Every year, National Small Business Week rolls around and the internet fills up with graphics, sales, and a lot of “we’re so grateful for your support!” content.
And honestly? That’s fine.
Community matters. Gratitude matters.
But I want to take a slightly different angle.
What It Actually Looks Like to Run a One-Woman Studio
nth degree media & designs is me. Just me. I handle the discovery calls and the design work, the proposals and the invoicing, the strategy and the “wait, why did that form break” debugging at 9pm. There’s no team to delegate to, no account manager buffer between me and the client, no one to cover when life gets complicated.
It’s what I signed up for… and I mean that genuinely. Because what comes with all of that is something you can’t replicate in a larger agency: every single client gets my actual attention.
Not a template. Not an intern’s interpretation of a brief.
Me, thinking carefully about what they need and how to build it well.
Why I Started Doing This Work
My background isn’t traditional design school. It’s disability rights and advocacy, and that shapes everything about how I approach web design.
When I look at a website, I’m not just thinking about whether it looks good. I’m thinking about whether everyone can use it. Whether it holds up for someone navigating with a keyboard, a screen reader, or a slow connection on a mobile device.
Good design, to me, means design that works for people… all of them. That conviction is what led me to build a studio around it.
The Clients Who Make This Work Worthwhile
I work with a wide variety of clients from small businesses and local nonprofits all the way up to statewide organizations and government agencies.
What they have in common isn’t budget… it’s that they’re doing real work in their communities and they need a web presence that reflects that.
Small Business Week is a good reminder that behind every small operation is a person (or a small group of people) who decided to build something and kept showing up to do it.
I see that in my clients all the time. It’s motivating.
What’s Next at Nth Degree Designs
This spring, I’ve been deep in a blog series called Going All In on Accessibility, where I covered everything from ADA Title II compliance to accessibility overlays (spoiler: they’re not the fix people think they are) to practical design basics anyone can implement.
If accessibility has been on your radar, whether because of a compliance concern or just because you want to do right by your users, I hope you’ll check it out.
And if you’ve been thinking about a new website, a redesign, or finally getting serious about what accessibility means for your organization, I’d love to talk.
Here’s to another year of building things that matter.
—Rachel at nth degree
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