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