Design Intellection is a small web design company committed to making the web a better place.

The entire article is quotable, Jeffery Zeldman on self-promotion.

“The baker in the medieval town square must holler 'fresh rolls' if he hopes to feed the townfolk.”

Over the past month and a half I've had the pleasure of working with Backupify on designing various aspects of their brand. The company is barely a year old and is on track to be very successful. The founder, Rob May, is from Louisville and is someone I've known for a while. They are also backed by Dharmesh Shah, who runs a very smart blog called On Startups. You can read about the rest of their team on the about page.

The first major task I have is to design their internal user interface. That is, the interface for users who have been through the signup process and now need to manage the backups of their various services.

I've finished the initial round and have six mockups. I've listed them below with a little context for each one, but I'm leaving the majority of thinking and iterations out for now. On each image you can click through to a larger version.

I've enabled comments on this post and offer the mockups for your review; so please leave a comment if you have suggestions for improvement. Well it turns out commenting is broken for some (currently) unknown reason. I've enabled the regular email form instead, so still feel free to send me feedback but it won't appear as a comment, my apologies.

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A background for your iPhone.

A while ago I jotted down three things that make a good content management system (cms). I recently rediscovered them, re-read them and found I still agreed with them.

1. Simple
   There is absolutely no reason a cms should be complicated and hard to use. A cms that has lost simplicity has lost focus. But to reference 37signals, there's a dirty little secret about simplicity: it's hard to do.
2. Solid
   Every interaction between the user and the cms should be made with confidence. There should be no inclination that you are about to break something, or that that's even possible to do. (And if you're the one building the cms make sure there's no way a user can break anything.) When the user can't trust the cms you have birth pangs of a larger, systemic problem.
3. Elegant
   A cms should be a beautiful piece of software both aesthetically and functionally. It is used constantly so the experience should be fulfilling. If you're not inspired to use your cms then that will be reflected in the end product – your site.

Mr Eaves Sans is a typeface designed by Zuzana Licko and released by Emigre as a companion to their much beloved Mrs Eaves. I recently purchased it for a site in progress; and in addition to being a perfect fit for the project, the typeface is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. The italic is especially beautiful.

All this to say that I made several iPhone/iPod touch backgrounds that feature the typeface which are included for individual download below. If you would like all of them there's a link to a zip file included at the end.

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When it comes to creating design mockups for websites I've always been a fan of creating one mockup and revising as necessary. Of course this only works when it's part of a larger process. Recently I tallied a few working reasons why I think the single approach is better than the multiple, and I thought I would share them here.

• If you create multiple mockups almost always there is going to be one that you like the most. Inherently – maybe even subconsciously – you're going to give the most attention and your best work to that one mockup. If the client picks a different one is that ethical?
• We are craftsmen who hone our work based on specific needs of the client, the context of the situation and many other tangible and intangible items. If we spread these out over multiple designs does it weaken the final result?
• Perhaps you may save one approach for a specific mockup just so that it maintains its uniqueness, when really that approach needs to apply to all of the mockups.
• If you are working towards a specific solution shouldn't they all look more or less the same?
• Many times showing multiple mockups is to mask insecurity in either the agency's ability to deliver or the client's ability to trust the agency's expertise.

Mark Pilgrim has started a project “to elaborate on a hand-picked Selection of features from the HTML5 specification and other fine Standards.” Dive Into HTML5 is required reading for anyone who builds websites.

I'm thoroughly convinced that HTML5 is the future of markup and it would behoove you not to miss the bus. And as it goes with new technology there is more incorrect information out there than normally. For example, when I was first learning how to use HTML5, the site I was referencing said that the

tag was to be used for external blog feeds that you place on your site.

On that note, the best thing that Dive Into HTML5 has going for it is that it's authored by Mark Pilgrim. Mark works for Google and has authored other books including Dive Into Python and Dive Into Accessibility.

My goal is to read the entire thing. I would encourage you to do the same.

I'd like to introduce you to my new side project: this blog. Like many web workers, I always have these ideas for “side projects” that invade the present and demand to be built, thought about, worked on, sketched, etc.

I allow myself to follow too many of these; which causes me to lose focus on the long-term goals. So for now I'm saying no to all ideas that arise because I already have a side project. This blog is enough work by itself and has always been something I've wanted to pursue with intentionality. For some reason I've had the idea that I would blog after I made a self-sustaining product or application. But that's backwards. I'm going to blog and blog and blog until something truly worth investing in comes along. And then I'll still blog, just less.

A while ago I posted Questions to Ask A Web Designer as a quick reference for companies looking to hire a web designer. The questions focused on core philosophy and approach as opposed to which tools a designer knew how to use.

This time I'm going to flip roles and list some sample questions to ask an employer if they are seeking to hire you as a web designer. These are actually the questions I asked the folks at Facebook when I was going through the interview process there, so they have a natural bent towards an in-house position. Of course this is not an exhaustive list†, and will need to be adjusted based on the context and your unique personality.

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Earlier this month I made "special edition" business cards for my trip to An Event Apart. I wanted to do something above and beyond your standard business card so I made them slightly oversized and had them letterpress printed† by the talented folks at Hound Dog Press. The result is something I am very proud to hand to people.

The icing on the cake however, is that today it's featured on FPO. Much thanks to UnderConsideration for taking the time to post it, and for the wonderful photos as well!

I first learned about concept models from Dan Brown in his presentation about them at An Event Apart. If you're a web designer or someone who is in any proximity at all to information architecture (IA) I would urge you to explore it a bit.

A concept model is essentially an IA diagram that is extensible and rich enough to handle the way information is presented and consumed on a website nowadays. Whereas the old IA diagrams were taxonomy flowcharts that showed ownership and where things belonged (main pages, subpages, etc.), concept models describe the structure of the system by showing relationships between the content and the user.

You can read more about concept models in Dan Brown's article on UIE: In Which a Concept Model Makes Me Giddy. And there's also a classic example of a concept model for the Flickr user model.

This probably won't be the last you hear from me about concept models.

It's my pleasure to announce that I'm going to be interviewed along with a host of others for an upcoming ebook called Love Freelancing. (The website promoting the book is quite nice as well.)

If you view the site you'll see that the line-up of interviewees is full of web design heavyweights. Suffice to say, it's quite an honor to be included with the others, even if a bit intimidating. I hope to bring a unique perspective as someone who is still transitioning from having a full-time job and free-lancing part-time to free-lancing full-time.

Kai Brach is the person behind the project, and as you might expect is himself a free-lance web designer. I imagine the book will make a pretty big splash when it comes out; even if I weren't included I would still be interested to hear about everyone else's take on the free-lancing life. Look for it early next year.

Thanks, Kai!

If you read anything about entrepreneurship it doesn't take long to figure out that everyone is obsessed with failing. At times it seems like it's an end goal in itself, especially if it's your first time being an entrepreneur.

For a long time when I pictured failing I envisioned total crash and burn; losing tons of money and dragging your family through months of zero income as you rebuilt and started another venture. Not a fun time to say the least. However I'm learning that usually failure comes in much milder doses. Even what looks like success can be a failure. And many times failure is bringing you closer to truer success.

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Day Two of An Event Apart Chicago was as equally excellent as the first. However, I was not as studious a note-taker the second time. Plus a few of the presentations centered heavily on code execution and examples. So instead of summarizing each presentation I would just like to publicly give a well deserved thank you to Jeffery Zeldman and Eric Meyer for hosting An Event Apart; as well as to all the speakers for sharing your knowledge and insight. You are all fantastic and inspiring.

Day one of An Event Apart Chicago is complete: I took seventeen pages of notes. To summarize the first day I've listed three random points from each session, some are paraphrased quotes, some are my interpreting what I think they said. And these aren't necessarily my top three favorites, just those selected from a larger list.

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Today and tomorrow I will be in Chicago for An Event Apart. If you would like to follow the conference tune in to A Feed Apart for live “tweets” throughout.

I've already seen a few people that I know via their blogs: Chris Coyier and both Eric Meyer and Jeffery Zeldman. It's quite something to be here with several hundred other web professionals.

In the off-chance you read this blog and you're also here at AEA please stop me and introduce yourself. Also I have letter-pressed business cards to give away, so if nothing else just introduce yourself to get one of those!

If you've visited the site either yesterday or today you've seen my most recent realign. If you're reading this via a feed reader I would encourage you to visit the site and take a look.

There are two main goals with this realign. The first is to attract more clients who have websites that need to be designed. To do this I've made the portfolio a little more prominent and attempted not-embarrassingly-bad copywriting for my services page. I also realized that in the version prior to this one the about page was more of an extended services page, so I've tried to rectify that and make it more "about-y." I am still in dire need of a better picture though.

The second goal is to encourage "easier" posting. I have easier in quotes because the act of publishing a post was not hard (Habari makes that simple), it was the design that was cumbersome. With its red drop cap and trumpeting first paragraph, the previous design was elegant in style but awkward when posting anything that wasn't longer than five paragraphs. The desired change was to move towards a design that allowed for shorter, more direct posts; as well as longer posts when necessary. (By the way, in case you're wondering, I will keep posting uniquely designed articles.)

Forward Looking

Beneath the design you will find a base markup structure of HTML5. I've had to use extra markup in some places to accomplish intended effects; when presented with the choice between diminished usability and extra markup, I chose the latter. As the technology matures though, I doubt this choice will have to be made. I also took advantage of CSS3 throughout the site, which of course degrades gracefully if you're using a browser that does not support it.

One of the more entertaining CSS3 properties to use was transitions. If you're using Safari you can view these in action when you hover over the post thumbnails at the bottom of the home page.

A Web Gallery

A new feature I'm very excited about – and that's fairly unique as far as I know – is the inclusion of a new web gallery that is run solely from Twitter. The gallery is called Good Website. To include a site in the gallery I post its URL and a few reasons why I like it. You can follow Good Website on Twitter to get instant updates; as well as view the sites included in a dedicated sidebar on the blog. If you would like to suggest a site for the gallery all you have to do is mention it to me on Twitter via @goodwebsite.

That's about it for now. Of course it's always appreciated if you let me know of any bugs you encounter on the site. Also feel free to suggest topics for future blogging by way of the contact form.

Thanks for reading!

Noah Stokes on the state of the web design profession.