We’re looking for someone to do some part time blogging and community participation over here at Jackson Fish Market. If you enjoy blogging, participating in forums, and like the products we’ve created (or at the very least want to make them better), then we may have some part-time work for you.

Send us a note — iwannawork[at]jacksonfish[dot]com. BTW, we’re much more interested in your blog than your resume.

Blog out!

We’re back after the Labor Day weekend and our cozy workspace has gotten a little quieter. Our first ever class of interns — Luke, Tyler, and Alex are off to school. They each did an excellent job this summer and we’re super pleased. A quick refresher:

• Our promise that the interns would ship something.
• Our announcement of the intern’s project shipping - Elmore City Dance Club
• Luke’s report on how he spent his summer internship here.

I think for us the inaugural “Atelier” internship program was successful on many levels:

• We actually were able to recruit 3 quality interns (2 devs and a designer) to JFM for the summer even though other companies were better known, more highly resourced, paying better, etc.
• The interns actually were able to ship something by the end of the summer doing the vast bulk of the work on their own.
• We now have three graduates who are potential contractors for work that we have to get done down the road.

All in all… a fun, productive, and educational summer. Now on to some autumn software development.

To be perfectly honest, I did not know what I would be getting myself into with this internship at Jackson Fish Market. When I read the job listing, it sounded somewhat off-putting relative to what I thought I wanted to do. My hope was to get an internship that bolstered my experience in the programs that I use, and also gain some names on a sheet of paper that I could tote around and show to bigwigs to further my life as a designer. Even when I agreed to take the job, I was full of doubt. I was leaving so many things behind to take on an endeavor that I questioned at times. My motives were childish and opinionated, but I understand why I had those thoughts. The kind of designer that I wanted to become did not match with the description of JFM, but that was because they didn’t seem right in the traditional sense.

My discussions with friends and family (and even strangers) about what I do as a designer are often times a thing shrouded in mystery. Sometimes it’s a talk about logos, brand, and the importance of a name. Other times it’s a cool t-shirt or sneaker. My perception of who a designer is was based on what he/she did. Though I don’t believe that’s a flawed way of understanding more about designers, I don’t believe that it even scratches the surface of what a designer does, and what we are capable of.

In the process of shipping Elmore City Dance Club, I have learned several things, one of the most important being that designers should not get stuck in the mindset that their work is not multi-faceted. That is the reason I was hung up before I even accepted the job. I was entrenched in the mentality that there are few areas left that could be covered by the reaches of design. I was, of course, wrong. Jackson Fish Market seems very impervious to this “Nothing New Under the Sun” school of thought. Their passion and enthusiasm for what they do sets them apart. They are like the three fairy godmothers in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, flitting around the internet waving their wands at things to make them prettier and more inventive, all the while looking after the lovely Briar Rose (the interns). But my JFM fairy godmothers are completing a lot more than a makeover. They are creating an experience that can be shared with others on a level that’s more personal and thoughtful than what you see out there. They care for their designs and they want others to realize that, and coupling those designs with the Internet, they are able to accomplish this goal in spades.

So at the end of my time here, I ask myself, how much do I care about what I put into my design? How does my work reach beyond my previous perception of what I thought design was and who I wanted to become as a designer? Those questions, like my JFM fairy godmothers will be floating around in my head for quite some time, pushing me to design with thought and innovation.

Yesterday I posted a link to my “review” of a really crappy website for the folks at imediaconnection. My original writeup lauded an app I use all the time. While they were looking for criticism, I think my original post is worth publishing as the folks at Less Accounting are doing a great job. Here it is…

There are a series of websites emerging from the loosely-defined oeuvre generally called “Web 2.0″ that are focused on helping small businesses get things done. The informal leader, or at least iconic representation of these sites is a small company called 37 Signals.

37 Signals puts out a series of very popular project management tools for small businesses. Their company is a small business itself with only a handful of employees, and most interestingly for the tech space, no traditional venture investment (though they recently accepted an investment from Jeff Bezos of Amazon).

When you sign up for one of their applications, in addition to the service itself, you get a healthy dose of small business religion. Essentially… stay small, stay focused, do one thing, and do it well.
This backstory is relevant as that approach is reflected in their user interface as well as those of many of the sites that share their philosophy. These include sites like GoodBarry, CushyCMS, Mint, MailChimp, and SmartSheet. (Full disclosure: we helped with the design of the SmartSheet user interface.) All these sites share a focus on the simple.

Another site that belongs to this genre is Less Accounting. The name itself makes it clear that you are not about to get the a full-featured accounting site ready for enterprise use. But if you’re a small business, overwhelmed by the accounting morass and ugly user interface that is QuickBooks or Peachtree then Less Accounting feels like you’ve arrived home. The first column of marketing text on the page focused on “What we aren’t” while only the second focuses on “What we do…”. I know of almost no traditional big company marketer who would let you lead with a column on what the product doesn’t do, much less include one at all.

And that’s what interesting about the design of this site. It’s not beautiful, exactly. The layout, the colors, etc. are decidedly unfancy.
As someone who is a big advocate for creating an emotional experience, this is counter-intuitive even to me. But in reality, everything they don’t do on this site is a statement about who they are. And in fact, they’ve resonated with their customers perfectly. (Note: in this world of ad funded startups hoping to break even or make any money at all, the Less Accounting customers are all paying customers.)

One you’ve logged into the site, the user experience continues with its coherent expression of the Less Accounting philosophy. And in fact, for anyone bewildered by the depth and breadth of the traditional small business accounting packages, this site is laid out the way most humans imagine a business actually works. There’s the list of all the money coming in (receivables), and there’s the list of all the money going out (expenses). And then there’s some super simple customizable reports, contacts, and administrative functions. All of this wraps up in a homepage called the Dashboard where you can get an at-a-glance overview of the financials of your small enterprise. By the way… the receivables tab is called? “Money In”. Expenses? “Money Out”. Even I can do it!

All in all, I heartily recommend checking out this new genre of sites.
Even if you don’t need what they offer, they make a strong statement about just how much doing less can ultimately add up to more focus, more customers, and a more successful site overall.

The folks at imediaconection were nice enough to ask me for a writeup of my impressions of a financial site. After first writing up a positive post, they sent some choices that had a lot more “potential” for criticism. And by “potential” I mean, they sucked.

Here’s the opening paragraph:

“The mortgage crisis has affected people in many negative ways. But it’s not like we didn’t know it was happening. Even if you didn’t know what percentage of online display ad inventory was being bought by mortgage lenders, you knew it wasn’t small. For years, their ads plastered every spare inch of real estate in many of the sites we all use. The ads also had a certain quality about them — sort of a local radio meets what fonts come with Windows aesthetic. Miss them?”

Check it out.

We managed to get a talk suggestion in for next year’s SXSW Interactive event in Austin. Here are the details:

The Rise of Artisanal Software

As we crawl out of the industrial age of software, and the biggest software platform in the world grows at a torrid pace, the emergence of software as art and craft is inevitable. What is artisanal software? Where is it headed? And, why will we all be much better off when we’re all using it?

We’d really love for you to vote (honestly of course) for our talk, as it would be great to share our values with the folks at SXSW (many of which no doubt are already on this path).

You can vote here (requires quick registration).

Today we’re pleased to announce our new web experience — Elmore City Dance Club™. This new site was conceived, designed, and built by our first ever class of Jackson Fish summer interns – Tyler, Luke, and Alex. They’ve been working hard all summer, and we hope you’ll enjoy the result of their effort.

Elmore City Dance Club lets you make and share your very own dance. The site has a built-in tool that lets you create multi-step dance diagrams for one or two dancers, put your dance to music, and even embed a video of a performance of the dance you just created. Once posted you can embed your dance on your blog, webpage, or social network profile, and other people can comment on your dance or even post their own video responses.

If you’re interested in sponsoring ElmoreClub.com or know someone who might be, feel free to get in touch.

We’d love for you to check it out, see some dances, and maybe even create one of your own. Your feedback and comments are welcome and encouraged. Thanks for taking a few minutes to try out the new site if you get a moment.

P.S. Special thanks to everyone who attended tonight’s Secret Society meeting. They got to see the new site before anyone else.

Tonight is the second ever Jackson Fish Market secret society meeting. If you’re in Seattle you should definitely drop by. The details are here.

All sorts of fun stuff planned including a cool dance performance. Did I mention the free food and drink? No? Well… there will be free food and drink. And we ordered twice as much drink as last time so we don’t run out (like last time).

And don’t forget, after the performance (yeah, we have a short performance scheduled), we’ll unveil what we’ve been working on all summer. Hope to see you there.

As usual, the stars of the big budget world represent the brass ring for most businesses. But in a business that is hit-based, the more low budget approach can be a higher percentage shot…

“Jennings points to the ballooning costs of MMORPGs — World of Warcraft is estimated to have cost $40 million to $50 million to develop, and while Age of Conan cost just $25 million, the game is having retention issues, largely because the budget wasn’t big enough, he says. By contrast, he notes, small companies produce low-budget web-based MMOs like Club Penguin and RuneScape that post far higher profits.”

…not to mention yield higher percentage profits.

I’m not a big fan of energy drinks or diet supplements. If I could design my daily energy boost it would be a story every day about a tiny enterprise that makes it big without all the trappings of a large enterprise. Today’s story is:

“Jonathan Blow, developer of the game Braid, an Xbox game that’s somewhat similar to early ‘Mario’ games for Nintendo. His game has only been on sale for a week, but he estimates it’s already sold 55,000 copies for the Xbox 360. At $15 per game, that’s $825,000 in first week gross sales. Microsoft takes a cut — we don’t know how much — but that’s still a really impressive debut.”

I know these stories represent one extreme end of the spectrum in terms of all the independent development that’s happening. But the fact that it’s possible at all I find super encouraging and inspiring.

We’re pleased to invite you to the second Jackson Fish Market Secret Society Meeting.*

• Tuesday, August 19, 2008 — 6:30pm-9:00pm
• Jackson Fish Market World Headquarters — 619 Western Avenue, 2nd Floor North (near the corner of Western and Yesler), Pioneer Square, Seattle
• Featured Guest (8:00-8:15pm): Clear the floor, and turn up the music… we’re going to have a live dance performance at the party. Think modern and swinging!
• After the performance we’ll give everyone a first look at a brand new Jackson Fish Market web experience.
• And there will even be snacks and beverages. Mmmm beverages.

* Shhh, don’t tell anyone. Also, those folks who came last time, make sure to bring your Secret Society Membership Cards. (A few are still available on eBay for collectors.)

I am desperate to live on one of these.

“When climate change allows oceans to wash over the lands we once called home, you’re going to want to immigrate to one of the ecopolises that Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut created for his LILYPAD concept project. Callebaut’s cities will float on the oceans swollen by the water from melted icebergs, and produce their own foodstuffs for up to 50,000 people whose homes are stacked inside “hills” where plants are grown.”

I’m also assuming it will come equipped with my own internet-enabled hover-chair.