- Good morning everybody,
welcome to a new vlog.
Sorry if you can hear the robot vacuum
going in the background.
I have some news, I did an update to my gallery wall.
(cheering)
It was, oh gosh, several months ago
that you saw me start planning this out
and I think I only got up to this point
because there was some pictures I wanted to wait for.
This print here was one of them.
This, I'm showing you this
in the most awkward way possible, aren't I?
It's a little line drawing
of one of my favorite music venues in London
and I just, I loved it, so I'm really excited
to have that on my wall now.
Yeah, along with this flag.
This is still one of my absolute favorites.
It's not a print, but pieces of art
that I have hanging on my wall.
So now I work in this little,
if I come over here and show you,
I work in this little gallery zone,
which is very fun.
There's still a bit of room to expand
to the edge of this wall here.
But it's pretty cool, so yeah,
really, really happy with it.
Feeling quite inspired on this Monday morning.
Hopefully, you saw my last video,
which was where I told you about my promotion.
I'm now the Creative Director at CovertKit
and I've been in this role for about a week,
so I'm still figuring out the ropes and everything.
This is my first vlog as Creative Director,
so in this one you're probably gonna see less design stuff,
but I will tell you a little bit about
how I have been arranging my days
and ways I'm gonna try and fit in
all the different things that my role comprises of now
going forward as I figure out new ways to get work done
and what works best for me.
I'm going to do my usual opening of Slack this morning,
let's see how many notifications we've got.
I had Friday off work 'cause it was a fiesta,
like a proper holiday here in Valencia
and so,
20, not bad at all.
20 Slack messages to go through,
bunch of channels of stuff to read.
They're gonna be the first thing I do this morning.
The other thing I need to do today is,
okay, quick story,
last night I watched this movie
called The Wolf of Snow Hollow.
It was really, really good.
You should go and check it out on iTunes
and after I saw it, I enjoyed it so much I Tweeted about it,
I like sharing with people to try and encourage people
to watch it, but a few minutes later
the person who wrote, directed and starred in it
deemed me on Twitter and was like, hey,
tell me about ConvertKit, I'm looking to transition
from MailChimp and I'm like,
this is why I freaking love the internet, you know?
You can watch a movie and thoroughly enjoy it
and then a few minutes later,
the person who made the movie is messaging you
on Twitter and you're having a conversation with them
about email marketing.
What the heck?
So, I'm gonna make a little video today
walking through to demo CovertKit
and how I feel like it would be useful
for film makers, we'll see.
We'll see where that goes,
but it's just pretty fun.
What else? I had some team organization stuff to do.
Maybe a little bit of design stuff we'll get to today,
but maybe not.
I'm redesigning our pricing page at the moment.
So, I'll show you more on that as I get to it
and then tonight, I'm gonna be a guest
on The Future Belongs To Creators podcast,
which is a show that Nathan and Barrett started,
our CEO and COO during the pandemic,
live streamed on YouTube.
All right, enough updates, time to get into work.
I have my coffee, ready to go.
I've run out of filters for my Aero Press,
so it's Nespresso from here on out
until I get around to ordering new ones.
Let's get into the work day.
(upbeat music)
It is a fiesta today in Valencia.
The Friday was the day of the Valencian community,
the day the city was founded, I guess.
And there's been mascletà going off all over the place,
which is the thing that they do in Spain,
it's like day time fireworks
and it's about orchestrating the sound,
rather than the visual lights of usual fireworks.
I just heard one going on in the distance out there
and I was gonna try and catch it but it stopped
as soon as I got my camera out.
Guess I'm going back to work then.
(upbeat music)
Okay, cut to night time.
It's been a hella busy day.
Lots of writing, Slack communication,
organization stuff which is all part of the job,
but right now, I'm getting ready to speak
on The Future Belongs To Creators podcast with Nathan
which is gonna be fun.
We're gonna talk about creators unionizing,
which is a thing I've seen, been talking about
more and more lately.
So yeah, that'll be good.
It's nearly nine o'clock and so it's a late day for me,
but I took a break earlier for dinner to make up for it.
I think it'll keep this vlog going tomorrow
because I didn't get to show you much today
and as I've been working today,
I've been starting to think about figuring out
a new routine for myself,
where I have days dedicated to different things.
So like Monday, I think, it's always gonna be organization,
planning, catch up strategy type of day
and then Tuesday, the afternoon is meetings
and so to counteract that,
I think I might make the morning design time.
So, stay tuned for tomorrow for my design time.
Good morning, it's a new day.
I've just spent about 20 minutes going through
Slack, base camp doing my usual morning catch up thing
and now I'm gonna get in to doing some design stuff,
which is gonna be fun.
I'm gonna be Y framing for our pricing page.
I think the great thing about me
being in a different time zone to my team
is that I'm always going to have my morning's free
and so that means I just need to use them
really efficiently to get practical hands on work done
before it's communication time in the afternoon.
Like, this afternoon I've meetings from three o'clock
until seven o'clock, pretty much, back to back.
I've got time before that to get stuff done
that I need to so let's get into Y framing the pricing page.
I don't know if this happens to you
when you're designing things, but with this page,
I have found myself designing a version,
feeling like, ah, that's not quite right
and tweak, tweak, tweak in different versions
and then eventually ending up back
at the original one I started with,
but still feeling like it's not right.
Sometimes you go through that iteration process
and you realize that the first one
was actually the best way to go
and sometimes, you just get frustrated
because it's still not the right way to go.
But yeah, if you look at these from far away,
they look pretty much exactly the same, don't they?
And there's just very small differences between them.
What I'm trying to do,
the challenge that I'm tryna solve for here
is we now have three plans.
Previously we just had two, a free plan
and then the creator plan, which was our paid plan.
We've added in this pro plan here
which has some extra features
for people who need more advanced stuff
and so I need to adapt the design for these three plans.
The prices of these plans change
based on the number of subscribers you have,
so that's what I'm tryna do with this slider up here
and then they can also change based on if you pay
yearly or monthly.
So there's just a lot of stuff to include here,
as well as of course, all plan details.
Like this feels overwhelming,
the amount of information on the page, right?
It's a lot of stuff,
but I do think it's clear
and it helps you read through exactly what's in one plan,
rather than if you're in a table,
you look through and you're like okay,
this plan doesn't have this thing, what is that
and then you have to look over to see what is was.
But visually, this looks nicer, you know?
But yeah. I don't know.
We did have feedback on a previous version
of the pricing page that was like this,
that people like to just be able to read in a line
what was there, but I don't know if it works
with three plans man.
It's just a lot of text on the page.
And I can't work out how best to do the slider thing
at the top. I've tried a few different versions.
Well these ones are all adding up,
yeah, there we go, there's a different one.
Make it this little toggle instead.
I don't know, this is what I'm gonna crack on with now.
I got to this point the other day and got frustrated
with it, so let's jump back in with a more positive
mind set and see where I get to.
(upbeat music)
Just taking a quick break from work to record a podcast,
as you do.
All right, it's Thursday now.
I haven't done a great job with keeping the vlog updated
this week but I'm back to working on the pricing page
again and I wanted to show you.
So this week it's been a strategy day,
then a design day, strategy day, then a design day.
It's worked out really well so far this week.
Yesterday I spent a bunch of time,
essentially doing a lot of writing
and thinking about the different creator archetypes
that we are tryna attract and get using ConvertKit,
like musicians, artists, authors, people like that
and that was really fun to spend a bunch of time
thinking, planning, strategizing
and it be my job now, you know?
'Cause I did used to do a bunch of that stuff.
We've made some Design Life podcast episodes
about how when you're a designer,
100% of your time is not spent designing.
That's just not how it turns out
and yeah, my role as I've been at ConvertKit longer
and longer, I have spent time writing things
and strategizing things,
but my role is still design,
so I had to make sure I was getting the design work done
at the end of the day and now,
the strategizing stuff is part of my job,
so that's really cool, I really enjoy that
and I've felt like it's been a good balance this week
of just like one day, admin, writing, strategy,
one day, design.
But like I said, I'm back to it being a design day today.
I can't remember where I last showed you the pricing page.
Essentially since then I have done several more versions.
But what I'm liking right now,
I do like this one.
I'm still torn between the idea of having all the text
and columns, I can't remember if I told you about this,
so that you can read down it,
or having a table which is slightly less friendly
I guess for figuring out what's in a single plan,
'cause you have to scroll down and then look along to it,
but yeah, I don't know.
I'm still working out the best way to arrange
the other stuff around this table idea.
But I think what I'm gonna do next
is first of all, mock up what this will be on mobile,
I already have it in my head,
just needs to be mocked up so other people
can be brought in to the vision of it.
I'll do that for both versions I think
so that I can then share it with the team
and get some more outside feedback,
but I feel like I'm finally solving this problem.
Where at the start of the week,
when I was over here,
it did not feel like I was anywhere close
to a solution, so that's good, you know?
Sometimes these things take time.
(upbeat music)
Okay, I've finished a design for the pricing page
and I'll just show you quickly.
So I've loaded it into Invision to share with the team
for feedback, (mumbles).
You can see I always leave little tour point dots
explaining several parts.
Yeah, this is one version.
I decided that I like these columns
where you shrink the font
so that it maybe feels slightly less overwhelming.
It's still a lot of text,
but I honestly think it's better than it was.
This is still my favorite one.
Here's me showing what it would be like for a large plan,
for a small plan and then this is what I've mocked up
for mobile in the end.
Yeah, I don't know if you can even get a good sense
of this here on screen, rather than not sitting here
on a phone, but hey
and then the idea is that as you scroll down,
the plan names is what I'm looking for.
Plan names are prices stay sticky to the top
so that you can always have that as a reference
for what column you're looking in
and then I also shared this one as well with the team
to see if, yeah, they particularly liked this bit,
I just wanted to show it as an option
'cause I felt like people were gonna ask about it.
Maybe we could go this way too.
I wouldn't mind too much,
but I do think I prefer this one here.
We will see what comes out of some discussions.
It's been a good week,
it's been a busy week.
So I've been adapting and tryna get the design work done
as well as settle into this new role
that I hope you've enjoyed coming along
and seeing how I've been structuring my days.
I'm sure I will be refining the idea
of this different day to day,
just different things as I go forward.
Figuring it all out and sharing it with you along the way.
Hope you had a good week.
Let me know in the comments how it was.
Tell me something good that happened to you
or that you did this week
or that you particularly enjoyed,
even if it was just the small,
like watching your favorite show
or something like that, I don't know.
The world's still going through tough times, it's 2020.
So let's look for some bright sparks
and feel free to share them in the comments
if you so want to.
I'm gonna sign off now
and end my day with a bunch of readings.
So thanks for tuning in and I'll see you next week.
Bye. (upbeat music)