Pocket Revolutionary

Not a Manifesto

2012-02-02T07:19:40+00:00

So, my big project for the beginning of this year (that’s not really a secret) has been the launch of my own little design and development studio, Craft + Story. I’m not officially launching until May¹, but until then I’m spending a lot of time thinking about what I want it to be and, most importantly, who I want to work with — my clients and my team. Instead of a 3,000 word, Mad Men-esque manifesto, though, I distilled it down to a few core values for the company:

We believe in partnering with clients.

We respect our clients, and we only work with clients who respect what we do. We are partners until the bitter end.

We are problem-solvers.

Our job is not to make something pretty. Our job is not to make a website or create an app. Our job is to solve the client’s problem.

We think deadlines matter.

We don’t create arbitrary deadlines or agree to impossible timelines. We rely on our process and client meetings to set a series of milestones for the project. Then, we hit every one of those deadlines.

We don’t strive to be efficient.

We are not a factory, and we don’t churn out websites like one. We like to work with a small number of clients every year, and we spend our time in discovery and design finding the best (not the fastest or easiest) solution for them.

We aren’t cheap.

Every client gets the same treatment: discovery, planning, design, development, and deployment. We need to understand the problem before we can create a solution. We can’t take shortcuts to finding the perfect solution.

We don’t really care about tools.

We’ve built websites in TYPO3, ExpressionEngine, Wordpress, Magento, and custom web apps. We know all about HTML 5 and CSS3. We even build iPhone apps, and we love it. At the end of the day, though, we are just choosing the best tool for the job at hand, and we don’t get too attached to any of them.

We don’t deliver multiple designs when only one is right.

Our job is to solve a creative problem in the best way possible, and there is usually only one best solution for any one problem. During the design process, we explore all of the possible solutions and whittle them down ruthlessly until only the best survive. The solution (or solutions) that make it through are shown to the client. Everything that doesn’t solve the problem is thrown out.

We hate the hourly rate.

We like to work on whole projects, and we don’t believe that hourly (or daily) rates are the best model for us or the client. Our work is done when we’ve delivered the best solution - not when an arbitrary number of hours has elapsed.

We do offer hourly rates for consulting only, but we’re not cheap.

We’re currently signing clients for May and June. If you’re interested, jeremy@craftandstory.com. ↩

Changes

2011-11-29T04:27:09+00:00

No, I haven’t forgotten that I have a blog, and, yes, I still love writing. It just happens that there are some major changes happening, and I need to devote my “free” time in new directions. I’ll have some news soon¹, but for now I’m taking some time to plan out the next major phase of my life (and even this site).

Spoiler: Nobody is pregnant. ↩

Steve.

2011-10-06T16:05:42+00:00

Around 1986, my family got our first real computer, a Macintosh 512k (so titled because of the memory stored behind it’s glowing screen). I was six years old, and it changed my life. My mom had Lupus and couldn’t work in a normal office, so when my dad left that year she could only work from home. She had only occasionally used a computer up to that point when her best friend Melinda, who was also in a wheelchair, showed her how she was able to work from home using this amazing Macintosh operating system.

My mom was hooked. She was able to be one of the early pioneers in the world of desktop publishing when it still seemed like magic. During the hardest years of dealing with sickness, divorce, and single parenting, she joined a beautiful new community, the local Mac User Group. She taught me how to write and create on that Mac, and we moved on to bigger and better Macs like the Mac Classic and even an ill-fated Performa. When she was bedridden at home or in the hospital again later on in life, she slept with little white earbuds in her ears and a Powerbook by her side in case she woke up and needed to connect with a friend on Facebook or play a word game to distract her from pain. We both waited for Apple to release some kind of “magical tablet” that she could use for reading, writing, and watching movies in bed.

My dad was later to the Mac world. As a musician, he was early to use expensive standalone MIDI devices, and he saw the future coming. In 1994, he decided that he needed a real computer to help him compose music faster and run a business. His one stipulation that had scared him away from most PCs at the time: he didn’t want his computer to make him feel stupid, and he didn’t want to devote half his time to learning how to use it. I took him shopping at one of the only stores that sold Macs (luckily we were in a university town), and he got a Powerbook 500. Ten years later, he was still bragging that I was the best son ever; partially because I introduced him to the Mac. He also went through multiple machines as he taught music to thousands of children and released multiple albums, and we talked about how much he loved his refurbished Powerbook and new Mac Mini in our last conversation. He had finally gotten an iPod, and he asked me how to hook it up to his car.

The growth of Apple was a shared experience for all of us. My parents were inspired to write, draw, and create music on devices that didn’t quite seem like computers to them. I was inspired to write, draw, and create music by watching them. All of us got excited when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, and all of us prayed for him when he started getting sicker.

My father died at the end of 2008, and my mom passed in 2009. Now, with the passing of Steve Jobs, I feel like an era has ended. I’m saddened, because the world is a little bit less interesting than it was before. I’m thankful, though, because all three of these people left behind a legacy and the tools to continue what they started. Thank you, Mom. Thank you, Dad. Thank you, Steve.

How to Not Make Bad Propaganda

2011-09-01T19:25:28+00:00

Confession: when I started the post about slow-clapping and my dad, I didn’t really know where it was going. I could write that style of writing off as an anomaly, or I could justify it and claim to have two wildly different writing processes that I switch between for different goals, audiences, etc. Obviously, I opt to justify, and I’ll give each process a descriptive, if hyperbolic, name: the “market-y, sell, sell” process and the “painfully honest” process.

The “market-y, sell, sell” (or “purpose-driven”) process starts with an idea, theme, or result: “I want to say X!” In order to say X in an engaging way, I need to tell a story. Now I start to mine my creative depths and experience to either find a great story or create one. I’ll find a story that can connect with the people I care about, and I’ll get a point across or drive them to action at the same time.

If I’m creating a website or a marketing strategy, I’m 99% guaranteed that I will have a goal, an agenda, laid out before I create the story. It just makes sense. It’s not dishonest, but it has to start with the agenda and work its way backwards. This is how some people write great stories, and how I write better-than-average stories.

The other process, the “painfully honest” process, starts out with only the goal of writing and being honest. It might turn out delightfully honest, pleasantly honest, or ambiguously honest. The point is that, above all, it is honest.

The honest process always starts with the story. You start typing. You tell a story. You tell the hell out of that story. You dive in headfirst, and you tell that story like the last five minutes of a deathbed confession. After you dig deep enough, you start to find the meaning in the story. You find the kernel of truth. You know that you’ll find that kernel of truth eventually because the story is true. After you find it, your job is just to bring that kernel to the surface so that the rest of us can share in the discovery.

That’s how I write this blog, and it’s how my favorite documentaries are made. The filmmakers may have acknowledged some goals or biases at the beginning (I mean, something motivated them to raise money, do research, and pick up a camera to begin with), but they are open to wherever the story wants to take them. Stephen King famously likes to create the characters and follow them down the path; sometimes they veer or change the plot in ways he wouldn’t have expected. They may be created out of this own thoughts or ideas, but they’re free to do or say whatever makes sense as reflections of real life.

After all this talk of honesty and truth, it may sound like I’m declaring “painfully honest” to be the best process at all times, but that’s not really true. Sometimes you need to use a little persuasion or take people down a clear path, and sometimes you need to blindly feel your way to the nugget at the center of the story. The key is always knowing which one you’re doing and sticking to it. I believe that what turns a good documentary into bad propaganda is simply being dishonest about (or confusing) which came first, the story or the conclusion. I don’t want to make bad propaganda.

My Writing Process

2011-07-10T19:22:09+00:00

I documented my writing and creative process for “cross-training” at work. The tools I use in the video to write and design are Scrivener, Byword, and Photoshop.

Like when I write, Radiohead (Like Spinning Plates) plays in the background. I recorded and edited everything using ScreenFlow.

San Francisco, Father’s Day, and slow clapping

2011-06-20T03:17:28+00:00

My first official conference talk in San Francisco went well.¹ All of my words came out, I didn’t die, and I had a lot of really interesting conversations with smart people about mobile development and user experiences. On top of that, I got to meet actual people who have read my book, which is always a thrill. Most importantly, I did my best to accept encouragement or compliments at face value. This is very hard for me because of a disorder that I have named SCS.

SCS, as you may or may not know, stands for “Slow Clap Syndrome”, and it is surprisingly rarely diagnosed in the medical community. SCS is very simple, though. Whenever I get a compliment or encouragement, I automatically imagine a slow clap accompanying it in the background. Obviously this is just in my head, but it effectively negates the compliment unless I can think ahead to shut it off. It can be a sarcastic and condescending slow clap:

“I really (slow clap) loved (slow clap) your last blog (slow clap) article. It was sooo (slow clap) original.”

Or it can be the genuine, heartfelt slow clap you reserve for the art of five-year-olds you’re not directly related to and adults who have no idea they’re operating way out of their realm:

“Did you draw that pipe in Illustrator (slow clap) by yourself (slow clap)? It’s very good (for a five-year-old or an adult with a tragic but preventable head injury).”

What does this have to do with Father’s Day? My parents obviously didn’t give me a sarcastic slow clap, and they never patronized me. My father, possibly the most gifted musician that I have ever known, always encouraged me in piano, cello, bass, guitar, and anything else that I tried. He told me when I did well in a piano concert, and he informed me, bluntly, when I needed to practice more. Because I grew up with their honesty, my parents’ words always bypassed the “slow clap filter”. Slow claps were never added in post-production, and I took their words at face value.

As a natural entertainer, my dad could always captivate a crowd. My dad died at the end of 2008, but I know he was proud of me. I know he would have loved seeing me give my first public talk in San Francisco, and he would have been following the whole thing on Facebook (once I persuaded him not to fly out). Most importantly, though, I know he would have been honest with me, and I could have heard everything he said without slow clap accompaniment. That’s what made him such a great dad, and that’s why, no matter what happened between us over the years, I can spend my Father’s Day remembering every nice thing he ever said and imagining how much fun we would have had hanging out on the back porch with some beers, good music, and stories of San Francisco.

You can see my video along with all the other sessions on Vimeo. ↩

One-hundred slides in ten minutes

2011-06-09T05:20:09+00:00

“Don’t be offended if people get up and walk out early.”

Awkward pause.

“I mean, I’m sure that many people will stay. It’s just… people are very busy.”

My beautiful wife, Rebekah, has been doing her best to encourage me before my talk at the TYPO3 conference in San Francisco. I need the encouragement. I need to hear that I will do fine. I guess I also need to hear that I shouldn’t be frustrated if half the room walks out halfway through.

I’m in the final stages of preparing for my very first conference talk. I made an extensive outline, designed a comprehensive Keynote deck, and I’m covering a topic that I already wrote about in my book — building mobile websites with TYPO3. Now I just need to perfect the Keynote and practice, practice, practice.

In theory, I should do okay. Only two big things are making me nervous at this point: my talk is 45 minutes and I’m pretty sure everyone in the room will be smarter than me.

I can’t help being nervous about the amount of time I’m given; I’m just really afraid that I’m going to freak out and speed through a hundred slides in ten minutes. I’m not sure if that’s even possible, but it still seems completely likely in the paranoid part of my brain.

As far as everyone in the room being smarter than me, my only hope is that I can shed light on one new idea for each person to make it worth their time; I don’t have to revolutionize site-building, just make it slightly easier. Really, though, I’m coming to grips with the fact that I always just feel like I’ve faked my way into this whole position and I’m just waiting to be found out. Maybe I’ll be found out this time. Maybe I’ll actually have a few good ideas and I’ll go to bed one more night without everyone knowing that I don’t know what I’m doing. I guess we’ll find out this Saturday.

One serene moment of freedom

2011-05-30T01:02:39+00:00

Confession: I waste a ridiculous amount of time worrying about things I can’t fix and feeling defensive about facts I don’t control. I didn’t get a degree when I was still in my twenties. I’ve felt under-qualified for every job I’ve ever had (even stacking boxes in a factory).¹ There are countless creative people with more natural talent than me, and I see their work every day. I could go on listing inadequacies for a good afternoon, and I wouldn’t get any closer to changing them. Most importantly, I’d never give myself the opportunity to actual produce something of real value.

I’m realizing (slowly) that titles, education, and my personal history don’t have to affect today as much as I think. I may not be as talented as Jeffrey Zeldman or Jason Santa Maria, but that’s not completely within my control. I may never be the greatest creative director in the world, and at times I don’t even feel like a particularly good one. The moment I sit down at work, though, it’s too late to worry about any of that. At that moment, we have passed the point of no return, and no amount of self-deprecation will make me better equipped right then. The best thing I can do is to sit down, give my work complete attention, rely on the experience and education I actually do have, and do my best. My best may not be equivalent to Zeldman’s best, but there’s not much I can really do about that when I sit down to work.

At first glance, this may sound like me giving up, but it’s not. I’m not just surrendering to my weak spots. I still work nights and weekends to get better at the craft, and I sweat to make sure I never repeat the same mistakes twice. When I sit down to design, write, code, or work with my team, though, I am not holding myself responsible for not being the next twenty-something wunderkind or not having thirty years of experience in design. I will do the best with everything I have control over, but I have to let the rest go. Then, at least for a few moments after I sit down, I have permission to step out from under the shadow of my weaknesses and feel free for a short time. After that serene moment, I get back to the hard work of creating, tweaking; and, heaven forbid, critiquing or editing myself.²

I was slow.↩
We’ll have to talk about that heartache some other day.↩

How to Take Stock

2011-05-09T04:29:38+00:00

How do you know you’re still working on the important things? Since the beginning of the year I have been on a steady trajectory of projects, conferences, and trips that all fed into the “important things” for this season like helping to run a young business and paying bills. I didn’t have to worry about major deviations or course corrections. I had an outline from the beginning of the year, and I was just filling it in with my own hard work. I probably was too rushed to appreciate it at the time, but it was a rare season of “flow” where I got to go down the path set before me.

After my return from Germany, though, I realized that I was finally at a point that I needed to start planning and choosing projects again for Vintage 56, the ministry, and myself. We were almost done wrapping up some of our biggest projects, and I needed to make some wise decisions about how the next season would play out for my team.

See, one of the best (and most challenging) things about my job is having two great creative teams (with some of the same people) looking at me for direction. Don’t get me wrong; they can be independent and self-directed when necessary, but they still look to me to define the overall goals and which tasks or projects will help us achieve those goals. Like I said, though, we’ve been filling in an outline from the beginning of the year with only minor projects in-between. It was time for me to do my job as Creative Director and lead not just client projects, but our creative direction for the company as a whole. I set aside Friday morning to avoid the office, and sit outside with nothing but my sketch pad, pens and pencils, coffee, and a pipe.

The following is a full account of what I did, as a creative and a leader, to take stock of all of my projects, create a handful of stories, and setup some great projects for my team. This may not work for everyone. It may not even work from me in six months. As a framework, though, I think it might be useful to leaders and creatives alike:

The first thing I did was ask myself what I thought was important to the ministry, the company and me. I wrote down all the major ideas, projects, or tasks that came into my head. I just listed everything we were already actively working on, things I knew immediately that we needed to do from our backlogs, and the things that had been nagging at the edges of my consciousness for the past week. Importantly, this was not a task list (that’s what Basecamp and OmniFocus are for) or a someday/maybe list (all of these things should matter in the next month). It was just an unorganized braindump of what I thought was important.
After that initial braindump, I started adding some quick tags for organization. I added a column to the left quickly tagging each item as Generals (the ministry), Vintage 56 (the company), or personal (including writing, speaking, and work for Rebekah). This took five minutes to decide on the three tags and tag each item. The key is to be quick and not create too many tags.
Next, I added another column of tags for what “type” of thing each line represented. Like before, I tried to be quick and just created the tags as I needed them. “Donor development? That’s a pretty big ongoing project. I’ll write ‘P’ for project. We need to finish up that client project that’s 90% done; that’s not really a project anymore, so I’ll put an ‘F’ for Finish Up.” That’s how it went in my head, at least, and it took another five minutes.
Now that I had tagged everything in one list, I really needed to look at the items for each area (Generals, Vintage 56, and personal) individually. I just made a list for each area and moved the items to their new lists. At the same time, I brought over the “type” designation of each line and differentiated between major projects and minor projects; I did this just to make sure I wasn’t setting myself up for failure by giving myself too many major projects in one short period.
Finally, I started to think more “strategically” about each area by reading through each list and looking for the main theme in each list. Any team works better when they can see one or two overarching goals for what they are working on each day, even if there happen to be a variety of projects on they way to those goals. If this were a story about Vintage 56 in mid-2011, what would be the plot? What would be the climactic scene? What are the projects, or conflicts, we must overcome to reach our climactic scene? What projects on this list won’t get us any closer to that goal?
Based on the overall themes and goals, I finally started editing my lists. I added a few things from the backlogs that I now realized contributed to the goal. More importantly, I removed the items that didn’t affect the goal and put them in the backlog. Every writer will tell you that editing is the hardest part, but it’s necessary. Some things might be great projects for Vintage 56 in a few months, but they would only slow us down or distract us today.
After all of that, my lists were looking good and I was ready to let my teams see them. I posted each one in Backpack (one of our greatest assets for the ministry and the firm) in their simplest form. For Generals and Vintage 56, I added them to the existing backlog pages as a “Current Projects” list with the themes as a mission statement at the beginning so that everybody could be motivated towards the same main goals. For my own list, I added it to my personal Backpack page with a mission statement as well.
Finally, all of these lists had different actions associated with them once I posted them. For Generals, the list became the basis of our next Scrum sprint, and the overarching goals became our Scrum mission statement. For Vintage 56, the list was more than could be handled by one team or one sprint, so it became the agenda for our weekly partner meetings where we decide what part of the creative world to conquer next. Finally, for myself, it became a list that I can compare to OmniFocus during my weekly review: “Are these projects from OmniFocus in the list? Why or why not? Should I remove stuff from OmniFocus, move projects from the list to OmniFocus, or both? How am I doing on finishing these important goals?”

In total, this little adventure of resetting my priorities and taking stock of an ever-changing situation “set me back” exactly one morning and two cups of coffee. I met up with everybody that same day for lunch, and we started talking about the things we wanted to build with a refreshed vigor. Since then, we’ve launched a new sprint at Generals focusing on the items from the list, we’ve started brainstorming two new (highly secret) projects for Vintage 56, and I found enough time to write this increasingly massive article about the whole process. Mainly, though, we are all operating with a renewed focus that will carry us nicely until the next half-day reboot is necessary (probably after I return from San Francisco).

I can’t say that everybody needs to do something like this very often, but I do have a few key recommendations:

Keep a backlog of things you want to work on. It can be a someday/maybe list, if you’re really into GTD. In general, though, I like the idea of a backlog from my software development days because backlogs are things that really should be done. It’s not wishful thinking or dreams; these are projects that really matter, just not today.
Have a list of what you’re currently working on. If we do everything that comes along without keeping track, we undoubtedly spend a lot of time doing things that may not really matter. We need to be honest about where we spend our time.
Finally, schedule an appointment with yourself to take stock and evaluate what you need to be working on. When we do client work, we get into the bad habit of coasting through months of client work and going completely idle afterwards without ever stopping to look at our bigger goals. This isn’t smart for us as people, and it’s not smart for our businesses. As a leader and a creative, it is our job to step back and evaluate what is really important at least a few times a year.

How to Write Like an Adult

2011-04-09T19:02:44+00:00

Lessons to My 21-Year-Old Self:

How to Write Like an Adult

Author’s note: Lessons to My 21-Year-Old Self is simply a series of things I wish I had been practicing for the past ten years (since I was 21).

I used to spend a lot of time fretting about how to write. I read blogs and books by great writers. I studied the craft and thought about different processes a lot. I evaluated every different brainstorming tool, word processor, pen, and notebook I could buy, but I didn’t start really writing until I discovered the real secret. How do you write? Keep the cursor moving to the right. That’s it. Writing isn’t thinking about writing. Writing isn’t brainstorming or outlining what you could be writing. Writing is simply moving the cursor to right over and over again.

In order to fully grasp this lesson (in the middle of a book), I actually made a list for myself of all the things that writing is not so I would spend less time on them:

Brainstorming and outlining (important, but you still need to produce real words on a page)
Thinking about writing
Tweaking writing software
Reading about other people’s writing processes
Finding the right pen and notebook combination
Checking email

Once I eliminated these from my list of “important tasks when writing a book” my life was much simpler. I didn’t need to study, process, tweak, and fret as much as I just needed to put words onto my screen. So, here is my gift to you:

How to write like an adult and actually produce something (in 4 easy steps)

Start typing. Move the cursor to the right.
If you lack motivation, have accountability. I write because I’m supposed to. Sometimes I write because I’m getting paid, and sometimes I write because I want people to read it; either way I have an obligation to finish. If you don’t have real accountability like an editor or a client, you just need to trick yourself. Tell your best friend that you’re supposed to write one blog a week; if you miss a week, they get to change the password on your Netflix account or confiscate your Moleskine collection.
Move the cursor to the right by any means necessary. If you have to b.s. your way through 1500 words while chained to your desk listening to an endless stream of Sigur Ros to give yourself one good sentence, that’s what you need to do for right now. One day, genius words will flow like you’re Faulkner on a weekend bender. Until then, just write something.
Now that you’re moving the cursor to the right, you can play with your system a little bit. You need to sync Scrivener with Dropbox? Take ten minutes to set that up. You find yourself making a french press in the mornings before you write? Fine; that’s now part of your process. Do whatever little things it takes to make more usable words appear on your screen, but don’t do anything more than that. If you’re happy with your Pilot G-2 pen, stop reading reviews of other pens right now (unless it’s written by Michael Lopp).

Okay, that’s really enough reading about writing for one day. Stop reading the same articles by would-be writers like me, and go write something. If you don’t, I’ll change your Netflix password, steal your notebooks, and replace your favorite pens with Bic Stics. Seriously.