Topic: Industry & Business

The High Price of Free

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Our industry is remarkable for how many of us do unpaid labor—sometimes for exposure, other times to give back to the profession and help our peers. We’re all grateful for the free software, learning, and support made possible by this generosity. But in coming to depend in it, we can’t forget that people need time to pay the bills and assure a secure future for themselves and their families.

Back to the Future in 2016

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Practicing kickflips. Standing still. Drawing. Learning JavaScript (finally). Messing around with Arduino. Reading and writing books. Jumping into CSS Grid Layout. Sunbathing with cats. We asked some of our smartest friends in the web design and development communities what new focuses they planned to bring to their lives and work in 2016. Their answers fell into four categories—design, insight, tools, and work—but one idea cropped up over and over: sometimes you need to take a step back in order to move forward.

It’s the People They Know

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Chance can play such a vital part in your career. You may be unexpectedly exposed to technology that becomes central to how you make a living. People you meet who seem to have nothing to do with your work, or who were potential clients or colleagues that didn’t pan out, can end up connecting you to someone who turns out to be central to the next phase of your career.

Planning and Organizing Workshops

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Good workshops start long before you get everyone in the room. By setting goals, creating an agenda, and communicating early and often with your attendees, Senongo Akpem shows how you can set your workshop up for success.

Balancing the Scale

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The culture of a business is closely tied to its size. A small crew with little overhead has flexibility in choosing clients. A big firm offers extensive resources and coworker interaction. Your startup’s character will change as it progresses through these levels too. Knowing what effects come into play during company growth can help you choose the work environment where you’re most comfortable and fulfilled, or give you the ability to control the growth of your own business so you can bring it in at a size that works best for you. In the final part of a four-part series on the money side of the web, Matt Griffin describes the ages and stages of company growth.

Singapore, a Hub for Designers?

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A city with dazzling diversity and a global outlook, Singapore has always been a genial entry point for first-time visitors to Asia. Now the city-state is shaping itself into a center where startups and creative thinking can thrive. Antoine Lefeuvre has traveled there several times. Here he shares his impressions and what he has heard from residents—native Singaporeans and expats—about the business climate transition.

Using Roleplay to Prepare Design Managers

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Practice makes perfect, but how do you help your team practice difficult conversations? Senongo Akpem shows how roleplay can help new managers learn useful techniques and gain confidence for those tough discussions ahead.

Choosing a CMS Your Organization Will Love

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That never-ending search for the perfect CMS—maybe we’re using the wrong criteria. Too frequently, we approach CMS selection with cost or functionality as our bottom line, leading to solutions that look good, but struggle to adapt to the internal workflow. But finding a tool that matches organizational requirements means shifting focus. Artas Bartas presents three ways of approaching the CMS selection process with your team’s needs and processes top of mind.

Groups of Five

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Technology rests on a discovery of patterns: of behavior, association, energy, thinking. How valuable those patterns are to us is constantly being renegotiated as we experience a series of reveal shots that show us another part of the big picture, and yet another part of the big picture, and so on. To rely on a favorite cliché, it’s turtles all the way down.