When Adobe introduced Linked Smart Objects in Photoshop it had an immediate impact on my design processby allowing me to save various reusable components in a separate file and place a linked instance of those components wherever they were needed. It sounds convoluted, but let me use an example to put it in context.

Let’s say I’m designing a site and use a separate PSD for each page: Home, About, and Contact. In my example, I want the same header and footer to appear on every page. That’s what I’m calling reusable components. Before Linked Smart Objects, I’d probably design the header on the Home page and drag it to every additional page. If the header needed an update, I would have to make those changes on a single page and drag the new copy to the other pages. Pretty tedious stuff.

With Linked Smart Objects, I save my reusable components (in this case, the header and footer) as their own files. Then I place a linked instance of the component on every page. If I need to revise something now, I just open the original component file, make my updates, and when I save, every linked instance of that component gets updated.

Here’s a quick intro:

By the way, if you like the template design in the video, it’s available as a WordPress theme at Creative Market.

When people ask how business is going, I think about how my dad — an elevator man — responds to the same question: “sometimes it’s up, sometimes it’s down.” It’s a lighthearted response, but a realistic perspective in running a business. If the ups outweigh the downs, something must be going right.

2013 Highlights

Batman News

Batman News kicked the year off in style for us and still remains one of my favorite projects. There will be a few additions to the site in the near future, so keep a look out for those.

In his essay “Paint and Blood,” songwriter Tom Russell writes, “Picasso said the muses will descend, but they must find you working.”

Work before inspiration. In that order, we can create our own muse.

Enter process. Process is the means by which scary ideas lose their intimidation. Process is about dividing a project into manageable chunks. “If the process is sound,” says writer and editor William Zinsser, “the product will take care of itself.”

Every project is different, but it has to have a tangible starting place. Sometimes that’s a sketch on paper, sometimes the exploration begins on the computer. The point is to get started. The water may be cold, but acclimation comes through assimilation. We like to dive in.

Through the process of work and elimination a form takes shape and along the way something happens; call it a spark. That’s the inspiration or the muse and because we will have put in the work we’ll know what to do when it strikes. Work before inspiration.

More times than not, the end result is vastly different than the original idea. But the product is also better and the path to that end is work. So yeah, we’re big on work.

This is the first in a series of brief posts we plan to publish about some of the things we believe. The intent is to eventually use these as a manifesto of sorts.

Happy 2013, folks! With a new year comes new plans and new goals, but we’re not quite done with 2012 — not without mentioning a couple of clients and projects that kept us busy ’til the drop of the ball.

Morton Golf

We began work with Morton Golf in August to redesign several sites for a family of golf properties in Sacramento, CA: Haggin Oaks, Bing Maloney, Bartley Cavanaugh, William Land. Our primary goals in the redesign included: migrate to WordPress to allow for easier management, improve integration of social media and various third-party resources, and simplify the navigation and site architecture. Whew.