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AMA: I’m Mig Reyes, a designer at Basecamp.

almost 9 years ago from Mig Reyes, Exploring art, technology and design at Basecamp.

  • Jarrod DrysdaleJarrod Drysdale, almost 9 years ago

    Hey Mig,

    Big admirer of your work. Love the Basecamp.com marketing site.

    I was recently browsing through the Basecamp public projects (https://basecamp.com/public-projects), and was curious about how the Basecamp team collaborates on design.

    In the conversations where the designer is posting lots of screenshots showing variations and ideas, is that all happening in code? It looks to me like a lot of Photoshop is happening there, especially considering the volume and speed.

    Clearly after a lot of the back-and-forth happens, it moves to code quickly, and revisions still seem to be happening in code, especially if a programmer needs to get involved.

    I know this is probably different for every designer on the team, but just curious about the high level process and tools used.

    Last, does the team have a server somewhere that HTML design prototypes are posted for all to see, or does collaboration mostly happen through screenshots posted in Basecamp?

    Thanks so much!

    0 points
    • Mig ReyesMig Reyes, almost 9 years ago (edited almost 9 years ago )

      Jarrod,

      Thanks for the kind words.

      It depends on the comfort-with-code level of the designer, but these days, I do believe every designer is working with code in the actual Basecamp code base. (On its own separate branch with Git, of course.)

      HTML is the shared language between designer and programmer, so more often than not these HTML designs are in local copies of Basecamp running on all of our machines.

      Designer: “Hey, I made a design update to the form when you enter to-dos.” Programmer: “Awesome! I’ll pull down your branch, review, hook it up, and pass it back.” Designer: “Thank you! Let‘s celebrate with pizza.”

      2 points
      • Jarrod DrysdaleJarrod Drysdale, almost 9 years ago

        Thanks, really helpful. So you have a lot of local branches for various ideas, but only push the branch you want to use to the remote repo.

        And in the process of creating all those local branches, you're sharing screenshots in Basecamp to collaborate, get feedback, etc.

        Pizza for everyone!

        Thanks again :)

        0 points