I love inspecting the code. Insane that all this is coded and animated with SVGs.

Hey Drew,

I recently left Stripe for Freshbooks(WePay) because of chargeback policies. Stripe will almost always side with the customer, and WePay will protect the seller. Nobody likes the fact that a customer can get frustrated/angry and easily get potentially months/years worth of product service refunded.

What's your guys' policy on chargebacks?

P.S. I like your guys' pricing model!

Flower one is cool. Hard to decide between that and classic since I don't know much about the company. I might say, classic if it's less of a tech company. The flower if it's a tech company.

Edit: Just remembered it's an app, so obviously a tech company. I might still like the classic on the site, because it matches the site well.

I really like this answer, but I feel it's most appropriate for projects you get an ideal budget on. I have a low cost lifestyle, and I think it'd probably cost $5-10k for me to justify going through all these steps.

I seem to get a lot of clients that I "want" to work with that don't have that kind of budget starting out, so I think it's nice to have a discount process as well (given that you're willing to sacrifice ideal budget for a more interesting project).

So it depends on the project for me. Sometimes I skip hand-sketching. Sometimes I even skip the mockup process and go straight to development. Usually a combination, where we establish the design is headed in the right direction and start developing it knowing there will be some minor changes.

One important thing to always keep the client aware of is in the video production world, what we call picture lock. Once the storyboard has been approved, and especially is production has commenced, they will be severely penalized if they want to re-work some original ideas that were approved. Idk the correct term for this in web design/dev world, but I'm sure it exists.

A couple other tips:

• If you use Photoshop, "Generate Assets" is a great feature that will export any layers/group names ending in .png or .jpg (I suggest only doing .svg in illustrator).

• If you're using SVG's in Illustrator, you can edit/save in Illustrator with live updates to your site.

And if you're writing code, especially if using a css pre-processor, grunt, gulp, or webpack (my new fave compiler) help immensely. Especially if used with Browsersync.

If you find yourself redesigning similar websites over and over again, consider building internally used templates/boilerplates. Nothing will do more for refining your work-flow than actually documenting your process in detail, then constantly improve upon it.

Good luck mate!

Like many others on here: Music, photography, video, podcasting, reading/writing, etc.

I also enjoy cycling, backingpacking (alpinism), every type of rock climbing, and for being such an active person, I sure play a lot of video games :)

Yo, Omer:

Obviously asking for advice on DN is a death wish if you're attached to the originals. Kudos to you for throwing it out there. I think the final is great. I totally agree with losing the long shadows. Makes me think I should be more vulnerable and ask DN to tear my designs apart. Haha. Cheers mate.

I've been running a design/dev agency for 4-5 years. I'll take a whack at your Q:

1. Don't take outside funding
2. Don't give anyone more power/equity as yourself unless you know them extremely well
3. Set a minimum amount, (i.e. $2500 or $5000) tell clients you only take 100% upfront for those budgets.
4. Don't underestimate the power of spec work
5. Specialize in a system that you have a competitive understanding of
6. If you're going to take payments online, use WePay
7. Read: The E-Myth Revisited (might recommend "Rework" as well).
8. Build great documentation, and you'll be able to scale faster
9. Don't confuse scale with success
10. Do exceptional work, and if you find yourself becoming jaded, re-evaluate your business

Those are just some valuable lessons I've had. Good luck!

Couple extras I thought of:

• If you give clients 10% off for the first 7-10 days after you send your invoice, I've found the close rate is much higher.

• When doing the "discover process" with a client, really dig in and question everything about their last project. I've found they will usually tell you how much they payed even, which can result in charging a lot more and not feeling bad about it.

I like it a lot man!

A year and a half ago I resigned from my design firm.

I applied for a design position at a certain firm in San Diego who had Adobe on their client list, and a couple other tech-celeb status clients. Got one or two interviews deep, I had a good feeling. I was almost certain I was going to get it. They'd call me next week to setup the final interview– radio silence.

Damn. Adobe would have been a cool client to work for. I was legitimately bummed. This San Diego firm even got to drink beer at the office.

About a month or two later when I was still trying to figure out what to do, an old time buddy hit me up. If I was willing to move to Salt Lake City, he said he just got a new client he was going to need help with. Client being Adobe.

It was ironic how it worked out. Also, the beer thing worked out too. ;)

I later realized the SD firm probably made a good move on not hiring me, because I easily get bored and make a pretty shitty employee. Everything worked out perfect, as it usually does.

Good luck mate!