Welcome to the first edition of the Bethink Bee! I am solidly 15 years into my journey with actively publishing online (rarely under my name) and building websites (often without credit). Bethink Studio is nearly five years old, yet our website has only been up for a little over a year. The truth is: I long had anxiety and imposter syndrome that somehow what I was doing wasn’t good enough. It was always good enough, and I should have shared what I was learning and doing from the beginning. 

This newsletter is intended to be a portal into how we’ve built a web agency that values our people first, including building up their skills in a sustainable and organic way while supporting their lives outside of work. If we all share our knowledge and keep passing it forward, opportunity opens up and our communities get stronger. Our team is growing and made up of the most fantastic humans I could dream of to work with. 

 

Please share this newsletter with your friends and colleagues and follow us on all the socials (BlueSky, LinkedIn, Facebook, GitHub, Dribbble). We’re going to keep publishing tutorials and instructions we’ve found helpful with our clients. We’re going to open source our work when we can and continue our work to unabashedly support those who have not traditionally had professional opportunities in our industry. We hope you’ll join us for the journey.

With love and gratitude, 

Bud Kraus and I have been talking about doing an episode of his WordPress podcast, Seriously, Bud? for so long… and last month we finally made it happen! Our conversation took me way back — we talked about my long journey to and in tech, how my experiences in the nonprofit and agency worlds have shaped how I do business now, and what mentorship in action looks like. I also tease what lies ahead for Bethink, and the big dreams we have for what we’re building together at the studio.

October 6-10 is National Voter Education Week — an annual open-source, nonpartisan voter education campaign that has brought together thousands of local, state, and national partners to educate millions of voters across the US. 

 

We worked with the NVEW team in the run-up to the 2024 elections to make major updates to their existing website’s design and rebuild the site from the ground up — on a tight deadline! — to improve user experience for voters, campaign partners, and the campaign team. That meant streamlining their workflow, remapping user journeys, improving information architecture, and preserving their brand continuity in the process.

We're lining up our projects for 2026 and we'd love to work with you. Whether you're looking to refresh your website or build a new one from the bottom-up, we're ready to make it happen. 

 

In an era of AI summaries, what's happening to search? Human Made breaks it down.

 

"One thing I’ve learned the hard way is that seniority can create blind spots." This quick piece from engineer Pedro Tavares has a lot of insight to offer — on expanding your circle of competence, turning every experience into a learning opportunity, and making growth part of your web dev practice.

 

"Images are a powerful way to clarify complex ideas, reinforce content, and make the web more engaging. But if they aren’t accessible, some people will miss part of the story." Enter: These practical, WCAG-compliant techniques for making SVGs more inclusive, from A11y Collective.

 

"It’s interesting how templatized things become when you do them for the 1000th time. You start operating on autopilot and lose the creative touch." Read this important perspective on taking the opposite approach from designer Hardik Pandya.

 

Where did the @ sign come from? Amphora? For real! Read all about the fascinating hidden history of this ubiquitous symbol from the BBC.

Recently we (and I actually mean our entire team) have gotten obsessed with the Finch App. At first I thought it sounded completely silly, because having a personal self-care Tamagotchi IS a silly concept, but our project manager Kayla convinced a few of us to try it and, well, this has become a core self-care strategy for several of us. Plus, it’s fun!

Got the Bee from a friend? Sign up to get it monthly.