Heavy meds for your pain points
I work with words and ideas. I help people make decisions about their work, then I help make their plans happen. I work with people who want to do good in this world or create things that delight you.
I’m Carolyn Wood. Pixelingo is my consultancy providing user-experience-focused writing, editing, content strategy, and brand clarity for businesses, healthcare practitioners and institutions, nonprofits, designers and other web-makers, artists, and indie publishers. Based in a grey, drizzly, secret hideaway, I work with clients from around the world.
Text and Contexts
Do you need:
- Strategy and tactics for a clear way forward with your site design or redesign?
- UX copywriting that reflects who you are and serves your clients well?
- Writing that works with the design—from someone who respects design?
- Voice and tone and editorial calendars?
- Writing and microcopy that are on-brand and add life to your story?
- The, er, story? The, um, brand?
- Respectful, helpful sites for human beings who are dealing with seriously hard stuff?
- A screenplay for a video?
- Untangling of all the words?
- A “Getting Started” section that actually gets people started?
- Assistance with an art or typography project that needs titles or text?
- A magazine that requires editing or a tightly-run ship?
- Dang good bios and About pages that get you speaking gigs without heightening your inner sense of the “Imposter Syndrome”?
- A redesign that says something fresh, that resonates with people, but needs a Vulcan mind-melder to make you think, “That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to say!”
- Advice about making something that hasn’t been invented yet, and perhaps helping you invent it?
“Yes, I do that!” I cried, “Yes, yes, yes! Yes to reaching people at their core, yes to rejecting the same-old stuff, yes to excellence, ideas, truth, action, clarity, community, relevance.” I think it is safe to say that I always do more and go deeper than you expected.
and Why Hasn’t It Happened Yet?
I also work with people who are ready to make their dreams finally happen. Laughing, listening, questioning, being on your side.
I do some or all of this: help you find or define your hope, longing, or idea; map out the plan; get things started; lift up rocks and if there are icky things crawling around under there, deal with them; find your distinct voice and brand; sometimes interview people from your company, your desired audience, or your peers; work with you to make the vision for your project or company take shape—and, in the end, make it better than what you envisioned.
You are likely much more remarkable than you realize, and I’m going to pry that awesomeness loose so we can show the world. I used to be a midwife. This process is another version of that. (Except, then, no prying was involved.)
Let’s get it done.
Availability
You shoulda called me months ago, at the beginning of the project. You knew you shoulda, didn’t ya? Well, last-minute-itis abounds across the land. So, even when I'm fairly booked, I try to reserve wiggle room, especially for intriguing projects with people I enjoy from the first hello. Or, maybe I just have an obsession with the phrase “wiggle room.”
Which project excites you or really matters to you? I want THAT job. Bring me in when it's still a gleam in your eye, or you feel in your bones that the project needs a more winning or meaningful message, some clarity or extra oomph, some creative direction, or just some spit and polish. Well, at least some polish. If you think you have a project that might tickle my fancy, let’s see if we’re right for each other.
Selected Former Projects
- Staff position at A List Apart magazine (Three years as Acquisitions Editor)
- Editor-in-Chief: Codex journal of typography, Digital Web magazine, The Manual
- Individual sites such as Veerle’s Blog, Duoh!, and Ligature, Loop, and Stem, and an inordinate number of sites that were bought-out by larger companies.
- Writing, editing, or consulting for a wide range of clients including:
- Established businesses,
- design studios,
- startups,
- typographers,
- artists,
- authors,
- healthcare-related institutions,
- app developers,
- and Fortune 500 companies,
- Dan Mall,
- Mr. Jeffrey Zeldman,
- Nick Finck,
- Cennydd Bowles,
- Jen Simmons,
- Mark Boulton,
- Duane King,
- Karen McGrane,
- Veerle Pieters,
- John Boardley,
- Jennifer Brook,
- Huge/KingCoyle,
- Noah Stokes,
- Paul Soulellis,
- Trent Walton,
- Scott Boms and the ButterLabel gang,
- Jonathan Snook,
- Tiffani Jones Brown,
- Josh Brewer,
- Stephanie Sullivan,
- Matthew Smith,
- Lea Alcantara,
- Derek Featherstone,
- Simon Collison,
- Dan Martell,
and work of various kinds with experts on the web such as
and many others who will now be offended because I did or didn’t mention them.
- Articles including “Putting Our Hot Heads Together,” published by A List Apart, and “Don't Push Through the Pain,” published by 24Ways. I was also asked to participate in A List Apart's celebration of the 15th anniversary of John Allsopp's classic article, “The Dao of Web Design.”
- A little bit about me at Workspiration and an interview with me at one-two-one-two-microphone-check, in which I touch on the ridiculous and the sublime.
New Personal Projects
I have been doing more personal projects, which tend to be quite different from client work. Oh, look! Here's one! And another!
- A departure for me. In the Space Between is a site of my own sort of art—in this case, writing the art experience. Not essays, but experiences. This is an ongoing project.
- What an opportunity. A joy collaborating with Brian LaRossa, who curated an art exhibition, and I edited the catalog and website, Undefined by Design.