“Today, Walter Smith is a co-founder of Jackson Fish Market a producer of aesthetically sophisticated web sites.”
A little view into Walter’s past.

Lifehacker linked to an article on the top workplaces in Australia:
“A recent poll in Australian business magazine BRW set out to find the 50 best workplaces, and while the results are Australia-specific, one thing stood out: Companies with great perks consistently topped the list.”
When you’re a part of the tech startup community it’s commonplace to [...]

Paul Graham publishes a series of essays, and i often find myself agreeing with them or inspired by them. His latest talks about the characteristics he thinks startup founders must have.
“I was writing a talk for investors, and I had to explain what to look for in founders. What would someone who was the [...]

Well, it’s 4:45 on our first day back at work after break and I keep forgetting to blog. Not a good sign for blogging, but a very good sign given all the work we have to do. Everyone had a fun break and our Jackson Fish family grew a little as Walter now has an [...]

There are many ways we could count the start of Jackson Fish Market: the day the state issued our license, the day Jenny showed up, the day we got our first paying gig, the day we got our first check, etc. But in this webby world it seems like the day our web site went [...]

There are many ways we could mark the official launch of our little business. There was the day our papers went through with the state, or the day we signed our first paying contract, or the day that Jenny, Walter, and I were all finally and officially employed by the company. But the date I [...]

I admit it. This weekend I attended the 2008 BrickCon conference targeted at Adult Lego Hobbyists (ALHs). The conference lasted for essentially three full days from Friday to Sunday. I even took off work on Friday. Super nerdy? Yes. But before you judge… hear my story.
I always loved Lego as a kid. What’s not to [...]

In keeping with this week’s mood board theme at Jackson Fish, I’d love to share with you the inspiration for Carbon Grove. If you haven’t been to Carbon Grove yet, it’s a site that let’s you sign up for reminders for small things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint. Users get weekly e-mail [...]

Invitastic is a super simple site for inviting friends and family to events. To convey the simplicity of the experience, I explored a mood board of fun, playful and simple elements. You’ll find bright, happy colors, mod patterns, hand-drawn typography, and party decorations. Even the logotype came from a garland of flags that you might [...]

It’s no secret that a lot of designers use mood boards as a way of kicking off the creative process. What’s a mood board, you ask? It’s a collage of colors, typography, and images that together, helps to inspire a personality/theme/experience. But don’t be fooled into thinking it’s merely a decorating exercise. There are elements [...]

To be perfectly honest, I did not know what I would be getting myself into with this internship at Jackson Fish Market. When I read the job listing, it sounded somewhat off-putting relative to what I thought I wanted to do. My hope was to get an internship that bolstered my experience in the [...]

I’ve been a manager many times throughout my job history. There’s a trap that most managers fall into - the trap of control. Basically, you want to lead your organization and guide them to shared success. What better way to do that than to optimize them around a shared objective? After all, once everyone is [...]

If you made it to our inaugural Secret Society Meeting at Jackson Fish Market World Headquarters last month, then you already know we’ve moved our working offices from the northwest corner of our building over to the northeast corner. The new space is not only much bigger, it also comes with wonderful floor-to-ceiling windows! [...]

We’re happy to see Tafiti getting such a nice reception across the net. In general there are lots of good comments as well as excellent suggestions on how to make it even better. One thing in particular that we noticed was people commenting on the tree view. The comments have ranged from the “wow” variety [...]

In addition to working on our own offerings, periodically we work with key partners to help them deliver new software experiences. When we work with partners we look for opportunities where we can inject some of our particular brand of user experience value as well as our technical expertise. We’re kind of picky and ultimately [...]

Designing our business so we could have extended periods of time off has been critical for us in terms of having the life we want. And even though I was never really in doubt, a tiny part of me wondered if after a month off in the middle of the summer I’d want to come [...]

Even when you have a job like mine where you love what you do, taking time to do other stuff is important. Personally, I don’t need recharging per se, but getting to do other activities and gain new perspective is always a good thing. And ultimately I think it helps me do my job better. [...]

As the lead flower harvester for the “florists” at They’re Beautiful!, I thought I’d share with you how the flowers were made.
To get some basic understanding of what it’s like to be a florist, I spent half a day job-shadowing Nisha Kelem, owner of Seattle’s Fleurish. We met early one weekday at the wholesale flower [...]

What an exciting last couple of days we’ve had here at Jackson Fish HQ. While it’s only a small first step in terms of the experiences we want to develop, we’ve been lucky to get a very fun reception for They’re Beautiful! First and foremost we wanted to thank everyone who’s checked it out, given [...]

We really try to be patient and not rush things. But there gets to be a point in the project where you need to just push push to get it out the door. That’s where we’re at (with a couple of projects actually) so we’re eating at our desks. On the menu today is BBQ [...]

Despite the shame and embarrassment this might bring to our new little company, we’re revealing our Guilty Pleasures Playlist that we’ve been fine tuning over the past few days.
There are some songs in the list that one might argue are just classics and therefore would cause no embarrassment. But the way I [...]

We’ve been playing with different subscription music services in the office. Jenny has a Napster account and Walter has accounts with both Napster and Rhapsody. They’re relatively cheap and they have a reasonably good selection of music. After losing our “Guilty Pleasures” playlist (of which Jenny will post the contents at some point if we’re [...]

I’m a big talker when it comes to how businesses should be transparent about their inner workings. However, it’s mostly talk. I admit that it feels very counter-intuitive to actually put it into practice in many situations. I’m trying to push the envelope a little at a time when it comes to articulating what’s going [...]

After lunch the whole team dropped by the nearby Costco to pick up supplies. I know it’s a cliché but it was surprisingly fun. I picked out a three pound box of Oreos. Three. Pounds. Of. Oreos.

…that’s how many spam comments we’ve gotten on the blog in the past week. Akismet (spam plug-in for Wordpress) is pretty amazingly effective at routing these junk comments into the spam folder (though this past week a handful got through to our main unapproved queue which usually doesn’t happen). Each of the spam comments is [...]

I recently was talking to a friend who’s doing his own startup. He’s looking for someone to head up marketing for his company. He’s halfway through his formidable seed round and expects to get VC after that. He’s already got a sizable group of devs and he’s off to the races with his product. He [...]

When we first moved into this space down in Pioneer Square in Seattle, one of the first important tasks was determining the nearest best spot for coffee. Not being a coffee person this wasn’t really a priority for me personally, but Jenny and Walter needed their fix. (They’d be blogging this themsleves, but they’re busy [...]

<cliché>I ordered the Lego Corner Café for the office.</cliché>

I literally waited a day before pulling the trigger on getting it. Because it was a $130 “luxury” that we don’t need? No, because I felt like such a startup poser. In the end though, the awesome coolness of the Lego Corner Café won me over. Screw [...]

Eating has always been an incredibly social experience for me. A chef friend calls it the “last bastion of human social interaction”. Who you go to lunch with at work is also part of a complicated social dance. (Though lucky for us it’s pretty easy since there’s only three of us.) It’s time to chat, [...]

Yesterday we delivered part two of our four part series of posts directed at the brand advertising community: Branded Software Experiences - A Cost-Effective and Critical Component of your Brand Advertising Mix. Today we’re delivering part three.
Despite all the technology, the creation of software is not a science. It’s not necessarily an art either. It’s [...]