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Who

Andy Rutledge of Design View grabs the third interview spot by Focus Minded for Freelancer Friday. He is most known to me with is Redux posts (For those who don’t know what this is, Andy takes well known sites, and ‘mocks’ them the way they ’should’ be). I have long been a subscriber to his blog and suggest you do the same.

Background

Andy doesn’t know this, but he has made me a hero. One of my friends admires Andy because of the quality information provided on his website and said that if I were able to land Andy for an interview it would elevate me to ‘hero’ status. So thanks Andy!

1. Can you briefly tell us a little about yourself?

I’m a designer and information architect from Texas, married to a terrific girl and I have a cool son in grade school. I started as a freelancer for a brief period and then first went to work for a design agency in 2004. I’ve been independent for just a few months. As for geekery, I’m a bonsai artist and piano composer hobbyist. I guess you could say that I dabble in all things creative.

2. How long have you been 100% self-employed?

Yes, I’ve been independent of any employer for just a few months now, having started a design consultancy, Unit Interactive, with a colleague of mine. This has been since April of 2007. Though we’re just starting out, we’re fully tasked for the foreseeable future; thankfully, we’ve been blessed with plenty of clients wanting to work with us.

3. What did you do before you took the leap to full-time freelance?

For the last three years I was creative director at a medium-sized interactive agency in Dallas. It was terrific experience and it gave me a clear view of what is good and bad in running an agency, client relationships, project management, and managing potential projects.

4. Was it an easy transition and why?

For me, yes. I started out as a freelancer and the experienced gained while working with the agency prepared me for a more professional approach to going back toward being an independent creative professional. It was really an ideal progression, I think.

5. Can you briefly walk us through a typical work day for you?

Well, I’m sort of weird in that I start my workday pretty early. Up at 5a.m., I’m at the office by 6a.m., answer emails, spend up to an hour going to my daily website haunts to stay current and find worthwhile articles of interest to my readers (for my personal site, Design View), then the real workday starts at around 7a.m. or so.

On any given day, I’m writing bids, in meetings with clients, working on design projects or front-end development, etc… Sometimes it’s just one of those, sometimes all of them on the same day. The variety is nice. Of course we spend time working on Unit, too. The company requires attention and that might be business development, personal projects, or it might be as mundane as keeping books. Luckily, we’ve not found any part of our work to be too tiresome or boring to let anything languish.

6. In a typical week, how many hours do you work on the following:

• Client Work: 25
• Personal Projects: 4
• Blogging: 2
• RSS reading: 5
• Learning: 6
• Other (describe)?: (10 hours) Business maintenance, project bids/discussions, meetings.
• Of course there’s PLAYING!: (2 - 3 hours?) We can’t get through the work week without at least a couple of play sessions spontaneously breaking out. We’re athletes and we have to keep our bodies in motion. We play badminton, catch, magnet darts, lots of made-up-on-the-spot games, etc… Play is the lubricant that keeps all the wheels turning true and keeps our minds from becoming mush.

7. For you, what do you think is the best way to attract new clients?

For me, I’d say demonstrations of work and thinking. Nearly all of our work comes from word of mouth or from people who see our portfolios and articles. In my case, though I don’t approach writing with this in mind, potential clients tend to be attracted to the ideas I touch on in my articles. As my writing largely focuses on the relationship between design, business, and professionalism, many potential clients appreciate the concepts expressed. Though I write mostly to spark thinking among the design community, the ideas reach beyond our community.

But I say that we mustn’t discount repeat business in favor of attracting new clients! If you do good work, your clients should want to come back to you with more work. That’s one of the ways that we’ve been successful at Unit; several of our clients like to keep new projects going on with us. That’s a great way to develop some great relationships and better serve clients’ needs. “One and done” is sometimes a bad thing.

8. If you had to list several industry ‘mentors’ or ‘heroes’ who would they be?

I’ve not had the chance to work with anyone in our industry who directly mentored me (as I’m essentially self-taught), but our online community is set up such that we can all benefit from the wisdom of exceptional pros in our field. I have learned much from the words and have greatly admired the work of those who are likely the usual suspects of Web design: Jeffrey Zeldman, Cameron Moll, Khoi Vinh, Keith Robinson, Mark Boulton, Dan Cederholm, and others, too many to list.

You might laugh, but my bonsai teacher, Nick Lenz, and high school band director, Gerald Stuart, have probably been my most valuable mentors for Web design. The fundamentals and other lessons they offered laid the foundation for a comprehensive understanding of creative communication. Theirs was probably the most important influence in my life as a creative professional.

9. What is the biggest blunder you see other web design companies do?

Get between the client and the designer. I have never understood how one can expect a designer to do a credible job and fulfill his responsibilities to the client when he’s not allowed to directly work with the client. Things like creative briefs are useful, but they’re ill-used when they’re a substitute for direct contact. A designer has to look the client in the eye.

10. What is the most under utilized web element/technology in your opinion?

I really have no valuable opinion on this. I’m not a big fan of technology and don’t really care about technological toys or widgets. Simple works just fine.

11. On the flip side, what is the most over used web element/technology in your opinion?

Again, no real opinion on this, but it might be a toss-up between AJAX-like mechanisms and RSS (full text) readers. Just about anything can be overused, and generally is by someone at some time.

12. Rapid-Fire Recommendations (URL and optional comment):

• Must read blog (other than yours): The Adaptive Path blog
• Must visit website: Freelance Switch
• Unusual site you visit daily: Adrants. Not really unusual, but interesting takes on some things.
• Most inspirational site for you: Swiss Miss. She finds really cool stuff
• Best site you’ve seen lately: The redesigned CNN.com

13. If there was one bit of advice would you have for those interested in creating or growing their web design business, what would it be?

Always work like a pro – if you’re going to be a professional, act like one in every facet of the business that impacts clients. Deadlines, contracts, documents, client interactions, honesty, ethics… everything comes back to you and it all affects your clients’ fortunes. They count on you so don’t let them down even once.

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