Design Pepper

If you happened to watch the Grammy Awards this year, you may have noted that Bela Fleck and his Flecktones won yet another award. Bela is a world-renowned banjo player who, in his 20 years with the Flecktones, has been nominated for Grammy's in jazz, bluegrass, pop, country, …

The Ultimate List of Freelancing Resources is back with 25 more great links to help you launch or improve your freelance career. Coffee Break: Your Best Piece of Advice This article from FreelanceSwitch is a simple question: What's your best piece of freelancing advice? …

The last time you were in a restaurant that had crayons available, did you use them? I admit to using crayons, markers, pencils, soft rocks, anything to give my fidgeting fingers something creative to do. I'm the first to grab the "forest green" and start planting …

The problem for a lot of web workers is that we need focus, but we work with computers that allow us to program a steady stream of distractions into our day. The following steps assume that you've already turned off email and Twitter notifications (and any other incoming …

Those of you subscribed to my RSS feed probably haven't noticed, but I've moved to a new site. I'd love to get your thoughts on the design (though I'll probably be tweaking things for a while). There are more changes in the works as well. Thanks for …

I slowly sipped the cool liquid energy from a can of Mountain Dew. It would only be a matter of minutes before it joined the school of empty cans surrounding my workspace as a reminder that I was out of creative juice. Caffeine does a pretty good job of keeping me awake. Exercise …

Have you ever wondered how to deal with people who leave blatantly self-promoting comments? Try replacing their links with this. …

This is the first in a series on a type of website mistakes that I call "unprofessionalisms." But they aren't just any mistakes. To qualify as an unprofessionalism, it must: Be relatively common. Detract from the professionalism of a website. Be something …

It's been a little while since the first installment of the Ultimate List of Freelancing Resources, but I haven't forgotten it. This time we go from 26 to 50 in the list. How To Turn a Blank CD Into a Profitable Contract This post at Create Business Growth talks about …

If you've been in your feedreader at all this morning, you may have noticed a lot of people talking about a new blogger-run nonprofit called Train for Humanity. I think that's totally awesome, particularly since I had the chance to design their website. :-) What is Train …

Though there are some great examples of web designers writing on typography recently, one thing that I've always wanted is a quick little reference to help me remember both the terms and how the typographic toolkit should be used. This is the beginning of such a …

As most of you know, in addition to freelancing, I also work part-time in an office environment. And on my desk sits a shiny new Intel-based Mac, complete with dual monitors, Adobe CS3 and every other application I could possibly want. Yet I rarely use it, preferring to carry my …

It seems like everywhere I turn these days, people are talking about freelancing, running their own businesses, and escaping the rat race. Though I enjoy being a bit contrarian regarding trends, in this case I'm totally on board. So here's my contribution to the trend, my …

As you've probably noticed, I haven't been updating the blog very much recently. Between a part-time job, working like crazy on freelance projects, moving to a new apartment, and preparing for a wedding at the beginning of August, something had to give. In this case, it was …

It seems like every day I see another batch of articles about the power of engagement, and the benefits of being permanently connected to the latest social networks, lifestreaming feeds, or Web 3.0 applications. There's no denying that they can be wonderful tools, but just …