We’re an industry of ideas—ideas that feed our interests and enhance our work. Each perspective is a potential catalyst for growth. In this excerpt from Demystifying Public Speaking, Lara Hogan tells us why and how to give public speaking a try.
Topic: Industry & Business
Managing Ego
Any of us can be that irrational colleague who makes for an interesting day at work. All it takes is low confidence and high anxiety—and that comes with the territory. Brandon Gregory shows us how we can bolster and validate our coworkers and strengthen our own emotional resilience so we can avoid unnecessary drama and produce happier relationships.
Insisting on Core Development Principles
The expectations for our work have matured significantly over the last couple of decades. If this overwhelms those of us who build the web day in and day out, imagine how our clients must feel. And yet time and again, we fail our clients by offloading too much responsibility for the development process onto them. We need to build best practices into our workflows from the start, Kendra Skeene reminds us—not wait for our clients to request specific core practices.
The Coming Revolution in Email Design
Email isn’t just evolving—it’s staging a coup. More and more designers are coming up with exciting new ways of bringing effects like animation and interactivity to the humble inbox. Crucially, for the first time, email client vendors like Microsoft and Google are listening to concerns voiced by email professionals. The web is leaking into the inbox, writes Jason Rodriguez. Don’t get left behind.
Network Access: Finding and Working with Creative Communities
Real creative change can happen. And is happening and thriving—just outside our usual circles. Senongo Akpem talks about how the design community has changed, and how venturing further afield can help us push the “Reset” button.
Designing Interface Animation: an Interview with Val Head
Animation has come a long way over the course of the web’s still-young history. For years, designers felt the need to take sides. Should we build hypnotic sites in Flash? Or should we stick to static, standards-compliant sites built with HTML and CSS? Author Val Head never wanted to choose. Her new book, Designing Interface Animation, celebrates how animation is finally coming into its own, and shows us what we can do with it. In this wide-ranging interview, she tells us why she loves animation so much.
Help! We (Think We) Need to Hire a Content Strategist
Managers beginning active searches for content specialists frequently have little understanding of what their companies need beyond a title, cautions Jennifer Bassett. Hiring managers at agencies, brands, and startups would do well to hire based on the type of work they want to focus on. And if they’re not sure what type of work that is, talking with a real live content strategist is an excellent place to start.
Why Aren’t You Asking Questions?
As a designer, your job is to understand your client’s needs. Listening to what they tell you is a good place to start, but it doesn’t end there. You gain much more insight by asking the right questions. Of course, it also helps to ask the right people and ask in the right way. Janice Gervais offers some tips to turn you into a better designer/detective.
Another 10k Apart: Create a Website in 10 KB, Win Prizes!
In 2000, Stewart Butterfield launched the original 5k competition to celebrate the merits of simplicity and brevity in web design. Ten years later, An Event Apart joined forces with Microsoft to launch the first 10k Apart, adding progressive enhancement, accessibility, and responsive design to the mix. Now, An Event Apart and Microsoft Edge are back with an even tougher challenge: design a compelling experience that can be delivered in 10 KB or less and works without JavaScript.
Finding Opportunities in the Mistakes We Make
You flung yourself headlong into your career. Suddenly you realize you’re barely keeping your head above water and you’re not even sure where you’re going. Time to reflect, says Clarice Bouwer, and do some small experiments designed to find the course corrections that will get you back on solid ground.
