Growth is always a focus for startups, since a startup without growth is usually a failure. However, how and when to grow is often misunderstood. YC is sometimes criticised for pushing companies to grow at all costs, but in fact we push companies to talk to their users, build what…
Last year in What changed this year in web design (and what's next), there was a lot of hype about transitional interfaces, more designers tackling coding and new devices coming to market that would continue to challenge our approaches and processes in responsive design. The  Watch isn't on anyone's wrist…
When was the last time you visited a website and you were blown away by its performance (i.e how fast you were able to do what you wanted to do)? The new @caniuse is lightning fast! http://t.co/NpqgIRSVZu— Brad Frost (@brad_frost) July 20, 2014 The…
Web accessibility (known in other fields as inclusive design or universal design) is the degree to which a website is available to as many people as possible. Accessibility is most often used to describe how people with disabilities can access the web. Via Why Bother with Accessibility? This strikes a…
The balance of creating a collaborative environment without constantly interrupting each other is not an easy one. Whether you are working with a distributed team or are in the same environment, context-switching is a major productivity hog. Here are a few ideas for how to take the friction out of…
Meet North, design and development standards to align and guide your project. It's a comprehensive guide contributed to the open source community to encourage, "a mobile-first, in-browser, system based approach to design and development." Check out North on GitHub: The section of the guide that I found most interesting is,…
Josh Clark's "Seven Deadly Mobile Myths" talk (video! and slides!) makes a resounding argument that the web should not be fragmented into alternative experiences like the "mobile web", "tablet web" or "desktop web", but that the challenge should be to shape one web, and progressively enhance when the opportunity arises…
I put this together because I thought it would be interesting ot get a good sense of what the people who visit this site use for their toolkit on an everyday basis. Of course, some of these tools you might not use at all, but if you do, be sure…
Bill Simmons' Grantland unveiled its third iteration this week. The long-form sports and pop-culture media site originally launched in June 2011 with top-tier writing talent and a license to be to ESPN what Miramax was to Disney, "a boutique division with more room for creativity." The site relaunched on Wordpress…
Design is still about words This has really always been true, the change here is how much web designers are embracing this fact in the approach to building websites. Jeffery Zeldman's recommendation to design websites "content-first" makes a very clear statement: Design without content is decoration. It used to be…
A lot of things are more effective when you have someone else there to keep you accountable. I started paying closer attention to my finances when I opened up a joint checking account with my wife. I never miss a gym workout when I set-up a time to go with…
Paul Graham wrote an iconic post last year on How to Get Startup Ideas. Recently I started listening to Startups for the Rest of Us with Mike Taber and Rob Walling who talk about the challenges and decisions that are made when launching are startup, as well as sharing their…
Over the past year I have spent a lot of my focus learning and leveling up on my Sass knowledge. Talking with others, I think the most common concern when switching over to a CSS preprocessor is this: I don't know where to start when converting my CSS project over…
In all of my interactive agency experience, there is a one constant when working on a project: unpredictability. Websites are complex beasts. It takes a lot of planning and execution to pull off something that looks simple. For the last six-plus years I have been a part of an interactive…
I gave a talk at DrupalCamp Chicago on front-end style guides over the weekend and it was a really cool experience. It was about a 45-minute presentation, with some really good Q&A (how do you get started transitioning from CSS to Sass on a project? At what point…
This round-up focuses on how others are building CSS/UI style guides and some best practices. Specifically not grouping in pattern libraries in here (besides MailChimp, which is surface-level patterns) to demonstrate the many uses of these documents. Anna Debenham has an excellent round-up of what makes up a front-end…
Don't let the underwear cover fool you, The Year Without Pants is not about a guy sitting in his apartment ordering pizzas for fifty-two weeks straight. Scott Berkun is a lightening-in-a-bottle type, he recounts his time as Team Social lead at Wordpress through a unique lens of a savvy-veteran returning…
You're reading this! That means I was able to set-up Ghost and now have a platform to explore thoughts on web design. Ghost is on version 0.3, so it's brand new and it's built on Node.js so you can't run on it a shared server. Admittedly, that's not…