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Extensively Extending Sass @extend: How I Overused Extends
Right now, I believe CSS should be minimal, meaningful (to people), and not descriptive of what it looks like (visually). Also, I can be a bit of an idealist. Especially at the beginning of a project. As a warning, this post isn’t meant to teach basic CSS concepts. Get ready for some CSS nerdery. Project…
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6 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Working for Free
It’s tempting to work for free or with steep discounts for friends and nonprofits, but there are some pitfalls to be aware of. If you can get to the end of these questions and feel great about designing a logo, building a website, or whatever it is you do, then by all means, go for…
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7 Easy Steps to Fail at Building a Network
For most of my career, I’ve felt like an imposter. I didn’t think I knew enough to contribute to the web designer/dev community, so why would anyone want to network with me? If I tried, wouldn’t people just figure out I didn’t know as much as them? I used to believe this was true. As…
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How to Get Started as a Web Developer
I became a designer and developer by baking bread. Wait… let me start over. I accidentally became a web designer/developer by baking bread. Here’s how it happened: Get a BA in Creative Writing and an MA in Elementary Education Learn how to make great sourdough breads Sell bread and my wife’s granola bars (best bars…
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Rules of Thumb for Good Logo Design
Over the years, the logo you design will be slapped on just about anything: letterhead, billboards, stickers, websites… So, how do you make sure it’ll work in seemingly infinite possibilities? These rules of thumb go a long way towards a logo that will work for the long haul. 1. It Works in Black and White…
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Let’s Celebrate! All Responsive Websites Look the Same
The dust has settled from the introduction of Responsive Web Design (RWD), and we’ve honed design patterns that adapt well across devices. This has led to those same design patterns appearing on site, after site, after site. But few people seem to be celebrating this trend. Does it mean we’ve lost our desire to innovate,…
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Quick Tips to Improve your Website’s Accessibility
Web accessibility shouldn’t be an afterthought, but, oftentimes, it is. Fortunately, for most basic sites, it’s easy to make some minor adjustments that make a huge difference in the site’s accessibility. I recently retrofitted some of my designs and code to be more accessible, so here’s a few quick tips I picked up along the…
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Skip to Content Link Bug in Chrome
Skip to content links are a great way to give people using screen readers a quick way to skip your navigation and go straight to the good stuff. Unfortunately, Chrome’s implementation is buggy, and I tried to trouble-shoot it for far longer than I would have liked. My previous skip to content link looked like…
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WordPress Custom Themes vs Pre-made Themes: Which is Right for You?
WordPress has great appeal because it’s a free, powerful content management system with thousands of pre-made themes to choose from. There’s so much you can do yourself using free or cheap pre-made themes, so when is it time to hire a developer/designer to do custom work for you? When is it better to save money…
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Why Pixel Perfect Responsive Design is Wrong
I’ve been reading over job postings for front-end developers and designers, and a lot them have a phrase like “You should love coding pixel perfect responsive designs”. Those jobs instantly go to my “no” pile. Responsive design means letting go of the idea of a pixel perfect design. Responsive designs need to adapt to any…
Jerry Jones 