I created Craft+Story in early 2012 with a MacBook, a lot of coffee, and a spare room in my house with the simple motto “Start small.” Over the past six years, I’ve been blessed to work with some awesome clients and amazing collaborators while staying profitable enough to work from home and spend extra time with my pregnant wife (and now baby). The one thing I’ve missed was getting to lead a long-term team (for more than a few months) and mentor other designers, developers, and leaders who are coming up right now. As my true mission for Craft+Story and myself has always been to help others (clients and peers) reach the next level, I’ve decided the best way to do that in the next season is to join a team that wants the same things.

I’m excited to announce that starting in July 2018, I will be joining Jonah Digital Agency (JDA) as [Working Title]. Yeah, we don’t exactly know my title, yet. Evidently, my skill set is “difficult to categorize” (hopefully in a good way), but I’ll be working with the directors and officers to define what I can do to help us reach the next level as individuals and an agency.

I just want to sincerely thank all the clients, agencies, collaborators, and friends that I’ve had the privilege of working with. I’ve had a great time getting to know all of you, and I look forward to keeping in touch. As always, you can drop me a line, and I can always make time for coffee (or whiskey).

I will admit that I love shiny new processes or tools. I constantly embrace the hope for radical changes that will make my life easier in every way. I jump on them, try them out, and abandon most of them as being more “shiny” than “helpful.” I think that’s healthy for somebody who’s supposed to build and consult others on all these things. Still, a few things have truly changed my world. Abandoning table-based design and embracing CSS was a win, obviously. I couldn’t go back to life without CSS pre-processors like Sass. Craft CMS is the CMS I wish I had been building in for a decade. Now, atomic design and Pattern Lab have finally separated out the front-end development from integration in a way that has completely changed my job on certain projects.

When I worked with Busy Noggin Digital recently on the new Craft CMS site for 121 Community Church I was able to build and deliver completely in Pattern Lab (with Twig) for the first time, and I don’t think I could go back as a front-end developer. Since they were doing the back-end development and integration in-house, all they needed or wanted from me was CSS/JS and modular HTML. I could have given them static HTML, but I thought that this was a perfect opportunity to use Pattern Lab. Thankfully, they like refining processes as much as me and trusted me to run with it.

So, with a completely new process at hand, I started my first deliverable (not pre-production or staging) pattern library deliverable using Pattern Lab with Twig. In a few minutes, I was able to launch a new docker container with just PHP (Pattern Lab doesn’t need a database or anything), my standard starter files with Grunt and Bower setup just the way I like them, and I was already pulling in colors and fonts from the mockups. I shared a git repository with their main back-end developer, and he was able to see my progress and make notes. Even more cool, because of the modular nature of the project (and Craft implementation in general) and the fact that I was already using Twig (for HTML templates), he was able to take my code and start integrating as I was still finalizing the CSS and JS for the project. If he had changes necessary for integration, I could update my HTML and immediately test the changes in a responsive environment with plenty of example pages (seeing the module on it’s own, on the home page, and even embedded on a content page).

So, what were the main benefits compared to static HTML?

• Speed. I was able to be up and running with lots of standard HTML elements (like headings, paragraphs, and tables) almost immediately. Then, as we worked together I could use the same elements repeatedly without copying and pasting any HTML or Twig.
• Testing. I could test elements on their own and as part or a page. I could see how elements worked in a grid or what happened when data was missing. On top of that, Pattern Lab already comes with a handy way to test responsiveness (for elements and pages). Every time I made a change, I could test all the situations without generating new example pages.
• Modularity. Developing in Craft CMS should be done with modular templates, and this was already specially requested by Busy Noggin. Using atomic design forced me to think in modules. Just as importantly, if I couldn’t build it as a self-sustaining module in Pattern Lab, then they wouldn’t be able to implement it in Craft. They needed modular elements for their final build, and I couldn’t cheat my way around it like I can if I’m building whole static pages.
• Twig. It’s a small thing, but it helped everyone that I could hand over Twig files instead of static HTML. Yes, they still had to modify it a little to work with their data from Craft, but every module started just a little bit ahead of the curve.

More importantly, what were the benefits compared to us collaborating in one Craft CMS implementation?

• Separation of duties. Since, in this case, I was not doing the back-end or integration work, I really shouldn’t concern myself with those pieces. Having access to only HTML/CSS/JS kept me “in my lane” on this project.
• Parallel development. Along with the separation of duties, we were able to develop in parallel. I didn’t need to wait for integrations in Craft in order to move forward as soon as I was done generating a module. While they were integrating modules I had already “finished,” I could go back to cleaning up the Sass and tweaking responsiveness or JS that was already coded for in the HTML.
• No database. Like I said, I just ran a small Docker container with PHP. I didn’t even need a Docker container, probably, but it helped keep it portable and made testing easier. Most importantly, we didn’t need to constantly sync up database changes or deal with one more thing that can break in a development environment.

Overall, this project worked out great, and I’m in the middle of working on the pattern library for rebuilding this site and craftandstory.com. Even though neither of those are shared projects, I can use it as an opportunity to practice my techniques I learned on that shared project and even get better for the next project. I’ve already updated my Pattern Lab starter repository with common elements. So, if you haven’t given atomic design and Pattern Lab a shot, I highly recommend both of them. You can learn more about atomic design from Brad Frost’s articles, but I would recommend just buying his book. If you’re serious about playing with atomic design or pattern libraries in general, you should definitely check out the Pattern Lab project. Of course, if you want to work with a front-end developer who already uses them and loves new tools, then you can always hello@craftandstory.com.

“I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.” Michael Caine, in an interview talking about Jaws: the Revenge

I watched Jaws: The Revenge recently because, well, I had just re-watched Jaws (amazing) with my wife (more amazing) and I tend to be a completionist. After Jaws, I watched Jaws 2 (Jaws returns and only the sheriff remembers what happened last time) and Jaws 3 (Jaws in SeaWorld), and finally made my way to Jaws: The Revenge (Jaws in the Bahamas). I was watching this already terrible movie make weird excuses for Roy Scheider’s lack of appearance (he died offscreen while not signing a contract to be in the worst Jaws), and I heard the unmistakable voice of Michael Caine. Sir Michael Caine. Sir Michael Caine was in the fourth Jaws film because Roy Scheider was not.

I was awestruck. I jumped to the internets to explain this to me. I knew that Michael Caine was already a well-established actor before J:tR came out. In fact, he was basically at the peak of his career (I checked). As far as he'll say, he was not blackmailed and did not owe millions in back taxes. He just did a job the best he could, and he got paid. Then, in a move that I didn’t think was possible, he went on and continued to be a great actor, grew even cooler, and became Sir Michael Caine.

I don't know why it was so shocking to me, but it was. I guess I was shocked because everytime I do a slightly less than groundbreaking project I feel like I'm just sliding backwards faster than I can run and that, because of that project, I'll be doomed to finish my career penniless in obscurity. It may be extreme, but I don’t think I’m alone in these feelings. No matter how many fun redesigns/relaunches I complete, working on this one Wordpress extension sets me all the way back to junior developer. Obviously, that was not true for Michael Caine, and it doesn't seem to be that way for anyone else either.

People work. Sometimes they do good work on bad projects. We forget, and keep working on new projects. Sir Michael Caine was in Jaws: The Revenge. Dustin Hoffman was in Ishtar. Patrick Swayze in Skatetown, U.S.A. I don’t know why I give them more slack than myself, but I'm going to change the math in my head (or try to). Maybe I can do a non-portfolio project without feeling like I’m moving backward. Maybe I can earn a paycheck using my less glamorous skills occasionally without fearing that I’m redefining my career. Michael Caine didn’t become cheesy action movie guy after that one film. Most importantly, I have to refuse to define myself or my career off any individual projects (big or small).

Disclaimer: I’m training for a major half marathon that has taken up most of my time and all of my other sources for analogies.

I have a favorite running path that I go to for all my long runs. There’s a 3.75 running path between two parks (a 7.5 mile circuit), and you can of course extend it on either end or run it a couple times to get some great mileage without getting hit by cars or running out of pavement. That's not why I run there, though. There is a more magic result of this “extend-your-own-course” path, though: you never know where anybody is at in their run.

You don’t know if that person who flew by you early on is a seasoned runner on their eighth mile of the morning or just an overzealous newbie on their first quarter mile. You don’t know if that slightly rounded, wheezing man (me) is really out of shape or just on his thirteenth mile. You don’t know (until you’ve been running their a while) whether somebody is at the park every weekend or once a year. We’re all just runners, and it’s completely impossible to judge yourself against anybody else.

Even more interestingly, I don't know what part of the longer journey they might be on. I see some of the same people in passing, but I don't know their story; were they a college athlete, or did they just lose tons of weight (or both)? Did they just start training for an ultra-marathon or are they about to run their first 5K? I have no way of knowing, so I can’t measure myself against their pace either to beat myself up or make myself feel better than them. All I can do is feel a certain kinship with them as fellow runners and wish them the best as I try not to fall off the path or dry heave in their presence.

As with most painfully transparent analogies, this has something to do with life in general. When you happen to glance at somebody’s portfolio or see their new job on LinkedIn (ugh), you don’t have enough information to do anything but wave as you pass each other. You don’t know where they are at, and you don’t know where they are trying to go. Not only is it misguided and a bad idea to measure yourself against them, it’s technically impossible to even get a good reading. All you can do is appreciate their progress as a fellow “runner” in this life, wish them the best, pay attention to your own feet, and try not to throw up on the sidewalk.

I would promise this was my last easy running analogy for a tough life lesson, but I will remind you again that I am, evidently, officially becoming a runner and we are bound to talk about PRs, shoes, energy gels, or “life lessons from miles on the road” at least once per day.

About a year ago, I stepped back in my work on my one-man studio, Craft+Story, so that I could spend more time working with my friends at Busy Noggin Digital growing their business and giving me some opportunities to work on some much larger projects (like the new website for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago). When Ron and Jeff asked me to come on board last year, they said the magic words, “we want to get to the next level,” and I was hooked. When they said those words, I thought about why I loved my job at the ministry (growing my team from nothing) and why I loved my first couple years with Craft+Story. So, I devoted the next year to helping them grow while Craft+Story stabilized in the background.

In that time, I had a lot of time to review the first few years of Craft+Story. I thought about what I did right and what I screwed up. We had launched some awesome projects, but I had become too focused on the growth of Craft+Story. I had burnt myself out trying to force Craft+Story to get bigger. I started to get jealous of my friends who were growing faster from a similar starting position. I lost sight of why I started Craft+Story and how I wanted it to be different, and I had to do a hard reset and evaluate what I really wanted to do. That took about a year.

It took me honestly looking back at my personal career history and the failures and success of Craft+Story to see that I’m most fulfilled (and successful) when I’m helping others get to the next level. At the ministry, I loved seeing people grow even when it (quite often) meant them leaving for bigger and better opportunities. My favorite moments with clients (and my wife’s business) have been watching them grow amazingly after an overhaul.

Now, after one long year, I’m devoting myself entirely Craft+Story 2.0 with one priority: helping others grow. For clients, I want to provide second chances or new opportunities to get to that next level. For partner freelancers and agencies, I can be a launch pad for bigger or better things. For everyone else, I want to be a resource and maybe (hopefully) and example of a different kind of agency.

What does it mean for the official mission of Craft+Story (and myself) to be helping others grow? We’ll do redesigns, relaunches, and rebrandings whenever possible. After that (or sometimes before), I’ll be a “creative director on call” for all those small teams out there like I used to lead. I’ll share my whole "toolbox" with anyone who works with me (clients, interns, employees, and contractors) — even when that means they’ll hopefully end up smarter than me. I’ll be open to speaking in front of (probably small) groups of smart people, on the off-chance that they will learn one important thing. Of course, I’ll also share all my knowledge on here (but it helps if you ask a question).

Truly, I believe a company can only have one true priority, and mine is going to be growing others. After that, I’ll make sure that I have enough profit to keep going, but I won’t worry too much about “growing the business” or “expansion” anymore. I tried that, and I forgot why I loved this job so much to begin with.

I'm in the middle of working on a redesign of this site and relaunching my business, Craft+Story, so I pulled out one of my old rough drafts that I never finished. This is especially fitting right now, because it's about launching your redesign with a small (or no) team:

In agile development teams and online businesses, a lot of us talk about launching early and iterating in the web world these days. That makes sense for those of us who are launching web apps and online services with a development mindset and some experience launching on the web. What about non-technical ministries and small businesses that are working on launching major updates or redesign? How do you, as a non-development leader, know when you should go ahead and launch something that may not feel "there," yet? Simple. You launch when it’s better than what you have.

Is the new thing perfect? No. It won’t be. Should you launch when it’s 90% there? Should you even waste time trying to calculate how “complete” it is? Probably not. We (leaders of development) might have a lot of cool Gantt charts and complicated ideas to tell us exactly how far along a project is supposed to be, what percentage is complete, and what the estimated completion date is (based on more guessing than we will admit), but that's probably not your real job. Frankly, that’s a ridiculous onus to put on the non-developers out there, so just follow the simple rule: Launch when the new thing is better than what is currently up there.

I have the fancy charts and timelines at my disposal, and I still use that as my real test, for better or worse. When I’m doing updates on my sites, I launch as soon as it’s better. Is the new banner perfect? No, but the fact is it’s better than the old one (which might be outdated for any number of reasons). As soon as it’s better, I launch. Period.

I say this especially applies to leaders in small businesses and ministries with little to no internal teams because it really does. I know how busy you can be wearing five different hats on any given day, and percentage complete doesn't mean anything in the real world to your users. If you wait for everything to be perfect, you will run out of time or money eventually. Once you have something better, just launch. If there's more work to be done, keep somebody like me around on retainer for a while to keep making improvements. I'll even update the Gantt charts.

I’d like to think I learned a lot about hustling from The Roots and Jon Acuff (in different ways). I've been reading Jon Acuff’s blogs since Stuff Christians Like, and I recommend Quitter as my favorite (non-idealistic) guide for moving on to your next big thing (which may not be quitting your day job). I also want to stay on his good side in case I need an endorsement for a future book. That being said, I didn't really internalized the hustle until I signed up for my first 15k.

Here’s a quick summary of me before signing up for my first 15k which I finished last weekend (at the beginning of February):

• I had just started working out again in July after 15 years of steadily putting on weight.
• I mostly lifted weights and did “fun” cross-training like jogging with a ruck and boxing on a heavy bag.
• I was not a runner, and I did not enjoy running.
• I normally maxed out at 5 miles without stopping.
• I averaged a 12:00 min/mi pace (not great).
• I was obviously overly optimistic if I thought I could run more than 6 miles, much less the 9.3 miles required.

Despite all of this, I saw people signing up for the Hot Chocolate 5k/15k and thought (1) I should challenge myself and (2) I could already run 5k, so it was not challenging enough. So, I signed up in November, kept working out like normal, and, in January, started a real training program. I cut out non-essential cross-training and ran four days a week. I never skipped a run. I woke up even earlier. I monitored my diet before every long run to learn what worked and what didn't. I ran extra-long on Saturdays. Basically, I had to hustle every day to meet my goal.

I realized by the end of January that I had been working hard before, but I had not been hustling with a goal to hit. Hustling meant setting a goal where I would be judged on how much I had worked up to that point. It meant temporarily giving up the fun, productive things like boxing and cross-training so that I could carve out more time to train for my real goal. It meant going to bed early, so I could wake up even earlier with energy to run. It meant running when everyone else was asleep or relaxing with friends and family. It meant never skipping a scheduled run (even when that meant running trails at a bed and breakfast during vacation). It meant measuring my results week-by-week by keeping track of my times, and it meant pushing myself extra hard to run 10 miles on Saturday mornings. It meant I finally internalized the hustle.

What I learned applies to any area where I have to hustle to be successful (running a race, starting a business, growing a business, etc), and these are my takeaways (in no particular order):

• I need to hustle towards a goal. I don’t believe in exercising for the sake of exercising. That doesn't motivate me to try harder. I believe in training. Training has a final goal, and it’s something that I can get closer to through my own efforts. My goal was to finish a 15k in under 1:45:00 (I finished in 1:30:12). In business, my goal has been to bring in more qualified clients and grow so that I can help more people grow (which I'm doing, but I still have some open slots available for new clients).
• I need to track my progress. I'm hustling towards a goal, but that goal might be a ways out and I can’t just blindly train or work hard without knowing if I'm doing the right things to make progress. I tracked my average pace on every run, and I quickly adjusted variables (normally my diet or water intake) when I saw the numbers go in the wrong direction. If my goal is to land fifteen new clients by the end of the year, I need to be aware enough to change things up if I only have two new clients in July.
• I need to have a clear idea of what I can control and what I can’t. I learned about Stoicism while studying at the Air Force Academy, and this always stuck with me. I can’t control how well other people run or the fact that many of them have not gotten out of shape since college, but I can be responsible for how often I run and what I eat. I still can’t change other people’s budgets or priorities, but I can control how well I present myself and appeal to their needs. I can’t hustle my way around all the factors that affect the outcome, but I can take complete ownership of everything within my control.
• I may have to sacrifice (some normally good) things to hustle. I had to give up sleeping in and eating fatty foods, but I also had to give up training that didn’t help my running and seeing a lot of friends that were on “normal” schedules.
• The focused hustle is not a permanent state of being. I hope I always work hard. I think I always have. This sort of hustling, though, needs to be a very focused period with a beginning and an end (when I reach my goal). I'm giving up some good things to get a little further. I'm also burning away with less recovery. All of that is okay, though, because I know that I'll reach my goal. Then, I can recover and start thinking about the next goal (like a GORUCK Challenge, which means changing my routine and hustling again).
• I need to be judged at the end. Just like I know I need a goal, I know I need some skin in the game and I need to be ready to be judged based on how well I hustled up to that point. I might be judged pass/fail like completing a GORUCK challenge or making enough money to go independent with a side-project, or I might be judged by how fast I was or how many new clients I brought in. Whatever it is, I have to have the opportunity to fail at the end, or I won’t work my tail off to do better.

So, that’s it. I ran my first road race in over 15 years. More importantly, I learned how to internalize the hustle for my personal and professional pursuits and tried to share what I learned here. As always, hit me up on Twitter or in jeremy@jeremygreenawalt.com if you have any questions or feedback. If you want to work with me to grow your own business or ministry (and watch me hustle), fill out my handy contact form.

Final cautionary note: After basic online research, I am now aware that almost everyone recommends spending more than four weeks preparing for your first 15k (possibly more like 16 weeks). Obviously, that is helpful information that I did not have in January of this year when I started training, but I thought I should pass it on in case you get inspired and don’t want to injure yourself.

A couple weeks ago, I got out of town for a few days to update my strategy for my one-person studio, Craft+Story, and make a plan for the year ahead. I even formed a mission statement after almost four years of Craft+Story; I honestly don't think every one-man operation needs a written mission statement, but I obviously think while writing and the act of making one made me think about what I want to accomplish. Anyway, I realized that my sole mission in everything (Craft+Story, past jobs, and this blog) has always been about helping others grow (and really not in the cheesy way that everybody writes growth as their unique offering). I like to see my employees grow into bigger and better jobs (not always with me), I love seeing my clients grow beyond what they thought possible, and I like writing on here with the hope that I might help somebody else like me learn a little or get inspired to grow in the same way that so many others have helped me.

So, why am I writing this? A large part of my new strategy (and the part you'll see first) is a renewed focus on this site including an updated design and some tweaking of the branding. It will finally be responsive (like every other site I've built for years now). I'm switching from Expression Engine to TYPO3 to play with some new techniques. I'm going to update the look and branding to match who I am now, a few years older and wiser (including going from the cool but incomprehensible Pocket Revolutionary to just my name, Jeremy Greenawalt). Finally, I hope to be more focused in my writing about the technical, creative, and business sides of my life. Selfishly, I would not mind if some people liked my point of view enough that they reached out to hire me (just being honest).

Again, why am I posting this? Partially, I want to commit myself publicly to this update. I've been working on a new version of this site off and on for about half a year, but I obviously did not put a high priority on it until I realized it was part of my mission. Mainly, though, just the act of writing this post is already getting me to write again for publication (and not just proposals or reports). It's a tiny step, but starting small is a great way to get momentum (it's also how I went from a daily walk to lose weight to a 15k run next weekend, but I might talk about that later).

Last week, I finally finished one of the toughest assignments in the short history of Craft+Story: re-branding my wife’s business. I’ve always built her sites and helped her when possible, but this was a big deal. This was a total relaunch of the name, brand, and everything. She bribed me with a steak dinner and a couple martinis, and I spent my weekends working on it until it was finally (mostly) done. Luckily for me, she loves the finished product. For those interested, this is a basic breakdown of what we did and a few lessons learned.

Renaming

The original name of Rebekah’s business, Images by Rebekah, was very – utilitarian. The rebranding was a chance to show how she was shifting focus from a lot of weddings and a few other things to doing exclusively weddings, and it was a chance to highlight her fun personality. We went through a lot of brainstorming and thought experiments, and produced nothing memorable. At one point, she came into my room and wrote “Hello ____” on the whiteboard; I immediately finished the thought to “Hello Beautiful”, and the name stuck. We checked the domain name, Facebook, Twitter, trademarks, etc, and we went for it. I’d like to say there was more to the process, but this really was a situation of just banging our head against bad ideas repeatedly until something we both loved emerged from the bloodshed.

A New Brand

For the new brand, I drew a lot from things I already knew my wife loved (Kate Spade, script fonts, girl-y colors) and the brands and designers that already appeal to her brides. We had played it safe in early designs, but this time we knew we needed to stand out to find the “right” brides and couples who would be excited to work with Rebekah (or “believers”, as Jason Blumer says). I created a simple logo and some “style tiles” where we paired the bold pink with complementary blues and yellows (later used in her print materials).

Website Gallery

In true backward fashion, I started playing with the gallery first because I knew that everything else (static pages and even the blog) would key off this central piece. Traditionally, we’ve always shown a handful of large images at a time (like most photographers), but I really wanted to change that. I started sketching some ideas and decided that in order to fully show the stories in the galleries and to encourage people to look at more than just a couple photos, I wanted a to use a reponsive grid of smaller images (with lightboxes for zooming in). The next step was just figuring out how to tie that into a back end gallery system that Rebekah could update herself.

We had been using SlideShowPro Director for years, but the front end (SlideShowPro) was built on Flash and their JavaScript fallback was not flexible enough for the front end I had designed. Luckily, the creators of SlideShowPro had already started their latest project, Koken, to be a complete website solution for portfolio sites without Flash. I started messing with it early, and followed along with all the beta versions. I liked the back end and template system, but wasn’t really in love with how any of their pre-built templates handles responsiveness, so I started building my own theme. At one point, some bugs in the beta combined with some problems in the JavaScript solutions I was using caused me to drop the gallery development and start working on the rest of the site (detailed below).

After I came back, the bugs were gone, but the responsive grid solution I was using was not able to handle lazy loaded images (loading the images “as necessary” after the rest of the page is visible). After just moments of testing, I knew that lazy loading the images was absolutely essential when you had live galleries that could grow to hundreds of photos. So, I scrapped the grid system that I almost had working and decided to implement Masonry.js using some hooks to call it after each image had finished loading (which is surprisingly fast per incident and alternates between downloading and processing).

This was the first part I started, and the last piece to be finished.

The Rest of the Site

Like I said, I started out using Koken, and I had actually gone pretty far doing the whole site in Koken until I hit some major snags. First, the only way to have a contact form was to code it in PHP; annoying (because Rebekah couldn’t update it), but workable, I guess. Then, I was implementing the blog (which will launch later), and realized that there were some features missing. The blog posts themselves had to be added using the simplest of forms; so simple, in fact, that the only option for laying out images inside a post were straight HTML (bad for Rebekah) or no formatting at all (bad for everyone). I thought I could work around this until I realized I didn’t know how to implement an indexed search; and then I found out that there was no indexed search capability, and it wasn’t even on the roadmap according to some answers I found from Koken developers.

Since a blog without even basic searching is not a long-term plan, I decided to just use TYPO3 (which I could modify to do anything I want in the posts and has great search plugins) for everything but the galleries. I could have done the galleries in TYPO3, but Koken really does have some great tools like Lightroom integration.

Seeing this as a chance to start over and not have to conform to some of the “quirks” of the Koken page systems (which are admittedly kinda slapped into a great portfolio/gallery system), I started out from scratch with my TYPO3 implementation. Not a lot of gory details here, but I created a pretty good design system and got it working. Once it was done, I went back and finished the gallery.

Copywriting

I don’t always get to write copy for websites, but it’s definitely one of my favorite things. All of the writing on the website sounds just like my wife (who loves exclamation points) and is geared towards brides and their moms (our main visitors). One of the questions I added to the form, “What part of your wedding are you most excited?”, had some initial resistance from Rebekah because it wasn’t entirely practical and she was afraid everybody would say “getting married”. I liked it, though, because I knew it’s one of the first questions Rebekah loves to ask, and brides love talking about their wedding. In the first day the website was live, we had multiple people filling out the form and they all gave fun answers filled with exclamation points, and excited brides is pretty much what we’re about. Yay!

What’s Next?

We didn’t get to launch with the blog because this has been a project strictly for the weekends, and it was more important to get the new brand out there than to wait for total completion. I am excited about the blog, though. We’ve setup a system in TYPO3 to really highlight her images, and I think everyone will love hearing her unfiltered excitement.

Check out Hello Beautiful Photography!]]> 2014-04-30T01:54:13+00:00 http://www.pocketrevolutionary.com/articles/view/tailored_solutions http://www.pocketrevolutionary.com/articles/view/tailored_solutions#When:17:42:41Z

Custom development and tailored solutions have almost inadvertently been at the heart of Craft+Story since the beginning (last year), but I didn’t make it part of our one-sentence description until recently. It just made sense. I started out as a backend developer, so I always want to tweak things. We’ve been adding custom extensions or functionality to nearly every project. It’s the “craft” part of Craft+Story (as in craftsmanship, not papier-mâché).

What does this commitment to “tailored solutions” really mean, though? How does it compare to templates and off-the-shelf solutions? Those are good questions, so I wrote a FAQ.

What is a tailored solution?

Like most good solutions, it starts with a problem. It could be something you know your clients are needing or a business opportunity you’re missing. The problem is probably not “we don’t have a website”. It’s normally more like “we want to provide online video better” or “we want to connect real estate agents to pre-qualified buyers”. Starting with the problem, we can step back and start to form a solution philosophically. Then, we can build something to exactly match that solution.

Is custom or tailored necessarily better?

Yes! Maybe. It depends on your problem and how much you’re willing to spend to solve it. For my basic everyday problem of covering my naked torso, an off-the-rack shirt is worth exactly what I’m willing to spend (not much). For the more expensive problem of looking awesome at a gala in my honor, I’ll want something tailored to make me look less fat.

Why is it better?

Tailoring the solution gives us the chance to build exactly what is needed to solve the problem. Often, a one-size-fits-all solution won’t solve more complex problems, and if it does, it’s likely to be bloated with all sorts of unnecessary solutions to other people’s problems. A tailored solution is (theoretically) guaranteed to solve your problem, and do it faster and with less overhead than an off-the-shelf template.

Why is it more expensive?

It isn’t always, but it can require more of an investment to get the results you really need. The difference between a custom solution and grabbing something off the shelf, though, is that everything is designed to give you a higher return on your investment than any one-size-fits-all solution could promise.

Who am I kidding? Of course it’s more expensive. It takes more time, knowledge, and experience to make things custom. Unlike the “handmade leather interior” option on a Kia, though, it’s probably worth it.

So does this mean you’re always starting from scratch?

No. We’re not stupid. We work with content management systems that are made for customization (TYPO3, ExpressionEngine) so that we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Of course, occasionally the solution isn’t a CMS at all. In that case, we start with a basic framework and make our own system.

Do you charge by the hour, day, week, or fortnight?

No. I love value-based pricing. At the beginning or during discovery, we calculate the value of the project based on the expected return and how much can be invested in strategy, design and development. Then, we normally present a few options with different levels of investment and return.

Isn’t that kind of arbitrary?

It seems a lot less arbitrary than declaring all of our hours are worth $100. Personally, I know I’ve had $400 hours (early in the morning or having a great idea in the shower) and $25 hours (right before naptime). Value-based pricing sounds a lot less arbitrary to me because it’s all about results. I’d much rather sell results than a random chunk of time.

Anything else?

Custom (or tailored) solutions are awesome. I love this stuff, and I should have been telling clients why it matters before now.