When Designers andDevelopers Push Each Other

0:20Janne Parri: Okay, Benton. So as a web designer or a team leader, what things or factors make you want to work again with a specific Webflow developer?

0:33Benten Woodring: Yeah, my favorite Webflow developers are ones that are extremely collaborative. Like they can think on their own. They don't, they have like, they feel like they have freedom to kind of explore things a bit on their own. Don't take things quite as literally. Like if they have some ⁓ ideas that they want to implement, I love hearing that kind of thing. So as you might know, I work with a lot with a Webflow developer, Devon Fountain, and he's kind of like, we do almost all of our projects together. And he's great at pushing back on even certain design things, because he's also a designer, thinking about different interactions and transitions that we could incorporate. There's a lot of times I just hand off a file and I don't even add annotations or anything like that. He can kind of just interpret what I have and run with it. I also like when people push back too. If someone's just like, well, I'll implement it, looks good.

1:27Benten Woodring: No pushback whatsoever, sometimes I'm a little bit wary of that. I like when people like to push back a little bit and say like, hey, maybe this section could be improved a little bit or maybe we could make a couple of tweaks here. So that's my favorite thing is just being more collaborative like throughout the whole process, even like early in the design phase. Not waiting until like the very end ⁓ at when we're just handing files off to like start getting into the files. So that's how I like to work is very collaborative, very open. They're like no wrong answers. I love to kind of explore a lot of possibilities throughout the process and think about like how we can improve things together.

2:04Janne Parri: Yeah, yeah, I'm totally with you. Like you could have the collaboration, especially if you are like creating something like extraordinary or want to do something new. Of course, if you, if one has like a very static websites, the developer can be like a mindless robot, but no one, no one basically likes that. But I got to ask you, how much do you like, open webflow yourself. Do you find yourself pixel beeping on that side quite often?

2:35Benten Woodring: Very little actually. A lot of people think I'm a Webflow developer. I would love to be more in that realm, but I focus mostly on the creative direction and design. I'll get into Webflow once things are built on some of our own projects, just adding case studies and adjusting content. So yeah, I do focus mostly on the design and hire other people to do the dev and do what they're best at. So maybe someday I'll push more into that. I have messed around with, you some things with Webflow, but yeah, I focus mostly on the design and creative direction.

3:06Janne Parri: Yeah, yeah, beautiful. And as always, there's so much interesting stuff going on within the web design, web development world, but also outside of that. So you kind of have to pick your lane. But okay, before we go any deeper, we're going to do some intros. So my name is Janne Parri. I'm your host today. I'm a Webflow dude all the way from Finland. And you're here. For this guy who is of course Benten Woodring. So Benson, you have done a lot of cool stuff. Just to give you a rundown of my list, there's of course the footer Gallery, which is a gallery for our website footers. You have also talked in Webflow Conf at some point. You participated in Relume Design League. That's very cool.

4:03Janne Parri: You have an active community, local community, Pixel Pushers, and as your main geek, you run Noon Studio, Noon with three O's, where you obviously design and create awesome websites. But I also checked your LinkedIn and I saw that you have a history of all sorts of creative roles. And I'm curious, how did you find web design or did web design find you?

4:31Benten Woodring: I feel, it does feel like web design found me. But yeah, if we go back, I actually didn't start with a background in design. I mean, I was kind of creative as a kid, like I would draw and stuff, but I went to school for business and then afterward the job market wasn't great. I just, ended up doing like an internship with a nonprofit and then I got hired there. So I actually worked with like at-risk and homeless youth for four years before I did anything that. Resembled a career. It was actually a lot of fun, but I basically was tasked with running a screen printing business there and had to teach the kids job skills. Obviously I didn't really have any background on how to do that, but I worked on trying to create a curriculum. But I also had to learn how to do screen printing, so that obviously involved some design. So I had to kind of learn.

5:24Benten Woodring: Photoshop, illustrator, all that stuff and some of the other software that you have to use. And so I started doing that, like printing t-shirts and things. And then some of the clients eventually started asking like, hey, can you like design some of the t-shirts or like, can you help us come up with a logo? And I was like, sure. So that's what I started doing. I think I charged $100 for my first like real freelance client with like this terrible logo that I made in Photoshop. But it was like, like a lot of designers, get that first taste, like someone's gonna pay me for this, like amazing. So that's kind of where I got hooked. And a little bit after that, like I'd been working there for several years and then I got married and then my wife and I were about to have a kid and I was like, I need to make like more money. This nonprofit job is not covering the bills if we're gonna have a kid. So I started looking around for jobs.

6:17Benten Woodring: And I had been doing a little bit of freelancing on the side. And then I landed at a corporate events company. So that was my first like real design job four years after I graduated. And up to that point, I'd just been kind of like screwing around, not really doing a lot. So that was like my first role and I was working on like huge conferences for companies like, you know, like Chipotle indeed. I'm trying to think of other big companies like Salesforce. So it was a really good. Way to kind of get introduced to like the agency model and like what it's like to work with big brands. And it was very different. Was all very like, you know, it's like custom signage, screen graphics, like name badges. It's all a lot of very like print heavy stuff. So that was like a great background. And then after that, I ended up at a, I actually left and went full-time freelance for like a year and a half. Didn't do great.

7:10Benten Woodring: Just because I don't think I had enough experience under my belt. So didn't charge enough, worked way too many hours because I wasn't charging enough. And there was like literally zero work-life balance. Was working like 80 hours a week and it was not great. Then after that I ended up at a marketing agency. So I did a mix of like brand and print stuff there. And that's where I kind of stumbled into web design. They... Started taking on web projects. We didn't really, like none of us really know what were doing. We were kind of like figuring it out as went. But I got to do some like decent size projects, learned a little bit there. And then eventually I moved to an agency called Unfold. And that's where my career like just, I learned so much. Just like absolute insane group of designers. And I felt like I was like just a total baby designer being there. Like being in the same Figma file as everybody.

8:03Benten Woodring: I had to learn Figma and things like that. But just like watching everybody design like collaboratively all at the same time in the same file was just insane. And that's how I ended up in like Relume Design League and some of the other things that we'll talk about later. But yeah, I'd say web design found me. I ended up kind of like shifting from being more like brand design, print design. And then when I moved to Unfold was when I officially became a web designer. I think that was like four years ago. Since then I've worked at another agency called Bunsen. Now I run my own studio. But I really love the restraint of web design. Like brand is really fun. I was like decent at it, but not as fast. For some reason there's something about web design I think that just like works with my brain. It's like the, I like the restraint. You have to kind of think in a certain way, but you're still like expanding upon brand.

8:53Benten Woodring: With web and I think that's kind of like where I really like to play is taking the brand and expanding that into web and thinking like a brand designer in brand design and not just reusing a bunch of the same components for every project. Like to think literally with a blank canvas every single time. Yeah, long answer but I would say that web design definitely found me as this. Once I kind of discovered it, was like, yeah, this feels right. Yeah, and I've really dug in and specialized with that.

9:21Janne Parri: Yeah, I totally get that web design sandbox. I like it too. First of all, the projects are like not finite, but clearly like structured and they will end at some point unless you like go on a retainer. Like that the projects change. But if you were just a brand designer, you just design the stuff that everyone else uses. But as a web designer, might be, and often is the website, mean, that is the biggest branding canvas, if you may, the biggest thing that communicates that brand. It is cool. Of course, I'm quite biased.

10:04Janne Parri: But hopefully all the ⁓ audience members are too. So web design is awesome, but I'm curious, you have done this for quite a while. So has your like approach to web design evolved in some way? Or ⁓ to maybe phrase it more concretely, have your like design process changed over the years in any way? Of course there's AI and stuff right now, but yeah. Are there any changes?

10:31Benten Woodring: Yeah, it's kind of funny. It's like, a lot of times I feel like it's kind of like the bell curve that meme that you see. It's like, just make cool design. It's like, no, we need to do like, you need wireframe sketches and like different frameworks and you know, a whole design system. And then it's like, no, I just want to make cool stuff. And I think over my career, I think I've simplified and just keep cutting things out to the point where like my process just becomes leaner and leaner. Before it's like, I would do. I mean, it's not that much linear, ⁓ Like the biggest thing I've probably changed is like, don't, we don't really do wireframes anymore, we kind of just skip that... Because most of the time, at least for our projects, we're doing smaller sites for startups. It's like three to seven pages. You don't really need to think about informational hierarchy or like information architecture as much because it's, they're all pretty similar. But I used to like spend a lot of time like researching, brainstorming.

11:23Benten Woodring: Sketching, doing a lot of that. And I think a lot of it probably just comes with the experience. Like I just don't need as much of that anymore. Like I don't even need inspiration half the time. I just kind of just jump into the file and get started or have like a pretty clear idea. I think the biggest thing that's probably changed, one is just like, yeah, making the process leaner, cutting out unnecessary steps. And two is thinking more conceptually. So before it's like, what are like extra things I can add in here to make it look cool? But it doesn't really have, doesn't really tie back to any like strategy or have any meaning. And you're just kind of like keep adding stuff and hope it looks okay. And for me, a lot of times now I just like write. So as a creative director, I'm kind of guiding our designers and like what the overarching idea is. So obviously we have like, you know, a discovery process for the clients. We do like kind of a short questionnaire, get an understanding of their goals, like what are their objectives that they're trying to accomplish.

12:19Benten Woodring: And then, you know, kind of get an understanding for like, what's their special sauce? Like what makes them unique as a company? And we take all the information and then I'll just kind of sit with it and think about the core ideas. So like I said, we always start with the blank slate. We don't have any like kind of library or anything like that. We literally just stare at a blank screen and I'll kind of think through that and I'll write and kind of, you know, think about what the overarching concept could be like. But I learned this a lot from Matthew Smith at Bunsen, my last agency, where he was creative director. And we would think in brand metaphor. So it's like, are certain things that could evoke a feeling? Like, how do you want a website to make you feel? We're not just telling people, like, here are the features of the product, here's what it does. We want people to kind of have this certain feeling pulled out. And that's what is memorable. It's like more of a feeling, not just like.

13:12Benten Woodring: What kind of typeface did they use? What colors did they use? We're using those as ingredients that generate that feeling. So that's what I think about. I think more concept level versus just getting straight into design. So that's probably the biggest thing has changed is yeah, thinking about the overarching concept and sometimes it can take a minute to get there. It's not always a straight line. But yeah, I'll just think about all the different ingredients and then kind of hand that off to our designer for him to get started. And yeah, so I say leaner and then just thinking more high level concept.

13:45Janne Parri: Yeah, yeah, beautiful. I'd like to hone in on that because, well, I find myself in a some sort of like, how would I call it, like design plateau. And I believe that quite a few of our audience might at some point be in the similar situation where you like design websites, but you realize that all the sites like look. Bit like each other so there's nothing like new coming out of your designs

14:17Janne Parri: So any advice or tips or ideas how one could overcome that sort of design plateau?

14:26Benten Woodring: Yeah, it is easy to, I mean, you'll definitely get clients that are like, want our site to look exactly like theirs. I think a lot of it's just having, like understanding the client is really helpful. Obviously being able to kind of sit with them and understand like their goals. Sometimes they think they want a certain thing, but they actually need this thing over here and being able to kind of understand that. So sometimes like, you know, personal preferences will get in there like with clients are like, I don't like that specific approach. But you can always point them back to the initial discovery process. Like, okay, well, what were our goals? Who is the audience that we're trying to reach? What resonates best with them? Obviously, if you're trying to differentiate yourself in some way from the competitors and from the market, there are certain approaches that you can do to either be more similar, which is one strategy, or more unique, which is another. I'd say, yeah, being able to kind of get to the root of what the clients are trying to achieve.

15:20Benten Woodring: With us, it's like we're working with a lot of startups. It's, you know, they're either trying to raise another series, like speak to investors, recruit, and kind of like build their team. And all of them obviously want to establish like credibility, establish your brand presence. So leaning into that can really help just making sure that you feel aligned with that. But yeah, I really like to think about feeling. I know it's like a really hard thing to tack down. But we had one client actually, eco.com they're a web three, company. And this is a, example that I shared at, flow fest in Manchester earlier this year, where I talked about concepting. And as a lot of startups, like things are shifting, they don't always necessarily know exactly like who they are, what they do, cause it's always just evolving. And were kind of struggling with that with them. Things kept changing. We kept kind of.

16:10Benten Woodring: Going in circles. We did the approach where it's like, just get into design. Don't worry about like an overarching concept. We felt like they had an established brand already, but we just kept going in circles. And eventually I just, we got on a call with them. Was like, all right, let's chat through this. And I just, I want one of them to tell me like, what makes you unique? What is, what is your special sauce? Like we had already talked about this, but we just kind of needed a regroup because a lot of things have been shifting on their end. And eventually they said, they were kind of saying like, well, so basically they allow like cross network transactions basically is kind of the summary. So instead of needing a bunch of different platforms, you can just use theirs, do everything you want there in one spot. And they were saying, it feels like you just like click a button and a bunch of things happen behind the scenes and you don't know what it is, but it just works. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. There's not really anyone else that can say that at least in their area, at least at the time.

17:04Benten Woodring: And as they kept talking, I was like, you know what? That kind of feels like magic. Like it's like something happens. You don't know how it works, but you know what it works. And they're like, yep. And you could just see like there something click with them that they're like, yeah, that's the feeling we want. We want to evoke a feeling of like the sense of like magic. The other, some of the other words that I had at the time were like speed, which, know, any web three company can say that. I was trying to remember what the other one was, but it was very generic. So they were like, okay, let's lean into this idea of magic. So I just grabbed some like reference images from Cosmos that felt kind of like ethereal and interesting. And they're like, yes, this is like evoking the feeling we want. I was like, okay, I think we have what we need. Let's translate that into a web design. And that one's kind of hard because it's like, what visual do you use? But they said they really liked the idea of like kind of like a portal.

17:53Benten Woodring: So we kind of leaned into that. So on their website, eco.com, it's kind of just, very simple, but it's just like gradients and you kind of like zoom out of a portal. It's like very abstract, lots of like soft gradients and things like that. But were able to accomplish what they wanted and it's a very simple site. But once we like landed on that idea of magic, like as the core concept, it just tied everything together. It's like, how do you approach a button hover state that feels like magic, what color palette do you use, what visuals do you use? And then once you land on that, it just really ties everything together. So anytime you're like yourself or the client is kind of like, what is our next step? It's like, okay, how can we tie that back to our original concept? And it really ties things together. So it's kind of like light brand strategy. It's not like real brand strategy, but that seems to work really well for us is having that core idea.

18:39Janne Parri: Yeah, beautiful. I'm already getting excited and like pumped up and I'd like to jump into Figma and design some stuff. Yeah, where to start? You mentioned, of course, concepting and discovery. And you really like if you want to do something like beautiful, something extraordinary, you really need that secret sauce because every client, at least my experience, is that every client wants to seem credible and they wanna somehow differentiate themselves but they usually wanna like stay in the same sphere of the field.

19:22Janne Parri: Kind of end up balancing that you want to look different but still look like credible and safe and so on. I believe, as you said, like the concepts in discovery are so important. Again, I wanna hone in even bit deeper, like what do for like concepts in what sort of... Sorts of like assets do you show how like deep do you go and do you have lots of like different crafts and like tell us what everything every little detail what do

19:55Benten Woodring: Yeah, So what I do basically at the studio now is just like a blend of all my favorite things that I picked up at ⁓ the other agencies I've been out throughout my career. ⁓ So ⁓ the biggest thing we do obviously is like the brand metaphors... We kind of go through that exercise ⁓ where we think about what are like the visual cues. What are the overarching metaphors? So those are your like, usually we have three and we'll break them out into three distinct directions. So. So one could be magic, one could be like speed or something like that. And then we also have like visuals that we'll kind of work with, but we'll break those out into three explorations. So we only do like the hero section and we'll kind of play with typography and supporting visuals. And sometimes we'll even bring in existing visuals. Like we don't always.

20:38Benten Woodring: Create everything fully custom because we're just trying to get a sense of the direction to go. But it's mostly like a hero, three distinct hero directions. And we'll base that on our discovery process. And we try to push them all to be pretty unique too. So we have one that's like kind of straight down the middle, kind of expected, one that's maybe really bold but still fits the brand, and then one that's like a wild card. So that's usually kind of how we like to do it. I actually like to push the boundaries a little bit. So where people are like, whoa, that's like way too far out there. I'm like, cool, okay, now we know what the boundary is. We can stop there and kind of rein it in. I actually like to do that. Some people don't like that. They're like, this is like way too out of left field. But it really, I like to be able to see like, okay, where's the boundary and then kind of bring it back. So we'll have three distinct directions. We'll have like typography and color palettes incorporated there.

21:25Benten Woodring: And we usually, we'll have this ready within the first week. So we have, usually we have like kickoff on Monday, talk with the client. We'll start playing with ideas, present on Friday. And then usually we try to get them to pick a direction. As you know, a lot of times they'll kind of pick a couple of things from each direction. So we usually try to account for that. But yeah, you know that pain.

21:43Janne Parri: I totally know that, yeah.

21:45Benten Woodring: Yeah, but we'll use, we have those three distinct directions tied to our brand metaphors. We'll have like our visual cues. And we also like to think about their product too. Like what does their product do? Cause obviously you still need to communicate that. So if it's like, oh, it's collaborative or it's like async or agentic, know, different, like we're working with a of AI companies as a lot of people are today. It's like, how do you communicate those? That's like the what makes up their product. And then we also need to think about visually how we represent it. So it's like, are we gonna use like a monospace type or are we gonna use, is it gonna be kind of clean? Are we gonna have like kind of a grid layout? Do we want to feel technical? How are we gonna approach that? And a lot of times I'll just kind of like during the discovery, I'll just like write down keywords or just things that come to my mind. It's like that things will say that I'm like, oh, that feels a little bit unique.

22:40Benten Woodring: Like one company, they're a huge like equipment rental company essentially, but they also built their own software and they're based in the Midwest. So we're kind of balancing this feeling of like tech, like technical feeling software, but they're also like very personable. Like you can call them and get on the phone with like a real person in like 30 seconds. And they... They're not salesy. They're very warm and friendly as like a lot of Midwestern people are. And so that felt like really unique. It's like they built this product for themselves. So we kind of want to lean into that like warmth and person and like human feeling. So incorporating like they had great photography, lots of people. So incorporating that can kind of set them apart from like the usual just like black and white SaaS company. So there are ways to kind of lean into that.

23:32Benten Woodring: So that's how we approach it, three unique hero directions for them to choose from and then we kind of hone in from there and then carry that across the rest of the site. And it saves us a lot of time because in my, like at native digital, the marketing agency I used to work at, we would do like whole, like two, three pages for like multiple concepts. And I think it kind of. Can put clients in a corner where they're like, man, they've gone away for like three weeks, they've been working so hard on this, I don't really wanna change anything, I feel like I have to pick one of these. So we like to bring clients in and from the first day they have access to the file, if they wanna hop in there and see our messy files they can. We ask them questions kinda as we go. We don't do like a big reveal because of that, because I don't like to make people feel like they're kinda put in a corner.

24:20Benten Woodring: So it feels more collaborative. They could say, get buy-in early before we really get into like production mode.

24:26Janne Parri: That is actually quite wise. I usually do the three drafts of the first page, but the first page might be quite long, so there is the risk that I do quite a lot of work. So I might actually try out to do just the hero section, because that is obviously the most important and usually the most visual section, and that kind of conveys and gathers everything you want to communicate with the whole page. That is actually quite good tip just for me. But okay, how about like a quick jump from the client world or client collaboration to the internal team?

25:10Janne Parri: Team I know that you at noon you try to push the boundaries so to speak and do something extraordinary and I wonder with a team how can one like do that because it's easy for example for me to imagine something then and I already know that's like ⁓ possible to like develop but when you have a team you gotta kind of have the back and forth all the time and as you as you said in the at the start that you like to get like feedback or push back from the developer so that is just like one designer and one developer but you might have of course

26:06Janne Parri: All sorts of people in the team. So ⁓ at Noon, how do you manage that? And do you have any like specialties or tips for collaboration inside the team?

26:17Benten Woodring: Yeah, so with any project, starts with kickoff, obviously, and then I'll start thinking about creative direction. And then usually, our main designer right now is Tim Boros. He's absolutely insane visual web and product designer. So I usually will think about overarching concepts. He'll already have been in the call, and so he'll start grabbing inspiration and other things that he thinks might work well. Pull all of my creative direction together, I might get some initial visual references and things together for him and kind of build some guardrails. That's mostly what my job is provide three really clear directions with some pretty clear guardrails for him to kind of explore within. And then most of our teams, for project teams, are usually built of four people or so. So it's usually myself as creative director. We'll have a lead designer. We'll have a project manager.

27:06Benten Woodring: We'll have a Webflow developer or whatever platform we're building on. And then we'll usually have animator as well. So we usually incorporate like a of animations or other similar animations on most of our sites. So that's kind of the framework. As soon as we get into design, even our developers are in the file. So like they kind of know what's happening. They will kind of hop in there and kind of take a look too. And we'll think about, we like to think about animation and things like that kind of early on and maybe certain interactions or transitions and bring them in early be like hey as I see them possible like we have this idea doesn't make sense. Are we building it correctly and that helps a lot too so we can kind of get everyone's wheels turning. And then even our animators will come in early too and we'll kind of give them like a general idea like hey, here's roughly what we're thinking. Sometimes we'll do full storyboards of like

27:58Benten Woodring: A specific animation if we want something really to be a certain way. But most of time it's like, hey, here's a rough idea. Like what kind of ideas do you have? How can we push the boundaries? You obviously know like motion better than we do. So like what ideas do you have? So it's like very collaborative. We're not like, no ideas are off limits. And that seems to really help as well. And we all work fairly async. Like most time we're not necessarily designing alongside each other. We're kind of all on different, like we're in similar time zones for the most part, but we kind of all work at different paces. So we can kind of see like what's been worked on over here. I can hop in and provide some feedback if I have ideas. If I want to like riff on a section, I'll do that. Same with like our developers. They usually have some ideas as well, like bring in some references. So I'd say overall it's like pretty collaborative and it seems to be working pretty well.

28:48Benten Woodring: We kind of all have our roles that we play within, then we'll overlap as needed to kind of like share those ideas.

28:55Janne Parri: That is always fascinating. Of course, it differs from project to project. I'm curious, do you always work with a four-person team, or do you have linear setups, or maybe bigger setups for some other projects?

29:09Benten Woodring: Most of our projects are pretty similar actually. Even our bigger sites, which we don't do massive sites, like the biggest we'll do that we've done so far is like mid 28 page range. Most of the time it's if we're working with like an enterprise company, usually we're kind of working with their marketing team. So we kind of like build the framework and everything to get them started and they'll kind of like run with it after that. So pretty much is always a four to five person team on almost every project. We do have some retainers that are a little bit different where we have a few different people kind of in and out on those projects. But yeah, I'd say there's usually a designer, a developer. We have our PM who manages all of our projects and then typically animator. So that's kind of the overarching theme. And then I'll be a support as needed. So yeah, it is almost exactly the same on every project which is kind of funny.

30:00Janne Parri: Yeah, yeah, cool. And it's of course, like cool to see the team come together and having the dream team and like knowing that, okay, with this group, everything is possible and we can do cool stuff. That's very helpful if one gets to be a part of that kind of team, of course. But yeah, one thing... Almost slipped my mind before we go to all the other projects the side hustles and whatnot

30:31Janne Parri: You mentioned the n-surprise projects, but this applies to everything. Nowadays in webflow, there's a big push for component space building. And of course you can do all sorts of design systems in Figma. So do you often, end up doing some sort of system in Figma and some sort of system on... Website platform so that the client can like use it and yeah any thoughts on those.

30:58Benten Woodring: Yeah, once we get design established and everything, we'll use templates and things in Webflow. Especially, most startups and most enterprise always have, they've got their product pages, their services pages, maybe feature pages where they need a single template that they can quickly duplicate and populate without needing to bring us in every single time. So that's how we like to approach it is for those kind of pages. Build a template that'll flex for different lengths of content, try to consider all the different ways it might be used so they can, like their marketing teams can easily spin up new pages. That's probably the main thing, but obviously we use components and things like that. We don't go too crazy on the design side, we keep it pretty light. We just use like type styles and color styles, components for buttons. But that's pretty much it. We don't go too crazy and like componentize like.

31:48Benten Woodring: Sections and things like that because most of our sites are smaller. Again, we try to like keep it pretty lean. So the web developer just has just enough for what they need to build things out. But yeah, we do try to think ahead so that clients can pick it up. At the end of all of our projects too, we have like, we'll do training so that we bring them on. We'll launch with them, but we'll also record a video so they have everything they need. We can hand it off and they can share it with their whole team. It doesn't need to just be one person. So they have a client hub with all their final files, animation files. We'll have a recording, any other information they might need so that they can just hand it off to their team. All in one spot. And then we'll support the client too, usually for a week post launch. So if there's any lingering little things they want,

32:33Benten Woodring: To tweak or that weren't caught earlier. We don't wanna just leave them out to drive so that we give them some support there. And then sometimes we'll stay on for a retainer and we'll move them into our retainer setup where they can make requests and things like that. But yeah, generally we try to think a little bit ahead so that if they don't need us as much, they can run their own site. With their own team, which is kind of the ideal, especially with like Webflow, it makes it lot easier.

33:00Janne Parri: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Even if you have a retainer or something like that, of course the developer or whoever does not want to be the one fixing like typos or stuff, it's always good if the client can do that sort of stuff by themselves. And quite many, well, Webflow folks and designers do a lot of those. Videos like Loom videos or there's other apps and I like those too. So if there's someone listening and you find yourself like doing all sorts of little management stuff. There's a big recommendation for just doing the videos. And I usually do the videos like about everything, that is a bit more complex than usual. So it might be

33:49Janne Parri: Just one like element or one section if there's something custom to it I usually do a video for that so that is that is awesome thing and good for the clients but okay let's move on I'm very curious about the Relume Design League you have been a part of it and to me it's it's like a scary thought to be designing live kind of against someone. So what was your experience and how did you end up participating in that thing?

34:23Benten Woodring: Man, yeah, ReLume was so cool, the design league. So I was introduced to Josh Lowe, who ran it right at the, I think it was at the beginning, like right when they were kicking things off through one of my coworkers at Unfold. So he met... He met Josh at State of flow, which is a Webflow conference in Florida. And so we just got on a call. He was like, hey, Josh is like really cool. You should meet him. He has this like thing that he's building called Relume Design League. And that's where we started chatting. And yeah, then I got thrown in as one of the contestants and yeah, the first one, the first one was rough. It is like definitely an adjustment, like designing. Obviously you're not designing like.

35:03Benten Woodring: It's virtual, it's still like lots of people are watching you and you have to do it. Like it's like definitely the feeling when like someone's standing over your shoulder and watching you design where your brain just like shuts down. It doesn't work anymore. It's so funny. So you kind of have to practice a little bit. The first one I did, I didn't even get, I didn't even finish. It was like a, I think it was like a hamburger, like a restaurant website that we had to do. And I didn't even get to the footer. We're obviously using like Relume components, which helps, but I like to break things a lot and kind of make it a little bit more unique. So there's a little bit of learning curve. And then the second time I was like, all right, I'm gonna practice some more and spent a lot of time just, I would literally just like time myself and give

35:49Benten Woodring: Myself, we would practice with like a wireframe or something on a new topic, because we wouldn't always know what the prompt would be. So I just kind of practice. I would like try to choose, come up with like fonts and colors. I'm like, no, these could probably work for like any kind of category. So I would kind of get those together just so I could easily remember them. So my second time was a lot, a lot better. I went up against Fonz Manz and we did a electric car company, kind of like, it was sort of like Rivian style.

36:23Benten Woodring: And that one went a lot better because I actually practiced. And I've done several others since then, but that, I still tell Josh to this day, he's been huge for my career because not only did he make me a much faster designer, it's like when you have 30 minutes, you don't have time to think. You literally have to rely purely on intuition. So you get to see like. What you actually have when it comes down to it. And sometimes there's something there, sometimes there's not. So that's where like practice can really help. But yeah, you can't, you don't have time to like go find the perfect font or like find the perfect color palette or think of the perfect layout. You literally just have to start designing. You can't hesitate at all.

37:04Benten Woodring: So you get to lean a lot on your intuition. And since then, I actually, it's made me a much better designer because I don't have to rely as much on existing things out there. I can just kind of pull from my repository that's just like in my head. So that helps a lot. And then you also helped me just like get connected with a lot of people. So a lot of people heard about me because of Relume Design League, which really helped me. Down the road when I actually start to launch my own studio, I think that played a huge part in as well, being able to have that network to lean on. So it was great. I've done a couple other collaborations with Josh too with the arena and some of his bootcamp kind of style workshops, which have been a lot of fun. I think it's a very special and unique idea and I'm excited to see it keep growing. I think, especially in this day and age, being able to hop in with some of the world's

37:56Benten Woodring: Like best designers and like learn from them is amazing. And it feels kind of like a gym kind of setup like people go around and like you're like the kind of like the coach or the instructor and go around and see people's designs. It's a really cool setup so I'm excited to see him keep pushing that.

38:10Janne Parri: Yeah, that is exciting. Somehow, I don't know what it is, but it feels like that even in our small little web design field, there is this like some sort of like higher goal or some sort of arena where you can go and meet your maker or compete against others. Yeah. There's something about it. But I'm curious, have you continued with your training regimen? Do you still time yourself and do some practice rounds?

38:45Benten Woodring: I should, especially being more in the creative director role. You do spend a little bit less time designing. Those almost feel like little mini sprints, because you jump in between meetings, or like, okay, here's an idea I have. I think it's a good exercise. Actually, at Unfold, we would do that kind of thing sometimes. On Fridays, we would all... Practice like illustration, for example, and even though I'm not an illustrator, I would still jump in and we would like work on something for an hour. It was like a really good way to like understand like light and color and different tricks that you can use in Figma to add depth. So I actually, I would love to bring that back because I think it's a good practice to have is just practicing your craft even specifically when it's not like a client project. I think that's where like side projects can be a lot of fun too. It's like.

39:29Benten Woodring: Doing something purely for yourself and like doesn't have to be, it's not for anybody else. So yeah, I think we should bring it back.

39:36Janne Parri: Yeah, yeah. I've been meaning to build my own some sort of workout routine because as a freelancer, there are times that I land a big project. It might be like just a development project. And then I work on that like multiple months and never open Figma or just open it to reference the design that I'm building in Webflow. I kind of would benefit most definitely from that sort of like design routine. And of course one can like publish those and one should publish those and do content out of that. Everybody needs to do content nowadays. So why not use those? Actually that brings to my mind one thing I wanted to ask you about.

40:28Janne Parri: Your relationship to social media and publishing and showing your design work. Course, quite a few people encouraged people to publish more. But what's your stand and how's your content game going?

40:43Benten Woodring: It's honestly, it's like a necessary evil, I think. It's very like, I would not be here if it wasn't for sharing on social, like a lot of people. It can also be kind of draining though, like when you're like, I just wanna get work done, I don't wanna be distracted by this stuff. So I go in and out, but I still love it because that's how I've met so many people, like yourself and so many other people in my network. It's like. I would never know these people otherwise. And I know people all over the world now just because of that. And then you can meet them in person, which is always great. So I think it's a great way to grow your personal brand, to learn from other people. And now I have all these little networks and communities of people that I can reach out to because of it.

41:28Benten Woodring: But I would encourage everybody to share your work because no one knows you exist. You have to be kind of annoying to be like, hey, here's what I made today. And you also obviously get business out of it. We've had five figure projects land within minutes of a single tweet, which is crazy. So there's definitely a place for it. But it can be hard to prioritize, I think, for me personally. So I kind of go in and out. Yeah, it's definitely worth pursuing.

41:56Janne Parri: Okay, I believe I hear the audience like shouting what was the tweet that landed the clients and

42:01Benten Woodring: Yeah, we.

42:06Janne Parri: To continue with that is social media like your main way to get new clients or are there any other channels?

42:13Benten Woodring: I actually get very few clients from social... I think it's mostly... ⁓ just staying top of mind is kind of like the point of social. So there are very few that we can tie it directly to that, maybe two or three projects, but it's mostly word of mouth. So I've spent a lot of time like building my network over the years, and building a referral network, which has been something I've been working on, over the last year or so. So I'd say, I mean, at least 90 % of our work or referrals. And now we're at the point where people we don't even know are referring us, which is great.

42:44Benten Woodring: That's a great spot to be in. But they also typically will convert a little bit faster if they're, you know, they already know someone that they trust has already referred them. That helps a lot. So that's a little bit less work. But yeah, I say the social game is just to stay top of mind and continue building that network.

43:00Janne Parri: Yeah, but you mentioned the referral network like how structured is that? Is that like just your thing? I know that there are things like BMI and those sorts of things. So are you talking about something like that or what do mean by the referral network?

43:19Benten Woodring: Yeah, it's gotten a little bit more structured over time. At first it was just like people like friends that own agencies just referring, like not really expecting anything in return. I've tried to make a little bit more structured to like where it's a win-win for everybody. So we do this a few different ways. One is just like a referral fee. So we kind of just send out contracts to people that, you know, get a lot of work in. Maybe they do brand only, they don't do web or like it's just a project that. They don't have the time for. And so we'll cut them a percentage or a flat fee for certain projects that come in. So that encourages them to like obviously forward people's names along. If they can get a few grand out of it, then it's kind of a win for everybody. Another is we have like more official partnerships. So there's one like with brand studios where, you know, maybe we're one of or the only web studio that they refer work to. So we'll cut them a percentage. We do the project and it works well.

44:14Benten Woodring: For everybody and we've done a lot of projects with them so that helps the process be more smooth. So one studio we do that with is Primary Studio. They do brand sprints. They did like the Loveable Rebrand, Paper, a lot of other companies out there. And we'll take a good chunk of... Their clients if they wanna bring on and do web projects. So that one's been really good for the business. And a lot of ways that these relationships have started is by doing pro bono work. So some people I think have like kind of conflicting views on that. It's like you should never work for free. But we kind of do it strategically. It's if someone comes to us and...

44:50Benten Woodring: And they're like, hey, how much would you charge for this? But we see kind of a different opportunity. It's like, hey, we won't charge you, but we'll do this as a trade for referrals. Maybe they have a really good network and they like would are actually interested in sharing referrals. Then we kind of will do those strategically throughout the year. We'll do like three or four of those a year and we'll still send a contract to like this be like this was the price. We'll cross it out. This trade for referrals and we'll still. We'll treat it like a regular project to the best of our ability. Like still client work will, paid client work will take precedence still, but we've also used that to build our network where we just continue expanding that to where we get referrals in from a lot more people. So we'll balance it with, yeah, like actual partnerships with other studios and then doing pro bono work.

45:35Benten Woodring: And it's been, it's worked pretty well actually. So that's where most of our work comes in from referrals. But we're definitely intentional about it. We try not to do like, we're not just doing pro bono projects for everybody. Cause our time's limited. But that's been kind of our strategy.

45:48Janne Parri: Yeah, yeah, about pro bono, course. Never say never, like, there are people that say that you should not do work for free, but there are like other valuable things besides money. So definitely there might be big opportunities like that. Yeah, there's so much stuff that I'd like to talk with you. But... I gotta take it back to the... You mentioned those communities and I know that you are running Pixel Pushers, your local community and I checked the website and I was amazed how far you have taken this,

46:34Janne Parri: My imagination of a local community is just like a Facebook group that sometimes manages to meet in person. Yeah, what's the original story of Pixel Pushers and how can you keep up a local community or keep it active if you may?

46:55Benten Woodring: Yeah, I feel like community is something I like, I just do ⁓ without meaning to half the time... At least that's what I've been told. It's like, ⁓ like I did a design challenge thing called dare to share, last year where we basically encouraged people to post their work every day. And then it turned into like a whole thing. Like there was like a, Twitter community. We did contests with like where we brought in like Pablo Stanley, Dan Petty, Webflow. ⁓ Lots of others to like sponsor and like provide like thousands of dollars in prizes that turned into like a whole thing. We ended up kind of like tapering it off a little bit later last year, but that was like really cool. Another one is pixel pushers. Like you said, I also have like a small slack community. That's like a invite only thing with just like kind of like our closest freelancer friends. So like pass work around and that's been really, really valuable. Devin and I started that.

47:49Benten Woodring: Purely because were trying to solve our own problem of like, hey, we wanna know when all of our friends are available, what their rates are, but it's like getting really annoying having to like email everybody or like DM them all separately every single time. So now we have that community, we can like throw out projects, like where we might need someone to join us on a project or where we just have work that we can pass along. And I truly believe like there's plenty for everybody. So we pass work around all the time, share inspiration. But Pixel Pushes is a great one because it's in person. Like I feel like a lot of us don't really get as much of that these days, especially working remotely. And so I live in a small town in South Carolina and I was trying, I was looking around for creative communities and there wasn't one, it was so weird. There are small meetups here and there that I've like since learned about. And I was originally gonna do a FRIENDS of Figma chapter here.

48:37Benten Woodring: But they were on hold because of the Adobe acquisition at the time. I was like, ah, screw it, I'm just gonna start my own. I got tired of waiting around. So it just started with just texting everyone I knew in the area, DMing them on LinkedIn, be like, hey, we're gonna meet at a brewery. Everyone buys around drinks, but we're just gonna hang out and talk design. And that's how it started. It's, like a lot of things, I try to do the most minimum amount of effort that makes it still worth it. Because obviously I've got other things going on, but I still want it to be like a good time for everybody. So we've been doing that a year and a half. I now have like a co-host now. He has a great network here. He's lived here a long time. He's very rooted in like the design community. And so that's kind of helped to grow the number of people that come. Like, we kind of host it at his like coworking building that he's at. So that makes it super easy, but literally it's just a...

49:31Benten Woodring: We buy pizza, we buy some drinks, everyone comes, hangs out. A lot of times we'll have a speaker, like someone that is local to the community. They can talk about their design process or running a business. Maybe like an illustrator, brand designer, things like that. That's kind of like on topic. And yeah, we'll just get people together. It's not huge, it's like 40 to 50 people. But we also have sponsors now, like, Nistr Studio, they're a Webflow studio and product agency. And yeah, they've been able to help us out with covering some of those expenses, which has been great. It's like, really, lot of these things I do selfishly for myself, like I'm like, I just want to meet people, I want to know who's here, what other agencies are here, what other designers and freelancers and devs and...

50:22Benten Woodring: All of the creatives and it's been great. So it's very low key, not super fancy, but people seem to really appreciate it. There hasn't been anything here like that in 10 years, which is crazy. It's just nuts to me, but yeah, we love it.

50:35Janne Parri: I wouldn't use the word low-key if you have sponsors and speakers

50:39Benten Woodring: You

50:41Janne Parri: And stuff like... If you just had pizzas, that would be low-key. But I'm very inspired by this. We should get something like that going on here in Finland. Yeah, of course there's those internet communities. It's good to be part of those, but especially the big ones. Where there's like thousands of people, it really gets like overwhelming and you end up just lurking around and seeing what people post there. And usually it is quite much just self promoting or something like that, asking about issues and so on, but a local community where maybe even if it grows a bit, like the start will be...

51:27Janne Parri: A small group where people know each other, actually know each other and actually like end up seeing each other in real world. That is and that would be like awesome. And I'd like to see more of that. And I believe that there is some sort of like need for that after COVID and everything. And lots of us like work like me from

51:57Janne Parri: From their home or some co-working space and they just do not see like colleagues or people that do the same kind of job. So that is awesome to see. Any tips how I or someone in the audience could get that sort of thing started?

52:15Benten Woodring: Yeah, I would say don't overthink it and don't overcomplicate it. Just do it and do it consistently. There are gonna be times when it's awkward and one or two people show up and that's totally fine. I've been doing it a year and a half and I feel like it's just now getting going. Just stay super consistent. We just do it the third Monday of every quarter or we do it once a quarter on the third Monday of whatever that month is. And we just do that every single time, same place, same time. So people kind of come to expect that. We've started adding some mini ones in between, but literally spend as little time as possible. Don't overthink it, be like, just literally text everyone you know, tell them to invite their friends, just say, hey, food's on us, come hang out, that's it. And then just do that on repeat, and eventually you'll learn the things that you need to add to it. You'll get feedback from people like, hey, what if we did?

53:09Benten Woodring: What if we had speakers? Like I hadn't really thought of that. It wasn't really on my radar. People love that. And then people were like, well, what if we had other things? Like what if we could just like grab lunch together, do a happy hour? That's not part of the official thing. And again, you just invite people. I use Luma as the invite, like events platform. It's great. That's all you need. We didn't even have a website until recently. I started like recording talks. I just use my iPhone. I use Riverside. Throw it up on YouTube so other people can enjoy it too. But don't overthink it and then just stick with it. Don't expect it to be perfect. Just kind of iterate and learn as you go. It'll be fun. Anyone's gonna appreciate that kind of initiative and most people are itching for community. So go for it. Also, you can always ask me questions.

53:56Benten Woodring: If you have any. So I love doing this stuff. I'm like a total nerd when it comes to this kind of stuff. So you should definitely do it.

54:02Janne Parri: Consistency is one big thing. As in concentration, one should strive for consistency. But it is simple, but it is not easy, of course. Yeah, if you get one or two friends to do it with you, it is easier to do and manage. But yeah, we have... Ride like a webflow meetup with Felix Means who is also living in Finland so I should call Felix that we gotta try this one again. But okay there are still a couple of topics that I want to talk with you. The first one kind of relates to footer.design which is

54:48Janne Parri: Your footer gallery which is awesome. I believe at some point I did a video about the gallery to youtube and that is such a cool little project. Well little it is actually quite big I would say but yeah how do you see like side projects and they're like purpose or meaning or value for creators, designers, maybe even developers. Everybody have something like that?

55:22Benten Woodring: I'm biased, but yes, I think so. I think side projects are, like for me, it's most time I'm trying to solve a problem, like for myself. But it's also like a really good excuse to work with people you might not have worked with before and just do something for yourself. So with footer, like I've never been good at designing footers. They're like ironically kind of tough to design. And a lot of times they're just kind of forgotten about. It's just like a random like link tree design at the bottom. Like don't think about it. And I was actually looking for footer inspiration. And I was like, how is there no website about footers? I feel like it's kind of an important piece. There was obviously like awards and you can look at the categories, but it's kind of buried and they don't specifically focus on that. And so I just started tweeting about it. And I was like, hey, does anyone know if there's like a footer inspiration site out there? And.

56:12Benten Woodring: I learned there really wasn't and I was like, why don't we start one? So I just started playing with mockups and that's actually how I met Devon Fountain who runs Noon Studio with me. And if it wasn't for that side project, we probably would have never worked together. And he was like, hey, if you design it, I'll build it. And I was like, sweet. And so we did that. We also got some other people like Fonz came in, did the logo. Matt Cramm is another great designer who came in and... Helped us with curating everything, helped us design things and come up with ideas. He also helped with scheduling posts and everything. And so I was able to get a lot of things out of that more than just footer inspiration. I met some new friends, people that I work with still to this day. And it also kind of started, now there are a bunch of other micro niche inspiration sites out there, like Navbar Gallery and 404 Gallery.

57:04Benten Woodring: Like Storefront, which is like e-commerce. So many cool ones out there now that I can enjoy because we built this one little nerdy website. And just like anything else I do, it was like very like MVP, like it's just good enough to get out there and to use. That's one thing I've also learned is like, I definitely was a perfectionist. I probably still am to a degree, but. I've learned to just ship things and fix it later. Like just get the idea out there so people can start using it, playing with it, then you can improve on it. Don't get hung up on it being perfect. Like I know so many of us have projects at like 90%, just like sitting in our files that we never launched. And so it's like good just to like get out the door, fix it later. Most people won't even notice. And that's still our MVP site, but now we have, I think we're coming up on like.

57:53Benten Woodring: I mean, we passed 500 posts like a while ago. And now you can go to websites and you see the nice chunky, really well thoughtfully designed footer. And I'd like to think we have a small part in that, which is really cool. So there's even more inspiration out there. So yeah, that was a side project I did that was there to share. I've also done ones that we tried and it didn't really do anything. We had a gallery for Figma plugins. And then Figma redid their community so it's a lot easier to find things so that we didn't really need that. So it kind of worked out, but I love, and then I also got to work with different people on that project too. Same with Dare to share. All people that I still kind of like talk with and collaborate with now. So definitely do it. You'll meet new people, you'll learn new things. You might even solve a problem for yourself. And you can also share it with the world. You never know who you might get to meet.

58:43Janne Parri: Yeah, it's kind of like this community contribution, if you may like. If there's someone in the audience thinking that I'm not gonna build a inspiration site, the site project can be completely different, like some sort of plugin or like what are those sites that just list? Different resources and so on and so forth and developers will have their own contributions and things like stuff that you are known for. But I could ask if I design a cool footer, what's the process of getting it to footer that design?

59:26Benten Woodring: Man, well, so Devin now curates it, so you gotta get through him. I can't even get some of my footers on there, because he'll be like, nope, not good enough.

59:33Janne Parri: The

59:35Benten Woodring: So you'd have to appease the footer gods, which is Devin. But most of it's like, I mean, something unique. If you can get some kind of like subtle animation in there, or even an interaction, those bode well. If it's just like a list of links, it's... Not gonna make it in there. So yeah, giving it some personality. I'd say like definitely spend as much time on the footer as you would on the hero, which is like crazy to think about, but that might give you a chance.

59:59Janne Parri: Yeah, but I believe I said in the video about footer design that there is like this footer revolution coming and I'm kind of hoping that is the case already that people are like finding different places to put their efforts into but yeah obviously the bar is high and as I mentioned the design plateau I feel that I usually design types of footers like there's the one with all the links like very SEO heavy footer or then there's the minimal with logo in the middle and some boring links on either side and that's about it but yeah maybe I'll add that one to my like design workout routine like footer reps I gotta get my reps in

1:00:53Janne Parri: We are going to jump into things outside of web design and Webflow. We're closing into the end. We gotta land this plane at some point. But before that, I gotta ask outside of work, what do you like geek on? I know that at some point you were... An avid cyclist if I remember correctly. Can I see a bicycle on the background? Is that...

1:01:23Benten Woodring: Yep. It's blurred, but yeah, I got my road back there.

1:01:28Janne Parri: Beautiful. Is that like the one true hobby for you or do you geek out on other stuff?

1:01:34Benten Woodring: Yeah, that was definitely a huge thing I used to do a lot. I actually took a step back from it, which is weird, because it was my whole personality, to build a business. I would get up early in the morning, go on a two plus hour ride before work. But then I was like, all right, if I'm gonna build a business, I wanna give it 100%. I'm gonna take that time that I already have blocked out for cycling and put it toward the business. And... See if I can get this thing off the ground. And so that's what I did for a year. I'm working on getting it back into the routine, because it can be tough. And my wife is in school in the evenings and weekends now, so that makes it a little bit tougher. So I've been doing a lot more CrossFit, because I can bring the kids with me. You're in and out in an hour. You get destroyed. You get your workout in. So I'm working on getting that back in. So that's one thing I do. I also love to just be outside, so like hiking, paddle boarding.

1:02:28Benten Woodring: Just walking is something I just like to do just like kind of unplug yoga basically any way I can move and be outside and like we've got some good mountains here. So in like lakes and waterfalls So good to get outside as much as possible, but I also have kids so we'll do you know, lots of kid activities just like do stuff around the house, so it's definitely more boring these days but I like it. I like that I've been building a business or a little studio that I've been wanting to open for a long time. So that's been good. And it's still here. So.

1:03:03Janne Parri: Yeah, the kids like put your priorities in order, so to speak. But I remember we started this conversation and you mentioned that you did a lot of like print design. So do you do anything like creative hobbies or something related to prints or like manual of the computer design stuff?

1:03:28Benten Woodring: No, but I've actually, I feel like this is something that parents can struggle with a lot is like, obviously like kids kind of take priority in like your family and you kind of lose some of those hobbies and it's always kind of a bummer. So I'm actually trying to get back, figure out like, I'm like, okay, I want to, I like need space for some like real hobbies again. Like, I don't know if that would be like photography or like learning an instrument or like making music. I'm actually trying to figure out what that might be to like, because in the evenings, you've got a couple hours of downtime that you need to unwind and get away from work. So I'm actually actively working on that. I don't know what that will be yet, but hoping to kind of make some space for that.

1:04:10Janne Parri: Yeah, hobbies are great. They are a great way to unwind, especially when they are off the computer. But since you mentioned the kids again, knowing your role at work, when your kids are drawing stuff, do you find yourself art directing them that? No, that is not a good color with that one.

1:04:32Benten Woodring: They're actually very artistic and not because of me, because they just kind of taught themselves watching YouTube videos and I don't know, it's actually really cool to see. My favorite thing to do, this would actually probably go under my hobby, is building businesses with them. I've always been kind of entrepreneurial. I always wanna try to start new projects and we've kind of started some together. One was like... Designing and creating greeting cards and we would sell them at little local markets or doing dog walking and designing flyers with them, even making a little website for them. I really like that stuff because it's like you can get away from the client work, yes it's still on a computer but you're building with them and kind of creating memories together and showing them you can do this too. You don't have to, you have the tools you need.

1:05:20Benten Woodring: To go and do something you want to do and get paid for it. I think it's like a really important skill for kids to learn. So I actually really, I really like doing that. And it's like a way for me to unplug it. You obviously don't have to take things too seriously. You can kind of let them be in charge and kind of tell you what to do, which is kind of fun, but also like give them some like helpful tips. So that's like one thing I really enjoy doing. We've kind of bounced around. Obviously with kids, they don't always stick with things forever, but I hope that they remember some of those, like some of what I've taught them, like they can go do basically anything they put their mind to.

1:05:51Janne Parri: Yeah, yeah, there's like huge learning opportunities in projects like that and it even like if one of those grows and becomes like their own it would be like huge asset to go to college for example with and just run your own business while you're studying or something like that. But yeah, those are cool. Okay. One last thing. I'm not sure if you have watched any of my episodes until the end. There's a little section at the end of every episode. It's a little Finnish section where I tell a Finnish saying. I will translate it to English word for word and you as a guest have to know or guess what it means. So...

1:06:40Janne Parri: Are you ready for your saying or idiom or whatever?

1:06:44Benten Woodring: I'm ready.

1:06:45Janne Parri: Okay, so in Finnish the saying is vedellä hirsiä and in English it is translated to drag logs. So what does it mean when I say that I was just dragging logs?

1:06:59Benten Woodring: Man if I were to like take it at face value, I would say like dragging your feet or like waiting around for the perfect moment but that's just a guess

1:07:09Janne Parri: Good guess, not even close, no worries. There's probably been one or two guests that have gotten this one right. Usually these do not follow a logic or if there is a logic that is somewhere in the history, but to drag logs means to sleep or to snore while sleeping. So...

1:07:34Benten Woodring: Okay. Yeah, we have a similar expression like sawing logs.

1:07:38Janne Parri: Yeah, yeah, actually, yeah, I have heard that one. It was not that far fetched. So it's

1:07:45Benten Woodring: I love it.

1:07:45Janne Parri: Kind of funny when you find like similar phrases, but slightly altered in different languages. But OK, this has been a blast. I'm going to have to let you go. But before that, if someone wants to follow you or maybe contact you, where should they go?

1:08:03Benten Woodring: Yeah, you can find me at Benton Woodring on X or Twitter and on LinkedIn. That's usually where I spend most of the time. And then if you want to check out some of the work that we've been doing, you can go to noon.studio, noon with three O's. We'll be updating that site and refreshing it, hopefully in the near future. Yeah, working on kind of like a rebrand and stuff. But yeah, you can find me there. Shoot me a DM. We'll love to chat. If you ever got questions about design or business or. Anything, any other nerdy hobbies, I always love to chat with people.

1:08:33Janne Parri: Would you like some accountability? Would you like to say when the update is coming?

1:08:39Benten Woodring: Yes, early next year. So let's say end of February, but hopefully it'll be done sooner than that.

1:08:46Janne Parri: Yeah, I'm excited for that one. But okay, Benton, thank you so much for this and all the audience and for the listeners. See you in the next one. Bye.

1:08:56Benten Woodring: Yeah, thank you so much.