Fixpert

The Interstate Highway Act in 1956 “paved the way” to our modern highway system as we know it (ha ha). With paved roads running state to state, I imagine that Americans at the time felt that the country had decreased in size — suddenly, a short day trip to another state was feasible.

See, I do a lot of thinking about transportation, American culture, cars, bikes, oil, pollution, obesity, etc. I am a big bike enthusiast, and applaud anyone who has made the extra effort to leave their car in the driveway and hit the road pushing pedals instead. I realize that this is not always possible or reasonable to expect from everyone. Not everything is bikeable, or walkable. And unfortunately, America is not known for having a great mass transit system. I think part of the problem is that this country is physically huge. Have you ever tried to drive across America? I have, it takes friggin’ forever! Like 5 or 6 days, and that’s putting in a solid 8+ hours of driving a day at top (legal) speeds. I’ve also tried biking across America — well technically I biked top to bottom, Maine to Miami — and that takes friggin’ forever too! Three weeks at a break-neck pace of 100 miles a day.

Having taken these trips, I feel like I’m in a good position to comment on the size of this country. It is ginormous, and there’s a lot of nothing in between the coasts. I think it’s beautiful in the middle there, but seriously, there are places where I think you could die if your car broke down because you’re hundreds of miles from humanity.

Back to my point, this country is huge, but being able to travel quickly in cars using interstates made it feel smaller. Here’s the rub: in certain areas of America, the population has become so dense, that cars are no longer effective and it actually takes you longer to get to your destination by car. I was in LA recently (the inspiration for this post) and it took me 1.5 hrs to travel 14 miles. I could have easily biked that distance in less than an hour. When I was working as a bike messenger, I would repeatedly catch back up to the cars that just passed me that were held up at the red light ahead. Cars just don’t fair well in stop and go city traffic. The incredible shrinking country feels like it’s plumping up in size again now that we’re all stuck in traffic. Meanwhile, we’re all plumping up too.

I am officially registered for SXSW Interactive in March. This will be my first time. A company I did Illustration and Interface Design for back in 2001 was a finalist, but I didn’t get sent down there that time. This time I’ll just be wandering around with my new Fixpert shirts. Check me out in the SXSW registrant directory (Sally Carson) and holler at me if you see me wandering around!

I’ve gotten the impression that sure, sure the festival is fun, but it’s all about the after-parties. Is that an invite-only thing, and if so how does Fixpert get an in? Hope to see you all there!

I read blogs, lots of blogs. Great big gobs of blogs. Most of the blogs that I read are written by web designers, about web design. Over the last year or so, I’ve read along as many of these professionals have decided to go solo, breaking out to work for themselves. Their experiences seem to range from many months of planning and preparation to a sudden, flippant move to self-employment. It’s rather inspiring and I suppose reading about their experiences planted a seed in my head that this was one possible direction that I could go in.

I’m currently interviewing for various IA/Interaction/Interface/Experience Design Lead positions (we do have a lot of titles in this industry, don’t we?). But in the meantime, Fixpert’s workload has really bloomed. It’s quite exciting and unexpected, but I’m really enjoying it. I suppose that my version of the aformentioned “going solo” post is that I found myself making a go of freelance work somewhat unexpectedly, and it’s such a nice surprise!

If you count Saturday as a workday — and you easily could in this new-fangled freelance world — today is technically Day 4 of me working for myself. I’m already juggling six different projects that vary widely in terms of their scale and the type of work involved. It’s really fun meeting with my clients, talking about their needs and goals, and learning more about their particular industries.

Here’s what I’ve got on the burners right now:

• Design look/feel for a triathlete e-commerce site, including logo design
• Design and code e-commerce site for a professional illustrator
• Design a logo for a group researching historic African American cemeteries
• Develop a web site devoted to finding a home for the family of a young mother seriously injured in a car accident several years ago
• Design look/feel for a programmer’s blog
• Design a logo for a math tutoring service based out of Florida

I received Jeremy Keith’s DOM Scripting book as a Christmas present this year, and I have finally cracked it open. I have really enjoyed friends of ED books in the past, like Dan Cederholm’s Web Standards Solutions. I’m only about 30 pages in so far, but I can already tell that this is going to be a good read. The language is clear and natural. Jeremy does not appear to be making any assumptions about what I already know. This book is really what I needed to get me started with DOM Scripting and JavaScript — a book written specifically for web designers.