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 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 Manhattan. Welcome to our unwebsite, the site that Time forgot.

Contact

for more information about our services.

Current Projects

Web Work

I'm currently working with FurtherAhead (that smart guy Derek Featherstone's company), the incomparable Veerle and her company Duoh! in Belgium, the extraordinary Mark Boulton, Lea Alcantara of LeaLea fame, 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.

News

If you do any work to help create websites, be sure to take this quick survey. Tens of thousands took it last year. Participating this year is critically important if we are to have a clear picture of our industry and its workers.

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.

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!”.

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.

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?

Sound

Once upon a time I wrote an article on getting started with podcasting. Listen to a very short podcast (2 minutes and 40 seconds) created using Odeo's services and a simple microphone. Odeo, like its sister Twitter, is often in a state of flux, shall we say. You may need to hit the start button somewhere between one and forty-three times once you get there, or perhaps return and try again sometime after we start using flying cars.

Warning: Subject matter is pet-related!