This week’s awesome Design Shack Deal allows you to snag a commercial license of the awesome CouchCMS for a mere $9! CouchCMS offers designers the option of creating custom CMS-driven sites for their clients without any knowledge of PHP.

We sat down with the developer behind CouchCMS to learn what it’s all about, why he created it and why you should consider using it on your projects. If you haven’t picked up your copy already, you won’t want to miss this!

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About Kamran

• Name: Kamran Kashif
• Location:  India
• Work history: Web developer / designer with over 10 years of experience – 4 years as freelancer. Co-founding partner of SYS-Solutions and lead developer of CouchCMS – a CMS created specifically for designers.
• Company: SYS-Solutions
• Website: http://www.couchcms.com/

Why did you create CouchCMS?

I think it was a classic case of ‘scratching your own itch’. While creating any dynamic website, I always had two distinct problems with most CMSes I worked with– one from the designer’s perspective and the other from the client’s perspective who, at the end of the day, was the one who had to use the CMS.

Any freelance web designer who codes up his design in HTML/CSS and then has to, either by choice or by necessity, port this design to a CMS all by himself will find the following scenario all too familiar

You have a fully functional static version of your design in hand and then you start dismembering your carefully crafted piece of art and pushing and shoving parts of it into whatever CMS you have chosen for the project.

The process varies from CMS to CMS and, while some of them make it less difficult than the others, in general there are rigid rules laid down by the CMS and you are forced to either play by them or work around them. Your design gets relegated to a secondary status and it is the CMS now that drives the development process.

This part is also where, more often than not, getting one’s hands dirty in PHP code cannot be avoided.

Now, I agree that nowadays most of the web designers can work with PHP to a fair extent but, call it the ‘Right brain, Left brain’ thing, few are really comfortable doing so. Given a choice, they’d rather have some other way of getting things done. The problem is, few CMSes offer them this choice.

Design Driving Development

I always wished to have a system where things worked in reverse – where it is the design that drives the development process, instructing the CMS what functionality to add and where. Not the other way round as is done conventionally. I also wished that the designer could do so without being forced to put on a developer’s hat.

As a designer, one is familiar with the concept of using HTML tags to markup portions of his template that instruct the browsers to handle them in a particular manner.

I wished the same logic could be extended to have a set of similar tags that could be used to markup portions of the template, this time instructing the CMS to handle them in a particular way.

Fancy having a pair of tags that could instruct the CMS to render region marked up by them as editable (this could have parameters that can specify whether the CMS shows it as a wysiwyg editor, a plain textarea, dropdown list or checkboxes etc. A template then can have any number of editable regions instead of a single one that is offered by default by most CMSes.

Another tag could declare a template as clonable i.e. make the CMS allow end users to create multiple copies of the template, each having its own data. Yet another may be used to list all the pages thus created with excerpts of the contents being fetched by another tag.

It is not difficult to see that such a system could very easily be used to retrofit CMS functionality into an existing HTML template in almost no time. More importantly, this could be done without requiring any PHP skills whatsoever.

Clients Are Afraid of CMS Admin Panels

The problem from the client’s perspective was of an even more serious nature: The admin panel of most of the CMSes I used intimidated a lot of my clients! The eventual purpose of a CMS is to empower the end user and any CMS, however powerful it might be, if it comes across as being overly complex or confusing in the minds of the user, it has failed in its purpose.

I have seen many of my clients really struggle working with CMSes our industry swears by. What seems simple enough to a web developer or designer seldom appears the same to a client who just hasn’t had the same exposure to IT – perfectly competent or intelligent as he may be.

I wished I had a CMS that would give me a blank canvas to begin with. Something that would allow me to display only those elements that are absolutely essential for the client to be exposed to and not an iota more. No unwanted and unneeded array of controls and options in the admin panel that serve only to confuse a less savvy user.

So these were the features I wished to have. Now, we do have CMSes around that have some of these features, but not in entirety. On one hand we have products like CushyCMS or Surreal that allow the marking up of multiple regions. However, they are pretty limited in the other features required for creating a site of even modest complexity and not being available as self-hosted versions, they didn’t quite cut the deal.

On the other hand, we have heavy weights like ExpressionEngine and TextPattern. ExpressionEngine, I must admit, is one CMS that comes the closest to what I was looking for. However, a hefty price tag of nearly $300 and a definitely complex admin panel for end users are what made me look for other alternatives. TextPattern has the XHTML like tags I wanted but has a steep learning curve.

So, at the end of the day, the CMS I was looking for simply did not exist. I had a choice of either keep on waiting for it to appear or build it myself. I chose the latter option.

When did you decide that you wanted to build your own CMS and how do you even start such an ambitious project?

Well, sometime early last year while working on a Drupal project, that idea of building a simple yet versatile CMS occurred to me again.

This time I asked myself and my partner Abdul Raoof Khan how difficult it could possibly be to get it done. We started work on the idea and in eighteen days time had a working prototype ready. We demonstrated it to friends by using our web browser to save complete pages of random websites and then retrofitting our CMS into the ripped HTML design and having a functional dynamic website in literally minutes. (Mind you, I am not endorsing the idea of ripping HTML designs, this was done only to try out our concept!)

The reactions we had from them spurred us to develop the CMS further. A few revisions latter we deployed a rather crude CMS on some of our non-tech savvy clients and they really loved the ease with which they could manage their own sites.

This is when we decided to create a full-fledged product out of it. We named it CouchCMS to reflect the ease it was supposed to provide and got down to get it completed. It took about seven more months to get where it is now and the development is still continuing.

Tell us about some of the features you’re most proud of in CouchCMS, what sets it apart from other systems?

If I had to name a single feature, it would be the ability of Couch to allow the creation of quite complex sites out of any static HTML template without having to use any PHP at all.

Another feature that distinguishes it from other systems is the way it allows the designer to create as many editable regions as he requires (and of any type).

Couch really makes the creation of ‘write panels’ (as WordPress users call them) of any complexity a breeze.
As an example, please take a look at the following two screenshots. Here is a write-panel with only one editable region defined:

While the following is a more complex one with several editable regions of different types defined:

One lesser appreciated feature is the way Couch enables to convert your regular HTML forms into completely self-validating ones, need I say without any PHP code.

Finally, I am happy to at last have a CMS that gives me a blank canvas to mould it exactly the way I wish to. Here is what you get when you do a fresh install of Couch:

I have yet to find a CMS that greets me with such a bare interface. The following is what this blank canvas will finally shape into once I am through with the site:

We do not market it this way but Couch effectively is a framework easy enough for even non-coders for creating their own CMS.

What do you think of WordPress and why should some of its users consider switching to your system?

Whether or not Worpress is a true CMS or just a blogging engine, that debate has finally been put to rest with the custom post-types support in WordPress 3.0.

WordPress is a gem of a CMS, no two ways about it. I myself, as just about any other freelance developer, have lost count of the number of sites I have done in WordPress over the last many years. However, and I say this at the risk of antagonizing many of the readers, in my opinion, it is not a ‘designer’s CMS’.

To make WordPress bend to your needs still requires an uncomfortable amount of PHP to delve into. The reason why it is so wildly popular amongst designers, to my mind, is that designers find this PHP code already written for them by the amazing developer’s community around WordPress. This could come in the form of the literally thousands of plugins available or the plethora of quality snippets being shared over the Internet.

To make my point, I can quote one instance that comes to my mind – the famed ‘Wordpress loop’ has always been around ever since you can remember it. Yet it took several years before some intrepid developers demonstrated that the loop could be used multiple times over thus creating the so-called magazine themes. And now see what a revolution designers have caused about with these magazine themes.

As for why some of WordPress users should consider switching to Couch – I have already mentioned the problems I faced myself. Going by the response Couch is receiving, I can safely assume that I am certainly not alone in experiencing those problems. If any designer currently using WordPress thinks he shares the same tribulations, he is welcome to try Couch for his next project.

Where can interested parties go to learn how to set up a CouchCMS installation?

I suggest they begin with a very detailed tutorial we have over at our site on the Building A Real-World Site example. In this tutorial we build a complete real-world portfolio site right from scratch that includes explaining the installation process too.

They can also find a very comprehensive documentation on our Docs Page.

If they happen to be Windows users, they might consider downloading a portable WAMP bundle we have over on our Downloads Page. This has everything pre-installed and only requires one to download and click it to begin using Couch.

Finally we have an active forum. If they run into any problems or have any queries, they are most welcome on our forums.

What’s your pricing system like?

Couch is free for personal and non-commercial use. Commercial use of it, currently, requires a license that costs a very modest $39 per domain (Get it for only $9 here).

I’d like to add that we are seriously mulling over introducing a core version of CouchCMS that would be absolutely free for use even on commercial sites. Stay tuned.

Where do you see CouchCMS going in the next few years? Any big plans?

We are now finding it necessary to open up an API for developers to allow them to extend the native functionality of Couch.

For example, Couch does not have a Colorpicker or Calendar popup as field types. The API would allow a developer to easily create these. This will also open up the possibility of creating addons for Couch like simple forum or e-commerce.

The idea is to make it possible for developers to add functionality to Couch and expose it as simple tags for the designers to use. Couch has been built for designers and we’ll always focus on that.

Conclusion

To sum up, if you or your clients are constantly frustrated with the complexity of most modern CMS solutions, you should absolutely check out CouchCMS. It offers designers the flexibility of keeping most of their current HTML designs intact and only requires a few tags to be dropped in to define content as editable.

This week only you can save 77% on a CouchCMS commercial license and start using it for your client today. Stop by our Deals Page to learn more.

Today we’re out to answer that question. We sat down with Ken Peters, founder of Nocturnal Design to hear his story about leaving a senior design position with an impressive salary to start his own company. You’ll get some real answers about how he managed to make this transition a huge success rather than falling on his face.

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A Little History

A little while back we posted an article titled, “How Much Money Do Designers Make?” In the comments we received several different opinions on the numbers that we presented. Some designers made considerably less and desperately wanted to know how they could reach the kind of figures we were suggesting. Others seemed to blow our numbers out of the water.

I spotted an opportunity for a truly helpful level of information sharing between these two disparate commenters. If we have some readers that have been successful, and some that are still searching for success, why not bring in some knowledge from the former group?

Ken Peters was the commenter that caught my eye. He lived and worked in the market that I had done my salary research, but seemed to be doing far better than average. Ken claimed to have left a high level position making $65,000/year and actually managed to double his salary in a year on his own!

So I tracked Ken down to see if he was being honest and, once I discovered that he was, I asked him to share some experience and advice with out readers. I wanted to know how he got up the courage to leave a high paying position and strike out on his own, how he managed to find clients so fast and how in the world he doubled an already impressive salary in a year. Fortunately, Ken was more than will to share and you’ll find all his answers to these questions and more below.

Our Interview with Ken Peters, Founder: Nocturnal Design

Below you’ll find the questions we asked Ken along with his insightful answers, which will hopefully help you immensely in your own professional journey. Along the way we’ll see some samples of his recent work.

Tell us a little bit about yourself


• Name: Ken Peters
• Born: August 25th, 1970, Detroit, MI
• Current Residence: Phoenix, AZ
• Education: Bachelor of Fine Arts, Arizona State University
• Title: Co-founding Partner, Creative Director
• Company: Nocturnal Design
• Website: www.nocturnaldesign.com

Nocturnal is a brand amplification consultancy. We help established and emerging consumer brands define, design, and declare their unique voice to engage people, nurture relationships, shape perception, influence behavior, and create value.

How did you get started in graphic/web design?

I think I’ve always been a “design thinker”, even when I was too young to know what that meant. I’ve always used design as a way to engage every aspect of life from architecture to politics to literature to science to history to music, and so on. Everything is design. All human activity is designed, either by action or by default, so being design-driven, or design-oriented seems to be the natural state of being.

As this pertains to my career; take all of that and add a lifelong interest in drawing, painting and the visual arts, as well as a fascination with storytelling and language, and the career path sort of seems obvious, in retrospect. 


Below is a quote from your comment on a previous article, can you elaborate on this a bit? Why did you feel the need to quit this seemingly great job?

“I was a senior designer at the number one design studio in Phoenix (as ranked by the Phoenix Business Journal) and making $65k, plus bonuses. It was unrewarding, unchallenging, and unfulfilling, so I quit and started my own studio.”

Everything at that agency looked shiny and polished on the outside. On the inside, poor management, and one of two partners with a substance abuse problem, created an erratic environment with low morale. As I said, it was unrewarding, unchallenging, and unfulfilling. I didn’t work “with” the partners, I worked “for” them. That was tough, because I felt I had more to contribute than I was being allowed.

So, there I was, with a seemingly enviable job and a generous salary, but dour and disenchanted. When you find yourself hoping to get into a fender-bender on the way to work, just so you can be late, it’s time for a new job.

Did you immediately start an actual company or were you simply a freelancer for a while?

To get the ball rolling I did some minimal freelance work early on, but only for select people/agencies with whom I had longstanding relationships. I never positioned myself as a freelancer, I always positioned Nocturnal Design as a full-fledged agency. My departure from my previous position was very abrupt. I didn’t plan on it when I went in that morning, so after walking out I found myself sort of professionally naked, as it were. But, I knew that I was going to pursue my own path as an entrepreneur.

I immediately designed a visual identity for Nocturnal, and applied it to business cards, stationery, and a website where I could display my portfolio. Branding lent instant credibility, and commanded respect.

Most freelance designers seem to struggle with finding clients. How did you find clients when you first started out on your own?

Having been active within the business and creative communities for years I had a strong network. The day after leaving my old job I began contacting everyone I knew to spread the word that the senior art director from the number one firm in town was now operating his own studio. Word spread quickly, and the phone started ringing.

Within days I was meeting prospective clients and securing billable projects. After two months, work was steady. By four months, I was downright busy. In 12 months I doubled my old salary, and there’s been no looking back since.



You mentioned that you doubled your old agency salary in your first year and have been growing that number ever since. Care to share some of your secrets to success?


I discovered early in my career that you get the kind of work you become known for doing, so you need to find and do the kind of work you want be known for. It’s amazing what can happen when you make, and keep, your clients happy. Word of mouth from pleased customers has been our primary new business catalyst. We have done very little marketing, and no advertising. In the past few years, our social media activity, and blogging, has proven to be a powerful income generator.

A quick story: One day, a couple weeks after launching the business, I was driving by the retail location of a former client of my former employer. I had worked on their account, but had not been to their new location. Long before I left my old job, I finished that project, and they broke ties with my employer. So, given my history with them, and the fact they were not associated with my previous employer any longer, I figured it was worthwhile to drop in and say hi. But, I wasn’t dressed for business that day, was in a hurry, and had a bunch of other excuses not to drop in. But, I did anyway, because I was there, and it seemed to be a good way to network.

I never ended up doing any work for them, but they passed my name on to somebody who became one of the most lucrative clients I’ve ever had. The work I did for that client directly lead to tens of thousands of dollars in additional work with other clients. I can track a great deal of revenue back to my decision to simply stop in and say “hi” to an old professional acquaintance.

Perhaps the moral of the story is not to make excuses.

How big has your company grown in terms of number of employees and clients?

My business is comprised of my wife and myself full time. We have resisted hiring any full time employees because we simply haven’t had the need. Most projects are able to be handled in house, but if the scope of something goes beyond our capabilities or availability, we have a potent network of associates, and that allows us to assemble teams tailored to our clients’ needs, when necessary.

We have wrestled with the idea of expanding and hiring. We almost did so prior to the recession hitting in September of 2008, but we were feeling as early as that January that something was “off” in the economy. Work was harder to come by, so we decided not to make the capital investment of expansion. I believe we made the right move, but who knows what the future will hold.

How can traditional agencies like the one you worked for before improve their companies and create a satisfying work environment?

Traditional agencies are dinosaurs on their way to extinction. Traditional methods of doing business no longer work, and the agencies that are surviving are adapting.

If you’re asking how employers can create better situations for their employees, you have to start by understanding that they are your greatest investment. Always hire people who are better than you, or your business will never grow beyond your own skills. Empower employees to make decisions on their own, and give them the latitude to actually do so. Remember that your people are just that, people. They may love their job, but they don’t want to come in on weekends or stay late to do it, and just because they may be salaried doesn’t mean you can ask them to. Long hours are part of the game, but don’t treat your people like they belong to you.

Do you encourage all unhappy designers to blaze off on their own or does it take a special, business-oriented type of person obsessed with profit?

Working for yourself, whether it’s owning your own business or freelancing, is not for everyone. Yes, it takes a very specific kind of person, and no, it has absolutely nothing to do with being “obsessed with profit”. There are no guarantees of success.

Launching my own business renewed my creative vigor. Work was fun again. It continues to be gratifying. The journey was long, but every step was necessary. It’s not always easy, and there are challenges, but I’m in control of my own destiny, and my successes and failures are my own. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

As a designer, you need to be able to put on other hats to run your own business. You need to have a high level of business acumen and communication skills. You also need a thick skin, because you’re the one who is going to take the flack when it comes down, and it will come down.

Conclusion

I hope Ken’s experiences and advice are enough to encourage you to reevaluate your own career goals to see if you’re maximizing your potential. Some view success in dollars, others in happiness and the amount of freedom they enjoy. No matter what your metric is, try to be sure that the only thing holding you back isn’t you.

Leave a comment below and let us know what you think of the advice above. Does it match with what you’ve learned in your own professional experiences as a freelancer or small business owner?

Quoting jobs can be a real pain.

As designers we often procrastinate and/or avoid this necessary step simply because it’s tedious and no where near as fun as actually designing something. QuoteRobot is a new tool that helps address this problem by enabling you to quickly get back to what you love instead of being bogged down for hours on end creating custom bids for every client.

We had a chat with Shawn Adrian, one of the founding developers of QuoteRobot, and asked him to explain a little bit about the service and why you as a freelancer should be interested in this product. Below is our full interview. Along the way we’ll toss in some screenshots so you can get a feel for the service.

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Who Are the Key Players Behind QuoteRobot?

QuoteRobot is made up of two founders, Shawn Adrian and Jon Cochran.

Shawn Adrian started designing web sites back in 1992 when the internet was still for nerds. He writes a popular blog for designers at blog.nerdburn.com, and now works freelance doing UI design for web apps.

Jonathan Cochran has been designing and coding since he was a kid, making Winamp skins and UI’s for web sites. Recently he’s returned from managing an offshore team in the Philippines, started freelancing, and won an award during the 15 days of jQuery competition for his mad Javascript skills.

What exactly does Quote Robot Do? What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?

QuoteRobot makes it easy to send multi-page, PDF, proposals to clients, without using graphic design software.

The problem is how much unpaid time it takes to pitch on new jobs. As a freelancer, and during my agency days, I would create proposals in Illustrator, one page at a time. It was a real chore and something I would put off. I knew other designers were having difficulty too, since thousands of were downloading the free template from my blog.

QuoteRobot solves the problem by storing line item data, client data, and a very clean template, so all you have to do is fill it out and send it. It takes 15 minutes as opposed to a couple of hours.

What are some of the primary features?

QuoteRobot is basically meant to speed up the quoting process by doing a couple of things well:

1) It allows you to create a great looking proposal without using a graphic design program
2) It saves quote data from everyone and presents hints on line items so you have to think less about how many hours something takes
3) It creates a community for the discussion of line items, quotes, hours, and other tedious matters

The rest of the features are just things like being able to duplicate a proposal for a different clients, importing people from basecamp, keeping track of milestones, past proposals and how many are jobs accepted, rejected, etc. There are user generated tips and discussion too.

Basically, the features are all geared toward quoting faster and more accurately. We’re very excited about the potential it offers in our own freelance businesses – really, quoting is a pain in the ass and we’re trying to change that.

What are the customization options like for designers?

Currently, the only customization options are the logo and the proposal content itself, but we’re working on adding completely custom templates. It’s a matter of working out a process that saves time, which is our main goal.

What features are you most proud of?

The “quote creator” screen itself would be the one that I’m personally the most proud of, as you can drag on and re-arrange pages in your proposal, fill them out, generate a PDF, and save or send to a client all in one place. It makes it easy to do a bunch of work, and it’s successful execution of the vision Jon and I shared.

Some of the most exciting features are still to come though. A large part of the vision is to help people know what to charge. The robot is currently collecting data so it can offer helpful advice in the future based on what has worked and what hasn’t in the past. That’s all I’ll say about that right now, but we’re calling this feature “social quoting”.

Can You Use Quote Robot to Send Invoices?

Not directly, but we’re working on integrating with popular invoicing apps like Freshbooks and Blinksale.

We really want to focus on helping designers and coders bring in more work, because there are apps already doing a great job of invoicing and project management after the work has come in. We don’t want to force anybody into our workflow – we just want to add a tool that will enhance their existing system.

How much is Quote Robot and how can freelancers justify the cost?

The starter package will cost $6 per month, the next level up will cost $12, and then $24 after that. Each package will have a varying level of features. We’re thinking the $12 package will be the most popular.

It’s easy to justify spending money to make money. I’ve spent years pitching jobs, and this format continues to impress clients and land work. With QuoteRobot, I can quote faster and more frequently, on jobs I want, therefore landing more work. If you look at the value of a new design or coding contract, a $12 investment each month seems like nothing.

Think about it this way – would you spend $150 to land a contract you really want? I would for sure. In fact I have in the past if you look at my hourly rate vs time spent quoting. That’s more than a years worth of QuoteRobot use that I’d be willing to spend for one new job I really want. How many jobs do you think you could land in a year if you could quote better and faster?

What plans do you have for QuoteRobot in the future?

Well, there are tons of ideas out there, but mostly we just want to continue making it easier and faster to quote on jobs. As more people use it, the data will become more and more interesting, so we might release an API for other people to make use of it in their own apps.

On a side note, I love helping people get into business as designers and developers. Whenever someone asks me what I do, I’m so passionate about when talking about my work, I have to stop myself from blatantly trying to convince them to quit their job and give it a try. I think my natural to help designers succeed, and Jon’s creative coding genius will take QuoteRobot where it needs to go.

What Do You Think?

Stop by QuoteRobot and give the free trial a shot. Then come back here and let us know what you think.

Feel free to throw out any questions you have for the developers as well as I’m sure they’d be happy to help you out in any way they can.

In this interview we’ll be discussing where Paul started as a designer, which part of the job he enjoys the most, a typical “day in your life”, and how his faith affects the way he runs his business, and deals with employees and clients.

Our Interview

Rightly or wrongly, traditional education is often overlooked when viewing someone as a entrepreneur. What did you originally study in college/university, and do you feel that it helped you get to where you are today?

Obviously there were no web courses when I studied (yes, it’s hard to believe I am that old). As a result I studied graphic design with every intention of working in print.

To be honest, the vast majority of what I learned was transferable. Maybe not initially (as the web was very limiting to begin with) but over time. University taught me principles of design such as whitespace, typography, colour theory, information hierarchy and grids. However, most valuable of all, it taught me how to justify my work – a skill I use every day when talking to clients.

How did your career begin in the early days, and how did you make the transition to being the Creative Director of Headscape?

While at University I was fortunate enough to get a year’s placement working for IBM developing a CD-ROM for their first ever multimedia PC (a PC with a CD drive and sound card). However, while I was there, this thing called “the web” came along. Because I was the most junior member at the time and because nobody else wanted to work on something with so many restrictions, I got landed with the job.

After I finished my degree I returned to IBM for three years. It was a valuable time and I learnt a lot. However, ultimately I didn’t belong in a big corporation. As the web grew in popularity, more and more of the strategic development moved to the states and I was left working with templates they delivered. In the end I left to work for a dot com startup.

When I joined, the startup consisted of half a dozen people. At its height that number swelled to well over hundred. I found myself the creative lead in charge of a team of 30.

However, like many dot coms, it didn’t have much in the way of a business plan. Despite raising $26 million in a public floatation it soon stumbled into financial trouble. As senior managers we tried to save the company by transforming it into a web design agency. However, at the end of the day the legacy and debt was too great and the company collapsed.

That said we did attract a number of large clients, so when the company went under, myself, the sales director (Marcus Lillington) and then CEO (Chris Scott) decided to form Headscape – taking these clients with us. It was the perfect way to start, as we were profitable from month one.

Which part of your job do you enjoy the most; are your roots and passion still in design, or do you prefer the challenge of running a business, writing, podcasting, and speaking?

To be honest I have moved on from design. It was hard to let go but eventually your skills degrade as you are drawn into other roles. Now I love podcasting, speaking and writing. Those are where my real passion lies. I like to play with new technologies, learn new stuff and then pass that knowledge on to our team, our clients and the web design community.

At the end of the day I am an enthusiast with a short attention span so my new role suits me perfectly! I like to do some design occasionally, but am nowhere as good as the amazing designers we have in house at Headscape.

Could you outline what your average day involves, from waking up in the morning to clocking off at night?

What is an average day? I seriously don’t have one. What I can tell you is what I did today.

I woke up at about 7AM and immediately pick up my iPhone. I checked my email, checked Twitter and then read through my RSS feeds. After a quick shower I set off for the Barn (our office) which is about an hours drive for me. On the way I ate breakfast and listened to a bit of an audiobook on making ideas sticky (Made to Stick) and some of a podcast (Macbreak Weekly).

Once at work I did a Getting Things Done review in Omnifocus and lined up tasks for the day. I dealt with some email and then recorded the podcast with Marcus. After that I worked on my workshop for FOWD and sent out our monthly Headscape newsletter.

The rest of the day was spent meeting and chatting with people about various projects and issues. I did a bit of wireframing with a project team and chatted with Ryan Taylor about our upcoming relaunch of Get Signoff (our design signoff tool).

Once I ran out of steam I headed home and did a bit more admin. I sat down and watched the remake of V on SyFy and am now dealing with a few little tasks like responding to this interview. Once I am done with that, it’s off to the pub with my wife :)

Which hardware and sofware do you use on a regular basis – both for business and pleasure?

I could not live without my iPhone. It is constantly with me. Software I use the most is EchoFon (a Twitter app for both my Mac and iPhone), Omnifocus (my GTD task manager for both iPhone and Mac), MarsEdit that I use for blogging and Flairbuilder (a great wireframing tool I swear by).

I work on a MacBook Pro with an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and a 28″ Dell monitor.

From following you on Twitter, it’s clear to see that you’re a Christian and dedicate time to running a youth group at your Church. How does your faith affect the way you run your business, and deal with your employees and clients?

The obvious and somewhat arrogant answer would be to say my faith ensures I treat clients and my staff better. However, I don’t think these characteristics are in any way unique to Christians. There are a lot of people out there who are nice!

I think the impact is more subtle than that. Being part of a church has had a profound impact on who I am. I’m used to interacting socially with people from a huge variety of backgrounds – from old people to single mums. This is really useful in my job. Not only does it make usability recruiting easy no matter the demographic, it has also helped me understand and empathise with a great number of different people.

I think that many web designers spend so much of their time in their own little sub culture they forget how other people live. They certainly forget how little most people know or care about the web. Being part of a church ensures you never forget!

Also, churches have always encouraged me to speak publicly from the front. From a very early age I lead services and gave sermons. Also, I hear great public speakers every week. Outside of the church we don’t get to hear many good orators these days. This has a huge impact on my speaking style.

Finally my faith informs my outlook on life. That includes running a business. I work to live, rather than living to work. I believe Headscape exists to enable myself and my employees to enjoy life. It should not be our lives! It has also taught me patience and tolerance – skills you need a lot when dealing with clients and users.

If you could give one piece of advice to designers getting started in the field, what would it be?

Get excited about what you do. Let it be your passion and your hobby. Don’t just do your job but learn to play with the web. Have side projects, read books, get engaged. As I said I am enthusiastic about my job and I think that has carried me just as far as my skills.

Paul’s Sites and Projects

Here are a handful of the different websites, designs, and projects Paul is involved with. Click one to visit that particular site:

Headscape

Boagworld Podcast

Website Owners Manual

GetSignOff

Thanks for Reading!

A big thank you to Paul for taking the time to answer our questions. If you’d like to find out more about him, I’d recommend checking out his blog, or following him on Twitter.

We’ll be discussing Vitaly’s background, the early days of Smashing Magazine, taking a look at a typical day in his life, and investigating some of the design trends we’re likely to see over the next 12 months!

Our Interview

You’ve become a well known figure in design circles due to your success with Smashing Magazine, but where did your career as a designer and blogger begin?

To be honest, it all started very unexpectedly for me. From a very early age I was interested in writing and have written a couple of short-stories and articles, so I always felt a strong passion and connection with writing and editing.

Towards the end of 1990s I also discovered the Web and I remember very vividly the times when I started experimenting with Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer 5 (and table layouts – I used the transparent 1 pixel GIF a lot back then!). Over the years I then started to deepen my knowledge about web design and improve my skills.

Back then I read a lot about web design, arts, typography and usability, and I am still extremely grateful to the design community for all the great articles and resources that were published on the Web in the early 2000s. Maybe this is also the reason why I am doing the very same thing right now on Smashing Magazine. This is when I started freelancing and earning money by designing websites. For some reason it always felt right to me – I enjoyed the work and I found the process extremely interesting, so I kept improving my skills.

This was the time when I also wanted to give something back to the community. So I started writing and publishing articles on my personal blog.

At the same time, I was also genuinely interested in programming and computer science which is why I was studying computer science and mathematics in the University of Saarland, Germany. I have never attended a single design class, and learned everything on my own. However, I have recently found a few gaps in my knowledge which I hope to fill in 2010 by attending some design and graphics classes.

What were the main projects you set up in your early days as a designer, and how did these lead to the launch of Smashing Magazine?

The most important project was Web Developer’s Handbook, launched in 2005. This is a huge collection of resources for designers and developers, all put in one place. The reason for creating Web Developer’s Handbook was very simple – I found it quite difficult to find all the resources, tutorials and coding techniques I used for my freelancing work, and I wanted to have a single common place where I would have the direct access to these resources.

So it was more like a personal collection which was available to everybody. Sven Lennartz, the co-founder of Smashing Magazine, found me through the handbook and my articles and suggested that I write for his German magazine Dr. Web, which had served German-speaking designers and developers for over 9 years.

Of course, I didn’t know back then that just a year later we would come up with the idea to launch a new blog for designers and web-developers. In August 2006 we translated a couple of articles from German to English, prepared them for English-speaking audience and published them.

It was more an experiment rather than a planned launch of the new international design magazine. We had no idea what Smashing Magazine would turn into a couple of years later. Essentially, Smashing Magazine was supposed to be nothing other than a useful resource for designers and developers – a resource that we would refer to or use when developing our own websites.

Most blog owners have a realisation point, where they discover: “I can make a living from doing this!” – When did this occur for you, and what are the main factors that lead to Smashing Magazine reaching this point?

Because we never actually sat down and planned a strategy for creating a financially viable online magazine, we didn’t really discover that we could make a living from doing this. As we gained more and more visitors over time, the costs started increasing. We also noticed that our readers were becoming more and more demanding and that there was an interest in the community for what we were doing.

Because Smashing Magazine was a “side”-project for both of us, it was becoming increasingly difficult to find time for it. So the financial support was necessary for us to make sure that we can keep up with the growth of the magazine. This is when advertising started play a more important role, but it was never our intention to make a living from doing what we do.

Could you outline what your average day involves, from waking up in the morning to clocking off at night?

We are trying to be very flexible and avoid stress, pressure or deadlines in our office. Everybody is allowed to come and go as he/she wants, provided that the work is done on-time and fulfils our requirements. Sometimes the office is also open on weekends, e.g. if someone has been busy with something during the weekday, he/she can come in the weekend and finish the work. Because our work is essentially all online, it’s also OK to stay at home and work on the project. Instead of having formal meetings in the office, we often meet in bars, coffee shops or pizza places and discuss further projects or just brainstorm together.

Once I arrive in the office, the first thing I do is to launch my to-do-list and prioritise it. I select the most important things that I’d like to get finished by the end of the day. I often tend to be unrealistic, so I usually defer the last item on the day’s to-do-list, because I am fairly confident that I won’t get around to it.

After that, I launch my e-mail client and check e-mails. The important e-mails are replied to right away, the less important ones are moved to a special folder. If I don’t manage to reply to messages that are 3-4 days old, I relentlessly delete them. There is nothing worse than an overcrowded inbox which usually makes me feel uncomfortable. It’s important to be efficient in order to be effective. I keep the e-mail client running in the background all the time throughout the day unless I don’t want to be disturbed (e.g. when I am writing or editing).

Also, I open Tweetdeck and check a few selected Twitter accounts. I also open my IM client and start out slowly by reading, drinking a cup of coffee or talking to friends. Shortly after that, I close all unnecessary applications (e-mail client is always on), clean the desk and clean the desktop. The worst thing that can happen to your is that you are being disturbed and distracted all the time.

During work I like to reach the “Flow” stage when I feel really passionate and excited about what I do and want to make the best out of it. For this reason I love to work with music. It shouldn’t be disturbing so it can’t be a radio. It’s rather my favourite CDs, music I love most and music that I know by heart. Then I move the e-mail-application to the second display (so if I want I can look at it and see from an angle when something important comes in) and start writing, editing, researching, analysing, brainstorming, thinking, sketching, drawing, comparing, designing, looking up in my books and reading related-articles on the web. Each article takes a lot of time, and we publish very selectively to make sure that the quality of an article meets our guidelines.

Before the midday-break, we publish an article on Smashing Magazine and Noupe. Because the articles have been prepared at least one day before publishing, they can be published right away. Once the new articles are published, the ones for the following day are prepared and finished.

At some point during the day, probably after a midday-break, I dedicate 5-10 minutes to the incoming tweets and engage with our followers. Also, 5-15 minutes per day are reserved for Delicious and StumbleUpon. Every other day we analyze the quality of our tweets, comments and votes on StumbleUpon and revise our quality guidelines to meet the expectations of our readers.

I love to review my to-do-list in the evening, considering what I could or should do tomorrow and how productive the day has been. It’s always useful to learn from your mistakes and, if you had a bad day, you can learn from it. That’s OK – you need to have bad days in order to have better ones. As the day draws to a close, I love to meet my friends for a cup of coffee or just go to the gym to get a break from sitting in the office chair. Before going to sleep, I tend to either read or watch a short series. They make me sleepy and distract me which is good.

Every day is different, of course, as I love to be spontaneous and unpredictable. But this is how one of these days could look like!

Which hardware and software do you use on a regular basis – both for business and pleasure?

I am a fan of Windows, and love using two displays for the extra screen estate. I also love typing on my laptop because I am extremely quick on it and can get things done much quicker than with a usual keyboard. I prefer to keep things as simple as possible – so I don’t use any To-do applications or planning apps; simple text files work just fine!

Smashing Magazine seems to have reached the stage of requiring a full-time team to manage your publishing and growth. How many people do you have working for the site, and do you have an office space?

We have dozens of contributors around the world. At the moment we have nine employees who work either part-time or full-time. We have five people in our current office: me and my colleague Sven Lennartz, a secretary, an editor and a trainee. Our office is located in Freiburg, Germany.

There has been a great deal of debate surrounding the quality of discussion on design blogs recently. How do you try to encourage interesting, thoughtful articles rather than covering old ground?

Over the last 6 months we have been working hard to publish thought-provoking, creative, unique content on Smashing Magazine. We are experimenting with new formats (Interviews and a Global Web Design series), and we are working together with high-profile designers and developers for more engaging articles.

We avoid generic content and have been investing a lot of time and new resources into making sure that the content is original and top-notch. It’s to readers to decide if we are doing a great job at achieving this or not.

You recently released The Smashing Book, and took an interesting approach of asking different designers to contribute to different chapters. This seemed to work very well, but what was your reasoning behind producing the book in this way?

Our goal was to create something tangible, a physical object that would stand for Smashing Magazine’s quality and strengthen our branding beyond the online presence. We also wanted the articles all to be a very diverse, yet contain the articles written by our writers who really know what they are talking about.

Initially we were planning to write the book by ourselves, but decided that it would take too much time. We still needed to keep Smashing Magazine running, so we would have at most 1-2 hours for writing every day which wasn’t really feasible. Besides, it was simply impossible to find one single author who could write the book. So engaging our writers in the process was a necessary step. We are confident that it worked out well in the end!

Smashing Magazine regularly highlight new design trends and techniques – are there any in particular that you feel our readers should be watching out for in 2010?

We see many interesting things happening in web design right now. One very striking thing is that we are observing literally a revolution in web typography as @font-face and font embedding services like TypeKit are gaining importance and popularity at the moment.

We also see many very unique designs, with unique layouts and navigation schemes. It seems that designers are experimenting a lot and we will present some of our findings in one of the upcoming articles. Also, with CSS3 and jQuery, websites are becoming more interactive and feel more “natural” meaning that many designers are using well-known metaphors from our physical world making the navigation more intuitive and simple.

The results are more responsive interfaces and designs with natural mapping. We’re also observing the strong trend toward simplicity and transparency (not PNG transparency, but transparency on a more abstract, general level). We hope to publish an article about these and other developments in March, so please stay tuned for our updates!

Vitaly’s Sites and Projects

Here are a handful of the different websites, designs, and projects Vitaly is involved with. Click one to visit that particular site:

Smashing Magazine

Noupe

Dr. Web

Alvit.de Handbook

Video Interview

Smashing Magazine’s intern, Jessica, is currently running a video interview series with Vitaly. It’s really interesting, and certainly worth taking a look at.

Thanks for Reading!

A big thank you to Vitaly for taking the time to answer our questions. If you’d like to find out more about him, I’d recommend checking out his blog, or following him on Twitter.

I hope you’re enjoying out interview series – if there are any other designers you’d like to see featured, please feel free to let us know in the comments!

We’ll be discussing Adii’s early days as a designer, the rise and growth of WooThemes, a standard working day, his favourite hardware and software, and a number of new projects he’s beginning to get involved with this year.

Our Interview

Rightly or wrongly, traditional education is often overlooked when viewing someone as a entrepreneur. What did you originally study in college/university, and do you feel that it helped you get to where you are today?

I’ve got a Bachelors in Accounting and a Honours in Business Management, so I definitely have a traditional business education, which I don’t have one regret over. But neither of these have taught me how to be an entrepreneur; instead I’d like to think that you can only become a better entrepreneur via experiences and that a traditional education only serves as a basis for these.

What were the main projects you set up in your early days as a designer, and how did these lead to the launch of WooThemes?

None to be honest. When I started out as a designer / developer, I was simply focused on building up great portfolio and selling my hourly skills at a higher price. So with WooThemes, I really had my first opportunity to sell something that isn’t limited by my hours.

Why did you make the decision to brand yourself as a Rockstar, and how important do you feel “personal branding” is when developing a website or online business?

The Rockstar idea was an evolving process really; it started out as a tagline and then just became a branding / naming convention for me. Ultimately both “Adii Pienaar” – and moreso “Adii Rockstar” – sound a little more marketable than Adriaan Pienaar, which is my birthname.

And if you consider how crowded the Internet is with many absolutely outstanding individuals, you have to spend time developing your personal brand. It’s one of the only guaranteed ways that you will stand out from the crowd.

Could you outline what your average day involves, from waking up in the morning to clocking off at night?

I’m normally at the office at about 6:30 / 7:00 in the morning and the first couple of hours (before everyone arrives) are spent cleaning out the various mailboxes, catching up on RSS and tweets from the previous day; basically giving myself a clean slate to work from the rest of the day. During this time, I also do extensive work on Basecamp to collaborate and coordinate everything that we are doing as a company (both in-house and through outside collaborations).

After that, my day varies greatly depending on the needs of the team. I do assign quite a bit of time each day to brainstorming & conceptualising new ideas (sometimes on my own, sometimes with the team), and I also take care of all blogging responsibilities (I try do this if / when the inspiration hits).

Beyond that, you can find me tweaking things here or there and giving an extra helping hand to anyone else on the team with regards to theme releases, bug fixing etc.

After work, I’m really trying to force myself to get some proper exercise and, in the evenings, I try to spend some time writing my book or just clicking around and finding new stuff on the inter-webs. It’s in-between all of these things that my life seems to happen; at least I’m flexible so I can fit social + personal time in anywhere…!

Which hardware and sofware do you use on a regular basis – both for business and pleasure?

I absolutely love my 13″ MacBook Pro, which I use with a 26″ T260 Samsung LCD at the office. Along with that I really love (and sometimes when I know I need to switch off, but can’t) my iPhone and more recently I’ve been enjoying photography with my Canon 7D!

In terms of software, I use Safari for web-browsing and wouldn’t be able to do my daily work with Things, Tweetie & Basecamp. I must admit though that most of the apps I’m using seem to be online these days…

I’m intrigued by how your job role has changed over the past few years, moving towards running a business and away from actual design and development work. Which part of your job do you enjoy the most, and why?

I love the business side, as I have a real passion for business models, management and figuring out how customers interact with a company. So this means that I haven’t really designed or coded something in the last 2 / 3 months, because ultimately these skills don’t come to me naturally and we have WooTeam members that are better equipped to handle these.

You’ve recently launched a project called The Rockstar Foundation, aiming to create better educational opportunities for disadvantaged young girls in Cape Town, South Africa. What lead you to set this project up, and how important do you feel it is for online entrepreneurs to “give something back”?

I’d like to believe that I have a big heart in the sense that if I can help someone, then I would try my best. So whilst a series of unexpected events prompted me to start the Foundation, the essence of giving something back has always been there.

I believe that I have been very blessed in business and I thus have a responsibility to give back to those who haven’t had the opportunity that I have been given. I might also add that business for me has never been about the money, but instead about the challenges of creating something of real value.

Designers always face the dilemma of keeping a business relatively small and remaining agile, or growing a larger team of colleagues and dealing with the rigidity that brings. Is this a concern with WooThemes?

Always. And to be honest: we haven’t found the answer yet!

I guess there’s a balance between growing a team and using collaborations to grow one’s reach instead. In-house will always win in terms of efficiency and quality, but sometimes the risk of having a bloated team (and overhead expenditure) isn’t worthwhile either.

You’ve recently branched out into selling ExpressionEngine themes, and clearly feel this platform has a great deal of potential over the next few years. Are there any other trends you feel that designers should be watching out for in 2010/2011?

I’m not sure to be honest. I think Internet workers are being faced with an ever-changing landscape, which only increases the importance of proper designing and developing. For example – I can see how the increase in the number of different devices that we use to access the internet will continue to complicate design and code in the future.

But that growth also means that we’ll have more options and niches than ever before…

Adii’s Sites and Projects

Here are a handful of the different websites, designs, and projects Adii is involved with. Click one to visit that particular site:

WooThemes

Radiiate

Rockstar Foundation

Adii Rockstar

Thanks for Reading!

A big thank you to Adii for taking the time to answer our questions. If you’d like to find out more about him, I’d recommend checking out his blog, or following him on Twitter.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the start of this new interview series – if there are any other designers you’d like to see featured, please feel free to let us know in the comments!

We’ll also take a look at the tools and workspace Alen uses to get the job done, along with a few pointers for places to find inspiration online.

Can you please tell us a bit more about yourself and how you got started in the design field?

I am web designer and web developer from Rijeka, Croatia a town situated on the beautiful North Adriatic coast. I first started out as a DTP specialist in a local print shop and then I slowly moved on to the web. At first I was employed as a web designer in a local web company. At some point I decided that it’s best for me to go solo because of greater job opportunities outside my local environment. At the moment I am freelancing so if your readers need a hand with their websites they can reach me at http://grakalic.com. :)

Besides work I am a father, husband and an amateur triathlete. I enjoy long distance endurance sports. I finished 3 Ironman races in past year or so. Ironman triathlon slowly became my life style!

What do you think has contributed most to the success of CSS Globe?

Community. Without the people posting updates and people reading the news the site wouldn’t exist. Sure, I publish an article here and there but without that regular flow of fresh links CSS Globe wouldn’t be what it is now.

What do you enjoy most about running an online community?

I enjoy reading the posts people submit. I find submissions to be very informative and interesting. Reading submitted articles is part of my morning ritual.

You recently launched a framework?

Yes, I launched Easy front-end framework (http://easyframework.com). The goal of this framework is to reduce the time needed for coding the basic template but it also provides a solid base for site development. It started as a personal project but then grew into something more.

Where do you go to find inspiration?

I stumble upon various things that inspire me, mostly by accident. Usually it’s the details that I find more inspiring than overall designs.
With years of working on many design projects you slowly build a repository of design patterns that become your personal style. When you are feeling uninspired you just reach out for some of the patterns and use them.

What does your workspace look like?

Up to this year I used various desktop machines, my latest was a white iMac. In April this year I bought a MacBook Pro. My intention was to get a LED display to go with it few weeks later. Then I took a trip to USA and Canada where I had no choice but to work on my laptop all the time and more so I had to work on many different places including various offices, coffee shops and even outdoors. I liked that so much, it gave me a sense of freelance freedom that I decided not to buy a display.

So now I have a portable web design studio and I try to get out of my home office as much as I can to do work. I find that so inspiring especially when I work on designs.

What software do you use on a day-to-day basis?

I use standard Dreamweaver/Photoshop combination. That’s about it as far as my work goes. I also use a couple of Firefox plugin for debugging and testing purposes, like Firebug and Web Developer Toolbar. I can’t imagine my dev process without them now.

What major changes do you see happening over the next five years in the web design field?

I really can’t say much about that. I don’t have a vision and sometimes when I think about near and far future of our business I get a little bit anxious. I guess the mobile devices will take most part of the market and designers will have to learn to adapt to it. Each site will have to be multi-device compatible.

Thanks to Alen for taking the time to share his insight and experience with us today. If you have any ideas for other designers you’d like to see interviewed, please feel free to share in the comments!

We’ll be talking about a regular day for Leo, how blogging has launched his career, and the principles he suggests for a designer to be more productive. It’s great to speak to someone so genuine and passionate about their philosophy, and I hope you enjoy reading what he has to say.

Please tell us a little about your blog, book and the lifestyle/work advice you’ve inspired people with

My blog, Zen Habits, has regular articles on things I’ve been doing the last few years in my life — positive changes like simplifying, becoming more productive and organized, getting fit and healthy, eliminating my debt, spending time with my family, and generally becoming happier. It seems to have struck a chord with many people and within its first year, Zen Habits was one of the Top 50 blogs in the world, and today it has nearly 100,000 subscribers.

My book, The Power of Less, is a condensed version of some of the most important parts of my simple productivity philosophy from Zen Habits. It shows how to do less and accomplish more by focusing on the essentials and eliminating the non-essentials.

The lifestyle I advocate is a simple one, based on what truly matters in life. I’ve gotten thousands of comments and emails from people telling me that this simple advice has turned their lives around — things like starting small and taking baby steps, forming new habits, limiting yourself to the essential.

I’m fascinated to know what a regular day for you entails – how do you manage your freelance career with other responsibilities?

I don’t actually freelance anymore, but focus more on my blog and businesses. I’ve been transitioning to making money for myself, rather than writing for others.

However, whether I’m working on my own businesses or freelancing, the basics are the same: I pick three really important things I want to do each day. One of those things is usually writing a blog post, and the other two are often related to other projects I’m working on. I try to do those three things first, and only after I’m done with them do I do routine and less important things like email and online reading and the like. I also try to get some exercise in early, before the rest of my life gets in the way of that.

However, that’s the ideal — I often stray from this routine. When I can stick to these basics, my day is much more productive.

How do you feel that Internet and phenomenal uptake of ‘blogging’ has helped your success?

It’s indubitably the reason for my success. Before I started blogging, I was a freelance writer but my audience was very limited — I live on Guam, with a population of 160,000. As a blogger, I’ve been able to reach millions of people around the globe. Without the power of blogs to connect writers to a vast audience, I’d still be limited in what I do.

One thing I love about blogging is that it’s incredibly empowering. Only a decade ago, to get information out to a large audience, you had to go through the gatekeepers of the media — newspapers, television and radio stations, magazines — but today the gates have been thrown wide open. Today, there are no gatekeepers, which means that anyone can get his message out, and the size of the audience depends on things like how good the message is, how useful it is to readers, how persistent the writer is in spreading the message — not on the opinion or mood of an editor or the space a newspaper has for content.

What is your experience with website design – are you solely a blogger, or do you occasionally dabble in the design of your site?

I’m not very good at design. I know a good design when I see it, and I can give decent direction to a designer, because I know what I want out of a design. But I can’t do the design myself. My current design at Zen Habits was done by a very good designer friend, and my other blogs use free WP templates.

I really, really love minimalist designs. My current favorite is shauninman.com.

Which principles do you feel can help a designer or developer to be more productive?

A good designer or developer who understands the principles of minimalism — to only have the essentials, and not have anything that isn’t necessary — will easily understand the key principles of simple productivity, which are pretty much the same thing. Take your to-do list and pare it down to only the most essential items, and focus on those before anything else. Take an index card and write the top 3 things you need to get done today — the really high-impact tasks that will make a big difference on your work and life.

By the same token, focus on your top projects and really try to get them done before moving on to new projects. Focus on one task at a time, and eliminate distractions, if you really want to be effective. Don’t multitask, and don’t allow distractions to pull your focus away from the task at hand.

Use the principles in The Power of Less to create these productive habits, one at a time.

Are there any ‘Zen Habits’ you would suggest for those in the field of design?

The concept of “Flow” is important, I think: it’s the ability to clear away distractions and concentrate on one engaging, challenging, enjoyable task, to really pour yourself into that task, so that the world around you disappears and you lose track of time. This is Flow, and it’s essential to really enjoying your work, to being in the moment, and to being incredibly effective.

I always feel relaxed with an uncluttered computer – are there any tools you use to keep your Mac free of distractions?

My favorite tool, of course, is Quicksilver. It’s unobtrusive and fast and minimalist, and yet so powerful for launching programs, opening documents and folders, and doing quick tasks without launching other programs. I don’t keep icons on my desktop, and don’t really file stuff anymore — I have one folder for things I’m working on and another for an archive, and I use a combination of Quicksilver and Spotlight to find the files I need without having to file.

I also do most of my work online, using Gmail, Google Docs, Gcal and WordPress to ensure that all my info is stored online, accessible anywhere, without having to store stuff on my Mac.

What further resources would you recommend to those wanting to know more about ‘The Power of Less’ (obviously in addition to your book!)

There’s a website for The Power of Less, which has a ton of free resources, including a companion ebook, audio podcasts, interviews, Twitter tips of the day, and a 30-day Challenge for people trying to form new habits. You can also find hundreds of free articles on my blog, Zen Habits, or follow me on twitter!

A big thanks to Leo for the tips and advice, and I hope you’ve found it to be a useful insight. Do check out his blog and book, and you’ll be on the right track to an efficient and productive lifestyle in no time.

Do you have any tips for designers to be more productive? How do you reduce the clutter and distractions in your working life?

What exactly does Cutcaster offer, and why are you unique?

Cutcaster offers unique royalty free images, stock photos, stock footage and stock photography for advertising, publishing or web design. We have combined a Flickr-type community with a Getty-type licensing model but turned the old licensing model on its head. In my old job trading stock on Wall st. I saw what electronic markets and cutting out the middleman did to our markets and I applied those efficient market elements to what I saw as an outdated licensing model.

We are the first licensing platform to let people set their prices for a high resolution file, use a patent pending algorithm to help them find the correct market price or let buyers buy ala carte, on demand or bid on content they want so they can name their price or licensing terms directly with a seller. That seller has the option to accept, reject or re-submit a new offer back to that interested buyer. We also offer buyers a way to request custom content from the community of Cutcaster members through our ProjectRequest area. Cutcaster is an open platform and anyone can join, learn and participate in the community and marketplace.

For how long have you offered the service?

The site has been researched and developed over the last 3 years but we launched our Cutcaster beta site in April of this year. We are a very new service but have been growing extremely fast. I left my trading job on Wall st. in January of this year to focus on Cutcaster full-time as the demand and time commitment became too much to try to do with two jobs.

Which two design features of the site are you proudest of, and why?

I am proud of how easy our site is to use but I am very proud of our negotiation platform called My Marketplace, which allows buyers and sellers to seamlessly negotiate on pricing and licensing terms much like a stock exchange. Sellers can now get hard data on how to price their content and where demand lies for their work. Buyers can directly buy or bid for content which allows them to name their price or buy extended rights like exclusivity over a certain time period or geographic region. The platform is simple to understand, easy to use and the negotiations happen very quickly between buyers and sellers.

I also really like the layout of our media details page which clearly lays out the details surrounding any media file uploaded to the site and is set up to allow users to easily interact with the different features of the site like immediately buying, bidding for content, adding content to lightboxes (we call them clipfolders at Cutcaster), reporting copyright infringements, downloading comps to show clients, requesting different file sizes and the ability to virally send your work to multiple networks to get more traffic and sales. Here is an example of one of the media detail pages, http://www.cutcaster.com/viewmedia/view/100027215/Photo.

Could you give an overview of the technology used to power the site?

Cutcaster is written/coded in PHP using a web application framework called CodeIgniter. Other scripting codes used would include Javascript and AJAX. It uses the world’s most popular open source database, MySQL to store data and other information. The site utilizes Amazon’s web services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for web-scale computing and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for storage of files.