For a long time now, there's been talk inside of NuSoft Solutions (where I work) about bringing designers onboard. We use design services from a few local design firms on a good share of the public facing web applications we've developed, and we always thought it would be a good idea.

Well, late last year, we started doing just that. We also formed a new group within NuSoft called Kinetic IG (Yup - Silverlight - unless you don't have it installed, then it's flash), and that was publicly announced a couple of weeks ago at a nice event at Eve in The B.O.B. So far, things have been going a lot quicker than I thought they would - we're looking to add six designers in the near future.  We're getting a lot of interest in our services, as well as a bit of press coverage. By the way, one of the projects mentioned in those articles is one I'm still working on.

To be honest, I'm really excited about this change. From a day to day basis, it's not much different, but being able to work closely with designers is great. I'm looking forward to building a working relationship that can be much tighter than we get with outside firms. It'll be interesting to see where things go over the next year.