This week’s installment of Oh Great Yet Another Portfolio That’s Better Than Mine is brought to you by Matt Lehman, a ridiculously talented designer, illustrator, art director friend from Nashville. He’s spent the last three years making CMT/MTV Networks look good fulltime, and he’s open for other business.

Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.
—T.H. White, The Once and Future King

Agree or disagree?

Some time ago, talking to some people, they wanted a bonus if the Lakers made the playoffs. I said, “Bonus? If we don’t make the playoffs, you don’t work here anymore.”
—L.A. Lakers owner Jerry Buss

Define the win, then hold your team accountable for not meeting the expectations. If they go above and beyond, it’s bonus time. But you don’t get bonuses for doing your job.

*This post has nothing to do with basketball.

My team currently has two openings, a Web Developer and Junior Designer, and we just hired a Project Manager. I’ve been spending ~15% of my workdays lately sorting through portfolios, reading and sending emails, and following up with potential applicants. I think most people in Director/Principle/HR-type roles are too busy to explain why an applicant gets rejected, but I want to throw some ideas out there that I think might help you if you’re a design/developer on the job hunt.

1. Show Lots of Work…
Actual, Honest-To-God, well-thought-out, proof-that-you-can-problem-solve WORK. There are 12 year olds with a copy of Photoshop who can set some cool type on an image. Your grandma could learn basic HTML/CSS (hyperbole, maybe—but also probably true). Where’s the proof that you can turn complex thinking into seemingly simple solutions? Proof that you can take a client’s needs and translate them into real work?

If you’re a designer, show a variety of design solutions (include sketches and failed attempts, too—process is important). If you’re a developer, show live code examples (not just “I worked on this website” statements). If you don’t have real clients yet, try your hand at unsolicited redesigns. Just get out there, find problems and solve them. Do it on your own time and show a potential employer/client that A) you can hustle and B) you’re capable of solving problems for them.

2. …in an Easy-To-Browse Portfolio*…
I had a wonderful client/friend (amazing combo if you can make it happen) who once told me he typically browsed through dozens of portfolios looking for the right talent for new projects. “Don’t make me click a lot,” he’d say, “just show me big pictures of great work.” Word to the wise from a guy who hires talent for huge clients.

*Bonus points if I can look at your portfolio on my phone. I’m not a super-busy guy, but I’m also not always at my desk in front of a 30″ monitor. Mobile is the future of how we interact with the internet—if you aren’t thinking about it now, you’ve got catching up to do.

3. …with A Stellar Cover Letter
Make me look twice. Being a vital part of a team is about more than a skillset, so your résumé is only the price of entry. Who you are determines whether you get to stick around for coffee. Is there a person behind the portfolio? How is that person different from rest of the stack of emails I’m getting? Standouts get hired, not résumés—have a voice. Articulate why you’re different.

4. Sweat the Details
Proofread your damn résumé. Make sure your website works. Spell the company’s name right. The care you put into the details of presenting yourself to a potential employer/client is a good measure of the care you will put into the work you do for that employer/client.

I once got a cover letter that led with, “My objective is to obtain a Junior Designer position at [local advertising agency's name].” Since I received this letter and résumé for a job opening on my team, I replied, “I wish you luck in your objective to obtain a Junior Designer position at [local advertising agency's name].” Details matter, always.

5. Follow the Instructions
Be as creative as you want to be, but make sure you follow the instructions in the job posting while you’re doing it. See #4.

6. Be Passionate
Please love what you do. If you’re not energized and excited about the job you’re pursuing, stop, reassess and pursue something else. In a typical week, you’re going to spend 35–45 hours a week with your coworkers—no one wants to work with passionless people. Find something you love to do and run after it.

Homework
Read Kevin Fanning’s Let’s All Find Awesome Jobs. It’s full of great, practical advice.

I believe that the BP oil spill could have even bigger ramifications on our country than we already realize.

If this disaster exits the public consciousess without there being a 1:1 ratio of fault to accountability, then we as a nation will have demonstrated to our government (and the corporations whose interests they protect) that there is nothing we won’t tolerate—that under any circumstances of wrongdoing, even one without moral or religious debate, we can be manipulated and made to forget. And if we allow that precedent to be set, there will be no turning back. They will know something no democratic government ever should: that no matter the circumstances, they can always fall back on the people losing interest if they can be distracted long enough.

—John Mayer

Think what you will about the source, but this is some apt social commentary.

Posting ’round these parts has been sparse of late, as my day job has kept me busy. Our “web team” is a team of two, and in addition to other duties, myself and Mr. Spooner have been todo-list-ing our way through a complete top-to-bottom overhaul of the NewSpring Church website for the better part of the last 10 months. The previous version of the site was launched two years ago, and served us well for that season, but I’m turbo-excited about the new site’s potential.

With Spooner’s skillful bending of ExpressionEngine to our will, we added a Stories section to the site to take advantage of the exceptional content a rather large church makes possible. Taking visual cues from some talented people exploring editorial design on the web (mainly The Bold Italic, Laura Miner‘s Pictory, and Jason Santa Maria) we developed templating system that enables fairly quick turn-around (2–3 hours for design, typically less than an hour for coding/publishing) on new stories without sacrificing unique visuals and layouts. For example: Zac’s story, Kacie’s story, and Neicy’s story are all from the same “visual family,” but unique members nonetheless.

Some of the changes were big. We retooled the sermon series pages to give more flexibility on bringing the series branding to life in a bigger way—page designs like Practical Atheist and Identity Theft weren’t possible on the previous iteration of the site. I look forward to exploring and designing for that canvas in the future. We also made sections like Watch & Listen much more about search and discovery, and improved general site search as well.

Some of the redesign process was more about small improvements to existing pages and userflows. Previous pages on the old site had way too much visual prominence, when they only served as a sort of pass-through or filtering page. For example, Ministries doesn’t need a huge visual of people “doing stuff”—I likely just want information about a certain Ministry and I want to get to it quickly. We don’t make a big deal out of singling out individual campuses, as we tend to stick with church-wide events, so we combined all the location and service time information onto one page. Anywhere we could simplify, we tried to. And the places where we felt like visuals could make a more appropriate, succinct impact, we made flexible.

There is still much to do. A website, at least a good one, is never finished, only launched.

But man it feels good to launch it.

via Stuff No One Told Me

People used to mock my theory that Disney romances are as detrimental to future relationships as pornography. But I believe it now more than ever.

This week’s installment of Oh Great Yet Another Portfolio That’s Better Than Mine is brought to you by Angus Macpherson, a third year graphic design student at Leeds College of Art. Top-notch typographic and print layout work, as well as photos—and not just “for a student.” The sky’s the limit for talent like this.

I’ve only asked for your opinion about the way I do things here once, in regards to blog advertising. I think this is a similar case, because we’re talking about whose voice gets heard, and how many voices are in the mix. So…

There’s been much hoopla discussion about blog comments around the corners of the internet I frequent—most recently, the aforelinked Daring Fireball article, Derek Powazek’s thoughtful response and a further clarification from DF. Both articles make some excellent points about why their respective authors choose to go commentless.

I’ve been working on and off on a redesign of this site/blog for a year now, a time period during which I’ve increasingly been building side project sites in Tumblr (to wit, Blankenship à Go-Go, Blankenotes, Haiku Pickup Lines, Prom Night Fist Fight, and soon Notes to Self). Tumblr’s quick, easy, and has some measure of built-in community for sharing/liking/aggregating that I dig. My initial reluctance to use Tumblr was its lack of native comments, but I’ve come to embrace that constraint. Certain types of content just don’t need comments.

I’m not convinced I want to use Tumblr for this blog. There are aspects of the forthcoming redesign, specifically the ability to post work and play projects with ease, that need a full content management system like ExpressionEngine. But the remaining question is one of comments.

Generally speaking, I’ve always appreciated the comments here. When I started blogging in ’04, it was a place for my circle of friends to interact and goof off. Over time, people I didn’t know began reading, participating, and commenting. 99% of the time, the comments are civil, intelligent, and engaging. Against all internet odds, it seems like we’ve built a bit of a community, however loosely or occasionally it manifests itself in a single comment thread.

But is it necessary? Would you miss it? I don’t write with the thought or expectation (well, except in this case, where I’m soliciting your opinions) of comments, so their absence wouldn’t change my writing habits, voice or content. But it would still be a big shift, and I’m curious to know what you think about the possibility.

If your mission is to quit, there’s no better time than right now.
—Scott, Spartan

There is never a more convenient season. Get it done, or let it die.