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At the time, I was working with PixelMill and writing a lot of customer support articles for PixelMill’s template products. My boss contacted SitePoint and found out that they were looking for articles about the design side of web design, including how-to articles about using graphics software.
I wrote a few articles for SitePoint, then joined on for a stint as their design blogger. I still contribute articles every now and then.

Christopher: How did you get into using Photoshop, and have you Always been computer-based, or did you start down the artist route?

I’ve always enjoyed drawing, calligraphy, and other forms of creative art, and my parents definitely encouraged my interests by allowing me to take art electives in junior high and high school and sending me to occasional summer art classes. My two older sisters (10 and 11 years older than me) were themselves artistic and also encouraged me by giving me cool art supplies on my birthday! My oldest sister was a graphic designer. I’d often stay with her and her husband during the summers and would inevitably play with the software on her computer, including Illustrator. I didn’t start using Photoshop, however, until my first encounter with web design during a summer internship the summer after my junior year, and basically taught myself how to make graphics for web pages.

Welshstew: How did you come up with your hourly rate?

I just picked a nice round number.

Okay - that’s what I did the first time around. I was a little more thoughtful when I raised my rates three years later. I looked around at other people’s rates who seemed to have similar skill levels as me. I also looked at Freelance Switch’s survey report, which included average incomes of freelance web designers and developers (http://freelanceswitch.com/general/3700-freelancers-surveyed-the-results-ar
e-here/) and read a few articles online about “how to set an hourly rate.” I looked at my own financial needs and calculated how many hours a week I’d need to work at different rates in order to survive. Finally, I ran my ideas for new rates past some of my trusted clients, specifically those who had worked with many other designers, to see if they were realistic and reasonable.

Glynn: How do you get around ‘design block’? As a new starter to design, what could you suggest for me?

You’ll often find me surfing the web looking for inspiration. Sometimes I’ll go to one of the many web design galleries (such as cssremix.com) and just click around. This can get overwhelming sometimes, however! When I find myself more overwhelmed than inspired, I’ll pick a site that has a style that I don’t typically work in and try to design something in that style; or, I’ll find a web graphic that looks cool and try to imitate it. Just the process of getting started and doing something creative, even if I’m simply copying someone else, can be enough to jump-start my brain and help me get going in a different direction.

Tom F: What was the most difficult thing about writing your book?

Creating the initial outline was the most difficult thing about writing my book - once I had the outline in place, it was just a matter of pumping out the words and screenshots! Photoshop has a ton of features; I had to think about how to organize the topics into coherent chapters. Because the book is written in a question/answer format, I also had to anticipate questions that people might have. Something that seems obvious to me might be something a newbie would have trouble with; on the other hand, someone might want to learn how to do something that I’ve never even dreamed of! I did a lot of research in order to generate the list of questions for the book, then spent many hours organizing and reorganizing the topics onto chapter groupings that made sense.

Tom F: If I want to write a book, how should I get started?

Unfortunately I don’t think I’m the best expert on how to get started on writing a book, as I sort of fell into it myself! SitePoint approached me with the offer - I had no intention previously of trying to write a book.
You might be better off looking at the many other resources out there for new authors (Writer’s Market, or simply typing “how to write and publish a book” into a search engine).

But from just my experience, it seems that some of the critical steps are to be well-versed in a subject, be able to articulate thoughts and ideas clearly through your words, and get yourself out there by writing articles for well-visited sites. SitePoint, for example, will accept articles for publication if they are relevant and useful for their readers.

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I don’t blog for the sake of comments or others. I blog because I like to research stuff and share it with others. My traffic shows that I have some visitors, so that’s fine by me. Of course, it’s always nice when you know people appreciate what they read.

I haven’t really spent much time marketing The Beta News. I mention it when possible, but since it doesn’t really cover any specific niche, it’s tough to advertise it on forums. I tend to comment as much as possible on various blogs and stay active on social sites like twitter.

The other blog I run (www.fifa2008news.com, now www.fifa2009news.com) are examples of what happens when you actively promote a blog. I’ve spent a lot of time on different sports forums advertising FIFA news. That has really paid off.

When possible I write a few posts at a time, but often they are impulse posts. I spend an hour on transport every day, so I have time to think my posts through. I usually blog in the evening on the couch.

Originally I wanted to cover and review different services, sites and application that were still in beta. I still do that, but a lot of other things has been added to it as well. I think The Beta News is a combination of many different sites. No one mentioned, no one forgotten

That’s one of the reasons why I blog. I just love to see how innovative many people are. They keep coming up with all kinds of new ideas. Some social network sites doesn’t make the cut, while others are pretty impressive. I’m not a huge social netowrk user. I haven’t accessed my MySpace in a long time, but I do check my Facebook profile once a week.

I use Linkedin to stay in contact with former colleagues.

A long as the quality is good we can’t have too many networks, but they need to be individual and unique.

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About Elliot:

Ex senior designer at Bath based Carsonified, Elliot has recently moved to Norway to start his own Web Business. He also writes monthly for .Net magazine and his blog, www.elliotjaystocks.com, has been featured on many showcase websites.

Your comments are most welcome:

You’ve recently left Carsonified and moved to Norway to start your own business. Was there any particular reason that made you move?

I left full-time employment because I needed to work towards my own dreams and not somebody else’s. I’d been toying with the idea of starting my own business for a long time, and it just made so much sense, in terms of timing. I settled on Norway as I have some friends here, and it’s a beautiful place that I got the taste for during a short visit last year. I’m here for just over two months and return to England in mid July, when my girlfriend gets back from her travels in the far east.

Windows or Mac? And Why?

Mac, all the way. Not only do they look beautiful, but they just work, as the adverts claim. I know we could all argue about Mac vs. PC until the cows come home, but there’s one thing I’ll say: nearly all Mac users were once PC users, but how many PC users were once Mac users? Once you’ve had Mac, you don’t go back…

When did you first get into Web Design/Development and how did it come about?

I startled dabbling with it in 2001, in my year out before uni. I released a record with a few friends (who were also in bands at the time) and we needed a website to promote the release. I was using ‘Homestead Site Builder’, which was a horrible WYSIWYG thing, but good enough at the time. Then I went to uni and gradually started getting into Flash, which I used to create my final project when I graduated in 2004. I then landed a job at EMI as a Web Designer and have never looked back! Since those early days, I’ve moved from being an all-Flash guy to an all-Standards guy. I don’t have anything against Flash at all - I love it - but it’s just not my delivery method of choice these days.

When starting a blog, many people struggle to get started and when comments don’t fly in straight away, they lose motivation. How did you manage to keep going when you first set up your blog?

It’s difficult, and getting comments is a kind of affirmation of whether the blog is successful or not, but my site got featured on a lot of ‘inspiration’ galleries not long after the blog seriously started (before that it was more of a travelog), so comments started coming in pretty fast after that. Writing about things that people find useful (such as tutorials) or things that people can discuss in depth (like design piracy) is a way of keeping reader and commenter levels up. Not that you should write stuff just to get comments, of course! That just becomes spam.

With the browser war still raging stronger than ever, why is IE significantly further behind all other competitors on CSS support?

I’m not sure I have an answer for this one. However, I’ve heard some very good things about CSS support in IE8, so here’s hoping…

And finally, if you didn’t do Web Design, what would your dream job be?

Without question, I’d be a comic book illustrator. It’s something I thought I was going to get into for a long time (almost right up before going to uni, really), and it’s definitely something I’d like to do again at some point. With a couple of recent client projects, I’ve had the chance to start incorporating illustration into my work again, which makes me very happy. You should see some evidence of this once I eventually release my new site later this year!

Many thanks to Elliot, and feel free to discuss!

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I would also like to reassure readers that questions have been sent to  Corrie Haffly and Elliot Jay Stocks, and they will return the questions once they can. We appreciate that they are very busy with work and other things, and them simply doing this interview is much appreciated.

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You’ve recently left Carsonified and moved to Norway to start your own business. Was there any particular reason that made you move?
Windows or Mac? And Why?
When did you first get into Web Design/Development and how did it come about?
When starting a blog, many people struggle to get started and when comments don’t fly in straight away, they lose motivation. How did you manage to keep going when you first set up your blog?
With the browser war still raging stronger than ever, why is IE significantly further behind all other competitors on CSS support?
And finally, if you didn’t do Web Design, what would your dream job be?

Elliot has very kindly agreed to return the questions within 5-7 days, and this is much appreciated. Comments welcome.

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About Corrie. Taken from her Website:

Corrie Haffly graduated from U.C. Davis with a degree in mathematics but found web design to be much more interesting. She created her first simple HTML page in 1998, then began working for Advantrics LLC in 2000. While there, she brought their PixelMill and John Galt’s Templates brands to the top of the web site template market, handled customer support, and wrote volumes of tutorials. Corrie left full-time employment in 2004 and now enjoys working at home. She and her husband live in Davis.

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A new website with at least one interview per week with a top web designer/developer. If you have any one you wish to be interviewed or any questions you want to ask them, please leave a comment below and there is every chance your question could be used.

And when we go live…

We will have interviews with Dennis Petersen, owner of thebetanews.com on what it takes to blog, Elliot Jay Stocks on his move to Norway and his time at Carsonified and Corrie Haffly, Photoshop expert on Sitepoint.com, on what it takes to write a book.

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