Enquire for Backgrounds
I often turn to background images and inline-CSS to achieve certain designs. In these cases, I’m looking for an image fill in available space without looking “broken” and background-size: cover is the usual go-to.
Defining our industry's methodologies, standards, and culture have long been a part of Happy Cog's values.
We started Cognition as a product to offer advice, create a dialogue, and serve our industry and clients to help them with their goals and aspirations.
Learn more about Happy Cog at happycog.com.
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From Pixels to Inches and Back Again
My undergrad degree focused primarily on print design – much like three of the other four designers at Happy Cog. I admit at first, I really struggled to design for the web. After a while I took a step back and stopped limiting myself with the expectations of what it means to design a website, and started to think about how I could apply my print background to interactive design. I considered how interactions and cues on a website relate to opening a package, how publication design is similar to a content-heavy website in terms of type hierarchy, how printing techniques could inform web visuals, and more. This helped get me out of my initial funk.
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Be a better painter
The past weekend I found myself in middle of the suburban maelstrom that is Saturdays at Home Depot™. If you’ve ever been to Home Depot on a summer weekend in New Jersey you know what I’m talking about. The entire universe of suburban dads swarm to Home Depot on Saturday to get supplies for the weekend’s chore list. It’s a controlled mayhem. Myself, I was in the market for some paint to freshen up our bathroom. I spent some time picking colors with my wife, settled on one, then sent her and the kids home while I waited in line for a gallon.
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Things I’ve Learned From Working With My First Web Team
For the last 6 months or so, I’ve had the privilege of completing an internship working as a developer for Happy Cog. Throughout my time working here, I learned about the strategy, artifacts, and processes of building a beautiful, user-focused, responsive website. I attended both internal and client project meetings, worked directly with the designers and developers, and built an understanding of design systems and the best practices for coding.
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A More Perfect Union
At Happy Cog, we frequently check in with each other about our respective projects and how things are going. In both post-mortems meetings and weekly check-ins we evaluate not only on the time, budget, and resourcing health of a project, but on how the client is doing – on the experience of working with each client.
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Get Hired
These are the markers for how we evaluate design candidates. I should point out that these rules, with the exception of #3, apply across the board, regardless of the role you’re applying for: development, project management, operations, etc. Admittedly, they’re not so unique to us. You’ll find with other studios’ or agencies’ hiring managers that processes will vary — what’s your experience? Tell us in the comments — but if you keep these rules in mind you’ll have a good shot with any people-first, quality-minded organization.
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Show Your Work
There is no Angie’s List for creative service companies. No IMDb for project credits. No peer review requirements for blog posts. Our industry is out here on its own, and left to act on our collective best behavior.
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Coglaboration
Like many agencies, Happy Cog works with strategic partners and freelance professionals to supplement resources or to utilize their unique skills for internal or external project work. Finding people you can trust is not always easy.
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Don’t Make Me Turn This Project Around...
As I sit in my living room, laptop open and a Cognition column awaiting my two cent contribution, I listen to the sound of my three children shrieking upstairs. It’s bath time and they’ve been freed from the prisons of their clothing. They may or may not be careening into one another in a darkened second-floor hallway, laughing like maniacs. Parenting, like client services, is the management of the wackiest of variables, people.
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Organic Artifacts
I first learned of Wharton Esherick when I took an impromptu trip to his studio outside of Philadelphia. Though he has long since passed, his live-in workspace has been preserved and was well worth the 45 minute drive. Esherick is known for many things, as a sculptor and woodworker he was acknowledged as the “dean of American craftsmen” by his peers and pushed the Arts and Crafts movement forward toward organicism and cubism.
