Last week we asked other Maine Web designers to Twitter some words of advice for our intern, Jordan Warren. What we got was good advice for any Web designer at any level. A sampling:

Wendy Clark – @wending (Senior Web Designer at MaineToday) – “Occasionally leave the computer for your education and inspiration. Visit the PMA or local galleries once a month.”

Tim Shackleford – @fiveleafdesign – “Always be learning, test early and often, and surround yourself with people smarter than you. You’ll learn alot.”

Dan St. Peter – @danstpeter – “Listen to and learn from the experts you meet. Study http://www.smashingmagazine.com and other great online resources.”

Maggi Blue – @magpiecreative – “Don’t over think it…it only gets you in trouble.” (Don’t overthink, Jordan, but please do think.)

Ellen Kanner – @ellenkanner (Kanner Kreative) – “Firebug plugin for FireFox. period.” (We got her squared away with that on day one, Ellen!)

Calvin Gilbert – @calvingilbert – “Create libraries of frequently used code snippets and site templates… and listen to Rob.” (Listen to Rob? Smart man, that Calvin.)

You can find all these “tweets of advice” on Twitter, tagged as #4Jordan. Thanks to the folks above for taking the time to share insights based on their experiences.

So what advice do you have for Jordan? If you’re a Web designer here in Maine, we’d love a quick comment. No matter how insignificant you think it might be, it’s a gold mine of knowledge for her. Help her get better, faster.

She’d love to hear from you.

Coincidentally, I got my hair trimmed the day before the fire. Talk about cutting it close (pun intended).

The day after the fire, Wanda called me and asked me to tell her the date of my next cut (it was Feb. 6, this past Friday). Her appointment calendar had gone up in smoke along with everything else in the fire, and she (and all the other stylists) had lost all their records.

I solved her problem by telling her about Google Calendar (take a tour). With “gCal”, keeping appointments up-to-date is a snap, and since they’re online (out there ‘on the cloud’, as it were) they’re safe from nuclear attack as well as fire (that was the original idea behind the Internet, you’ll recall).

Google Calendar lets you easily reset appointments without crossing things out or smudging erasures, as with a physical datebook. You can do things a datebook made out of dead trees can’t, like email an appointment confirmation or automatically send a reminder by email or text message the day before.

A Google Calendar for a business like a salon can be kept private, and if there are multiple stylists involved, each can have her own schedule that’s color-coded.

When I got my ears lowered again this Friday I followed up with Wanda (Top Cuts is temporarily sharing space with Studio 88, another Yarmouth salon) and she likes the idea. First thing’s first, though – they need to get a computer and wireless Internet access before they can put Google Calendar to work. Stay tuned…

Nothing is going to come easy for Portland’s digital creatives in 2009. Every day will have to count. Here are my suggestions (resolutions, if you will) for making it in the coming year:

Keep your overhead low – this is not the time to fritter away your cash flow on things you don’t need. Daily $3 lattes are out (I know, this will be hard) and learn to love rice and beans – you’ll be glad you did (and you’ll be healthy).

Offer something of value - to get noticed you have to provide something worthy of consideration. Seems simple enough, but remember, people have to understand the value of the service you’re offering them. It has to be crystal clear.

Be a Problem Solver – Find a need and fulfill it. Be relevant. In 2009, don’t do something “just because”. Those who succeed will find ways to make themselves useful to clients.

Refine your elevator pitch – who you are and what you do – and how that’s better – should roll right off your tongue, in two sentences or less. And it should strike a chord.

Build up your base – The best place to look for business in 2009 is towards your existing clients. You understand their needs, and they trust you. Offer useful suggestions to help them get through a tough year, and they’ll help you.

Keep it real – Sock puppets didn’t cut it in 2000 (we realized there’s no “New Economy” – just an Economy), and idle Twittering won’t get the job done nearly a decade later. Provide a real, sustainable service. Keep the buzzwords out of your lexicon; they are a smokescreen used by those who don’t know what they are talking about.

Ride the wave – On the other hand, find out all you can about the latest trends (we’re back to Twitter here) and try to understand how your business, and your clients, can benefit from them. In the last few years we’ve seen a succession of new digital media: blogs, online video and social networks. Prediction for 2009: keep an eye on Google’s Android open source operating system for mobile devices.

Challenge conventional wisdom – If most people are zigging, and you see that zagging makes more sense – do it! Don’t be afraid to be controversial and talk it to a different perspective, if you believe strongly. If you’re right, people will eventually come around, and by then you’ll own the idea.

Be in it for the long haul – Have a plan and work your plan, day in and day out. Be consistent. Suit up to play ball every day. There are no overnight success stories – only tales of hard work and lots of midnight oil.

Be undeniably good – This is Steve Martin’s advice to anyone who wants to make it in any field. Be so good you can’t be ignored. That takes hard work.

It was a bit challenging to prepare this presentation because:

1. I hadn’t put together a 2-hour presentation on the subject before
2. I didn’t know going in how much participants knew about CSS, so I covered a lot of ground, from the basics to some advanced sorcery
3. My partner in crime, Jen Ecker, (a.k.a. Dr. JEcker), had to bow out at the last minute due to a stomach bug, leaving me to do the whole 2-hour spiel (Jen sends her regrets and I’m glad to report she’s feeling much better today, though she remains disappointed that she missed out)

Fortunately, on the subject of Web design, I’m usually not at a loss for words.

Here’s the main point. Using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a better, more efficient way to design Web sites. It’s a lingua franca for the Web, along with that other 4-letter “word”, HTML.

CSS has “that same great taste, but it’s less filling“, meaning, you can make great looking sites w/a fraction of the markup. That leads to all kinds of benefits:

1. More Flexible Design
2. More sophisticated Design
3. Easier, quicker maintenance
4. Greater Accessibiilty
5. Better search engine ranking
6. Lower costs for bandwidth, server storage and redesigns

Jen and I have put up a CSS Quick Reference Guide we’re calling CSS 101. It’s here:
http://css.pemaquid.com/101/

Here is a list of some of the other resources we dug up for you. Use them in good health!

Online Resources

• A List Apart
• W3C – CSS
• W3 Schools – CSS Reference/Tutorials
• Position Is Everything
• CSS Zen Garden
• CSS Beauty
• Smashing Magazine (random article)

Books

• Bulletproof Web Design
• More Eric Meyer on CSS
• CSS Web Site Design
• Transcending CSS

Tools

• Firebug
• Web Developer Toolbar
• Colorzilla
• Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

Gurus

• Dan Cederholm – www.simplebits.com
• Andy Clarke – www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk
• Eric Meyer – www.meyerweb.com
• Dave Shea – www.mezzoblue.com

It’s the easiest way to sketch out your design thoughts visually. It’s faster than using a whiteboard, and it’s much easier to sketch out ajax or design interactions with Clients – especially those who aren’t particularly Web-savvy – than it is to try to explain it to them verbally.

The other day I had a problem – a big problem. My Photoshop locked up and wouldn’t run. It’s an old copy that runs on the Windows side of my Mac through Parallels.

Why am I running my Photoshop on Windows?? That’s a long story in and of itself and for another day.

I tried reinstalling. No luck. I figured maybe it was finally time to invest in CS3.

Before I pulled the trigger our Creative Services Coordinator, Sarah Hines, and I tried one last thing, something we occassionally do when we run into a programming conundrum: we Googled the arcane error message.

After sampling three suggested solutions Photoshop was back up and running. Amazing! On the other hand, I shouldn’t be too surprised.

The moral of the story? If you’re hamstrung by a problem, whether it’s a design issue or even a home repair issue, you might do well to at least give Google a shot.