Take care

People showing up at some website, they don’t care about it as much as you — the founders — care about it.

What you [should] care about is the person who shows up randomly [...] and has their finger poised over the Back button. Because think how many websites you visit everyday. Most of them are no good. You click on Back and go on with your life.

So you’re designing your website for the guy who’s just about to leave. Who’s just on the cusp of even caring [about] what you do. You know what your website does. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t even care that much. So you have to tell him.

— Paul Graham in an interview on Mixergy

What’s really behind the scenes of creative work

  • Chris Rhee: you still working out of coffee shops?
  • Kyle Neath: YES I AM NOT OVERCAFFEINATED WHY ARE YOU QUESTIONING ME

As a fellow web designer who often works from home coffee shops, I empathize with Kyle‘s pain excitement & enthusiasm.

Progress from Portland

Happy 2010! Here’s some photos for people who like to spy on others’ home offices. Warning: There’s not a single stick of furniture from IKEA.

My office #3
The view from the front door.

My office #2
A comfortable chair for reading reddit-ing.

My office #1
The view from above.

Previously on Blood

The name’s Hughmanick. Douglas Hughmanick.

Douglas Hughmanick Portfolio

My friend and frequent partner in crime design, Doug Hughmanick launched his new personal design portfolio earlier this year. I highly recommend you check it out.

Doug did the graphic design and I did the code. The site is run on WordPress, so Doug can add or edit projects and screenshots without a code editor or FTP. And the postMash plugin is used to customize the order of projects with a drag-and-drop interface.

There’s also a “secret” page that displays even more projects. Why the secrecy? Well… That’s a secret.

Previously on Blood (with Doug)

Two thumbs up and Based on a true story

Speak with conviction

“It is not enough these days to simply question authority. You got to speak with it, too.”

The exciting part

Tell anybody you’re a sculptor and they’ll say, ‘Oh, how exciting, how wonderful.’

And I tend to say, ‘What’s so wonderful?’

It’s like being a mason, or a carpenter, half the time. But they don’t wish to hear that because they really only imagine the first part, the exciting part.

— Nina Holton

Don’t stop

Too many entrepreneurs stop after they build the product. They think that building products is what makes them an entrepreneur. But entrepreneurship is about building businesses, and the product is just one part of that.

— Rob May on his blog post, Entrepreneurship is not sexy

Pixels from Portland

office2

My home office in Portland. Yes, I have flannel slippers with penguins on them.

Previously on Blood

Moving day: Plotting in Portland