Pixelingo Copywriting, Editing, Design for the Web

About pixelingo

pixelingo is a small studio founded by Carolyn Wood, providing user-experience focused writing, editing, content/creative strategy, and web design services for businesses (micro to massive), nonprofits, and creatives. Based in a grey, drizzly, secret hideaway, we have clients from Maui to Belgium. Welcome to our unwebsite, the long and skinny site, the site that Time forgot.

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pixelingo's Philosophy

If you'd like to use my web services, I take my job seriously—and work on every detail until the page cries out for mercy. But, working on the web (or for print) should be fun, even when the subject matter is all business. I want to laugh, to create, to solve puzzles, and to enjoy the collaboration. Not a laugher? There are scads of people out there who'd love to work with you, drain the very life blood out of you with everlasting dreary meetings, and make you jump through countless hoops. Creating a great site, though it requires some sharp thinking and clear, enthusiastic communication, should be much easier than that. The only hoops around here are of the Hula variety.

I admit I have a few rules. For example, jargon and business buzzwords are strictly forbidden. If you simply adore words and phrases such as “leverage” and “deployment of the strategic geegaw,” I'm not your gal. Instead, let's have an adventure with words, pictures, stories, interaction, and share it with your visitors—we'll aim for just enough so that they eagerly return, plates licked clean, saying, “More, please!”.

Recent Projects

Writing and Strategy for Cococello

Once again, I've had the good fortune to work with a remarkable person. Deb Pang Davis is a strong, smart, vibrant, creative woman. She's shifting her business and honing her online image to make sure that she is working more often with people who are creative or passionate about what they do. As her site says, "I Love Clients Who Love." She wanted to make that clear on her site, and then use the imaginary Content tool (er, me) to sharpen, sharpen, and resharpen her message. The site is beautiful, the story is sharp as a diamond-cutter, and within hours of putting the site online, she's already received a Request for Proposal.

Her business is Cococello, but take a gander at her portfolio. She spent years as an art director and did reams of high-end print work before embracing the web, and it shows. Balance, proportion, attention to detail, well, I could go on but then you'd miss the part of the story in which we gossiped, groaned, laughed our guts out, tweaked until we were tempted to just kill ourselves, got that little thrill when you know that bit of copy and design are a heavenly match, and invented job-weary, nonsensical catch phrases like, "Food Cart French Fries Forever!" (See her About page.) This woman works hard. It was so much fun to be along for the ride.

Writing and Working on Ligature, Loop and Stem site

Scott Boms and Luke Dorny, founders of the design consortium ButterLabel, are men with a love of type and design—and a drive to be free to expressive themselves creatively when they work. They've just launched the delightful site Ligature, Loop and Stem, where they offer original limited edition typography-related pieces. Delicious. Their initial focus is on the ampersand and my prediction is that these will be snapped up like homemade waffles with a side of crispy bacon.

Working on creative ideas and text was pure, groggy, late-night joy. Collaborating with Scott was a dream. Hmm, maybe it really was a dream. I should go check. So should you. Oh, and don't forget to look for the three Easter eggs. Fun! Keep your eye on this site. When you're cryin' in your beer because you missed out on these very small editions, don't say I didn't warn you.

Writing for the Duoh! site

Just about everyone in the world who creates top tier websites has heard of Veerle Pieters or seen her stunning blog, logos, illustrations, and sites. Along with her partner in life and work (in Belgium), Geert Leyseele, they've finally squeezed in just enough time in a packed schedule to redesign Duoh!, their company site. They came to me for fresh words about their business, and writing that reflects who they are and what potential clients want to know about working with them. I wrote the main text and headings, contributed some ideas, and only went into the individual portfolio descriptions to do some tidying up. I also may be contributing an article once in a while to their news section, especially if days suddenly last 36 hours. This was a wonderful project full of brainstorming, laughter, and a common obsession with details and love for what we do. I learned a few things along the way about them. For example, they designed the logo for an airline in Spain. Can you imagine seeing your work in all its glory on the side of an airplane? Also, that man Geert is a formidable member of the team, not a shadowy figure in the background.

Of course, every site requires different text, if it is to be true to its brand, story, personality, or offerings. The writing I did for this site was distinctly Duoh! both in tone and in the information we chose to include. Not only would I write something quite different for a manufacturing company—I'd write something quite different for another web design company. As I say in the section I wrote about the project for Veerle's blog, in general I strive for lively authenticity.

In conclusion, lucky me! See Veerle's blog for our description of the project, and see their gorgeous new site.

Other Web Work

I'm currently working (or have been working fairly recently) with FurtherAhead (that smart guy Derek Featherstone's company), the incomparable Veerle and her company Duoh! in Belgium, the wonderfully talented Elliot Jay Stocks and Jon Tan in the UK, Lea Alcantara of LeaLea fame, the lovely Dan Rubin and his brother Alex Rubin, the mighty men of Method Arts (Mark Bixby and Brian Warren), gorgeous and geeky Stephanie Sullivan, and other champions of the web standards and accessibility world. I'm also working directly with artists (I. Love. Artists.) and businesses, including the ginormous Sabre Travel Network. Interested in working with me? Just zip an email in my direction.

A List Apart

You'll find me, too, on the editorial staff of the venerable A List Apart, the mother of all web magazines, founded by the legendary Jeffrey Zeldman; my title is Acquisitions Editor. I look for and work with prospective authors for the magazine. Be warned: I may swoop down unannounced and snag you. Some of you are accustomed to these article-request ambushes; before joining up with ALA I was editor in chief of Digital Web Magazine. I get to work with great talents, find and nurture new talent, and constantly learn from people who know what they're talking about. And stay up too late at night. And have discussions about em dashes.

About This Site

This is the section in which geniuses like my friend Jonathan, at snook.ca, regale us with the story of the development of their sites, and how they used highly technical languages so frightening in their complexity that they would make me burst into tears. So, here goes: pixelingo, although technically valid, and using markup and code that is certainly good enough for mere mortals like, well, you and me, was constructed using XHTML, CSS, a can of sardines, a rusty bar of soap, three slightly burnt marshmallows, a jackhammer, and a dusty tablet of Purple Haze that I found under one of our sofa cushions along with two Cheetos, a penny, and a saliva-encrusted dog toy.

Somehow, between living life, running my own business, helping my husband run his business, and dealing with an assortment of other projects, (okay, and reading piles of books and watching movies) I must find the time to convert this poor little page into a proper blog and I plan to use Expression Engine to do it. I was convinced by my friend Simon Collison, of Erskine Design, to use Expression Engine, and was really inspired when I edited Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain's wonderful article about his redesign of the Expression Engine website (and the company's associated websites.) We'll see if I make it, or if another year goes by and these same words sit upon this page.

News

Article at ALA: Putting Our Hot Heads Together

Publication Date: August 12, 2008

The First Rule of Fight Club: “Make sure you have the right address.” People who make websites tend to be passionate about what they do, and the discussion sections of online magazines and major sites could be places where great new ideas are born. Instead, all too often, emotions run wild, feelings are hurt, and the next thing you know, we're all bloody and bruised instead of discovering cool things together. The wildly-thrown punches were supposed to happen down the street at that dingy-looking abandoned warehouse. How are they ending up in website comment sections, fer cryin' out loud?

As revolutionary as the web and its design, content, and community are, during arguments we magnify the tiniest technical molehills into ginormous, thunderous peaks. Why, just off the top of my head I can think of more important issues: People went without homes or medical care for months after the earthquake in the mountains of Pakistan, as winter was setting in. China may be hacking our computers to find the names of dissidents. Hillary’s eyes started to tear up very slightly in New Hampshire.

But, if we took a different tack and used comment sections to pool our talents, to encourage excursions into the unknown, and to truly collaborate, now that would be something. Do I expect to change human nature? Excuse me while I pause to double over with laughter. But, there's nothing wrong with aiming higher, and we could all benefit from a bit of perspective and a reminder to tighten up careless words and attitudes. Wonderful, brainy, creative, passionate people pop up in magazine comment sections. Let's make the most of our time there. Collaboration in comment sections: That's what my article is about.

Much Older News. So, I guess it isn't News.

I Got Real!

I never win contests. I've never even won the lottery, and I've played, like, 3 or 4 times! So, my eyes popped out of my head when I saw that I'd won WorkHappy's contest. Readers were asked, “In 10 years what will be the most significant impact of Jason Fried and 37 signals?” The assignment was to choose from one of four answers and explain your choice. The writer of the most thoughtful response would win a copy of Getting Real, the ebook by 37signals. So, I was thoughtful, I was brilliant, and most importantly, I suspect, I agreed with site author Carson McComas’ answer. BTW, I love his site, it's full of (as he says) killer resources for entrepreneurs.

UPDATE: Um, what's happening? I've won two other little contests. Pretty soon they won't let me play anymore and I'll be escorted out of every web-related contest by burly men with steely eyes and the scent of violence and cheap aftershave. From Coudal, I won a limited-edition poster by Aesthetic Apparatus celebrating the good summer read, and a few Coudal-produced short films nestled in one of their beautiful jewelboxes. How did I win? The contest was too silly to even tell you. It required only a pinch of imagination and a powerful desire to postpone working on my blog. The other contest required a caption for a photo of all those British web authors we find so fascinating who have penned friends of Ed books. Mine was in poem form—if you have a very low standard for what you call “poetry,” and I won the runner's-up prize of a free friends of Ed book. My poem teased Jeremy Keith a little—yes, ultra-smart, attractive, kind, and good-humored Jeremy Keith. It's sad what I'll do for a free book, isn't it?