In Depth: How to run a one-person web design agency
We're lucky enough to work in an industry where resources are seemingly endless. Books, magazines and online articles are readily available to offer hints, tips and advice about working with the web and all that comes with it.
There's no shortage of knowledge to be found on the subjects of design, development, project management and freelancing. However, I've always had a problem with many of these resources.
It's not that they're wrong, just that they're so often aimed at studios that much of the 'best practice' advice is irrelevant to independent designers, whose clients' budgets rarely stretch to include time for thorough research, a variety of design options and usability testing for the completed site.
Even my own book (Sexy Web Design, published earlier this year by SitePoint) talks about web design projects in an ideal world. The harsh reality is that us freelancers often have to cut corners. This is not out of choice, but because projects usually have a smaller scope than those taken on by large agencies.
It's not just the unknowns that struggle: many 'big name' designers face the same problems, simply because projects created by one person take on a different shape than those created by a team.
So let's look at how a one-man-band achieves a great working life. "Knowing yourself, working hard, playing even harder and being able to quickly switch between different tasks is a start," says Tim Van Damme.
Making introductions
"The best way to get good work is to produce good work. The better work you create, the more people will want to work with you," says Ian Coyle. Whether you have to pitch for clients, actively seek them out or find that they come to you, the initial communication with your new or potential client should always have the aims of impressing them and making them feel excited about working with you.
IAN COYLE: Ian Coyle's recent site for Luigi Bormioli mixes classic chic with JavaScript goodness
For Sam Brown, it's about personal branding. "The perfect client is someone who wants to work with me because they've heard about me, perhaps via word of mouth or a link on a site design they loved," he says. "It's really not about being the number one link on Google for 'web designer'."
When working with a solo designer, there's an extra element that clients are looking for: your personality. Unlike an agency, everything that happens with a one-man business is going to go through you. This has a major advantage for the client: they get a more 'hands on' approach and a direct relationship with the person doing the nitty-gritty work, but this also means that you need to get along and communicate well.
So, while it's important to assure your client that you're a consummate professional, it's equally important to be friendly and open. Show them that you're happy to chat, happy to discuss different directions and generally pleased to be working on their project. "Good communication really is the key to a successful project," enthuses Sam Brown.
SAM BROWN: Sam Brown is a forward-thinking designer who runs the one-man studio Massive Blue
While impressing your clients, don't forget that the clients should also be impressing you. Ian Coyle says you should "proactively interview the client to see if they're a good match for you, not the other way around. Each one must value my design philosophy before they're considered a potential to work with."
Research is one of those phases in a project that's easily overlooked, particularly when it comes to designers working solo on a project. However, it needn't take up much time – and research is a broad umbrella for a wide variety of pre-design activities, so it's not as daunting a concept as you might first think!
With the majority of the sites I create, the budget and timescale rarely allow for research on the scale you might find conducted by agencies, so I try to get as much done as possible within just a few hours. That means looking at the client's competitors to see what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong, and then developing ideas about values the brand should express.
"At its core, design communicates," says Ian Coyle. "Prior to designing, I work to discover what we're communicating and how we want the viewer to connect with it. Then I define an interaction model that's centered around that experience."
The brief I've read a lot about how different types of brief should be written (a creative brief, a technical brief and so on) but for smaller projects, this isn't usually necessary. Similarly, the lines between a brief, a spec or scope document and a contract can often be blurred. Even when they're combined, sometimes all that's needed is a well-written email in which the aims and expectations are clearly defined.
Essentially, a brief, spec or contract is just an agreement between you and the client about what needs to be done, and a formal way of covering yourself, should the client end up unhappy with the final product. Of course, that's not to say a formal contract isn't a good idea and you'll be pleased to know that, like the brief, writing a proper, legally binding contract is actually rather easy.
In fact, there's very little writing required at all, since Andy Clarke prepared a generic contract on last year's 24ways site: 24ways.org/2008/contract-killer.
"A solid contract is really important," notes Sam Brown. "Don't get complacent: if anything goes wrong, you'll have to rely on your contract heavily, so it needs to be able to hold its own!"
Structure and navigation
In my experience, the biggest area of client confusion or indecision comes not from the design itself, but the structure of the site, and how the pages and sections interact with each other. Some sites, even relatively small ones, can seem difficult to plan when there are many features, or if you haven't managed to secure a particularly thorough brief or spec document.
In these situations, it can help to focus the client on the site's navigation – to simply ask them what the main links will be. This can then be furthered by discussing sub-navigation that should appear on the various pages and, before long, a structure will appear all by itself.
It's usually at this point that it's sensible to start thinking about sitemaps, if they haven't appeared already through your conversations about navigation. WriteMaps provides a simple, out-of-the-box method and is an ideal web application for those clients who aren't used to more advanced tools such as Microsoft Visio or OmniGraffle – and even more so for clients to whom sitemaps are an entirely new concept.
Or, if you'd like to create a clickable sitemap yourself using HTML and CSS, try using SlickMapCSS from Astuteo.
Using wireframes
Sitemaps do a great job of seeing the 'bigger picture' of a website's structure, but sometimes more subtle interactions need specific focus. Take, for example, an order form that updates its fields without refreshing the browser window, or hides certain elements depending on the user's input.
There's no need to bog the client down with how it'll work technically, but it's important to get them thinking about the different interactive processes that their users will be going through. I've found that clients are more able to think of these detailed forms of interaction once they start seeing visuals, even if they're just 'grey box' wireframes.
If your client happens to be visually inclined and wants more input into the layout, then it might be an idea to let them loose with a tool such as Balsamiq Mockups, which generates rough wireframes in a hand-drawn aesthetic, using a library of common interface elements.
How much free rein you give to your clients with a tool such as this is dependent on the situation and the client, but it can help to ease the burden on you.
Once the approximate placement of elements on the pages is decided in your wireframes and signed off by the client, it's time to get down to the fun stuff: making it look like an attention-grabbing, aesthetically pleasing website. And this is what tends to take up the most time in a project, because the aesthetic layer is where things start to get emotive.
People have very strong feelings about colour, texture and, of course, the general atmosphere that's conveyed. This is why it's a good idea to really separate out the wireframe and aesthetic stages. Although they're both parts of what you could liberally call 'the design phase', they focus your client's attention on different aspects, one part at a time.
Very loosely, you could say that wireframes enable them to think about layout from an interaction point of view and aesthetics enable them to concentrate on the emotive experience.
One of the reasons the aesthetics stage lasts so long is because it's where the detailed decisions happen and so it's logical for the design to go back and forth between client and designer, undergoing a number of refinements in the process.
How many design variations you show the client during this phase is an important consideration, and although clients often like to see as many variations as possible, many designers believe it pays to be more conservative.
Ian Coyle says: "I only show one design that's best suited to a project's goals: in my opinion, the client should never be given multiple options – a designer focused on creating the best work should only show the best one."
Whenever I present a new mockup to the client, I always present it in the browser, setting it as the background and ensuring that the height matches the height of the image itself.
There are two reasons for this: first, it's better for clients to see the mockup in a browser so that they can get a clear idea of how big the design appears on certain resolutions, and with parts of the screen taken up by things such as browser chrome (which is impossible to gauge if the image is presented as an email attachment).
The second reason is that it makes a lot more sense psychologically for clients to see the design in what will be its final context. It forces them to think about the design as a website and not just a static image.
Typically, this mockup approval process will end when the client is satisfied enough for the site to be built. In recent times, I've tried to stop myself from making 'final' decisions in the Photoshop stage and instead I complete the design process in the browser, where elements such as typography will never match their Photoshop approximations.
Asserting your rights
When handing over your designs to a client, it's worth considering the level of copyright you give them, says Ian Coyle. "In my contract, I retain all intellectual property rights; the client only receives a licence to use what I've created."
Matthew Smith feels the same: "What if I designed a unique way to display a calendar for a client?" he says. "Should I be able to utilise and continue to develop that style, or does the client own it? These are the questions that you need to ask as you determine which rights to offer your clients and which rights you'd like to retain."
MATTHEW SMITH: Matthew Smith trades under the name Squared Eye, which also acts as an umbrella for additional freelance talent
Although the build process can be painful at times – think of Internet Explorer compatibility and weird "why won't it do that?" moments with CSS – in general I find it to be the most straight forward part of the whole creative process. There are very few decisions that need making at this point (as long as you've paid attention to the details in the previous stages) and really it's just a case of delivering a working version of the design you alluded to in the mockup phase.
You can also save yourself a great deal of time during the build stage by using frameworks. These can be pre-existing – such as Blueprint for CSS or jQuery for JavaScript – or ones you create yourself. I have an HTML/CSS framework that's essentially just several files with common code that I frequently reuse, such as header snippets, div nestings for certain layouts and essential hooks for CSS.
You could also view a content management system as a type of framework, because it provides you with a working skeleton on which to build your bespoke projects. WordPress, for instance, is a highly adaptable CMS that has a very small learning curve – and several sub-frameworks exist for it, such as Thematic or even my supersimple Starkers, both of which are intended to provide the starting blocks for a WordPress-powered site.
Learn to network
For more complex development work, in which you need to achieve something outside your knowledge base or skillset, it's worth bringing in some extra help on a project-to-project basis.
Matthew Smith explains, "More and more, I'm working with teams of freelancers as a network of service providers. Through the networked approach, I'm able to do more of what I love and what I'm good at, and leave the parts of the work that I'm less skilled at to the folks who are best at this portion of the project."
Once a site is completed and set live, it would seem like a logical place for the project to end, but there's more to the story. If possible, encourage the client to partake in usability testing so that you can see if the appropriate solution has been reached. It's difficult for clients to find the time and budget for this additional work, but it can be done cheaply and easily, as Paul Boag explains.
With the web, we have the freedom to tweak, polish and perfect. Projects can be revisited and an extra bit of TLC – when your client's budget allows for it – dropped in at any time.
The key to being successful when working on your own is to "stay ahead of the game, keep up to date on all the latest techniques, only work on projects you absolutely believe in, never sell yourself short and continue to pump out great projects that you've spent your time making," says Sam Brown. "Most importantly, love what you do."
Matthew Smith sums up the life of the solo web designer: "Yes, we have to watch out for our rights, be careful about money, and attract the best clients. But, in the end, what we're here for is using our expertise and creativity."
To keep yourself satisfied and happy, concludes Ian Coyle, "work exclusively on projects that you're passionate about, with clients that trust and respect you and on brands you want to be associated with."
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Guide: How to verify your files in Linux with MD5
Everyone downloads files, whether it's an ISO image of the latest Linux distribution, TuxRadar podcast or a PDF tutorial.
But despite this age of browser security, anti-malware software and sophisticated intrusion detection it's not always possible to ensure that files haven't been tampered with in transit (or even on the server itself).
In this tutorial we'll show you how to ensure your files have downloaded correctly and securely.
An MD5 checksum is a 128-bit code consisting of various numerals and letters for a file or string. This is referred to as a hash value, and when you generate one it is exactly the same on any PC however many times it is generated.
However, if you make even the slightest change to the source file or string, the hash value generated is completely different. This means that if you distribute a file it will generate the same checksum on any PC as long as it remains unaltered.
For example, if you type into a terminal:
echo -n 'hello world' | md5sum -
you'll get the following output:
5eb63bbbe01eeed093cb22bb8f5acdc3 -
This output will be produced in a terminal window in any PC on which you care to run the first line of code. The command itself pipes the text into the md5sum command, which then generates a hash value for it. However, if we change the value in any way, like below:
echo -n 'Hello world' | md5sum -
we get a different result:
3e25960a79dbc69b674cd4ec67a72c62 -
But why isn't MD5 used for everything? Back in the 90s researchers discovered there were occasional collisions where hash values were identical or third-party apps could be spoofed into thinking an MD5 checksum was passed. This remains extremely rare, but means that MD5 has been succeeded by SHA-2 for security-critical applications.
Despite this, MD5 is up to the task of simply checking that a file has downloaded correctly. If we're missing any part of the file we will see that the value is be different to what we expect, and we can react accordingly.
Md5sum is part of GNU Core Utilities package, so it should be installed automatically on almost every Linux distribution.
Hashing files
Md5sum is our MD5 hash value generator, but it isn't just restricted to strings! We can generate a checksum for a file by typing:
md5sum file.txt
Assuming you have a file named file.txt in the directory md5sum will generate an MD5 hash value for it. If you change the filename and run the MD5 checksum again you will notice something odd – the MD5 is exactly the same!
On the other hand, if you now change the content within the text file and run the command you will see the hash value change entirely. The reason for both of these results is that the algorithm evaluates content rather than the filename, which means you can move and rename the file as much as you like while still ensuring that the content within the file is unaltered from its original form.
We can also verify that two seemingly duplicate files are the same. Though traditionally you would use a tool such as diff, md5sum just provides two MD5 hashes for us to compare manually rather than state what each difference between the two files might be.
md5sum doc1.odt doc2.odt
If there is even a subtle change between the two files then the hash values will be totally different and obvious even at a cursory glance. Notice also how we can compare more than just plain text files!
Now that we've generated some MD5 checksums for strings and files we need a way to store hash values so that we can automate checks and share the hashes with other people. This way people can verify whether the file they have received was from you or someone else.
To output hashes to a text file, we type the following into a terminal:
md5sum a.txt b.txt > md5sums.md5
This line generates two MD5 hash values – one for a.txt and another for b.txt. It then pipes these values (with filenames) to a plain text file named md5sums.md5. To then validate that a.txt and b.txt haven't changed since you produced this checksum, we type the following into a terminal:
md5sum -c md5sums.md5
You should receive two lines of output, each with a filename followed by 'OK'. Note however that you can no longer change the names of the files you have generated hashes for, as the output file relies on the name being the same to find it and verify its integrity (if you do this you'll just get a 'File Not Found' error).
This is also the case if you want to verify files in an entire directory. To do this, type the following line into a terminal:
find dir_folder -type f -print0 | xargs -0 md5sum >> checksum.md5
This recursively hashes all the files in the folder named dir_folder and then pipes the output in plain text to checksum.md5. You would then run the code in the previous snippet to verify that each file has remained unaltered since you last hashed them.
This method also recursively hashes all files in the directory tree (so long as you have a recent copy of GNU Core Utils!), so any files in subfolders will also be hashed. This line isn't particularly easy to remember, so avid coders could write two shell scripts – one that changes into each directory and (using a much simpler command) hashes each file, and another that does much the same but verifies the files instead.
Another solution would be to install md5deep from your package manager and type the following into a terminal:
md5deep -rl dir_folder > checksum.md5
This tool does all the recursive action for you in the entire directory tree for every file and then pipes all the MD5 hash values and file locations into checksum.md5. Unlike md5sum, md5deep is not bundled with GNU Core Utils so this is not a standard fix. However, it's much easier to remember!
Sharing checksums
How you share your checksums is wholly dependent on how you intend to use them. If you're hosting a file on a dedicated server or free host and want to allow users to ensure their file has downloaded completely and that it is from the original source, you can bundle the checksum in the same directory.
If anyone tries to offer the file in an altered form on another server or the user doesn't download the file exactly as it was uploaded then the checksums won't match. The user can then either try downloading it again or from another mirror.
Email integrity
Another use would be when you are sending an email. You could produce a checksum for the message text and send it separately to the recipient. If the email has been tampered with or you have managed to send the wrong email by accident (which is easily done) then the recipient will know and can inform you accordingly.
The applications and possibilities for MD5 hashes are endless, so experiment at will and make sure you drop us an email to say how you got on! Now as you know how to generate, use and share MD5 hashes you can ensure all your files and downloads are unaltered and as their original author intended.
MD5 checksums can be applied to verify files and strings in any situation, so with this flexible tool you need never wonder about the integrity of your source again.
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Copyright holders might prefer piracy now
In a somewhat cynical table-turning exercise, a German anti-piracy body seems to be encouraging illegal downloading of music and other media in an effort to strong-arm money out of lawbreakers.
DigiRights Solutions (DRS) from Darmstadt has circulated a presentation to potential clients explaining how they might make more money by pursuing illegal filesharers than from regular, legal sales.
No questions asked
The key to the DRS strategy is a previously unknown figure suggesting 25 per cent of people who receive a letter threatening legal action prefer to just pay the settlement fee without question.
As copyright holders in the DRS model get €90 (آ£84) of the €450 (آ£418) damages charge per offense, that can be up to 150 times what a legal download brings in.
Weighing the options
Clearly, the approach is reliant on simple mathematics – the number of legal sales compared to the amount of threatening letters DRS can send out for a client in any given period.
The company says it can currently go after 5,000 illegal downloaders a month so, given the discrepancy between the two monetary values being weighed here, it could find itself with a lot more cash-hungry clients before long.
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Interview: Google explains its minimalist design philosophy
When Google's renowned visual design lead, Douglas Bowman, left the search giant at the end of March, he wrote a passionate blog post about his reasons for quitting.
He claimed that the company's reliance on data was so extreme, it prevented it from making any daring design decisions, and quoted one instance when a team couldn't decide between two blues, so were testing 41 shades between each of the choices to see which one performed better. Bowman's post sparked a heated debate on the web.
Irene Au, Director of User Experience at Google, acknowledges that Bowman is an extraordinary designer who made huge contributions to the company's products. However, she insists there's a clear logic behind Google's approach. "It's very much a culture of experimentation," she explains.
"We often will put things out on an experimental framework and look at how they perform, and use that to drive our design decisions. Search is the interface that most of our users are familiar with and so what goes into the search interface is really what drives our visual language.
"Search is such a fragile interface. It's humbling to see how the slightest changes in design, just pixel-level changes or barely perceptible changes to colours, can have such a dramatic impact on usage and revenue. At Google, we're in a unique position to measure the impact of design on the business, and we take advantage of that opportunity to make design decisions based on evidence."
Data-driven culture
Au, who spent eight years at Yahoo, accepts that some people might feel threatened by the data-driven culture and perceive it to be crippling, but highlights the fact that others might see it as empowering. It's a challenge to design something that's as beautiful as it is lightning fast.
"One of the best things about designing for the web is that you can instantly see and measure the impact of your changes," she says. "Google understands that designing engaging, useful and usable products with complex workflows requires something more than data.
"That's why we have a significant team of designers who bring unique skills to the teams they work with. Data informs decision-making but it's less useful for conceiving and building conceptually new directions. It's most useful for optimising and refining an established concept."
Historically, engineers vastly outnumber designers at Google (Au herself has degrees in electrical and computer engineering), which makes scaling the design organisation a big challenge.
"As a design team, we can't afford to have very high touch involvement with every single project, where we create pixel-perfect designs and have web developers that are implementing the front end exactly to the specifications," she says.
"Any kind of design system that we create has to be incredibly practical to implement. Our design strategy is all about creating an experience that's fast, not only in terms of latency, but also in terms of human cognition and perception.
"One of the ways in which we achieve this fast feel is to have a very minimalist look. Also, Google focuses on aggregating the data and presenting it to the users, so we don't want it to feel editorialised. We want it to feel machine driven, so people understand that it's not like we're presenting results with a certain point of view."
Au says the collaboration between designers and engineers is healthy. A lot of the design team's time is spent on setting standards and building a style guide for engineers to ensure a project will really end up looking like a Google product.
"Rather than having 30 different styles of tabs, we just choose one or two," Au says, "and they're the canonical types that have been proven to work. Then we create a toolkit for the developers, so that for basic interactions, where the patterns are pretty known and common, they'll have reusable components. Then at least they can get 70 to 80 per cent of the way there without having a designer involved."
Google has always had the mantra of 'focus on the user and all else will follow', so the company puts a significant amount of effort into researching its users. In fact, Au estimates that 30 to 40 per cent of her 200-strong worldwide user experience team is compromised of user researchers.
"Data can be invigorating when you understand the 'why' behind the 'what'," she explains. "For example, we work with vision scientists to understand how people process information, so we can create better predictive models for what will work.
"We also use a variety of methods, whether it's quantitative analysis, data mining or surveys, and do quite a bit of ethnographic work, too. While it's easy to design for people like yourself, it's hard to design for people in a totally different environment, so we've done field studies and rapid prototyping to better understand what their needs are and how they're using the internet."
On the move
One outcome of these studies is Google SMS, a suite of mobile apps that enable people to access information via SMS on topics including health, agriculture tips and local weather. The first country to receive the new service is Uganda, with other areas in Africa, where mobile phones are more common than PCs and only have voice and SMS capabilities, to follow.
"When we were prototyping and simulating this SMS-based search service, we had to understand what kind of information people were looking for," Au explains, "because we couldn't really scour the world's information and make it all available via SMS."
The suite also includes Google Trader, a marketplace for any type of product or service, and Google SMS Tips, a question-and-answer tool that interprets search queries, specifically on health and farming issues, and uses a database to return the most relevant answers via SMS.
Creating a coherent design experience
Au's design team is also spending a lot of energy on trying to create a coherent design experience. Projects are usually initiated by engineers and designers join in later. This traditionally bottom-up culture can make it difficult, but having more consistency across Google is crucial to build better products and a stronger brand.
"There's already a lot of consistency across Google's search products but there isn't much of a relationship between that and a lot of our apps. Many were Google branded and designed after we acquired companies like GrandCentral – so I spend most of my time right now figuring out how to apply the principles behind Google's design that made Google Search successful to all other products."
As part of this, Google recently rolled out new logos for all products, featuring a more standardised typeface and layout. The redesign of Google Reader last December was the first project to feature square corners and calmer colours. The changes addressed latency issues, while tying the service back to the brand.
When Google Voice (formerly called GrandCentral) launched a few months later, it looked similar to Reader. "This was a very deliberate choice because, as we start rolling out more redesigns and incremental improvements for our products, the look and feel for these products will begin to converge. We're also working to tie together the mobile experiences on smart phones, so they have a more coherent feel to them and relate better to the desktop experiences."
Google's approach to design will continue to divide opinion, but there's no doubt its refreshingly clean and simple homepage has served the company well. And so, as Google branches out beyond search, its design decisions will become more important than ever.
Using a fascinating arsenal of research, user testing and analytics tools, Google has turned this process into a science.
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British Kindle users to pay 40% more per book
We already knew Amazon would be making the Kindle e-book reader available at a premium in the UK later this month, but we had no notion it would come with a surcharge on the books as well.
According to a report in The Guardian, Amazon will be charging UK Kindle owners $13.99 (آ£8.75) to download each book. That compares unfavourably with the US cost of $9.99 (آ£6.25).
'Import deposit' too
In other words, early adopters in the UK will have to pay 40 per cent more than American residents who download the same book. The levy comes on top of the $45 (آ£28) 'import deposit' Amazon is charging for the Kindle itself.
While there's no official explanation for the price discrepancy, it's likely that international roaming charges on AT&T's US network are at least part of the reason users across the Atlantic will be paying more.
High data charges
Because Amazon has no wireless partners for Kindle downloads outside the US, any hardware shipped to the UK will come with an American SIM card, resulting in high roaming charges on each purchase delivered wirelessly.
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Nintendo Wii to screen US air travellers
Travellers to the US may soon have to bring their Nintendo Wii skills to bear, after it emerged that American authorities are using the games console as part of airport security screening.
More specifically, the Wii Fit Balance Board is part of a $20 million (آ£12.6 million) project aimed at finding better technologies for screening passengers boarding flights.
First-level check
The Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) researchers are looking at the board to see if its sensors can automatically weed out anyone who's overly nervous or fidgety, the idea being that they then are subject to further screening, presumably involving human staff.
Before any of that becomes of practical use, however, the team still has to determine if being (physically) shifty actually means anything when it comes to security.
Work in Progress
After all, if the Balance Board merely singles out people with, well, bad balance, it will only tell the Homeland Security functionaries that they are likely to be rubbish at virtual yoga.
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Eye-Fi wireless camera card hits UK soon
Next Monday should be a red-letter day for camera geeks in the UK, as 19 October is set to be the date the much-lauded Eye-Fi wireless memory card hits the country.
Eye-Fi Inc says all three models of its award-winning add-on for digital cameras will be available on launch day through the usual channels.
RAW photos too
Prices go from آ£50 for the Home Video model, through آ£70 for the Share Video, up to a hefty آ£120 for the Pro. Each price jump adds capabilities, with the Pro being the only one capable of handling RAW photos, hence the name.
Each Eye-Fi card has 4GB of memory and the ability to upload photos and video by Wi-Fi to a net-connected PC.
Geotag it on YouTube
The Share Video and Pro models add links to Facebook, Flickr and YouTube, among others, while the Pro also comes with lifetime access to a geotagging service.
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