Field Notes.
Essays, case studies, and observations from the trail. Some are about the work. Some are about the process. Some are about a bad decision we made so you don't have to.
Recent Entries
Trail Report
Bill Segars Just Got the Order of the Palmetto
The Order of the Palmetto is the highest civilian honor the state of South Carolina gives out. Last week, our client Bill Segars was added to the list. We’re writing about it because we’re genuinely proud, and because the whole thing is the kind of story that reminds us why we do this job in the first place.
Design
The Web Was Better In 2001. Fight Me.
We admit it, headline is a little hot. We’re not going to actually argue that the modern web is a disaster. But we started doing this in 2003, which means we remember the tail end of what the web was like before everything got consolidated and templated and optimized to within an inch of its life. And we miss some of it.
DevOps
What Stewardship Actually Looks Like Month To Month
Most agencies call it a “maintenance retainer.” Some call it “monitoring.” A few of the fancier ones call it “digital operations.” We call it stewardship, which started as a brand decision and ended up being an accurate description of what the work actually is. Here’s exactly what we do, month by month.
Process
Rebuilding a Small Shop From Scratch
She said her first sentence on the intro call: “I know I need a new website, I just don’t know what to do about it.” We hear this often. What it usually means is that the current site has drifted a long way from what the business has become. Here’s how we figured out what the real project was.
Process
Stop Calling It A “Redesign.”
The word poisons the project before it starts. In twenty-plus years of doing this, we have never once worked on a project where the real problem was that the site was ugly. Here’s what we call it instead, and why that one word change makes everything else easier.
Off-Topic
The Time We Ended Up In An Airboat With An Alligator Named Kevin
We booked the airboat tour on Yelp without reading too carefully. The guide was named Darrell. The alligator was named Kevin. Nobody almost died, but we did come back with a story. This one is not going to teach you anything about web design, but it might convince you to book the sketchy tour next time.
"you return from a hike as a slightly different person than the one who started it."
trail wisdom
Process
Notes From the Denali Trip That Made Us Rethink Our Process
The mountain is only visible about thirty percent of the time. We got lucky and saw the summit for about eight minutes at four in the morning on day two, before the clouds rolled back in. We did not see it again for the rest of the trip. I’ve been thinking about that trip for months.
Process
The Discovery Phase Is Not Optional
We used to think discovery was a luxury. A thing you did on big projects. A line item you could trim when the budget got tight. Then we’d figure it out as we went, and it would go badly. Every time we’ve skipped it, we’ve paid for it. Every time we’ve insisted on it, the client thanked us later.
Case Studies
How We Cut Load Time in Half On a Content-Heavy Site
The site was slow. Everyone knew it. Here’s what we changed, in order, and what actually moved the needle. (Spoiler: 90% of the win came from one thing, and it’s not what most people guess.)