Who
Nick Finck is likely most known for his online magazine, Digital Web Magazine. He also has a personal site and is part of Blue Flavor a co-operative company with many other well known web designers and developers.
1. Can you briefly tell us a little about yourself?
Well, I have been working in the Web for about 13 or so years now. I started out doing markup like everyone else (CSS didn’t exist back then) though I was working in Pico and reviewing the work in Lynx (this was pre-graphical web era). My primary skills are now focused around the user experience including things like usability, information architecture, interaction design, and so forth.
2. How long have you been 100% self-employed?
Well, not technically no. I am a co-partner and owner of Blue Flavor along with two other business partners; Brian Fling and D. Keith Robinson. I used to be a self-employed freelancer doing web design, front end web development, IA and usability prior to founding Blue Flavor.
3. What did you do before you took the leap to full-time freelance?
Well, I did a lot of moonlighting to see how I liked working with clients and being responsible for all the business things that go into freelancing (budget management, writing contracts, doing sales and business development, dealing with getting a business license and legal things, taxes, etc).
4. Was it an easy transition and why?
No specifically. It’s pretty risky and there was always that fear that the work or more the paycheck wouldn’t be there from one month to the next. You had to always work hard to make sure you had a steady flow of client work coming in and thus a steady cash flow. Working as a partner at Blue Flavor is quite different especially with two other partners to answer to. There are also a lot of different things that that need to be addressed, employees and human resources, project and resource management, public relations and marketing, etc.
5. Can you briefly walk us through a typical work day for you?
Well, I can tell you, but it won’t be brief…
I wake up, check my email, respond to any major things that need immediate response, get ready and head to work. I live closer than most anyone, so work is just a few blocks walk. I used to get in pretty early, before anyone else but now we have some hard working employees coming in before me or any of the other partners get in the door.
The day typically starts with checking the rest of my email and then shortly there after either a meeting with the principals or a status meeting with everyone which occur twice a week. After that I plan out my day as far as what client work needs to be done and what the priority is (yes, even as a partner in a 8 person company you still need to do client work, which not that uncommon these days). Then there is all of the administrative things like HR issues, organizing events, sponsoring events, reconnecting with new business leads, talking to external partners, responding to interviews like this one and such. All that has to be scheduled around the client work because its all stuff that still needs to get done at the end of the day. Once my schedule is planned its often a lot of heads down time punctuated by the occasional stroll in meeting or project lead that wants to check in to see how things are going.
We break for lunch and either a group of us will head out to a sit down restaurant or bring in back to the office. We have this huge long table that fits 10 people that we all sit down at. It’s pretty communal here when it comes to lunch time, we all sit around and chat about the latest happenings. That’s quite a departure from most companies I have worked for. Only a few places I worked at actually had employees eating lunch together and all chatting about anything and everything. It’s a nice departure from the client and business work. After lunch we typically do some sort of group activity. We’ve had spurts of different things ranging from Halo 2 games, Guitar Hero, Wii Tennis, and now the latest trend seems to be playing Call of Duty 2. Our office manager is a pretty quick aim on the sniper riffle, don’t mess with her.
After lunch it’s back to work, sometimes we’ll have a client come into the office for a meeting so that can take up a good part of the afternoon there, but typically my afternoon is spent finishing up the things on my to-do list. Some things I try to ship off before end of day client time, which could mean 2 PM pacific time if the client is on the east coast. Other things I give myself a next day deadline so that I have a night to sit and think about and come back the next morning with fresh eyes. If the music hasn’t been turned on in the AM (mostly KXP) then Keith will often kick it on in the afternoon. Some good music goes a long way to keeping your work pace up.
The end of the day is different for everyone. Depending on what needs to get done and when the deadline is, and also when you came in the morning you may see people heading home around 4 PM or staying as late at 6 PM. My schedule varies enough that I am either the first or last person to lock up shop. I’ll check my email again when I get home and sometimes there will be issues that come up in the evening that need to be responded to but for the most part, the evening is personal time. We use Jabber so you can see who is online and when in the event that they are working a late night from home, etc. We try to stay in close contact with everyone as much as possible and this helps quite a bit. During the day we sometimes have Campfire loaded up for Garrett who works out of NYC and formerly for Jeff who just moved from Kansas to Seattle (we had to buy some more chairs for our super long table).
6. In a typical week, how many hours do you work on the following:
- Client Work: About 20 to 30 hours.
- Personal Projects: Well, if you count Digital Web Magazine, 10 hours or so.
- Blogging: Maybe 5 hours in the past, now more like 1 hour.
- RSS reading: 1 hour if that.. I don’t really have time to read feeds anymore.
- Learning: Every hour, all the time, constantly learning new things.
- Other (describe)?: Well, there’s business development, only spend maybe 1 to 2 hours a week on this, Brian is our main business development and sales guy. HR, which is something of a new role for me, I spend maybe 5 hours a week. Events, depending on what we have coming up on the calendar could be anywhere from none to 10 hours a week.
7. For you, what do you think is the best way to attract new clients?
Be honest and transparent, charge what it costs, do good work, talk about your business, be clear about what it is you do, don’t get caught up in hype, buzzwords, or the other BS that circulates. If you do these things you’ll have to spend less time getting new work as work will come to you because of your reputation.
8. If you had to list several industry ‘mentors’ or ‘heroes’ who would they be?
I only consider two people my mentors; Molly Holzschlag and Jeffrey Zeldman. These are not people I describe as mentors because they are experts at what they do, they are my mentors because they literally taught me a lot of what I know today. Jeffrey for the period that I worked on A List Apart with him… I got my markup and CSS chops from him. Molly for believing in me from the beginning. She found me out of the woodwork, pulled me in to the first web conference I ever attended and showed me value in my craft, my peers, and the work I had done.
9. What is the biggest blunder you see other web design companies do?
There are several, not just one big one. Inflating their rates, charging for time that was never really used, being a black box, not really getting the services they offer from the CEO down to the receptionist… I could go on and on, but basically, the way I would summarize these things up is simply as not being forward thinking. I know a lot of businesses don’t see things changing, but they are, ever so slowly and slightly. If you take a look around we are constantly in a state of change and those who don’t adopt will find they need to reinvent themselves every so many years just to keep pace. You see a lot of larger companies do this, it’s because they can’t be dynamic and agile like smaller companies are. This is another reason why we don’t intend to grow Blue Flavor into a massively large powerhouse agency. That era is dead.
10. What is the most under utilized web element/technology in your opinion?
Well, I don’t really think in terms of technology as much as I think in terms of technique. Lately I have been feeling that context is often overlooked. A lot of people still feel that the web is something you use at the home office on your desktop. The reality is that professionals of all types access the web through a series of devices in the most remote and interestering enviorments you could imagine: Firefighters accessing HAZMAT information, doctors accessing medical records in the hospital, real estate agents looking up listings, financial professionals tracking stocks and interest rates, etc. Sometimes the typical website is not what these users need, sometimes you need to design for context and I don’t see a whole lot of web professionals really doing that.
11. On the flip side, what is the most over used web element/technology in your opinion?
Over used? Well I think we have grown beyond the overly generous use of Flash for things like the entire user interface, or worse, a splash page video. I could say bad content management systems (CMSs). A lot of businesses are taking their CMS and trying to shoehorn it into doing things it was never intended. Sometimes this can work out in your favor if the CMS is flexible enough, but a lot of of the time it can end up in a huge disaster that will have to be rebuilt from scratch anyway at some point. There are some really nasty CMSs out there, but mostly it’s nasty because the business bought into a specific CMS that isn’t the right fit for their needs. Every site has different needs and CMS try to package software that is suppose to work for the masses, well.. you can’t get there without some serious customization and modifications. THe best advice I can give when it comes to CMSs is to keep it as simple as possible, more often than not it’s the extra features you won’t use in a CMS that get in the way and destroy the whole reason of having a CMS in the first place: to make it easier for everyone to update the information on your website.
12. Rapid-Fire Recommendations (URL and optional comment):
- Must read blog (other than yours): Haha, darn, can’t plug my own sites. Hmm.. must read blog… that’s tough, I don’t really feel like I know any blogs that are absolute must reads. It all depends on the context, most of the time I just browse and search, no specific list of blogs that I visit. I do have my co-worker’s blogs that I try to check out from time to time just to see what’s going on with them but not too much else on a regular basis.. that is, aside from the Digital Web Magazine blog.
- Must visit website: You didn’t say other than my own… so I would have to say Digital Web Magazine and Blue Flavor.
Ok, all personal promotion aside, I do like to check out the other sister publications out there like Boxes and Arrows, A List Apart, Graphic Define, Speak Up, UXmatters, etc.
- Unusual site you visit daily: Daily? Hmm.. I don’t have a “unusual” site I visit daily. My daily sites are just like everyone else’s; Flickr, Newsvine, Twitter, Upcoming, and ya, I suppose Leaflets is probably a little bit unusual for some people.
- Most inspirational site for you: Well, maybe not on a design level but on an interaction design and information architecture level Epicurious.com has inspired me on a few recent projects. I really like their multi-faceted navigation filters when you go into the browse recipes section. Very well done. I find inspiration in all things, not just design. This is but one example of that.
- Best site you’ve seen lately: I stumbled across Mark Wieman’s site not to long ago. I really like how he shows off his portfolio and uses motion and color. Very clean design, yet very well organized site structure… the navigation is not excessive or over-done, it’s actually simplified. The three column approch on some pages is very well executed. The only thing I think is missing is a photo of Mark himself!
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?
You mean aside from what I have already said? hehe, well the best I advice I can give you may sound very textbook to you, but honestly.. looking back.. I don’t think I could have been told this enough; make as many mistakes as you can as early as possible. Seriously, do the wrong thing… early and first… because it’s a lot easier to make mistakes when you are a new business and small with tiny clients and projects than it is when you are even a medium sized business with bigger clients and employees… even worse, when you are a large company with a lot of employees or have big named clients, etc.
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