Patrick McNeil

Seeking employment

mcneilp — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:17:12 GMT

I have been freelancing for some time now but have decided to make the move to a full time job for a number of reasons. If your interested please give me a shout. In particular I love working with crafty designers who can provide me with some beautiful layouts to translate to functional sites. I am quite comfortable with CSS and .net and have of course worked with PHP JavaScript and the typical web technologies. I also really love working with platforms such as Drupal, Wordpress, Community Server Magento etc.

Take a peek at my resume and give me a shout if your interested: http://tiny.cc/oLlNU

My New Business Cards

mcneilp — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:39:09 GMT

I have a running collection of every business card I have ever had (for me that is), and my latest ones seemed fun enough to share here. They are my handy work (sans the scripty font etc which was hand tweaked by my friend Ben).

My new personal, two sided, exhaustive contact list:

The next ones are from a new venture I am working on called Bit Miners:

How to have your site ignored

mcneilp — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:00:00 GMT

I know, you don't really care all that much if I take a look at your site. Except that I might feature it on my blog, or in a .net article, or in my upcoming book on web design. So I am sure you don't care to much what I have to say. Ok, so I am feeling a bit frustrated right now, and I have a lot of thoughts that seem obvious, but apparently aren't.

My thoughts below flow from the mountain of sites I sift through. Dozens per day for DMD and now I have a pool amassing for the next book. It brings up some things that make me click the little X faster then you can auto complete your code. So, how can you manage to have your site ignored and not show up on my radar, read on:

Browser resizing

Plain and simple, you resize my browser and you loose. For me this is an unforgivable sin.

Browser resizing's cousin the pop up

I have yet to see a site that really needed dechromed pop up. What in the world are people thinking when they implement this? I do not understand.

Captain lamo stock photos

I hate to be harsh but if your home page has a photo of a smiling woman talking on the phone or other wise cheesy photo; design fail.

Google ads

It cracks me up when I hit a portfolio site or other wise that has banner ads. Now I have a portfolio site, and I think I get a fair amount of traffic due to DMD. And it would take me 10 years to eclipse $100 and get a check. The ads just turn me off.

Make noise

I am like a grumpy old man when it comes to web sites making noise. Keep it quiet will you! Noise makers make shut a site down unless it has a pretty clear purpose for them. Seriously, if I had to rely on your site for background music I would be in sad shape. Have you not been paying attention to the oh so modern world of iPods. Yeah that's right, I can play my own music. Shocking I know.

Repeat entries

Some people seem to think if they keep sending their site it will make it through, even though it is still as ugly as the first day I rejected. Here's a hint, I have a filter button that permanently ignores your url or domain name even though it looks like you can submit it. Like a magic spam filter it doesn't make it through.

Lorem Ipsum

If you send me your site to review I highly recommend you have all the FPO copy replaced. For the life of me I can't figure out why people send me half complete designs.

Skip intro

I guess you didn't get the memo, flash intros are thankfully a thing of the past. If your site includes anything that says "Skip Intro" you are in serious risk of being ignored.

Yeah I am in a feisty mood right now. Sorry if the post is a bit on the negative side. Though I have never really revealed any of my criteria for things...then again I have no formula. So maybe these are really my pet peeves more then anything.

It just seems to me that this stuff is pretty obvious, yet I have to shut down dozens of sites per day that fit these criteria.

Interested in free shamless self promotion?

mcneilp — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:35:00 GMT

If missed out on getting into my first book, you might be happy to know that my second one is in the works and I am currently taking submissions. If you would like to see one of your sites, or a site you built featured please take a minute and send it my way. It is of course free to do.

The deadline is May 31st, so head on over and submit your site before you procrastonate and forget!

Submit your site now >>

How to use inspiration

mcneilp — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:35:50 GMT

One of the things I have been asked countless times over the years is how to use inspiration and showcase sites to come up with a fresh design with out simply copying someone elses design. At its core I have always seen one thing, that is either your a person inclinced to copy designs, a person inclinced to seek as little inspiration as possible from others for fear of copying, or your the type that pulls ideas from many sources into a single fresh new design.

It is this third type of person that Design Meltdown is geared towards. For me there has always been a power in seeing how others have done things. It is through this that I can seek and develop new ideas.

A fantastic blog post about just this topic can be found at the In the Woods blog. It has a fantastic write up on how the process can work.

Amazon sales rank lurker

mcneilp — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:05:00 GMT

Yeah, I must admit I am obsessed with watching my books sales rank on Amazon. I can't resist pointing out my all time high of #684 on amazon.co.uk. The highest I saw it get on amazon.com was around 740. At least I haven't paid for one of the amazon rank watching services, though I wish someone would point me to a free one.

Top Ten Books for Publisher

mcneilp — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:56:00 GMT

I continue to be blown away by how popular my book continues to be. I was looking at the How Bookstore and was delighted to see I am in their top 10 books for 2008. Considering the book hit shelves in October that certainly doesn't seem inconsequential. I guess this explains why they are interested in doing a follow up (more on that soon).

FOWD 2008 in London

mcneilp — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:56:40 GMT

Yeah I know, this post is over a year late...but better late then never they always say. I just figure it makes sense to link to the presentation I made in London at the FOWD conference.

Last day at moose

mcneilp — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Well the big day is finally here; it is my last day at Moosylvania. Many of you might not even know that I was ever even working here. Well for the last year or so I have had the pleasure of helping a print agency jump head first into the interactive world. It has had its up and downs; but in the end it was a positive experience. I have grown out of it and learned a lot about marketing, management, client work, life and myself.

It's amazing the kind of stuff you figure out about the work you do when you have to explain, justify and communicate the many nuances of what you do to people who need to understand it. Now that I will have the time I think I might write a series of posts on the experience.

In the end it was an interesting path to be on for a year, but I must say my free loving (free loading at times) spirit is happy to be embarking on yet another journey into the freelance world. More then anything I think I am looking forward to the much lower stress level working freelance offers.

I actually have a lot of things I plan to do. First is freelance work, so give me a shout if your interested. Second, I am talking to my publisher about a second book (if you weren't aware of the first you can find it here). Finally I will be able to revitalize my personal projects (Design Meltdown, Spam Meltdown etc).

So I bid farewell to my many friends at Moose and say hello to the sun room and two cats, Studly and Ella will be glad to see me again!

SXSW 2009

mcneilp — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 06:44:06 GMT

I have been throughly enjoying SXSW. Luckily I have been staying with a friend (Justin), which is great because I would other wise be throughly bored.

Overall the conference has been fantastic. The biggest complaint I have is with some of the presentations. I knwo it isn't easy giving them, and they take an awful long time to build. But it really seems that some of them just really lack real nuggets of usefulness; stuff you can act on and do. In particular the keynotes almost seem pointless and unrelated to web development. Maybe it is just me though, I hate to be to harsh.

One of the best sessions was titled Being a UX Team of One. Some of the most relevant and useful tid bits came out of this session. In particular some solid ways to concept in sketch form based on the projects needs.

Another fun happening at SXSW for me is that Justin and I are playing with a fun little Twitter project. This will be up shortly and I am sure we will be linking to it.