Journal

New Bronco Design

Today marks 8 years since the start of Bronco and over that time I’ve worked for the company for about 4.5 years. In that time I’ve loved working at Bronco, even if there are times I find the job and the clients testing I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

But enough about me, the point of this post is to introduce yet another new Bronco website to the nation. It’s more coincidence than anything else but with it being Bronco’s 8th birthday it seemed apt to launch our new website. This is the 4th Bronco site I’ve designed and built in my time at Bronco and as always I think this is best yet.

It’s my belief that our site has to be the best that we can do and at times it just happens that we want to have a bit of an update. There are elements of the site I would love to revisit but on the whole I’m really happy with the new design and the additions we’ve made to the website.

You can read more about what we have added to the site and why on the Bronco website and if you have any feedback then please leave a comment below.

Enjoy

My ThinkVis

Firstly I’m not an SEO so at times I feel I have no right in going to Think Visibility let alone have work spending company money on sending me. There are not only the tickets but hotels, food and drink all weekend that I got with hardly dipping into my own moth filled pocket. So I feel bad if I don’t go to sessions or learn quite what I feel is enough to warrant my attendance.

And I wish I could say I did learn lots, and that I came away with ideas that although not particularly relevant to me as a designer still would help improve my work. But I can’t, not totally anyway, instead I missed a couple of sessions and a couple of others I attended did bore me a little. This is nothing against the conference or the speakers, more likely my own impression of what I’ve learnt, which is probably more than I can think of now whilst still suffering the after effects of the weekend.

When I go to design conferences I ensure I go to learn stuff in the knowledge that I hate networking and I don’t know personally all that many people in the design community. Actually it’s not that I hate networking but I struggle when wandering up to a complete stranger or group of strangers and trying to involve myself in the conversation. With Think Visibility I had the benefit of being able to hang around with Dave and Becky and get involved in the conversations that they found themselves in. Therefore meeting loads of interesting people, hearing some side splittingly funny stories and getting a few handshakes from people impressed with my work on Dave’s website which was of course rather cool.

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The largest blog ever

History is made today as I have declared my blog the largest to have ever existed. But what evidence am I using to back up this ever so bold statement?

Absolutely nothing

I know what you’re thinking, he can’t just decide he’s got the largest blog ever without justifying this with some cold hard facts and you’d be right. I would have to supply some kind of data to prove such a claim. This could be in the form of traffic figures or maybe it’s something stupid like my site has the most amount of code ever. This seems stupid right? Yet so many websites use such bold claims regularly without anyone seeming to question their lack of humility, or the basis for their claims.

So many sites use such matter of fact terms such as ‘the largest’ or ‘the best’ to promote themselves as the industry leader in order to attract new work. Instead these companies or individuals should tone down the arrogance a little. Claiming to be ‘one of’ the best provides a way to promote yourself as an industry leader but is a little more humble and also accepts that you might not be the best if one does actually exist. It’s a fine line between showing confidence and being cocky.

In certain industries there will always be the situation where you are the best. Google for instance could possibly back up such a claim, but as a web designer it would never be the case that I or anyone else for that matter could be seen as the best in our industry. It’s all down to finding a balance when it comes to marketing yourself.

Disclaimer
If you find a site where I’ve ever done this then read this blog as do as I rant not as I do :P

Why I write

In the past few weeks I’ve had a couple of guest posts published first on Onextrapixel and then on Six Revisions and damn it’s hard. I think I both love and hate writing in equal measure and here’s why:

Love

There are a few benefits to writing a guest article for sites like these. In some instances a site will pay you for the article, the extra money is always great but in truth the payment is nominal next to what I could earn freelance over the same time.

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