A Rally Podcast

In this episode: Anson shares some of his wet humor, Adam was converted to a developer, Brijan thinks code is boring, Geof plays a terrible devil's advocate and everyone wants to be an MC.

Please note that the opinions expressed here are not that of Rally Interactive and any possible reference to anyone living or deceased is purely coincidental. Also, we have no idea what we are talking about.

Send feedback to [email protected] or http://twitter.com/rallybanter

# Side project: Designfacts.org

- Made by Shane Bzdok

- Launched March 22

- 137 facts about our industry

- Check it out! http://designfacts.org

# Mentioned and discussed on the show

Special thanks: Gene Ross (https://twitter.com/generosss)

When should a designer code or not?

- Don't need to be specialized programmers

- Adam used to be a designer

- Went to school as a designer

- Analytical, logical mind…

- Originality is difficult

- Priority: Having something that's real

- Ornamentation as design

- Flash design, approach to design in 2008

- R.I.T. (http://www.rit.edu)

- Designers considering Page A to Page B?

- Design without thought to the system

- Transition glasses (http://goo.gl/v5seNf)

How far to take programming as a designer?

- Designers writing front-end code

- Django web framework (https://www.djangoproject.com)

- Learn how HTML, CSS works, start small

- Tweak something that's already built

- Designers taking care of CSS nitpicks

- Detail is tedious, but not hard

- Well then what are programmers going to do?

- Designers should care about what the real thing is

- Having a great PSD is useless

- Shane Mielke (http://www.shanemielke.com)

- Jared Kroff (https://twitter.com/jaredkroff)

- Bryan James (http://bryanjamesdesign.co.uk)

- "If i want to do something cool… why not do it all myself?"

Will learning to code kill a designers creativity?

- Maybe should actually design for medium? Not making fine art…

- Time/cost tradeoff

- Understanding what's easy and what isn't

- The Ribbon™ (http://beta.rallyinteractive.com)

- When to use WebGL…

- "Design should be problem solving, not decoration"

- "Blindly shotgunning creativity"

- Regarding Dribbble and validation

- Utah Rebound. What state are you in? (https://dribbble.com/shots/69556-Utah)

- What is Software Design?

- Learn from the people around you

- Design to Development? Development to Design?

- Responsive design/adaptive design

- Multiple screen sizes on iOS

- Mobile layout on desktop is lame

- Media queries are easy, hard to do well

- Desktop design at 1600px to mobile design…

- Developers end up needing to figure out everything in-between

- Don't sacrifice design decisions to developers

- What is the logic behind the design?

- Prototype different screen sizes with code

- Why does a design work?

- Why try to convince anybody of this?

Advice for new designer regarding code?

- Everyone should learn to program in school

- Benefit in the long term

- Start small, start with the basics, put text on the screen

- Never too late

- Pay for Anson's coffee and he will teach you to program

——

# Adam Luptak

Developer at Rally interactive and Indian food eating extraordinaire.

http://twitter.com/_luptak

# Anson Schall

Freelancer, hyphenator and birthday cake typographer.

http://twitter.com/ansonschall

# Brijan Powell

Freelance Interactive Designer working out of the Rally office and motorcycle riding hellion.

http://twitter.com/brijanp

# Geof Crowl

Designer at Rally Interactive and connoisseur of fine italics.

http://twitter.com/rectangular

In this episode: Jim lives in a grid, Eric doesn't see any more questions, Ben mentions complacency, Geof swings a microphone around and Brijan makes kissing sounds. Also: everyone struggles with Periscope (again) and someone gets a text message.

Please note that the opinions expressed here are not that of Rally Interactive and any possible reference to anyone living or deceased is purely coincidental. Also, we have no idea what we are talking about.

This episode was brought to you by: Rally Interactive and Air Lookout (http://www.airlookout.com/). Send feedback to [email protected] or http://twitter.com/rallybanter

# Mentioned and discussed on the show

For the first seven to eight minutes we struggle to find a topic. We briefly discuss why we are doing the podcast, the new Instagram feed and we encounter a locked chat in Periscope. Not to mention the variety of distractions along the way.

If you skip forward about eight minutes, you'll get to…

Grids

- When do you start introducing grid into designs?

- On gutters… when to use? when to not?

- Ben: new to grids

- Jim sees grids everywhere… he's in the grid…

Question over Periscope: How do we maintain quality?

- Question from Phil Coffman (https://twitter.com/philcoffman)

- Does quality require a small team?

- How do you grow and maintain quality control?

- Q/A from development team to design team

- How do you find detail oriented employees?

- On the Rally design test…

- Freedom as a way to enable high quality of work

- Maintaining quality as a freelancer

- Keeping a dialogue and fun process going

- Does fun increase quality of work?

- The time to master craft of design

Design Feedback

- Subjective vs objective

- Not getting good internal feedback? Ask outside mentors

- Anton Repponen (https://twitter.com/repponen)

- Claudio Guglieri (https://twitter.com/claudioguglieri)

- Getting pumped over good feedback. Hardest part of good feedback?

- Getting feedback from "non-designers"

- Working closely to developers/engineers

- Anson Schall (https://twitter.com/ansonschall)

- Need to have him on the podcast… maybe… episode 5?

- Design, as in the way something works, feedback

- Addressing client feedback

- Removing yourself from a design, focusing on the problem

- Not being reactionary to feedback

Question: How do remove yourself from a design while still being proud of your work?

- Question from: Rigel St. Pierre (https://twitter.com/rigelstpierre)

- Stepping back, was the problem solved?

- Designing in a vacuum?

- Separating expression and having a vision

- Minimalism: expression or vision?

- Personal style? Design style as soul?

- Word of the day: appropriate

Back to the topic of quality…

- "Only as good as your last project"

- Make sure you are growing and learning on every project

- Hating work is OK

- Is quality the most important thing?

- Work/life balance

- Job satisfaction from creating quality work

- On gauging what a quality project is…

- How do you always push yourself?

- Proving yourself as a designer

# Brijan Powell

Freelance Interactive Designer working out of the Rally office and motorcycle riding hellion.

http://twitter.com/brijanp

# Ben Cline

Part owner, designer and string cheese consumer at Rally Interactive.

http://twitter.com/yocline

# Jim DeBrock

Designer at Rally Interactive and Logic Pro tutorial consuming beast.

http://twitter.com/jimdebrock

# Eric Atwell

Designer at Rally Interactive and owner of reflective shoes.

http://twitter.com/ericatwell_

# Geof Crowl

Designer at Rally Interactive and connoisseur of fine italics.

http://twitter.com/rectangular

In this episode: Ben attempts to pivot the episode, Jim has several personal relationships, Geof continues to ask leading questions and Brijan gives everyone a yacht. Extra: one of our office chairs makes a squeaking sound similar to a fart (scout's honor!).

Please note that the opinions expressed here are not that of Rally Interactive and any possible reference to anyone living or deceased is purely coincidental. Also, we have no idea what we are talking about.

This episode was brought to you by: Rally Interactive and Air Lookout. Send feedback to [email protected] or http://twitter.com/rallybanter

# Mentioned and discussed on the show

- Side project: Air Lookout - airlookout.com

What would you tell a junior designer?

Degrees and school?

- G.E.D.? Do you need college?

Brijan doesn't actually tell why he got in trouble

- Drugs? Gangs? Shop lifting chapstick? Nobody will know.

- Awkward accents…

Actual advice

- Don't chase money

- Work at places with the best work

- Role models, find studios, establishing a connection

- Relationships and work ethic

- Don't be afraid to start over

- Show up to work

- The money (may) come… eventually…

- YACHTS!

- Learn everything

- Specialize?

- Talk to designers you like. Reach out.

- Michael Bierut (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bierut)

- Funsize (http://funsize.co)

- Community and peers

- Isolation in college

- Internships!

- Elegant Seagulls (http://www.elegantseagulls.com)

- Real world experience vs. school experience

- The perfect program? Apprenticeship?

- Dan Mall (http://danielmall.com, https://twitter.com/danielmall)

- Webmaster?? (wtf?)

When did you realize design was a thing?

- Everything around us, besides nature, is designed

- Realizing designer as a job and their influence

- Connections with James Burke (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPcZ_5uCldg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series) )

- Jim's texting addiction

- Modern civilization: everything is designed

- Myspace templates…

How to get a job?

- Portfolio advice

- How do you judge work for a hire?

- Distilling/curating best work

- Know your audience

- Focus Lab (http://focuslabllc.com)

- Jim shuts down… Beeeooooop…

What can be taught or not?

- Taste? Aesthetics? Problem solving? Work ethic?

- Learning taste

- Can passion be taught?

# Brijan Powell

- Freelance Interactive Designer working out of the Rally office and motorcycle riding hellion.

- http://twitter.com/brijan

# Ben Cline

- Part owner, designer and string cheese consumer at Rally Interactive.

- http://twitter.com/yocline

# Jim DeBrock

- Designer at Rally Interactive and Logic Pro tutorial consuming beast.

- http://twitter.com/jimdebrock

# Geof Crowl

- Designer at Rally Interactive and connoisseur of fine italics.

- http://twitter.com/rectangular

In this episode: Geof constantly (and shamelessly) plugs his own side project (airlookout.com), Ben reminds everyone that we're way over time, Adam confesses he has a graveyard of dead side projects in his backyard, Jim (acting as audio engineer) tunes into our own live Periscope and Brijan tells some whippersnappers to get off his lawn. And everyone unintentionally ignored any questions that came through Periscope.

We are looking to hear about your side projects! Hopefully we can get a few to showcase before each episode. These side projects could be anything from small and simple to a more complex project you're trying to get started! Just send them with a short paragraph description to [email protected].

# Mentioned and discussed on the show

- Air Lookout - http://airlookout.com

- A side project that took over a year to make and is selling on the app store for $1.

Do designers need to program in order to turn their side projects into something real?

What are too many side projects?

- The side project graveyard

- Balancing work and side projects

How to finish side projects?

Value in learning from side projects?

- Designing and building layouts in iOS

- The value of making mistakes

Selling ideas to clients vs. trying ideas in side projects

Thinking about layouts for flexibility and responsiveness

On red lines…

On constraints…

- https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/AppKit/Reference/NSLayoutConstraint_Class/

Responsive web design…

- Are websites looking the same?

What's an appropriate side project?

- The least appropriate?

- If you critique you can't be the critique-er… huh?

- Design and build something that's different

- Side projects could be a way to explore, expand and learn new things.

- Goals for side projects.

- Staying in the trenches…

- Marc Hemeon (@hemeon)

Facilitating design vs designing

Will design become a job to just make money?

- Being surrounded by passionate people

- Are there designers "just doing it for the money"?

- Reaching out to senior designers…

The Action Satisfaction slack team:

- https://actionsatisfaction.slack.com

- Reach out to @brijanp for more info

Hating your work… but in a good way.

——

# Brijan Powell

- Freelance Interactive Designer working out of the Rally office and motorcycle riding hellion.

- @brijanp

# Ben Cline

- Part owner, designer and string cheese consumer at Rally Interactive.

- @yocline

# Adam Luptak

- Developer at Rally interactive and Indian food eating extraordinaire.

- @_luptak

# Geof Crowl

- Designer at Rally Interactive and connoisseur of fine italics.

- @rectangular

In this episode: Geof accidentally hates on magazines, Jim talks about his extravagant lunches, Brijan goes to a place called Bob's on State St. and Ben goes on a walk.

Please note that the opinions expressed here are not that of Rally Interactive and any possible reference to anyone living or deceased is purely coincidental. Also, we have no idea what we are talking about.

Smart Water Bottle

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/582920317/hidrateme-smart-water-bottle

Massimo Vignelli

http://www.vignelli.com/intro.html

Wabi-Sabi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi

Raku Ware

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raku_ware

Nikon F

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_F

# Brijan Powell

- Freelance Interactive Designer working out of the Rally office and motorcycle riding hellion.

- @brijan

- Bodoni, Helvetica, Futura, Garamond, Avant Garde

# Ben Cline

- Part owner, designer and string cheese consumer at Rally Interactive.

- @yocline

- Gotham, Tiempos, Chronicle Display, Trade Gothic, Futura

# Jim DeBrock

- Designer at Rally Interactive and Logic Pro tutorial consuming beast.

- @jimdebrock

- Chronicle Display, Albertina, Klavika, Sentinel, Trade Gothic

# Geof Crowl

- Designer at Rally Interactive and connoisseur of fine italics.

- @rectangular

- Helvetica Neue, New Rail Alphabet, Trade Gothic, Minion, Bodoni

Air Lookout

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/air-lookout-monitor-air-quality/id1003112819?mt=8

The episode was brought to you by: Rally Interactive and Air Lookout.