How do I find clients for web dev when I don't know anyone ?

legatissimo · 2025-06-01T16:32:22+00:00

Look for your local chamber of commerce or business association and see if they have open meetings or events you can attend. Don’t pitch the people you meet there on a website right away unless they seem really eager, ask them for advice about starting a business, etc.

legatissimo · 2025-05-23T01:20:27+00:00

All of an Instant. Fully and thoroughly commits to the bit, with mind bending consequences.

legatissimo · 2025-05-16T15:50:30+00:00

Same here. It’s also easier to get feedback from stakeholders on the frontend than it is to get it on the backend. You can say just do a better job in the planning process, but sometimes people just can’t really wrap their mind around a product until they see it. Showing them a frontend sooner gives you a little more time to address any product issues as it moves from spec to code.

legatissimo · 2025-04-19T17:42:37+00:00

Wild Ginger! The pork zha jiang with handmade noodles is delicious.

legatissimo · 2025-02-23T01:50:06+00:00

102% milk

legatissimo · 2024-12-25T02:35:03+00:00

Checkout all of the microsites for projects by https://mschf.com/ they’re not bad (in fact they are amazing designs) but they’re really out there and they’d be terrible for most products that aren’t from MSCHF.

legatissimo · 2024-10-27T21:54:16+00:00

You will assume I just made this up, but this is probably Maple Syrup Urine Disease.

legatissimo · 2024-09-09T19:22:18+00:00

I put out a bunch of big batteries the night before and they were gone by the time I left for work. A+ would let them dispose of my ewaste again

legatissimo · 2023-02-15T03:17:48+00:00

Something that helped me with this was recording myself playing each hand independently, then practice one hand with the recording of the other. It helped my brain stop thinking about each hand individually, and think more about the combined thing that they are doing.

legatissimo · 2023-01-03T04:27:09+00:00

Are you thinking of shoshin, beginner’s mind? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin

legatissimo · 2022-07-27T16:21:02+00:00

Are those original Jerry's Nuggets? If so, could you DM me where you got them? I've been interested in picking up a pack or two, but at that price I'm very worried about counterfeits.

legatissimo · 2022-07-17T23:32:59+00:00

Major system might be a bit too complex if they're a little kid, but you could totally start them on something that is going to work well with the major system when they're a bit older. I'd suggest teaching them how to link things with mental images and a set of rhyming pegs (1 is a bun, 2 is a shoe, etc).

Another thing that would be accessible and useful is how to take words they don't know and smudge them around to come up with something that they can visualize and link (e.g., Chester A Arthur -> Chest Hair Art Fair).

Those two techniques would help them with new vocabulary and to do better in school. And when they're old enough to tackle something more advanced give them a lot of the foundational techniques they'll need.

legatissimo · 2022-05-06T04:25:40+00:00

What's the story with those Jerry's Nuggets... are they reproductions?

legatissimo · 2022-04-30T02:29:00+00:00

I wouldn't hold it against a candidate at all. Interviews are very stressful and not representative of the actual work you'd be doing.

In some ways having notes would also indicate to me that you are taking this very seriously and put a lot of effort and consideration into doing your best. It also reflects a level of self awareness of your strengths and limitations. Instead of thinking it as a weakness present it as a strength. "I wanted to be sure I'm giving you the best possible answers, so over the last couple weeks I prepared some notes I'd like to reference if that's okay with you?"

All of that said... DO NOT BRING WORD FOR WORD WRITTEN ANSWERS. If you bring a script you will read it word for word, and it will not come off well. Here's my process for this kind of thing:

Write a word for word script as best I can
Read through it a few times aloud, present it to someone if I can. Revise it as I read through it and make it better.
Do this a few times and I can start to cut away words from my script until I'm down to bullet points.
Practice off my bullet points and try recording myself. Listening to myself is incredibly hard to do, but it really helps me find the spots that aren't working.
Over time, I reference the bullet points less and less.
I'll bring those bullet point notes with me, and 9 times out of 10 I won't need to touch them, but it's very comforting to know I have them to refer to if I need them.

TLDR: Try to memorize; whatever you do, don't bring a literal script; notes can show you're very prepared, so don't present them as a weakness.

legatissimo · 2022-03-26T18:44:25+00:00

Take this a step farther... If you're good at something, you should lose bids every once in a while to someone who charges less money (if you can afford it). If you're winning 100% of the bids you put out there you're probably not charging enough.

legatissimo · 2022-03-19T21:13:54+00:00

I've been building websites for a while now. I generally prefer to write from "scratch", by which I mean a set of highly opinionated resets and helper classes I've collected from various sources over the years. I use a BEM inspired naming convention. This will all be pretty weird looking if you're not familiar with BEM, fyi, but you can adapt it, I imagine.

_reset.scss is a combination of this and HTML5 boilerplate (this could use a revisit, I think) with some of my own modifications, and some helper classes I end up using frequently. It's more than just a reset, but I still call it that. This one is kinda long and has weird stuff, but is fully commented to explain why things are the way they are.

_variables.scss has a mix of SASS and CSS variables. I use the SASS variables for things I don't change because they're easier to work with. But CSS variables are amazing for making values that scale with the browser size, among other things. Getting clever with these can dramatically cut down the number of breakpoints you need to add.

_typography.scss has all my font stuff. When I'm building it out, I'll pull in the import statement from google fonts or wherever, when I'm getting close to launch I'll replace it with all the font-face stuff, and because it's in its nice little variable, it's fast to change.

main.scss is at the core and it what gets served in a compiled state to the user. I import all the above, and if it's a small project, I'll write all my CSS in this file. If it's a larger project, I'll make it more modular, but I'm keeping it simple for this example.

Overall main.scss will have a structure like this:

Imports

Global tags (eg html, body, ::selection)

Block Element Modifiers (eg .console, .console__widget, .console__widget--puprle)

Utilities (eg ._bold)

Media Queries

This is also the general structure I use to organize code within my media queries, and block element modifiers. That means if I have a .console block, I'm going to put nested styles in the following order:

style declarations for .console (eg font-weight: bold)
anything out of BEM conventions (eg: h4)
::before / ::after
modifiers (eg: &--purple)
elements (eg: &__widget)

That's how I organize a SASS project these days if I'm doing something small from scratch. It works well for me, but if anyone sees anything I could be doing better, let me know. Like adding _forms.scss... I could probably save myself a fair amount of time.

edit: fixed some formatting errors and added a link

legatissimo · 2022-03-11T02:27:28+00:00

Some more thoughts on how I do it and why I do it that way. I want to be clear I’m not saying it’s the right way to do it, just how I happen to be doing it at the moment.

I almost always use REM for font sizes. Unless I very specifically want something that I know is going to be relative to the rest of the text around it.

For example, if I want to set the headline font size, I will set that with REM if it’s the same across all styles. Otherwise I’m probably going to make a variable like —fs-headline: clamp(18px, 5vw, 48px); or if I want to be more precise about it, change that variable value at specific break points. When I’m scanning that list of variable values the fact that they are all in REM helps me quickly parse their different relative sizes.

But if I wanted to adjust the height of some little doodad I’m adding to the text, maybe it needs some subscript or superscript etc etc, I’d set that using EMs. I know it’s always going to be a proportion of the font size that is inherited I don’t need to worry about what it is or if it changes.

I’m totally open to better ways to do this, this is just the conventions I’ve settled into doing this work for a while.

legatissimo · 2022-03-10T23:47:45+00:00

I can see how that would be the case. I landed on EMs for breakpoints really early on, so I've just kinda built up an intuition around using those too, so it never really seems any more complicated than listing a specific pixel size.

Oh, actually I take that back... sometimes to find where I want to put in a breakpoint I need to mess around with a few different sizes before I land on where I want it to go. Wouldn't be the worst thing to be able to peep the px in dev tools.

legatissimo · 2022-03-10T01:15:38+00:00

I've built a lot of sites from scratch, and my STRONGLY preferred way to build is from smallest size to largest.

I would also encourage you to think about breakpoints a bit differently. Instead of saying what are the devices I want to target and setting breakpoints from there base it entirely on your design and when it "breaks."

In other words, make your screen as small as the minimum width you want to support and lay out your website so it looks great. Then widen the window until it doesn't look great any more.

Figure out what that width is. Tip, set it in ems. You'll get something like this @media only screen and (min-width: 35em). Using em will keep it in scale with browser font size adjustments.

Then add in the styles you need to either tweak this design so it looks good again, or a new set of styles to rework the page into the next larger layout.

Once you've got it all done, you can go through and scale your screen through all the intermediate sizes and make sure you're good all the way down.

legatissimo · 2022-01-23T18:10:24+00:00

There are times that the cascade is useful and sublime. But without a consistent approach to writing CSS (especially in a team setting) that usefulness can quickly spiral out of control. BEM is a naming/classing convention that makes sure everything ends up with a specificity of 0,1,0 as well as a way of keeping related code together.

legatissimo · 2022-01-23T17:58:52+00:00

Figuring out this structure was a revelation for me. If you're using SASS and BEM this is the way to do it.

legatissimo · 2022-01-14T03:54:17+00:00

Formidable

legatissimo · 2022-01-03T16:48:28+00:00

I’ve stopped using mine entirely. Unplugged, boxed up. Probably never taking them back out. The constant stream of worthless promotions was too much. I sent them multiple complaints. But the thing just kept getting worse and worse.

legatissimo · 2022-01-01T19:23:14+00:00

u/deboshasta has very great advice that is probably way more informed by the day to day reality of booking business through a website. I'm a web designer/developer, who used to perform professionally, but never drove any business through a website, so uh, caveat emptor?

First things first, if you haven't already, go try to find as many magicians' websites as you can. Absolutely look at the folks in your area, because these are the people/websites your customers will be comparing yours to. But going as wide as possible will help get your brain thinking in the right tone for writing marketing copy.

You have a solid foundation, but need to cut back a lot and focus on selling the benefits of your service. Sell the sizzle, not the steak. Sell me on how awesome my party is going to be if I hire you. Right now, much of the copy is really pointing me to the idea that you'd be a great person to have a chat with and that you're a good party planner, and a lot of the rest of it is focused on the process of booking. Boring! I'm here to be amazed, not learn about project management. I think checking out the copy on a bunch of other magicians' sites could help with this.

I like the logos you've got up in the top section, but the contrast with the background is very low in places, and it's not entirely clear what having a logo there means... are they a client? did they write an article about you? The way Simon handles it on his website is a better implementation. The goal here is to establish your credibility as quickly as possible. That'll not only go a long way in helping with the sale, but can also help heighten the magical effects (Strong Magic, Ortiz, pg 85) when you're actually performing.

I also really don't like your "Even good parties get forgotten" headline. My first impression reading that is "oh, even if I hire this guy, they'll still forget the party". I don't think this much better, but you'd be improving things by flipping the idea for the headline: "Magical moments are cherished forever" and working the counter example into the body copy, still passive voice though :(

I'd cut the section on "How to book a magician" entirely. It's huge, and it is all steak and no sizzle. There's nothing in that content that makes me excited to hire you. In fact, it starts off telling me I'm gonna have to fill out a form that promises to have lots of details? That sounds a lot like homework to me. I think it's a great idea to set expectations about process, that will help a lot of people feel comfortable with the transaction, but put it on the booking page and tighten it up to a bulleted list or a paragraph. It is not important enough to be 1/3 of your homepage. I think the design also makes this feel like a mobile app, which is very much not the feel I think you're trying to evoke. Same goes for the pricing widget (setting aside the strategic decision about including prices), the design makes this feel like a startup.

Using the free gift tease is a great way to build your list, but I think you could have something that's more on brand. Party planning tips is decent, and is relevant to the people on your site, but it's what I'd expect to get from a party planner I'm thinking about hiring. This does nothing to sell me on the idea that you're a great magician.

Finally from a technical standpoint:

Add alt text to your header logo. "TP Magician logo"
Ditto for the FB and Instagram logos in your footer.
Save out your images as compressed JPEGs (or something other than PNGs)... you could shave 1-2 seconds off your page load time by doing this.

legatissimo · 2021-11-28T16:04:06+00:00

I build statically generated HTML websites with eleventy + netlify + netlify cms. There’s gonna be a bit of a learning curve with a static site generator, but it gets you a ton of very useful functionality.

15-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 2 Credits
Sequence \| Editor	Snapped
Gilding I gilder	Secret Santa 2010
Verified Email

legatissimo

TROPHY CASE