Newbies
Carol Pickering and Kim Girard
Net consulting newcomers are gobbling up work as fast as they can, trying to make a name in a crowded marketplace.
Method, a tiny San Francisco design boutique, is small (30 people), elitist, and staffed by international types. And the company's 28-year-old CEO, Kevin Farnham, prefers it that way.
"They're a small group of people that recognize excellence," says Fort Point Partners CEO James Roche.
Farnham argues that design schools overseas-including Europe and Australia-are turning out some of the Web's best and most disciplined artists, some of whom end up at Method. "Most of the Web looks like shit," says Farnham, who attended Parsons School of Design in New York. "Most designers on the Web haven't known what they're doing." Most Method-designed sites have a similar look and feel-because they are built on a grid, with attention to balancing unusual colors with order and simplicity. Like many executives who head smaller boutiques, Farnham blasts larger services companies for charging exorbitant prices for Web design work. "It's unbelievable," he says. While the average client pays Method a steep $320 an hour (1), Farnham says the firm completes its work a lot faster than bigger companies that promise everything.
Method has done work on about 30 Websites, including Autodesk and Adobe, and designed the interface for Intuit's Quicken 2000, the personal finance software. Farnham plans to grow the company slowly, adding five offices this year and doubling that number by the next.
"We didn't build this to flip it," he says.
(1) Method's rates actually average $125 an hour (We don't know where she got this).
