business. There are so many hats to wear and there’s so much to learn, but overall its so much more enjoyable that working for someone else. Even the niggling little tasks that you’d hate doing at your previous job, you find yourself enjoying that little bit more. Because, at the end of the day you know its for you and your business is going to benefit.

Time To Myself

This has been by far the trickiest thing to get right. When you work from home its so hard to switch off at 5pm. I always find myself trying to relax and thinking ‘What if I just get that done now – that will free up some time tomorrow.’ or just checking my emails on my iPhone – big mistake, especially before bed!.

To help switch off its been helpful for me to really push a few of the hobbies that I was already enjoying before working for myself. These things now ensure that I get away from my computer pretty much every night.

Thinking About Going Freelance? – My Advice

If you want to go freelance / be self employed, then here are a few pieces of advice I’d offer;

• Be prepared to work hard
• Ensure you’ve got a few clients and projects under your belt before you start
• Say ‘No’ if you really can’t squeeze that piece of work in tomorrow
• Don’t forget your passion – for me this is design, and its so important devote time to feeling inspired and energized about that passion
• Be confident in your abilities

Here’s To Another Year!

Fingers crossed next year is going to be bigger and better and I’m excited by what could come from another year in business. Thats the great thing about it – who knows?

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!