ScrnShots: Share your inspiration.

Eric Anderson is one of my favorite ScrnShots users… not that I don’t love every one of you, but the reason I enjoy having Eric around is because he makes my job easier.

Eric is involved in almost every conversation on ScrnShots these days, and his comments are always uplifting and informative. He’s also got a great eye for design; I would highly recommend subscribing to his favorites, as they are always an interesting browse.

You can stay up to date with Eric on his tumblelog.

Derek: What is your profession?

Eric: I am Lead Web Designer at a small design firm called neoverve that specializes in developing custom ProStores e-commerce stores. I have been working at this company for over 7 years now and still get a kick out of the design process. Push a pixel here, tweak a color there - increase that line height. I enjoy all the little bits that go along with Web design - typography, Web conventions, user experience and page layout. For me, Web design has lots of payoffs for a creative person. A round heaping of artist, a dash of writer, a bit of storytelling, a smidgen of ad-guy and a ton of geek.

Derek: What does a day at work look like for you?

Eric: A typical day starts around 8:30ISH with some Peet’s Coffee (I prefer Columbia), then Inbox “0″ and some feeds. I am usually a pig in our daily scrum at 10AM. During any one day, I may create some layouts in Fireworks, code some pages and/or CSS with Coda, or provide software training and support for clients. Each day is different, that’s part of the fun.

Derek: What are some things that you are working on right now?

Eric: Right now I am working on our company’s site re-design / re-align using a CMS called Movable Type. This is a welcome change from the old days of static pages (ugh). We had been so busy working as fast as we could for the past 5 years that our site had gone nearly untouched. This was bad - we were the barbers with bad hair cuts. Recently, our company overhauled our entire workflow and now are so efficient that we can afford the time to help ourselves. I also enjoy tinkering with my personal Tumblelog in my off-time.

Derek: How does ScrnShots fit into your workflow?

Eric: ScrnShots is the perfect square peg that fits the hole I kept trying to jam all that other round stuff into. I use it for inspiration, idea generation, studying conventions and just keeping up on design trends. It also has proven uber-useful for communicating ideas to the other members of my team. Being able to show someone a screenshot and say “why don’t we do something like this” - rather than trying to explain a new idea by waving my hands around in the air is priceless.

Derek: What do you use ScrnShots for?

Eric: I use ScrnShots as a Personal Creative Resource Library (a PCRL if you will). In the past I have used bookmarking services, software, smart folders, text docs, any conceivable way to try and save inspirational things in a way that can be useful.  I tried Yojimbo, Evernote, Skitch and even posting screenshots on Flickr in the past.  None of these other methods of capturing and logging inspirational Web bits ever really worked. The collecting part was no problem, it was the retrieval and use of the bits that was troublesome. ScrnShots just nails it.  Keep this - remember this approach - oh look at that Web form - hey, nice logo - bam add it to ScrnShots, describe it and tag it and there ya go.  It’s always there and can be recalled with a few clicks.

Derek: This is your time to shine, what else would you like to say?

Eric: I would like to thank Derek and Greg over at Orange Peel Media for creating this wonderful tool. It really fills a huge gap in a Web creatives tool belt and I am a better designer for using it, no doubt. Being 100% self taught, I have always relied on free tools for learning, and inspiration - ever since I began Web stuff back in ‘99. ScrnShots wins the award for most likely to cause personal growth. Cheers, guys.

Tags: Eric Anderson, featured, ScrnShots, User
Posted in Featured ScrnShots User | 3 Comments » | July 3rd, 2008 by Derek Kehler

Chris Coyier runs a “little” blog called CSS-Tricks. Chris recently wrote a tutorial on how to Build Your Own Social Home, which aggregates social networks including ScrnShots.

Chris is also the “web guy” for a small design company out of Madison, WI.

When asked a few questions, here’s what Chris had to say:

Derek: What does a day at work look like for you?

Chris: I think of myself mostly as a web designer, but things are never cut-and-dry like that these days. Since I’m the only one at the business with any web experience, my daily activities have a wide range. Sometimes I get to do “fun stuff” like creating mockups in Photoshop and converting designs into markup and playing with new cool technologies to make the sites better. Other times I am doing maintenance type work like updating content on sites, installing/upgrading software, creating reports and the like. Some days I am doing hair-pulling work like attempting to pacify angry clients and troubleshooting problems like “why is my website down?” which are way over my head. Those latter days, I could go without =)

That’s all day-job stuff. By night, I try to work on projects that don’t directly involve clients. I find those projects much more relaxing and rewarding to work on. I work on my my blog CSS-Tricks and always have a few other new projects I’m tinkering with.

Chris: Like I mentioned, I do consider myself primarily a web designer. But I do sometimes fantasize about being a real developer one day. It would be nice to make the sites I work on DO the things I want them to do instead of always dancing around functionality built by other people. Lately this journey has taken me toward learning to use Javascript and the jQuery library to do some neat stuff I was previously unable to do.  For example, I just finished up a little idea I had that uses the APIs from a few different social sites (including ScrnShots!) to build a “social home” for myself. Probably pretty simple stuff for a lot of developers, but I’m just learning this stuff so it’s still amazing to me. As I learn new things, I tend to write it up into a tutorial for CSS-Tricks. It helps me learn it better when I need to turn around and teach it, and my audience of web designers seem to appreciate it as well.

Chris: I am fairly new to ScrnShots, so I’m not sure that is has found a steady place in my workflow yet. The concept of it really gels well with me though. If I am looking at something inspiring on my screen, it is too painful just to close it away without doing anything with it. ScrnShots is a visual diary of those things, so that I can close them but know that I have given them a home that I can come back to and look at anytime. Plus ScrnShots gives me away to annotate and describe those things if I choose.

Chris: If del.icio.us is (Title + Notes + Link), ScrnShots is (Image + Notes + Link). Since they are both equally easy to use, it just comes down to how you want to browse your own diary. As a designer, images are much more meaningful. I am thinking ScrnShots to me will become my own personal go-to spot for inspiring ideas I want to come back to.

Chris: Just thanks for the interview! Take care Derek and good luck with ScrnShots.

Tags: Chris Coyier, CSS, CSS Tricks, featured, ScrnShots, User
Posted in Featured ScrnShots User | 1 Comment » | June 24th, 2008 by Derek Kehler

This week’s featured ScrnShots’ user is Ross Howard-Jones, ScrnShots alias: rosshj. Ross lives here in Vancouver, and we had the pleasure of meeting him at Launch Party Vancouver a few weeks back.

Greg and I (we’re the people who run ScrnShots) have an extremely involved game of foosball every lunch hour, and I found out that Ross is also an avid foosball player. This really got me thinking, it would be a lot of fun to slaughter Ross in a game of foosball! Just kidding, Ross… I’m sure you’d score at least one goal

I got the chance to ask Ross a few work-related questions, and here’s what he had to say:

Derek: What is your job title?

Ross: I am a User Interface Designer for Donat Group Enterprises. My day to day role however, encompasses everything from information architecture, usability studies and prototyping to art direction and front end development. That’s actually one of the great things about my job. I wear multiple hats, which keeps me connected to every aspect of our projects and our team. I have been working in the web industry for about 10 years now, and have enjoyed the evolution that has taken place online in terms of what people are doing from a design and functionality standpoint.

Derek: What does a day at work look like for you?

Ross: I usually start my day by making myself a monster americano. We have a great espresso machine at work, so I usually wind up as the morning barista for my fellow comrades in the office who are also in need of a serious morning wake-me-up. My job is great because in addition to UI Design, I get to be the hub to everyone in the office. I check in with our junior team, brainstorm with the development team, and jump into project management with the other senior management staff. I also work directly with our clients to make sure their vision is being translated in the work we are doing. I’m lucky in the sense that I get to work with some pretty amazing people. I think sharing ideas and collaborating with different people throughout the process is what ultimately leads to a better end product. It also helps keep things interesting and enjoyable along the way. Another thing I appreciate is the fact that we work really hard, but we also remember to keep it in perspective. We deliver some pretty big projects, but we also have regular intervals throughout the day where we kick back, mix it up with a foosball session or a time out to play some Wii.

Derek: What are some things that you are working on right now?

Ross: At Donat Group we are doing a fair bit of work for MTV Networks and other entertainment companies at the moment. We specialize in social networks, so it’s been a total blast taking what we do to an entirely new level with companies that come to us creatively inspired and looking to push the envelope. It’s been a great relationship, which at the end of the day is what really matters. The same can be said of working with companies like Virtue and Electric Sheep in the areas of brand development, art direction and information architecture. The great thing about feeling inspired at work is that it ripples over to so many other areas. There’s work, and then there’s life and being able to carry that feeling from one to the other and vice versa is a very cool thing. I have been really inspired over the last few months and have started working on more of my own projects as well. My friends and I have a small company where we get together and collaborate on things we are passionate about. We developed a social network that revolves around fitness a little while back, which was a great experience.

Derek: How does ScrnShots fit into your workflow?

Ross: I’m all for things that make life easier, and ScrnShots definitely makes having everything I collect for reference in one spot a lot smoother. I have always tracked and bookmarked the things I find interesting on the web, but using ScrnShots allows me an easy way to build and manage my library from a single spot, which is a far more efficient way of doing things. I don’t have to try and remember where I saw this certain UI or design, or where I might have filed it, I can just go to ScrnShots and click on one of my tags and bring up a whole bunch of examples. I like capturing different ways of presenting data, interesting user interface elements and anything that I find creatively inspiring. ScrnShots is a perfect site to use when trying to explain these types of things to someone such as a team member or client. It helps me reinforce what I’m trying to explain by having pointed visual examples of what others have done or what I have done in the past. Demonstrating what I am talking about in this way helps me not only further explain what I am referring to, it also helps manage expectations on both sides of a project.

Derek: What do you use ScrnShots for?

Ross: Since I discovered ScrnShots I’ve used it primarily as a tool to capture the things I’m working on and what’s going on around the web. I used to bookmark a site because I found a certain part of it interesting, only for them to change their design and have that piece disappear. Now I can keep them in one central area where I can trust it will be there without changing. I also use it to capture my own work. It has been great tool to save the state of one my sites. It captures a moment in time on a dynamic site and I like the idea around that. I also like the fact that with little effort I can stay connected to what fellow designers are doing and find inspiring. It’s really interesting finding things in common and having that act as an introduction to something totally different that you might not have otherwise encountered. Sometimes when you’ve got a block happening it’s great to jump on ScrnShots and go through your library or someone else’s to help you get it in gear again.

Derek: This is your time to shine, what else would you like to say?

Ross: I want to say thanks. I appreciate what you guys are doing and the opportunity to be involved this way. I am always looking for new places in which to draw inspiration from, and this is one that really works for me. So, keep up the good work, and thanks!

Tags: featured, foosball, Ross, Ross Howard-Jones, ScrnShots
Posted in Featured ScrnShots User, In Person, Uncategorized | 2 Comments » | June 17th, 2008 by Derek Kehler