Aaron Heirtzler Creative

Riding a Bike

Aaron — Fri, 18 May 2012 16:31:52 +0000

I’m going to deviate a bit this week from the normal design or client related stuff. Talking bikes again. But today’s topic will be about learning to ride a bike and teaching somebody to do it.

My mom says I learned to ride a bike around 5 or 6 years old. I can’t remember so I’ll have to take her word for it. I do know, however, that since then bikes have always been a big part of my life. Now, with a soon to be 4 year old daughter, one of the many parenting questions flying around around the house has been when and how to teach her to ride a bike. I noticed a couple of months ago that the tricycle just wasn’t doing it for her anymore. Her knees were cramped and she was spinning hard to keep up with me walking on our 5 block trip to the elementary school playground she loves. My wife is mostly indifferent when it comes to biking (although she does love to cruise town on her vintage Hercules townie). I am kind of the “bike freak” and she would probably like it if I stopped talking bikes altogether. That, of course, won’t happen. So the decision was pretty much left up to me when it came to noa and her biking future. The consensus on the internet seemed to be that most kids learn to ride a bike sans training wheels around 5 or 6 years old. But this is Durango and we’re a biking town. So what to do?

I had a decision to make. Get her a “big girl” bike with training wheels, get her a balance bike or try to bipass the training wheels and “tweener” stage completely and just go straight to her riding a two-wheeled, pedal bike. Noa has always been very athletic. She learned to walk at about 9 months and has been doing running laps around the house ever since. From time to time we’ll even run together down to a park. Last week on a trip to Denver, we went on a hike with friends and she jogged the fist 2 miles of a three mile hike. She probably would have gone the whole three miles, but she found a good sized rock in the middle of the trail, tripped and gashed her knee pretty good, so the last mile was spent on my shoulders (Disclaimer: I feel compelled to tell people as we jog past them or when I tell stories like these that running is her chose and she loves it. I assure you, it is not some crazy form of child abuse). So with everything taken into consideration, I chose option 3: bipass the training wheels and just go for it. The others seemed a short transition to the third anyway and training wheels seem to breed complacency and attachment issues. So we went for it. I found her a sweet little bike (pink of course) and we were off.

The first day we went to the neighborhood middle school and we let her ride on the running track (a little softer surface). My back killed me after that day as I had to bend way down and hold onto the seat for max support while running around the track with her. Later training sessions took place on the quiet street across from the house. Over the course of a week I slowly pulled back on any support I was giving her. On about day four I would let go for short spans and only put a light hand on her shoulder if needed. Now a little over seven days of afternoon learning sessions and she is off and riding on her own. She still has trouble getting started and she can occasionally get a little “squirrelly” but she has proven to be a fast learner. One of the greatest noises I’ve ever heard her make is her nervous, elated laugh when she is riding on her own. I think one of my proudest father moments to date came the other day when, after riding around the block on her own she looked up at me, pointed to the mountain bike park area I go ride after work and said, “Daddy, when can I go riding with you up there?” Soon, baby girl

Playing with the GoPro

Aaron — Fri, 11 May 2012 05:30:05 +0000

I have a couple of friends that were nice enough to give me a GoPro this last weekend. They knew I’d be excited, being an avid outdoors guy, a photographer and dabbling in video, but I was ecstatic. I’ve wanted to play with one of these things for a while now and I’m stoked on my new toy. As soon as I had the chance this week, I took to the trail behind the house and was off. Lots of fun! Thanks Alyssa and Mike!

I spent about two hours playing with the video, cutting a lot of it and threw together something to check out. Still kind of long and it could use some angle variations, but it was unscripted and spur of the moment

A Bike Sketch

Aaron — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:38:45 +0000

I had a couple of free hours this week while waiting for a client to get back to me so I took advantage and did a quick sketch. Taken from a picture of Chris Canfield, it was good to get back to pencil and paper (and photoshop and my wacom).

My 5 Favorite WordPress Plugins

Aaron — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:17:06 +0000

I use WordPress a lot these days. One main reason is the endless number of plugins. There are almost 20,000 listed for free on the WordPress site alone. There is also hundreds of “premium” pay for plugins. It allows me to easily provide a lot of functionality for my clients easily and cheaply. Here are some of my favorites:

Contact Form 7

A staple. This plugin allows you to easily create and place forms anywhere on your site using a bit of shortcode. It is very widely used and there is a lot of documentation out there for trouble shooting and customizing for your needs. It also allows you to do an infinite number of different forms on your site collecting different information for each. Whether you want to use text fields, check boxes or radio buttons to collect information, it’s all possible with this plugin. The creator also seems to update the plugin frequently to remain compliant with the newest version of WordPress. Free on the WordPress.org site.

WP Easy Columns

Another free plugin from on the WordPress.org site. This one is is really useful when organizing a lot of information on your website. It quickly gives you shortcode for creating a long list of different column arrangements. In visual mode when editing your post it gives you a shortcut button that brings up the admin panel on the right and automatically drops in the shortcode for the arrangement you want. Very easy to use and helps your content look great!

underConstruction

Another free one. This plugin is great and very easy to use. Activate the plugin when developing a new site or doing maintenance to your site. When you are logged in as admin you still see the site as it typically looks but anyone else who visits your site sees the under construction/maintenance page. One of my favorite features of this particular under construction plugin is the ability to do a quick, custom page using HTML instead of using a default style. As a designer, it allows me to customize the look and feel a bit more to the clients branding. After development is done and the site is up and running, just change the text to provide a nice, clean maintenance page. Very handy.

Subscribe 2

This plugin allows you to place a subscribe field anywhere on your site with a bit of shortcode. Works really well to bring people back to your site by notifying subscribers every time a new post is created. One of my favorite features of this plugin is the added ability to reach out to your subscribers via email. Very nice, easy, free way to provide a little email marketing for your clients. You can also export the email list for use in another email marketing tool like Mail Chimp or Campaign Monitor.

Cart66

Not free, but powerful. See my review [click here].

I use a lot of other plugins on a pretty regular basis, but these are my favorites because of ease of use, the frequency with which I need the particular functionality they provide, or the features they provide.

Hermosa by Christina: a Website Project

Aaron — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:25:56 +0000

Recently I was given the opportunity to work on a website project for Hermosa by Christina, an up and coming women’s loungewear line of clothing. Kris Hickox at Pool Creative was, once again, gracious enough to refer me to one of her clients. She’s an amazing designer and I always enjoy the chance to work with Kris on a project. For this particular web project, she designed the overall look and aesthetic for this site re-design and I converted it to a functioning website. Her goal in the design was to create a boutique-like feel for the website while utilizing a lot of social networking and search engine optimization best practices.

I have worked in the fashion industry before with a breif stint at Tehama and Izod G. I was more than happy to jump at the opportunity again. Hermosa by Christina is a woman’s fashion brand fast gaining ground in the world of loungewear. Not long after launching the brand last year they were picked up by Nordstrom. With the release of their Spring 2012 line they have continued to gain traction with Nordstrom and are now in more of their stores as well as being featured in a number of smaller boutique stores across the country.

The Hermosa by Christina website launch paralleled the release of their Spring line and the site has been well accepted. The design came off really well. It’s clean, the colors are calming and the garments are the focus. Good job Kris! From a back end viewpoint the initial phase of the site has been successful. Traffic to the site is up and with the launch of the e-commerce functionality last week, the hope is that the site helps generate revenue in addition to their in house presence with Nordstrom and other smaller shops.

Making a Case for Blogging and Social Media and Some Numbers

Aaron — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:02:49 +0000

A large portion of my business is putting together websites, and a lot of those are created using the WordPress CMS (Content Management System). I tell my clients all the time that managing their blog and utilizing social media will help considerably with their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts. I know that it’s important and a pretty solid contributing factor to SEO, but as someone with limited time and a clientele list that is 95% composed of referrals, I have not spent a lot of time practicing what I preach. This year I’ve made an effort to change that and hopefully use my own site as a reference for success.

Additionally, social media is widely used in today’s online marketing efforts, and for good reason. Again, related to SEO, social media can play a huge role in boosting traffic to your site if utilized correctly. Would I recommend it for every client that I work with? Yes, but to varying degrees. Does it make sense for a doctors office to use twitter? Not necessarily. But maybe it would make sense to have a Facebook page or a LinkedIn account. The use and degree of social media participation certainly varies for every client, but it can never really hurt your efforts to be found online if you take part in at least some level of social media marketing.

This year I have also made an effort to stay a little more involved in updating my Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts as well as developing and testing some new avenues of social networking. Some of the new efforts include writing for another blog, using Tumblr and trying out Vimeo. So far all of the above efforts have shown a significant increase of inbound traffic to my site. It should be noted that I haven’t picked up any new clients as a direct relation to these efforts, but that wasn’t really my goal in the first place. If that happens, bonus, but I am really trying to build a case for recommending these same efforts to my clients.

We are now 1/3 of the way through 2012 and I have a pretty good indication of the effect that this is having on traffic to my site.

Some Numbers from the first 1/3 of 2012:

Visits – Up 114%
Unique Visits – Up 97%
Pages Visited – Up 115%
Time on Site – Up 35%

The blue line depicts stats for visits from March 7 - April 13, 2011. The Orange line depicts stats from the same dates for 2012.

So, in short, it does work. As they say, numbers don’t lie. I am also currently helping to organize a blogging campaign with one of my clients. This particular client sells product on their site, so watch for the case study showing blogging and it’s potential to boost e-commerce sales numbers. Coming soon!

The Nimble 9 29er Touring Build

Aaron — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 16:43:14 +0000

I wanted a bike that could do it all. A commuting, bikepacking, single track, mountain pass and fire road touring and anything in-between two wheeled beast. My solution? Take a frame from one of my favorite bike companies (Canfield Brothers) and slap on a build kit that would allow that kind of crazy range of riding. I have always liked the idea of the Salsa Fargo, and when I started comparing the geometry of the Salsa Fargo to the Nimble 9, I noticed they were pretty similar (in the small size anyway). The Nimble 9 has a shorter chain stay (even at it’s longest setting), but other than that they were pretty close. Also, the Nimble 9 lacks all of the fender and rack mounts on the frame, but it seems the trend for bikepacking bags is leaning towards frame mounted bags as opposed to panniers anyway (see Bedrock bags out of Durango). Also, Salsa has had the foresight to sell the Fargo fork individually which I used to allow a lot of mounting options on the fork for smaller panniers and extra bottle holders. Plus, I seem to desire a bit more customization than an out of the box bike can provide. The result has been awesome. I love this bike! 29er tires while commuting have been great and much more comfortable than the skinny road tires I traded them for and since I’m running my tires tubeless I’ll be able to run my tire pressure at really low pressure and winter snow commuting should be much easier. I’ve also ventured onto a couple of short in-town single track trails on my commute. This thing is amazing. I’m taking it to Canyonlands, UT this weekend and will have some more feedback after this trip. But to date this is already one of my favorite bikes.

The Build:

Canfield Brothers Nimble 9 Frame – Small
Salsa Fargo V2 Fork
Stans NoTubes Custom Wheelset (Flow rims laced to Stans 3.30 Hubs)
Shimano XT Crankset
Cane Creek 110 Headset
Salsa Down Under Fork Racks
Detours D2R Small Panniers
King Cage Water Bottle Cages
Ritchey Pro 30º Rise Stem
Soma Junebug Handlebars
Cane Creek Brake Levers
Shimano Dura-Ace Bar-Con 9spd Shifters
Lizard Skin Bar Tape
Salsa Rack-Lock Seatpost Clamp
Cane Creek Thudbuster Seatpost
Cardiff Saddle
Detours Wedgie Seatpost Bag
Avid BB7 Brakes
Shimano XT DM Front Derailleur
Shimano XTR Shadow Rear Derailleur
Shimano 9spd Rear Cassette
Maxxis Ikon Tires

Update:

Check out the Dirt Rag review on this frame.

Best Practices, Lessons Learned

Aaron — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:55:57 +0000

I’ve been doing freelance design for over 10 years now. In any business customer satisfaction is important. In freelance it’s necessary. I suppose you could, as a freelance designer, just do a bunch of mediocre work and find your next client on the web and low bid everyone else to get the job. That would be tiring though. Constantly looking for new work instead of it coming to you. So today I thought I’d share a couple of lessons I’ve learned in my time doing this work.

Always deliver on time:

This should go without saying, but it’s extremely important. There is almost nothing more frustrating to a client than having to wait on you to deliver a product. One of the final questions in a meeting about starting a project with a client always seems to be, how long will this take. Be honest, but don’t be afraid to give yourself a healthy buffer. I also like to put some of the time-frame back on the client. I explain that a project like this would take me “x” amount of time if I had all of the info and immediate client feedback. I like to tell them that the more responsive they are during the process, the quicker it gets done. At that point, you at least have a partner in the time-frame and you’ve placed some of the responsibility on them and if they are slow to offer feedback or needed information through the process they take the blame for some of the delay.

Always be close to your estimate, or provide an explanations throughout the project as to why it will be going over budget:

Money. Probably the only thing that ranks higher negatively than not delivering on time is going over your estimate and demanding more money than originally budgeted for a project. It will inevitably happen. But you better make sure that it’s the clients fault and not yours. And try, at all costs, not to make the additional costs a surprise at the end of the project. If your client is constantly demanding new features, ect. for their project that will punch it over budget and was not a part of the original estimate, just be honest about the cost of each new request/demand and let them make the call on whether or not to include that element. You don’t want to be taken advantage of to be sure and the easiest way to avoid that is communication laying down clear goals, objectives and costs that relate to those project goals.

I’ve found many times that one of the best and safest way to avoid going over budget is to bid high and deliver at a lower cost. You may push off some clients who are looking for a cheap project, but you keep the clients you do procure happy which is much more valuable in my opinion.

Experience is also a key factor. With every project you undertake you are building an archive of project experience and the cost associated with similar projects. That is invaluable.

Hire help when needed:

This is, I’ve found, very important. Everyone is good at at least one thing and some of us are surprisingly good at a lot of things, but you want to lean on the expertise of others when necessary. This comes up frequently in web development, I think. While I think of myself as a pretty savy interactive designer, there are elements of programming that I know others can do more efficiently than I can. I believe there is almost nothing that, with a little time and experimenting, I can’t figure out, but when it comes to delivering a project on time and done correctly, I firmly believe in leveraging the expertise of others to get it done. Again, it all comes back to a happy client and a happy client is one that gets their project on time, professionally done and within budget.

Treat friends and friends of friends as you would any other clients:

This is one that I have had to learn several times (and still run into). Friends and business are hard to mix. Everybody wants a hook-up to be sure, but a lot of times it’s also that a friend will come to you because they already know your the best (or at least good enough that they don’t have to waste time vetting other people for a project). Resist the urge NOT to treat them as another client. You still want to be as clear as possible and up front with them. In fact, maybe more so. Deliver the same paperwork, contracts and up-front payment requests when beginning a project with a friend. If a project is going over budget, explain to them why and allow them the option of making the call on new features or elements of a project. Resist the urge to just do the work no matter what happens on the project just because you don’t want to tell a friend it will cost more money. If you’re clear and up-front a friends project will go off without a hitch, but if you’re not eventually somebody will feel as if they are being taken advantage of, and that will kill a friendship.

Have a solid contract:

This is a tough one and developing a solid contract is often trial and error. But make sure you are protecting yourself no matter what working situation you find yourself in. Be clear and concise in the estimate and include elements of the product description in the contract so as to avoid any future confusion or manipulation of the agreed upon terms. The best place to get started on a good contract is a Google search. There are plenty of example contracts on the web related to design work and with some experience and tailoring, you can develop one that protects you and helps to expel any miscommunication with future clients.

In all my experience, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that if you make your clients happy the work comes to you. Have I ever had an upset or unhappy client, of course. There will inevitably be a breakdown in communication at some point when dealing with clients, it’s human nature. But I do try to make reasonable concessions when it comes to that point because I know that a happy client goes a long way in procuring future work. Currently all of my work comes in on a referral basis and that is, after all the end goal I think. No marketing money. No spending countless hours chasing potential clients and working bids and estimates for projects that you may or may not get. If you’re fair and consistently deliver a product that meets the clients expectations, you won’t have to look for much work, it will come to you. And a potential client that comes to you from a referral is almost always already sold.

A Nimble 9 Bike Build – Pt. 2

Aaron — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 15:20:25 +0000

Spring is here in Durango. The trails on the East side of town are drying out. The trails on the West side of town are a mess of glorious mud. Only trace amounts of snow can still be seen in the shadowy recesses of the neighborhood. Afternoon t-shirt sunbaths in the backyard are in full swing. Saturday trips to snowboard the local ski hills or backcountry powder exploring followed by Sunday mountain bike rides. Ahhhh Spring in Durango. Beautiful.

For me, Spring is time to start getting excited about mountain biking and backpacking. My first backpacking trip is usually towards the end of May. Last year we camped in 2 1/2 ft of snow above Lemon Reservoir. You never know what will happen here this time of year. But the sun is out today, it’s warm and I’m thinking Summer excursions for sure.

My first project to get ready for Summer this year was building up a Canfield Brothers’ Nimble 9. It’s a sweet hard tail, steel frame 29er designed from the minds of Lance and Chris Canfield: short chain stay, a bit more aggressive headtube angle, sliding/removeable dropouts, B.A.. Maiden voyage this weekend. I love Spring in Durango. The promise of a many sun soaked afternoons filled with miles of single track is in the air.

Nimble 9 Build:

Small, Green Nimble 9 Frame
Fox 32 Talas Fork
Stans NoTubes Arch Wheelset
Kenda Small Block 8 Tires
Cane Creek 110 Headset
Sunline XC Stem
Sunline V-One Flat Bars
Lizard Skin Grips
Avid Elixer 7 Disc Brakes
Sram X9 Shifter
Thompson Elite Seatpost
Brooks Saddle
Sram X0 Rear Derailleur
Sram 990 Cassette
MRP 1X Chain Guide
Homebrew 34t Chainring
Sram X9 Cranks
Crank Brothers Pedals

Update 4/5/2012:

I’ve ridden this bike on some local single track now the the snow is melting. I love the bike. The geometry feels great. The Nimble 9 is very willing to tackle fun, twisty sections of single track and climbs like a goat. Even on my first couple of rides of the year, I felt I had the energy to keep going. A very efficient pedaling ride.

The drive train is great! Love the Homebrew single chainring on the front and 9sp gearing in the back. Seems very solid and the SRAM shifting in the back is, as always, very crisp.

I don’t think I would change a thing about this build. It makes for a sweet trail bike to be sure. All in all I couldn’t be happier. The Canfield Brothers have, once again, delivered a very fun bike to ride!

Update 4/23/2012:

I’ve now been able to put a solid amount of trail miles on this bike. I am still really pleased with the handling and responsiveness of the frame. I’ve purposely put it through some tight and twisty single track and longer climbs and I have to say this thing gobbles it all up. It really gets in and out of the turns quickly and I’ve stayed comfortable and happy on some longer rides.

Uphill, the frame is amazing in the 95mm travel setting and climbs impressively well. I have ridden quite a few 26″ and 29er hard tails (I actually manage a shop where we sell the Orbea Alma – one of my other favorite bikes) and this one is certainly on par with other, larger production frames in its ability to get you up some pretty steep sections and keep you happy on longer sustained climbs. The bikes geometry provides a very efficient feel both in and out of the saddle while climbing.

Downhill this bike is awesome. It really seems to want to get in the air and tackle super tight sections. You can really just lean back and let her eat. The big tires are great for gripping and getting the frame horizontal to rip through the corners.

On another note, I read the Dirt Rag Review. An interesting issue that was brought up in the review was the shaping of the rear chain stay and the tend to strike your heel on the frame. With the touring build I did on my other Nimble 9 and while wearing regular sneakers on my Canfield Brothers Crampon platform pedals, I have hit my heel on the chain stay a couple of times (actually I thinks it’s the seat stay that I’ve hit). I have a pretty average sized foot (size 10 US/42 eu). With this build, I have yet to hit any part of the frame. On this Nimble 9 I am wearing clip in shoes and using Crank Bros pedals. So not a problem here. Not sure what the difference has been really, maybe just my foot moving around a bit more on the platforms. Nothing that would make me shy away from the bike however.

Overall, I would recommend this frame to anyone. Great price for an amazing bike that can be built up in a lot of different ways. I think I may even put together a rigid single speed on this frame in the near future.

Cart66 – A Quick Review

Aaron — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:23:45 +0000

As a web designer, I use a CMS on most of my projects. These days I primarily use WordPress. It’s powerful. A lot of programmers design plugins for the Platform and if you can think of some kind of functionality you need on your website, chances are somebody has created something already that will allow you to do what you want. Whether it’s contact forms, user subscriptions, interfacing with social networking tools or any number of other functions, it’s probably out there.

Cart66 is a c-commerce plugin. While it’s not a free offering like a lot of available WordPress plugins, it is pretty powerful and seems to have a group of dedicated programmers committed to constant updates and improvement.

Interface:

The dashboard interface for this plugin is very intuitive and easy to use. Setup can take a minute, but there are a ton of option and features with the plugin, so once you have everything set, you have a pretty powerful tool at your fingertips. The first thing I do when diving into a new project using this plugin is to go through each setting on the admin settings panel, from there you can start on the fun stuff.

Features:

First off, some of the high level features. Adding products in Cart66 is easy and can be done pretty rapidly once you get the hang of it. You have the option of adding a product name, item #, price, shipping, weight and tax options and product variations for each product you add. Product variations also have the ability to add a cost value if applicable. For example “red (+$5.00)” would add $5.00 to the price of the red variation of that item. Once you have products listed, it is just a matter of adding a little bit of shortcode anywhere on your site to add a price, options menu and add to cart button for each product. I think this is a huge advantage to other e-commerce solutions, because instead of listing every product in a category or group, you have the option of designing the layout of each product however you want – not to mention the ability to simply add the action item of an add to cart button anywhere on your site.

There is also an inventory panel that allows you to add inventory numbers for each product and variation of that product. If a user selects a product or variation of that product that is not available, they will get an error message stating there are no more items available and will list the inventory numbers for variations that are available.

Shipping is very intuitive and allows you to do everything from live shipping rates with a number of carriers (USPS, UPS and FedEx in the United States) to shipping price adjustments. Flat rate shipping options are also available for setup as needed (location/product/ect.).

Car66 interfaces with a number of different payment gateways including PayPal, Authorize.net and several others. Setting up each gateway is very easy and there are help guides to find the information that the plugin requires for each of the supported payment gateways. There is also the option to toggle in and out of using SSL when collecting sensitive information on your site.

There are a ton of other features in the system, but the biggest advantage I find when using Cart66 is the amount of other services they interface with (FedEx/UPS/PayPal/Authorize.net/ect.) and that they seem to work hard to make sure that the list is always growing.

Cost/Conclusion:

As I stated earlier, there is a free (Lite) option for the plugin, but you will get constant prompts to upgrade to the pro version and the features included in the Lite version are greatly decreased from the Pro version. The Profession Version is $89 a year, and in my opinion is well worth the cost if you are doing any kind of productive online sales. I’ve used several other e-commerce solutions including some of the free ones, and Cart66 is by far the most expansive and easy to use plugin I’ve found for handling online sales.

Alternatives: