Michaelbox

Nah, you don’t know her! Or maybe you do?

If you’ve ever talked to her, you know that she has a burn­ing pas­sion for what she does and really loves the com­mu­nity that has evolved since the olden days. I know that I feel I got to get to know her just that much more after receiv­ing these responses, and I hope you feel the same. Lets get to know her a bit bet­ter together. Don’t for­get to fol­low her idesign­stu­dios (Twit­ter).

 

Who are you and what do you do?

Selene M. Bowlby: My name is Selene M. Bowlby. I’m a web designer and front-end web devel­oper with over ten years of pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ence in the design industry.

As the the owner of iDesign Stu­dios, I spe­cial­ize in cre­at­ing cus­tom web sites for other busi­nesses – focus­ing pri­mar­ily on cus­tom Word­Press theme design and devel­op­ment. I also blog on top­ics relat­ing to web design, small busi­ness, free­lanc­ing and work-life balance.

What is one thing that you would love to see avail­able in a default word­press install, that isn’t presently there?

Selene: There’s a core set of about 10–15 plu­g­ins that I install for EVERY Word­Press site that I develop – some basics like Feed­burner, WP Data­base Backup, All-In-One SEO, XML Sitemaps, etc. Obvi­ously not real­is­tic, but it would be cool if some of them (in par­tic­u­lar secu­rity type things like the Data­base Backup) were included by default.

Where were you on the night of Feb­ru­ary 30th, 2002? Don’t try to lie your way out of this one, we have leads say­ing you were frat­er­niz­ing, with Curlz MT Font!

Selene: Would you believe I first started track­ing back to where I was in 2002 before real­iz­ing there is no Feb­ru­ary 30th??? LOL Good thing too, because I’d hate to have to fess up to frat­er­niz­ing with Curlz MT… though hypo­thet­i­cally speak­ing, if I did ever work with it – it was WAY back in the 90’s in high school and col­lege. Strictly hypo­thet­i­cally speak­ing, of course…

You are also a twit­ter­holic, along with Grace Smith, but attended last week’s meet­ing only after a heavy amount of arm twist­ing. Who are some peo­ple that you think every­one should follow?

Selene: This is a tough ques­tion, because there are so many awe­some peo­ple on Twit­ter! For all of my rec­om­men­da­tions, check out my Twit­ter Lists! But to name a few that I con­verse with quite a bit – some great designers/developers to fol­low are:

• 465media (Twit­ter) — Anthony Cousins (web­site)
• andrea_r (Twit­ter) — Andrea R (web­site)
• bri­any­erkes (Twit­ter) — Brian Yerkes (web­site)
• edavis10 (Twit­ter) — Eric Davis (web­site)
• jeff­mackey (Twit­ter) — Jeff Mackey (web­site)
• kim­parsell (Twit­ter) — Kim Parsell (web­site)
• Sak­ma­niac (Twit­ter) — Brian Sakow­icz (web­site)
• sourap­ple­me­dia (Twit­ter) — Ty Den­nis (web­site)

You are stranded on a desert island and find a bot­tle and blank piece of parch­ment to be used for a res­cue mes­sage. What font would you use for the message?

Selene: Hel­vetica Neue

What are a cou­ple things you miss about any 9–5 cubi­cle life that you’ve expe­ri­enced? It would be hard to argue that there are no ben­e­fits to that career path over a free­lanc­ing path.

Selene: The main thing that I miss from cubi­cle life is a steady pay­check. The biggest issue with free­lanc­ing is that it truly is “feast vs famine”, and you don’t always know when your next client will come in (and when it does, it’s sure to bring a few addi­tional new clients with it… then they all dis­ap­pear for a bit… rinse and repeat!) I def­i­nitely miss hav­ing a guar­an­teed check every 2 weeks, but still not enough to trade free­lanc­ing! Espe­cially with today’s econ­omy, a full time job isn’t nec­es­sar­ily the most secure option, either. At least with free­lanc­ing you have mul­ti­ple sources of income.

I miss the real-life chit-chat that goes on at the office too… but I have Twit­ter and Tweet­Deck to make up for that, so it’s not that big of a deal any­more, LOL.

When birds stand on power lines and don’t get hurt, it’s most likely because of:

• good tim­ing, they only land between calls
• body mate­ri­als that are insu­lated from current
• not touch­ing any­thing else at the same time
• they do get hurt, they just express it poorly

Selene: Good tim­ing, they only land between calls.

Do you have any per­sonal quotes that you’d like to share with the internet?

Selene: Actu­ally my husband’s quote: Fam­ily First / Work Second

Many free­lancers – espe­cially those with fam­i­lies – are con­stantly try­ing to achieve the per­fect work-life bal­ance. Being a worka­holic, this is some­thing I con­stantly have to remind myself. I’ve got a much bet­ter bal­ance going on now than when I was jug­gling both a full time job and free­lanc­ing (can you believe it’ll be 2 years of full time free­lanc­ing next month!) Any­way, moral of that story is that this is all for fam­ily, because with­out fam­ily, what else do you have?

I also like the quote: Per­fec­tion is the enemy of “Good Enough”

This is an anony­mous quote that I have on a mag­net on my white­board in the office. Some­thing I need to pay atten­tion to more, LOL. I recently re-designed my web site, and as any designer knows – we are, indeed, our own worst clients. I finally just had to pick a point and say that it was “good enough” to run with. There are still a few things I’m not 100% happy with, but you can only tin­ker with a design for so long…

What CSS3/HTML5 ele­ments have you wig­gling i your chair the most?

Selene: Mul­ti­ple back­ground images with­out a doubt! I some­times cre­ate extra <div>’s just so I can layer a few back­ground images. Can’t wait to be able to com­bine them all into a sin­gle <div>

Can you recall any client moments that really made you go *facepalm*?

Selene: Ohhhh yes, I def­i­nitely can, but will refrain from point­ing out too many specifics so as not to incrim­i­nate the (not-so) inno­cent, LOL.

My biggest *facepalm* moment, though would be a client I had worked with for years (one of my first). I focus strictly on front-end web design / devel­op­ment, so I used to out­source any pro­gram­ming work. Unfor­tu­nately any of the pro­gram­mers I selected for this par­tic­u­lar client over the years never fully came through. There were always issues, and since I sub-contracted out the pro­gram­ming, their errors made me look like the incom­pe­tent one.

I ulti­mately lost the client (who went on to find their own pro­gram­mer… and believe it or not they’re still hav­ing issues). Any­way, that has shaped a bit of how I cur­rently run my busi­ness. I now stick with front-end design/development projects only. If there are any sites I take on that would require some back-end devel­op­ment, I let the client (or poten­tial client) know up front that they would need to sep­a­rately hire a pro­gram­mer to com­plete those por­tions of the site.

Yes, I’m sure it’s cost me some jobs where the client wanted to just work with one per­son / firm, rather than hire mul­ti­ple indi­vid­u­als. But the peace of mind that I won’t be tar­nish­ing my name if I hire the wrong pro­gram­mer for the job (not to men­tion the has­sles that project man­age­ment some­times bring) is worth it. That’s part of why I free­lance – I get to set the rules and decide what types of jobs I will or won’t take on.

If you were an LOL­Cat, what would be your caption?

Selene: I can haz iPad?

Favorite Inter­net Meme?

Selene: I like the “7 Weird Things” meme! I had par­tic­i­pated in this one on my anony­mous alter-ego blog, WAH(web)Mommy, back when I was still jug­gling cubi­cle life and free­lanc­ing. I shared a few of my quirks, and learned some very inter­est­ing facts about some of the blog­gers that I followed.

That old post of mine is in a tightly secured vault some­where… and only a hand­ful of peo­ple knew that it was my weird things they were read­ing about, mwahahaha.

If you could visit any art age in the past, which would you choose and for how long?

Selene: It would be cool to go back to the Renais­sance period – but just for a bit! I like my cur­rent life, and wouldn’t want more than a glimpse of the past. I think a nice day trip would be sufficient.

It’s the show­down to end all show­downs, the bat­tle of epic pro­por­tions! It’s brought king­doms down to their knees and made once-brave war­riors trem­ble in fear! It’s Pirates vs Nin­jas duel­ing to the death in Rock/Paper/Scissors. Which side are you on and which hand do you throw?

Selene: Pirate / Rock

Any clos­ing com­ments or thoughts?

Selene: Just to thank you for this truly unique inter­view! Each inter­view I do, I think that it has pretty unique ques­tions… but I don’t know if any­one can top the cre­ativ­ity of these! Thanks so much for includ­ing me in your inter­view series!

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