Unit Verse

Meet the Staff: Nathan Ford

• by Andy 11 months ago
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What’s your role at Unit Interactive?

I communicate. I talk with clients, and then communicate their ideas to the world. I talk to Unify customers, and then solve their issues. I write to our blog readers and occasionally write for other publications. And perhaps most importantly: I contribute to the ongoing conversation that is Unit’s role in the web design industry by bringing new ideas and helping all of us Unitards create the best work out there.

So how would you define Unit’s role in the web design industry…and why should an agency have some specific role in its industry?

Every practicing professional contributes to their industry’s perception whether they intend to or not. Agencies – being conglomerates of such professionals – are looked to as even more representative of the design community, so each shop has a choice: stay quiet or join the conversation. This conversation isn’t just amongst our fellow design buddies, though. It involves past, current & potential clients… and every person on the planet, really. That’s why I believe we get so impassioned at Unit when we see unprofessional behavior. We realize that bad experiences affect us all in this small web ecosystem.

How’d you end up at Unit?

I was a rather young art director at a national ad agency before I came to Unit. I was given a lot of autonomy over web projects since I was the only one with HTML/CSS chops, and so I learned the ways of the web fast and mostly uninterrupted. Eventually, the agency began to collapse due to some rather silly business practices, and I knew I needed to move on. Meanwhile, I came across Andy’s article, “On Creativity” on A List Apart and thought “that’s how you run a shop!” I tracked down more info on Mr. Rutledge (we don’t ever call him that, btw) and found that he and Angela ran a shop just 20 minutes away from my very seat! A few emails and a coffee-shop meeting later, I was a bona fide Unitard.

By now some may be thinking, you keep saying this word: Unitard.

Just a silly name we started using for ourselves when I started here (and perhaps before?).

What’s great about your job?

Untangling. I love taking a big tangled mess of an idea and straightening it out. I love facing a problem – or aspect of a problem – that may take a pot of coffee and an entire afternoon. And I love doing things that no one else is doing, or even thinking about. It’s a big wide world of possibilities out there, and Unit has been the perfect platform for me to dive right in.

Is that where Unify came from?

Unify came from wanting my own life to be easier. Of course creating it was actually much more difficult on my life for a while there, but in the end we all have learned a lot and grown tremendously from the effort. [Unify is Nathan’s brainchild and he is the primary driving force behind it here at Unit.]

So what do you do when you’re not designing?

My wife and I hang out and solve the world’s problems (in theory mostly). I get cranky when I don’t run, and I also spend too much time at used book stores. I could just buy the editions I want online, but I love the hunt.

Favorite movie?

If I have to pick, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is my go-to answer.

What are some of your daily website visits?

I mostly use apps like Twitter and my Reader. I let the little squared-off people inside those apps tell me where else to go.

What advice would you offer an aspiring design professional who is looking for the right opportunity and/or environment?

Read and observe everything. Let the bad in with the good, and analyze. Think about how you would improve everyday experiences like an ATM, or DVD kiosk. Right before I graduated college, I visited Frog Design in Austin and got this same advice. It has made all the difference in my career.

From my own experience, I would add a couple more thoughts:

• Dissect how things get made, not just in code, but in the board rooms too. If experiences suck, why do they suck? I’ll give you hint: it very rarely has to do with bad design chops.
• Work on your communication skills (sometimes referred to as “soft skills”). Put yourself in situations where you will have to communicate your ideas.

Nathan’s personal website