2025: A new direction

A pink and purple sky, caused by an aurora, with tree silhouettes in the foreground and a few stars poking through the color field.

I’m bringing Perpendicular Angel Design to the forefront of my career starting in December of 2024.

The short-short explanation is that:

  • There are multiple members of my family whose disabilities have worsened in the last 12 months.
  • While most of us picture “caregiving” as handling the basic activities of daily living (ADLs) like eating or dressing the person involved, it’s actually the instrumental activities — managing medical appointments, managing the household, etc. — that eat up a ton of time.
  • Those same activities mostly have to be done during “standard work hours” because the specialists we see work the same hours we do.

I’ve reached a point where it’s more important for me to project manage the Gibson house than it is for me to project manage a design system or a financial product.

But people gotta eat, right? The bills won’t pay themselves and the Mega Millions is stubbornly not picking my numbers.

Over the next few months you’ll see activity ramp up here, as I take on (and look for) what I call “odd jobs”.

Get in touch if…

  • You want someone to consult on a startup you’re building, or provide (light!) design work.
  • You’d like me to present a talk based on An Alphabet of Accessibility to your organization.
  • You need someone to thoughtfully content audit or migrate some content from A to B for 10 hours a week.
  • You haven’t touched your portfolio in two years and your employer’s hinting at layoffs.
  • You want to migrate off of WordPress. (I’m still working on this one! Large learning curves ahead!)
  • Something else! Let me know!

I’ve been doing freelance design and development work on occasion since the Geocities days, so when you reach out, you’ll know that you’re speaking to someone who cares about quality, accessibility, and common sense design. I look forward to it!

Now on The Interconnected: Exposure

On the 17th, I gave my first structured talk outside of the walls of whatever company I was working for. (I’ve talked quite a bit in the course of my career, but it was mostly for in-company presentations, projects, training, etc.)

It made me think about the question of exposure — that is, the things we do to make sure that other people notice us and our careers and what we’re capable of. For someone who works in-house their entire life, the sphere of influence is pretty much confined to the in-house work… but for those working in agencies or freelancing, the sphere of influence is necessarily much larger.

Now on The Interconnected: Staying motivated at work

Sometimes work hits a bad spot. Sometimes mentally you hit a bad spot. Both are OK (which is to say they happen, it’s not necessarily your fault, life goes on).

Sometimes we need a bit more motivation than we’d like to show up at work in the morning.

My August 5 post on The Interconnected was about staying motivated at work. Let me know if you have other ideas I should incorporate into another article. (Or write for us!)

Now on The Interconnected: You are not “The Guy”

“The Guy” is a concept I heard about years ago. The Guy is that one person that the company absolutely cannot live without — The Guy cleans up the messes, works incredible hours, fixes things no one else can fix, and is indispensable. If The Guy is on vacation, work doesn’t get done. If The Guy gets sick, or has a family emergency, no one’s sure how to pick up The Guy’s work.

Thing is, no company over a certain size should have a The Guy. I’ve seen many situations over the years where The Guy was the result of a manager who didn’t want to staff up or provide adequate support, which forced The Guy develop. I’ve also seen many situations where people made themselves The Guy by putting so much personal pressure on themselves that they became The Guy just because.

Neither of those is healthy. My July 12 post on The Interconnected explains why, and what to do about it.

Read You are not “The Guy”.