Starting a freelance design studio is incredibly humbling. In his talk, Matt Brown will share experiences from his first few challenging months of running his firm, thingsthatarebrown, llc.

The talk will cover a wide range of topics, and highlight many obstacles that single-principal design shops face. Subjects will include such chestnuts as “How to keep creativity alive,” “Don’t work in your underwear”, “Learning to think like your clients”—and many more. The discussion will be open and candid, and Matt will give real-world examples of how easy it is to get overwhelmed by the pace and challenges of ‘doing it all,’ as well as outline strategies for finding your way through the haze.

About the Speaker

Matt Brown is the Principal and Creative Lead of thingsthatarebrown, llc a small web design company based in Seattle. THINGSTHATAREBROWN, LLC crafts clean, elegant and easy- to-use websites and user interfaces for businesses and organizations.

Previously, he was Lead Interface Designer at SEOMOZ, a leading SEO firm. Before that, he was Lead Interface Designer at CATYLIST REAL ESTATE SOFTWARE, a national commercial real estate listing and marketing software company.

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The First Four Months of Freelance: A Series of Great Failures

This Refresh meeting is held at the Fremont Library, located near the Troll. Please RSVP if you'd like to attend.

And don’t forget that we’ll all head over to Blue Moon Burgers in Fremont for food and drinks after Refresh. Hope to see you there.