Somethings Gotta Give
There has been much change in my work life over the past few months. Beginning in October 2007 I moved from Senior Designer at MAYA Design to start my own company with a long-time friend and 4 other incredibly talented individuals. Leaving MAYA was a very difficult decision that I reflect on daily but the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of raising investment capital, acquiring and selling properties and the like was something I could not pass up.
Working for a Design company is amazing. A diverse range of projects keeps folks like me who thrive on change and new challenges stimulated and excited. The downfall, if it can be considered as one, is that as a consultant I found myself approaching Design problems from a higher, more conceptual level with minimal development work in the form of prototype development peppered throughout the process. On the surface most might not consider this a drawback and for the most part nor did I but there were times in the 3+ years as a Design consultant where I found myself wanting to follow a project through production to make sure the essence of the idea was not lost or because I felt the need to actually build it.
And so for the last 3.5 months I have found myself on the complete opposite end of the spectrum defining interaction specs, painting all of the interface details, and rendering interfaces in xhtml/CSS/javascript. It has been nice to work at this level for a while as a break from more conceptual design as I haven’t done much Web design and production work at all in recent years. I have enjoyed getting back into the swing of Web design and have been stimulated with the experience of developing a working relationship with folks that have had little or no real experience interacting with a Designer (especially of the MAYA variety).
As for what I have actually been up to, we are building a number of Web sites which are early in development so I have no choice but to be mysterious and assure you there is much happening that I am very excited to share with you in the near future. Welcome 2008.
I’m the same boat you were; I haven’t touched code in almost 3 years (until my personal site redesign recently). There’s a lot to be said for getting to actually build as opposed to conceptualize. There are definitely advantages to both, but I sure have missed practicing what little front-end coding I know.
Good luck with the new business venture. I am sure that everything will turn up roses!
Jared
Thank you Jared. You did a very nice job on your recent redesign. I am sure it was nice to get your hands dirty. Things are accelerating with the company and I will be posting news and updates very shortly as we are launching a site in the upcoming couple of days. Thank you for the positive thoughts.
Jeremy