Si-Mel Solutions was founded in 2004 by two Carnegie Mellon University graduates looking to make a little extra money on the side. Shortly after, one of those graduates, Thomas Shin, happened to find me on the internet through the very site you’re looking at (although not as nice as it is now).
I don’t remember exactly how it went, but he emailed me, one thing led to another, and then we were at Starbucks next to my school (University of California, Irvine) talking about a couple websites I could build. That’s how it all started and from there, I became a permanent member of the team.
I redesigned the website in XHTML, CSS and Flash. It looked pretty good for the times (when everyone had a thing for Flash). Flash works in moderation, but taken too far, the usability ceases to exist. Anyway, I also sourced all of the photos used in our websites and advertisements that I designed.
If you’ve ever worked with a small marketing budget, getting the right photos can be a bust, especially if you’re in need of product photos. Fortunately for us, we’re in the web business and we already have photos (screenshots) of our products, but we still need photos to use in our products.
That’s why over the years, I’ve become an expert at sourcing stock photography for as cheap and free as possible. Between coding and online marketing, you only have so much time to dedicate to art production; it’s much easier to pay a couple dollars or nothing at all and use Photoshop to sort it out.
Finally, Si-Mel is where I got my start in copywriting; learning out of necessity. When you run in a small crew, each member will inevitably have to play their part and more in the different aspects of the business. The only way to get good is to try, fail, and learn from your experience.
