Unfinished Business

This week, Andy’s back from two weeks in Japan and he and Anna talk about his trip Tokyo and Hiroshima. Andy explains why he thinks everyone should visit Hiroshima at least once and Anna opens her presents with loud rustling. They answer listener questions about weekly working, pricing and invoicing and then discuss whether it's a good idea to work while on holiday.

This episode is sponsored by Hammer for Mac, the nifty development tool for designers and developers, and Five Simple Steps and Collection Two of their Pocket Guide series. Tweet your favourite short business tip with the hash tag #pockettip before Friday 26th April for a chance to be one of two people to win Collection Two of the Pocket Guides, or the very lucky person to win an entire set of Pocket Guides.

While waiting for Andy's return, Anna chats with her "big brother", the righteous Ryan Taylor. They discuss working from home, apprenticeships, front-end portfolios, and working with a hybrid designer/developer.

This episode is sponsored by Hammer for Mac, the nifty development tool for designers and developers, and Beyond Tellerrand, a conference and workshop event for the web community. Beyond Tellerrand is happening May 27th to the 29th in Düsseldorf in Germany. Use the offer code unfinished4 for 10% off the standard price.

While Andy is in Japan, Anna is joined by the amazing Ashley Baxter, who took over her dad's insurance business at 18. They talk about starting out young, learning new skills, determination, vision and overcoming fear.

This episode is sponsored by Hammer for Mac, the nifty development tool for designers and developers, and Five Simple Steps and their Pocket Guide series. Get 10% off Collection One by using the code UNFINISHEDPGC10 at checkout between the 8th and 15th of April.

While Anna is en vacance en France, Andrew’s joined by guest co-host, designer Laura Kalbag to talk about mentoring students and how to give them, and other newcomers, valuable commercial project experience. Laura also talks about how best to ask for, and deal with, client feedback while Andrew remembers Mickey, the world’s cleverest chimpanzee. This episode is sponsored by Blush, beautiful letterpress printing of cards, stationery and more for designers and artists and Beyond Tellerrand a conference and workshop event for the web community. Beyond Tellerrand is happening May 27th to the 29th in Düsseldorf in Germany. Use the offer code unfinished3 for 10% off the standard price.

Following his visit to the University of Ulster in Belfast this week, Anna and Andrew talk about how hard it is to keep up with new technologies and techniques and how to decide what aspects of web design and development to learn next.

This episode is sponsored by Jon Hicks’ The Icon Handbook from at Five Simple Steps. Between now and the 1st April you’ll get 10% off all formats using the offer code UNFINISHEDICON10.

Industry Conference is an event for web professionals that’s happening in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK on April 24th. Use the code unfinished to get 40% off conference and workshop tickets.

Anna and Andy talk about Anna's new limited company, why she needed to set up a company and how she went about doing it. Andy moans about not understanding GitHub (again) and why developer tools often make him feel stupid. After hours, they talk about an episode of Anna's favourite cartoon, Adventure Time. (Andy would like to apologise for the scratchy audio in this week's episode. His beard was itchy but he promises it won't happen again.) This episode is sponsored by Typecast; quickly style type in the browser and check for readability, rendering and beauty as you work, and Beyond Tellerrand a conference and workshop event for the web community. Beyond Tellerrand is happening May 27th to the 29th in Düsseldorf in Germany. Use the offer code unfinished2 for 10% off the standard price.

Anna and Andy talk about the benefits Stuff and Nonsense gained when they ditched daily rates and fixed project pricing and switched to estimating, working and billing in weekly patterns. Andy explains how agile methods can benefit designers and clients, even though he doesn't really know the difference between agile and scrum. After hours, they talk about their movie of the week, Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol 2. This episode is sponsored by Typecast; quickly style type in the browser and check for readability, rendering and beauty as you work, and two Five Simple Steps’ business related books: Web App Success and Managing Web Projects.

This week, Andy and Anna discuss their experience of working from home (or living at work), and some of the techniques that help them block out distractions. They also debate the very important issue of how to make the perfect cup of tea. At the end of the show, they talk about Kill Bill Volume 1 in what will be a regular section about Tarantino movies. This episode is sponsored by Typecast; quickly style type in the browser and check for readability, rendering and beauty as you work, and Beyond Tellerrand a conference and workshop event for the web community. Beyond Tellerrand is happening May 27th to the 29th in Düsseldorf in Germany. Use the offer code unfinished1 for 10% off the standard price.

Anna and Andy follow up last week’s episode with listener questions about the professional (and unprofessional) ways to handle business disputes. They also discuss how best to say goodbye to a client and cue up a few movies to watch and talk about ‘after hours’ in the coming weeks.

Anna and Andy talk about how to get work and how they both found their first clients. Anna gets annoyed about revenge sites and Andy tells, for the first time, how he lost everything and restarted Stuff and Nonsense in 2006.