The Busy Creator 10, w/guest Erica Heinz

05/05/14 • 54 min

The Busy Creator Podcast with Prescott Perez-Fox

The Busy Creator Podcast episode 10, with guest Web Designer Erica Heinz

Erica Heinz (@ericaheinz) is a web designer in Brooklyn, NY. As a veteran freelancer, she’s work for a variety of clients and sectors, lately focusing on fast development around humanitarian and public sector projects. She’s also a teacher of web design, and of yoga. Together, Prescott and Erica discuss tools of the trade, best practices for web designers, how to continue to learn, and how to avoid becoming overwhelmed by systems. This episode features the most in-depth show notes to date, with a ton of links to websites, tools, and tips.

Show Notes & Links

Previous web designers on The Busy Creator Podcast, Niki Brown
Erica does Humanitarian Work and Rapid-Responce work
Occupy Sandy, built in 6 Days
Peace Talks in Ireland for the Council on Foreign Relations
A microsite for Richard Branson’s B Team, done in 3 weeks
Prototyping
Prescott hates the term “Product Designer” in the realm of Web Design
“Visual Designer” is a term that was fast outdated
Description vs. Rank in terms of job titles
Erica started in illustration, switched to design for the problem-solving
Terms like “New Media” for early Internet instruction
From fashion to packaging to software, Erica’s freelance career
Erica is an early adopter, but not bleeding edge
Studiomates, bunch of smart people
Using SASS to streamline a web workflow
BusyCreator.com is really just the basics
A Book Apart‘s books
Parsons, The New School for Design
ADOCHD (ADHD with OCD thrown in there)
“I have CDO ...”
Blister pack of pills ... for OCD
“The Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone“
Not everything is a checkbox (I’m looking at you, Basecamp.)
Getting Things Done philosophy
“GitHub is the new View Source.”
“HTML elements are like the alphabet.”
Jen Simmons on Drupal.org
Jonnie Hallman on Ruby on Rails
“Do things the long, hard, stupid way.“
So-called “Hacker/Garage Culture”
“A really good website lasts two years, and then it’s gone.”
Agile development

The Busy Creator Podcast episode 10, with guest Web Designer Erica Heinz

Show Notes & Links

Previous web designers on The Busy Creator Podcast, Niki Brown
Erica does Humanitarian Work and Rapid-Responce work
Occupy Sandy, built in 6 Days
Peace Talks in Ireland for the Council on Foreign Relations
A microsite for Richard Branson’s B Team, done in 3 weeks
Prototyping
Prescott hates the term “Product Designer” in the realm of Web Design
“Visual Designer” is a term that was fast outdated
Description vs. Rank in terms of job titles
Erica started in illustration, switched to design for the problem-solving
Terms like “New Media” for early Internet instruction
From fashion to packaging to software, Erica’s freelance career
Erica is an early adopter, but not bleeding edge
Studiomates, bunch of smart people
Using SASS to streamline a web workflow
BusyCreator.com is really just the basics
A Book Apart‘s books
Parsons, The New School for Design
ADOCHD (ADHD with OCD thrown in there)
“I have CDO ...”
Blister pack of pills ... for OCD
“The Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone“
Not everything is a checkbox (I’m looking at you, Basecamp.)
Getting Things Done philosophy
“GitHub is the new View Source.”
“HTML elements are like the alphabet.”
Jen Simmons on Drupal.org
Jonnie Hallman on Ruby on Rails
“Do things the long, hard, stupid way.“
So-called “Hacker/Garage Culture”
“A really good website lasts two years, and then it’s gone.”
Agile development

Previous Episode

The Busy Creator 9, Evernote for contact management w/guest Bob Stanke

Bob Stanke (@BobStanke) is the Director of Digital Media for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Over the years, he’s become an expert in Evernote, and has created several workflows he uses everyday to manage his bookmarks and other important information. In this episode, he shares with Prescott how he designed a system to use Evernote for contact management, including how that translates to use on mobile devices and how to create searchable data for future use.

Show Notes & Links

Google+ Podcasters Community
Evernote manages every aspect of Bob’s Life
Minnesota Timberwolves
BobStanke.com, media consulting on the side
Bob’s original blog post, Evernote as a Contact Management
Evernote is a blank slate
Bob likes to gather as much info as possible (name, address, birthday, spouse’s name, etc.)
Evernote beats Outlook/Contacts because it’s on all devices. It’s a central location.
Evernote lacked a reminder system, a way to create automated events. It’s now included.
No automation, unfortunately (ex. Thank-you emails)
It’s not a perfect system. Bob would love to develop his own.
Lifehacker
Evernote for sharing between teams/households
Bob’s podcasts: Minnesota Tech News Daily, The Springpad Podcast
Another blog post, How to Manage Web Bookmarks in Evernote
Bob like animated GIFs (who doesn’t?)
Bob uses Google+ for photo management; Google Drive for documents
How I Use Evernote and Google Drive Together

Tools

Evernote, of course
Google+ (+Bob Stanke, +Prescott Perez-Fox, +The Busy Creator)
Outlook
Apple Address Book/Contacts
IFTTT (If This Than That)
Zapier
Basecamp and Podio, project mgmt tools
Samsung Galaxy Note 3
Microsoft Access

Next Episode

The Busy Creator 11 w/guests Michael Sacca & Alex Rolek

The Busy Creator episode 11, w/guests Michael Sacca and Alex Rolek, co-founders of Brandisty.com

Michael Sacca (@MichaelSacca) and Alex Rolek (@AlexRolek) are the co-founders of Brandisty.com, a website that allows companies to put their brand on the web. The duo started out as a small agency doing web design and software development before shifting towards a B2B product. Along with Prescott, they discuss the origins of Brandisty, how they went about getting early feedback, and the day to day scrappiness of running a small web software company.

Show Notes & Links

Brandisty is a small software company, about 5 staffers plus contractors
TinyFactory, the agency from which Brandisty was born
Brandisty’s inception was born from frustration — “can I get a transparent PNG?”
Valio Con, a design conference where Brandisty was introduced as a beta product
The Busy Creator on Brandisty
Delete Blood Cancer on Brandisty
TinyFactory started as an agency
Michael studied the music business
Alex studied finance and real estate development
Entrepreneurs struggle to install productivity habits
Distractions at work are annoying
The difference between marketing and sales
The conference was to validate the idea
“customer service is our marketing”
Say Rhythm rather than Routine.
Alex endorses a lifestyle of moderation