One year ago, on September 6th, 2006, I made a life changing decision to leave the doldroms of the 9 to 5 and start my own design firm with my fiancée. The decision was not an easy one to make. Leaving the security of steady pay and working for a well established design firm was not to be taken lightly, but it was time to move on.
The decision was not taken lightly, by Lauren or I, but it was made at the spur of the moment. The conversation was like this:
“We should start a web design firm.”
“Okay, let’s start a web design firm.”
Two days later we found ourselves at city hall, with a rough business plan and a check. Oh, and yes, right after “Okay, let’s start a design firm,” we bounced a few name ideas back and forth (precisely 2), chose the one that was the most difficult to say and then hammered out a logo. Designing the website took a little bit longer. Two strong headed designers battling it out to determine what the face of their company should look like, is a pretty thing. But a learning experience it was, and the it kind of paved the way for us, moving forward.
Two weeks ago, we adopted a rescue dog from Big Dog Rescue (hence the extended interlude since my last post). It’s been several years since I had my last dog and I am positive that being a web developer can make you a better dog owner.
Meet Squiggy
A better web developer
How’s that, you ask? Well, let me put it this way. If you practice standards as a web designer and if you know how to organize and manage projects, then you have what it takes to care for and train a dog. If anything, dogs need consistency. Consistency in practice, makes for a better web developer. So, we consider Squiggy the newest member of Object Adjective, because he is bound to teach us, as well, how to be better web developers (and probably better designers).
So, to 1 year, close to 20 completed projects and surviving thriving in a live work environment for 365 days: CHEERS! (and lets hope we can take a vacation)
And a very BIG congratulations to Drew McLellan (whose blog All in the <head> I’ve been reading for forever) for making the break from Yahoo and moving on to bigger and better things. Cheers to you too.
