I’ve been busy. Really busy.  In the last week alone I’ve had 4 photo shoots and finished 2 new websites. But that’s not all – so far this summer I’ve been in two performances, won a contest for best story synopsis (for a TV series I’m writing), been offered a leading role in an upcoming film, had acting roles in several other productions (including fight and stunt choreography)… and on top of all of that, I’m redesigning my website to be less blog-centric (because lets face it, I don’t updates this nearly enough). Anyway – I’ll be sure to post the new work asap.

Tagged with: acting | martial arts | performance | photography | play | web design | work

So I’ve long finished a revised design for my site – but what’s the point of taking it live when I’m not really updating this one on a regular basis? Since my last post I’ve done photo shoots in London, Amsterdam, and Hawaii, had roles in 4 different films, designed a dozen client websites and even taken a few aerial fabric classes. So here’s the deal I’m making with myself… update and manage this site a little more regularly for a while then I’ll let myself launch the redesign. Sounds fair, right?

Tagged with: acting | excuses | photography | web design

It’s true that these days I’m doing far more design than I am coding, but that’s no excuse to fall behind… especially when it comes to new features being launched by everyone’s favorite analytic provider, El Goog.

If you’re web savvy you need to read this.

There’s nothing quite as daunting as waking up on a Monday morning fully aware of everything you need to get done that week. Sure, you have 5 days to rock it out, but where to start? And what if you pick the wrong thing… you know, that one project that’s supposed to take 4 hours but really takes 25?

Today’s one of those Monday’s for me, but I’m working it out, forcing myself to organize a plan of attack, sorting the projects for each day from smallest to largest and attacking the little guys with as much Monday gumption as I can muster.

This week: website designs, banner ads, email template, CSS updates, photo shoot, photo processing, get head shots to agent, edit a video, talk to corporate heads about changing ad standards, put together a live action stunt exhibition… am I forgetting something??? Probably.

Tagged with: acting | business | marketing | martial arts | OMG! | parkour | photography | tricking | web design

I’ve been designing a lot of websites recently. With the creative juices flowing I sat down to redesign this site too. It happened quickly – too quickly. So before I tear this site apart and relaunch it with a new face I’m going to force myself to ponder if I really need a new look for JustinHarvey.net or if I just have the design bug. I’ll give it two week (maybe).

Nashville based Fall Dance Co. has a new website coming in a few days. Of course it will be featuring my photography from their latest performance and their promo shoot as well. I’m feeling a bit privileged to be a part of this highly creative performance group’s debut year.

Tagged with: dance | Nashville | new | SEO | website | wordpress

I sat comfortably in a local Nashville coffee shop, sipping my dark chocolate mocha and reading a fantasy novel that my wife recommended – this was what Saturdays were made for. Two men descended upon the table next to me, speaking more loudly to each other than was manageable for my reading concentration abilities. They were discussing business – web design business.

I was quickly able to discern their arrangement. One of them was a “web designer” who boasted of his ability to get cheap web templates from foreign sources, modify them, and “slap them together in Dreamweaver”. He even said he could perform SEO by adding simple H1 tags. The other guy had a hard time following along with these simple web terms, but he seemed to be the actual “business owner”. He talked about how this new client of theirs was “loaded” and that they could probably squeeze a $12,000 website project out of her. I became indignant. Not only had they been a boisterous interruption to my book reading experience, they had revealed themselves to be the very thing I hate most about my business.

You see – I’ve done $12,000 websites, $1,000 websites, $30,000 websites. I know what it takes to plan, design, program, populate, host and manage all of them. I’ve been at this a long time (14 year, actually). It irks me to no end when these type of opportunists flood the market, spouting off industry buzz words, promising the world to their clients and then exceed the budget, overcharging them for the work and under-delivering with the final product. I’ve lost count of the number of times a client has called me after deciding to work with “someone cheaper” only to have paid more than what I quoted AND been left without a finished website, needing me to help fix it.

For every talented, knowledgeable, experienced web designer/developer out there, there are multiple business vultures. They know the terms (design, HTML, Flash, SEO, social media, web standards) and they’re sly enough to pitch them to prospective clients – but they continuously fail to deliver with the value those words represent. They make a quick buck at the price of devaluing and over-saturating a legitimate market.

I sat, amazed by the unethical, lazy and flippant way these two gentlemen planned their business scheme – but they were also the ones who interrupted my latte-sipping-book-reading-lazy-Saturday, so they were already on my bad side.

Tagged with: bad | business | media | SEO | shady | social | website

I’ll admit, I came to the WordPress game a little late. Sure, I tried it when it first came out, but as a designer and coder, I felt my own proprietary CMS did a better job. So I brushed off WordPress along with the countless other CMS options out there. Most tended to error on the site of being too bloated (trying to be all things to all people) while the others seemed too dumbed down (great for non-code savvy folks), giving the sense of designing a website with training wheels.

But WordPress kept forging on – growing, maturing – becoming a fantastic CMS – easy for the non web savvy to use, but powerful enough for real designers and developers to enjoy working with. Around version 2.5 I jumped on board. These days I tend to do most of my client’s sites with WordPress. Of course, what I like about WordPress (it’s clean, slim, minimal features) also means I have to do a lot of coding and customizations and functions to get it to do what I want. That’s fine. But one of the things I’ve long felt should be a part of the WP core is multiple content fields for pages and posts. Yes, Custom Fields usually get the job done, but multiple primary content fields (with the TinyMCE editor) really should be in there.

Let me preface this by saying that I usually don’t use WordPress plugins. As a coder, I really like to do things on my own and many plugins suffer limitations I’d rather not mess with fixing. So – imagine my surprise when I found out about the Secondary HTML Content plugin by jakemgold & thinkoomph. I’ve only recently tested it on a site I’m working on, but so far I think I’m in love. This is the type of plugin that makes WordPress and the community behind it so amazing. I suspect I’ll soon be adding this to my limited list of must-have WordPress add-ons.

Tagged with: CMS | development | web | wordpress

Baring any self-destructive tendencies, I think most of us make choices that help elevate our existence. We strive to make our life better, healthier, more fulfilling. I had hoped for such a transition when I closed my branding firm and jumped back into the freelance world. I had been a freelancer a decade earlier, before I learned how to navigate the business world. I was talented, but had no idea how to assign value to my talent. It took a few years of living on raman noodles and working 20 hour days before I realized I was selling myself short – extremely short.

So hereI am now – an independent creative consultant – doing website design and development, SEO and social network marketing strategies, doing photo shoots. I have more tools than I did 10 years ago, more experience, more ability… and suddenly i realized – more success. So why am I surprised by that? I expected things to go well – perhaps not this well – but certainly better than it had been before. I find myself pausing in the day just to reflect and be thankful. I’m doing the things I love. I’m staying busy with it. I’m thriving.

OK – enough pausing, back to work.

Tagged with: business | graditude | photography | SEO | success | web design