Unfinished Business

This week on Unfinished Business, I’m joined by James Young to talk about his recent, first conference presensations and why confidence in front of people is as important as a designer’s skills with Photoshop. We discuss his knives business and how a side business can improve the work we do on the web and give us more varied content to talk and write about.

Thanks to our sponsor this week GatherContent—helping people who build websites work with their clients to plan, organise and collaborate on web content.

On this week’s Unfinished Business, regular co-host Laura Kalbag and I talked candidly about hosting workshops and whether they make commercial sense and how we make money from them. Laura asked me about choosing Stuff and Nonsense for our business name and we talked about how people can make the best, first impression when you write to us. (Sorry for Laura’s audio quality. We’ll try to do better next time.)

Thanks to our sponsor, Blush, beautiful letterpress printing of cards, stationery and more for designers and artists. Support Unfinished Business by supporting them.

This week on Unfinished Business, I’m joined by CSS hero Harry Roberts to talk about being typecast (literally,) going Keynote commando and Harry’s first week on the dole. We talk about how people can improve the way they think about sending and dealing with email and why we’re both obsessed with the backends of vans.

This episode is sponsored by the new Device Lab from Vanamco and by Smashing Magazine’s workshops including my CSS3 For Responsive Web Design workshop and Harry Roberts’ Planning And Building A Big Front-End. They’re happening in Zurich, Switzerland on December 10th, 2013.

This week, I’m joined by fabulous designer Veerle Pieters to talk about whether cycling or eating toasties is the best exercise, when working on retainer for long-term projects makes sense and the right questions to ask in our customer enquiry questionnaires.

This episode is sponsored by our friends at Perch, the little content management system for projects where you don’t want a big, complex CMS, and Hammer for Mac, the nifty development tool for designers and developers. Please support the show by supporting them.

Designer and author of A Pocket Guide to CSS Animations Val Head joins me this week to talk about practical uses for CSS animations, how small publishers have made publishing books more accessible to first time authors and, of course, The Sooty Show.

Thanks to our sponsor this week GatherContent — helping people who build websites work with their clients to plan, organise and collaborate on web content.

This week, illustrator Josh Cleland joins me to talk about how far we can go using a movie or TV character’s likeness, the differences between an illustrator’s and a web designer’s contract and Josh’s 100% satisfaction guarantee.

Thanks to our sponsor, Blush — beautiful letterpress printing of cards, stationery and more for designers and artists.

In this week’s show, Alex’s friend Brad Frost, who having survived his trip to Brighton, returns to talk to Andrew about designing ‘in the open’ and what the benefits for you and the people and organisations you’re working for can be.

Thanks to our sponsor, Ghostlab — Synchronized cross-browser and mobile testing taken to the next level. Get 30% off at checkout with the offer code UNFINISHEDBUSINESS.

In this week’s episode, designer and co-host of ‘ that other podcast’ Liz Elcoate joins Andrew to talk about the difficulties of working alone for long periods, the difficulties of keeping your portfolio full of new work when you work under non-disclosure agreements and why we should never apologise for working with small businesses with smaller budgets.

This episode’s sponsored by our friends Perch, the little content management system for projects where you don’t want a big, complex CMS, and Hammer for Mac, the nifty development tool for designers and developers.

Special guest Dan Cederholm joins Andrew Clarke this week to talk about making money by making things, how making great schwag makes a great impression and what happened to Foamee. They discuss why on Dribbble it’s important for business to not get in the way of a great service and with Dan’s new book coming up, they talk about the process of writing and whether second editions are worth it.

Thanks to our sponsor this week GatherContent — helping people who build websites work with their clients to plan, organise and collaborate on web content. Sign up through that page and get your first month free, on top of the 30 day trial period. That’s a great offer.

Designer, icon artist , author and possibly Doctor Who’s next companion Jon Hicks joins host Andrew Clarke this week. They discuss differences in the ways that Jon approaches different types of clients, how publishing his day rate and availability on his web site has improved the ‘quality’ of his enquiries and who ultimately owns the work that they do. As you might expect they couldn’t spend an hour together without talking about Doctor Who. Quite a lot.

Thanks to our sponsor, Blush — beautiful letterpress printing of cards, stationery and more for designers and artists. Get 20% off custom business card printing during September when you use the promo code: UNFINISHEDBUSINESSCARDS.