“Fake It Till You Make It” (FITYMI) became a rallying call between the four designers whenever we got a new project the owner had sold. Video animation and editing, sure, we can do that. Complex Flash applications, sure, no problem. At the time, the only down – side was the long hours we’d have to put in to make something actually work, but the FITYMI rule didn’t really come into the fore – front for me until I and one of the other designers became self – employed.

My friend started his self – employment about a year before I did. He was working out of the basement for clients that he had freelanced for. There was a lot of the “Royal We” thrown about, and sometimes he would jokingly ask me to go on meetings with him so that is looked like he had employees and was bigger than just him.

We can do that for you

My biggest problem with FITMI was in meetings, when discussing needs or solutions, and saying “sure, we can do that.” I didn‘t really think anything of it at the time. My wife called me on it, when in a meeting with her and her business partner, I dropped it. I fell into the mistake again when setting up this version of the website, listing the services and processes that I provide as things “we” could provide. It came so naturally. Then I read this article, and promptly changed as many of the “we's” as I could find. This business is really me and the odd intern, and there was no reason for me to be dishonest about it. The two things I really liked about the article were a few of the author’s points on why FITYMI wasn't awesome: By faking it, we fail lto share our struggles, and By faking it, we fail to learn what it takes to REALLY make it. I’ve always wondered about how other small companies and self – employed people are doing, and yet no one ever really wants to talk about it. Same things about failures, not many people readily talk about them. Happycog and Fastspot did a SXSW panel on the subject, but that’s more the exception to the rule.

Coming back to FITYMI

After I read that article and changed the wording on the website, I didn’t really think much else of it. I tried not to use “we” in my conversations with clients and friends, though I’m sure a few slipped in there. A few days ago, Andy Mangold asked whether:

someone can become great without having to fake being great for a period of time

I flippantly urged him to: 

avoid FITYMI

This started off a conversation that roped a lot of people in and got me thinking again about being authentic.

TMI

I’ve been searching lately for authenticity in things that I buy and eat, and would like to extend that into what I’m writing here. I’ll be following up with a look at a project that is launching soon that looks pretty successful on the outside, but internally I did not complete this project to my standards. I think this will be important for me to remember what and where things didn’t work, and hopefully as a “teachable moment” for myself and others.

I’m also going to start doing a series of posts on how I got to be three years into self-employment. I feel I’m at a (self-inflicted?) plateau with Make Things, and I hope that in looking back, I can move forward.

Will follow-up tomorrow with a bit more detail.

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These partnerships made up a third of revenue to-date, down from 40% last year (and 60% in 2009!). While I appreciate the support these partners have provided, its encouraging to see their involvement in my financial stability trend downward, as I set more of a reputation and can garner work on my own accord.

I had outlined partnerships as a revenue stream when I first thought about working for myself, and had set the expectation that they would never exceed 30% of my business. I'm glad I could reach that goal.

Thanks to SDYM, Skelton Design and Smart Logic for being great partners this year, and I can't wait to see what we work together on in the future.

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to help out long time client Hearing and Speech agency with an interesting project called Soundscape. Soundscape is an initiative to help raise awareness to the sounds we hear in our everyday life.

This year, the Hearing and Speech Agency was able to develop an iPhone application to make the gathering and uploading of sounds easier. The sounds are uploaded and then posted back into the CMS, where Hearing and Speech Agency has the ability to approve or deny sounds before they show up in the application, or on the main Soundscape Map.

There wasn't much design in this project, but it was great to be able to take a client into a new medium that they haven’t had access to before. IPhone development by Bill Kautter.

seeks to create a vibrant neighborhood where arts, artists and entertainment venues flourish in the midst an economically diverse community with an abundance of healthy residential, retail and commercial offerings

{image-2}Their previous website, from 2007, besides needing a design update, didn’t allow the board to capture all the dynamic and exciting energy happening in the district.

With that idea of dynamism and eclecticism, I created an initial landing page and email template, which was based on the strong typography of the logotype.

After those landing pages, I brought in Jay Roop to help develop page designs based of my information architecture. These designs again built off the very structural nature of the logo, and expanded on the “eclectic” color palette developed for the landing page.

Unfortunately, the design and development schedule got up-ended to meet a new deadline, co-inciding the launch of the website with the submission of a grant proposal. A few sleepless nights later, I launched the first iteration of the website.

One of the small things I came up with for them is integrating Plancast into the site administration. Plancast is a tool that makes sharing events really easy, which was the basis of the site’s goals. With Plancast, Station North can publish events to their website, facebook and twitter all from one interface.

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I’m excited as Make Things continues to work with Station North on developing the site. We came up with a lot of great ways to make the site relevant and useful to the community, and now that we’ve met our initial deadline, we can get started on the next iteration.

Markup Changes

Most of the changes this week were under the hood, trying to optimize and normalize the markup used in the site. Working in six hour sprints is a great constraint, but it doesn’t lend itself to the most thorough or consistent code. I stripped the site back to its output only, then started layering in markup from HTML5Boilerplate and the 320 and Up project.

320 and Up is a great mobile prepared HTML library, making it very easy to create mobile optimized sites. That’s the goal next week, to create a better mobile experience for the site.

Better Javascript Loading

The site is also now using yepnope.js to load in scripts. This script combines the asynchronous loading of lab.js with the really cool ability of being able to test for certain conditions before loading scripts. This is particularly great for loading scripts to target older browsers and increasing their capabilities.

I’ve used lab.js for the past six months or so for loading javascript, and it’s an extremely flexible loading tool. YepNope makes it even more useful, I highly recommend checking it out.

Cutting Edge

I spent a lot of time on Saturday reading all the different best or emerging best practices that are recommended on HTML5 Boilerplate’s “Make It Better” page. Even with all the time I spend writing markup, there were some goodies in there. If you write markup, I highly suggest you check it out.

Total time this week: 8:35. I let myself go over the 6 hour time limit since I hadn’t worked on the site at all the past two weeks.

In March, Make Things turned three. In reviewing annual goals, I decided that this year was the year that Make Things got itself together and spent time on looking better. I’ve been graced with great clients and a lot of work, so I put in place some very specific constraints. They included:

• Iterating something every week
• Spending only about 6 hours total each week

I thought this would be a really good way to keep momentum building each week, without it taking up too much of the normal production schedule. Some weeks there is big progress, sometimes it’s behind the scenes work. Regardless, you can check back every week, and hopefully you’ll notice something different about the site. You’ll at least have a new blog post each week.

With our blog, I hope to provide a little bit more insight into my processes with projects, a look at some of my favorite design and development technologies, as well as commentary on sites, articles and policies that impact Make Things clients and studio.