Those of you who caught Carol Chapman’s profile last week may have wondered about the genius behind the design of her website WomanwithPortfolio.com. Partners-in-crime Joelle Reeder and Kathy Scoleri have built an almost unreasonably awesome career designing blog and Web sites, from informational and business sites such as Mommy Cast and Goal Getter Girls to personal and humor blogs like The Sneeze and She Blogged by Night (two of my personal favorites). The Moxie Girls have achieved an intimate sense of their clients’ needs, embellishing each author’s words and enhancing the mood of each site. Whether kitschy or mod, classic or wild, the Girls give each blog a style and personality of its own. You know what to expect from a blogger when you visit a Moxie-designed site: Joelle and Kathy don’t mess around.

Well, maybe a little—but what good is blogging without a balance of sense and fun? With great enthusiasm and humor, Joelle and Kathy ensure that their clients get the best any site can offer; to this end, they have even authored a DIY blog handbook, The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie, for those brave enough to start their own. The Guide makes the process surprisingly painless, starting from scratch—like any good textbook—and explicating in a personal and relatable language everything a girl could ever need to know about blogging.

And personal and relatable is the Moxie Girl way—today Joelle and Kathy get candid about their mad machinations and serious successes.

Both of you have art backgrounds: tell us about the transfer from fine and performance arts to web design.

Kathy: What made me transition from fine art to web design? Money. Nobody pays painters until they're dead. OK, seriously...when I was in college they didn't really offer any kind of training for that, so when I stumbled onto web design, it became an immediate interest. What I like about it is that it's like trying to solve a problem. With paint, you just pull out a canvas and paint a picture. With web design, you have to figure out how you're going to get it to display...you have to solve it, like a puzzle. And that was fun.

Joelle: I've always been the artsy-fartsy type. I'd been drawing from a very young age along with my music studies, and originally thought I might become an artist. But when I got into high school, art class was closed, so I joined choir instead. Way to persevere! While I still drew as a hobby, music became my passion until I discovered the Internet. I've always been a "figure it out" kind of girl so, once turned on to web design, I enrolled in design school, which I promptly quit to teach myself. Like Kathy, I liked trying new things and seeing what worked and pushing the boundaries of what was considered standard at the time. I still sing, though!

We'd like to know a bit about the design process, as well: when you're designing for a client, where do you start and how do you know when you've perfected a website?

Kathy: We usually start with a few emails and a proposal. Then we move on to the consultation phase, which allows us to meet with our clients on the phone or in a chat atmosphere to iron the big picture goals and the overall client desires for their site. Then we tell the client to just hang tight and we move the project into the creative phase, where we take all of their ideas, our ideas, and with their ultimate site needs and goals in mind, apply our skills and talents to deliver the creative concept.

Joelle: After that, we do some back 'n' forth revisions, and once approved, move the design into development and when the clients squeal and pee their pants in delight, we know the project is finished.

What motivated you to write The IT Girl's Guide to Blogging with Moxie? What was your intent, and has that changed at all?

Joelle: Well, we've always been motivated to write and have been working on our own series for some time now, but were approached by Wiley Publishing in late 2006. They were launching a new series of tech books for women called The IT Girl's Guides and wanted us to author the debut book about blogging.

Kathy: Our intent was to give women the opportunity to take on blogging without being bored to tears by the usual tech fare. We wanted to bring some fun to an otherwise dry topic. We wanted to take what we love and make it fun for people.

Joelle: Has our intent changed? Oh hell, no! We still stand behind the intent of the book and see it as so much more than just a tech reference. It's actually a fun read. We are all about having a good time and that's what makes our book and our business something we're so passionate about.

Anyone can start their own blog, and you've written a concise and comprehensive manual to facilitate that process: what do you think of the universal influence of blogging and our reliance on it as a medium of communication?

Kathy: The influence of blogging has been exponential over the last couple of years. It's opened up people to the Internet in general. People are becoming less afraid to get involved in technology. Blogging is becoming much more of a household thing.

Joelle: I think blogging is going to continue to make its way into the mainstream and not just through political blogs, but through all areas, especially with the growing female presence online.

What with the growing business and the new book, you're gaining ever-greater influence on this still-new form of communication—what do think of that?

Joelle: Both Kathy and I have been blogging for over five years, and over that time, we've seen blogging morph from a simple one-page online thought-dump with photo of a celebrity in the corner to full-on interactive personal promotion tools and self-run communities. As one of the very first blog design firms, we feel we helped shape the new look of blogging by introducing more impactful, out-of-the-box, fun and personalized blog design using graphics, "themed" concepts and new techniques not seen before. We're not going to go all Al Gore on you and pretend like we invented the Internet, but the several hundred blog designs we deluged the blogosphere with since 2003 and beyond definitely had an impact.

Kathy: As far as our influence goes, while we love to design for all kinds of people, women have really been the bread n' butter of Moxie Design Studios for the last five years. And we love them for it. We create stylish, fun design that girls like. What's not fun about that? I think it's great that women are getting more involved and it's giving more opportunities to shape their lives a bit. More women are finding ways to work from home or to explore hobbies that might not have otherwise been accessible to them.

The Alpha Five

1. Name one piece of work—novel, painting, movie, etc.—that really influenced/motivated you. Explain how/why.

Joelle: Well, that depends. There are a lot of things that move me...

Kathy: Like giant bean burritos.

Joelle: Well, I was going to say that art, music, film...all these things impact my creative vision. I love jazz and impressionist and surreal art, classic movies and hilariously-written essays. I'm not sure if any one specific thing impacted me to design websites, though.

Kathy: Yeah, there's not one specific thing that is motivation for me. Between the two of us, we get inspiration everywhere. It's in the card aisle at Target, when you go for a walk, but most recently I saw an art exhibit by Georgia O'Keefe. Her subject was a cow skull and it amazed me how she made something so beautiful and serene out of something so mundane as a bleached-out cow skull.

Joelle: Ooo Ooo! That reminds me... I saw a Salvador Dalí exhibit in London last year and it really fired me up. Dalí is sooooooo out there, it just reminds me that you should do what's in your gut, what stirs you, whatever inspires you, regardless of how bizarre or crazy it might seem. In fact, I feel that way about pretty much everything in life. We wouldn't be doing what we're doing if we didn't believe that.

2. What is the biggest challenge/obstacle you have encountered thus far?

Kathy: It's amazing to me how much we've accomplished when we've only been in the same room maybe 4 times over the last 5 years. But I'd have to say distance is one of our biggest obstacles.

Joelle: It's the only thing keeping us from taking over the world.

Kathy: We don't let it hold us back from what we really want to do; we just have to find more creative ways of getting things done.

Joelle: Especially with how quickly we've grown and all that entails, like writing a book... which we basically did over Yahoo! Instant Messenger. Now that's talent, people!

3. What is your biggest regret?

Joelle: Neither of us really feel we regret anything regarding our business. Rather than regret, we consider everything a learning experience.

Kathy: And we try to build from that.

Joelle: That sounds all nice-nice and pat, but it's not like we haven't had our fair share of arguments, PMS wars and bumps in the road, but those are things that happen in any healthy friendship. But we love each other and we love our business and we work it out.

Kathy: We don't ever let anything come between our friendship, our business or both. We just take in stride, learn from them and figure out how that can help us grow.

4. Describe what you envision your life to be like in 10 years—what has changed, what has stayed the same?

Kathy: That's a heavy question! Can't we just tell you what our favorite cocktail is?

Joelle: Seriously! That's deep. I don't know... we've managed to survive five years, what's another ten? I'd like to see more books with our names on it and maybe some more leisure time with people I love.

Kathy: Well, at the rate ideas pour out of us, in ten years we'll probably have many new things going on. Not just design-wise, but in many different areas. We don't want to spill the beans just yet. Maybe another baby....

Joelle: Oh, boy. Pour Auntie another martini!

Kathy: In ten years, you can be sure we'll still be friends, even if that means we're selling hot dogs at Home Depot.

5. What is the one piece of advice that you feel has been the most valuable to you and which you would like to pass on to others?

Joelle: Kathy's mom always has good gems for us. Like, "You can't get anywhere in life without stumbling along the way."

Kathy: And we've tripped and hit the pavement hard a few times. What else? "No conference calls during PMS."

Joelle: "Happy Hour starts at 1pm"—that's Moxie policy. You think we're kidding! Kathy, what else does your mom say?

Kathy: Um... "Always wipe front to back?"

Joelle: Yeah, that's it. *rolls eyes* That's the pillar that keeps our business afloat.

Check out the Moxie Girls’ portfolio, favorite websites, and drink recipes at www.MoxieDesignStudios.com and their new book at www.BloggingwithMoxie.com