Wednesday, March 23, 2011

March Madness (On A Slightly Smaller Scale)...

Have you ever had one those weeks where you have something big coming up and small things start to happen that make you think the entire week is going to be a disaster? Well, that was last week for me as I left to shoot the NJCAA Men's National Championship Tournament. I had to leave the wife and kids for a week so I was stressed about them, I had to work another job until late in the evening on the same day I was to leave on a 4 hour drive, and I ruined my travel air compressor and burned myself in the process. Needless to say, my week seemed destined for disaster.

Hutchinson Sports Arena
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Friday, March 11, 2011

What's With All This Design Work Lately?

Well, despite the efforts of UPS, another business card shipment came in today. However, this time around they weren't meant for me. My brother-in-law runs an auto detailing shop in my hometown and after taking a look at the Vistaprint template he was using and the blank back on them, I knew he deserved better.

Since I had already designed a logo for him in the past it made it fairly simple for him and I to work out a quick concept. With the card already visualized in my head, I set to work trying to make it a reality... Only to realize I had a problem. About 95% of the card design was dragging, dropping, resizing, and typing. Easy money, as they say. The last 5% was an emblem that he wanted me to put to the side of his contact info. I figured this would be simple as well since I had done the same thing as part of the previous logo, but the original logo emblem was too small to use so I needed to make another from scratch. Again, no trouble I thought, until I realized that I had made the original in my bootleg version of Photoshop (Judge not lest ye be judged!) and I was now using the much stripped down (but legit) Photoshop Elements. I won't bore you with the gritty details, but let's just say I learned that sometimes 5% of the project can be 95% of the work.

Here are the end results:

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Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Business Cards Arrived Today...

A while back I decided it was time to break down, give in, and bite the bullet. It was time to make some business cards. I know they are something that I have needed for a long time, but being in a creative business, using a generic Vistaprint template just didn't seem like a smart move. So, this meant I would have to design my own. For a long time it seemed more practical to just punch myself in the face until I forgot about it rather than getting it done and over with. After all, I didn't get asked for my info in person that often, it was mostly through emails to people who were already considering me for a job anyway. Then I realized that maybe this was my problem. Perhaps adopting the 'preemptive strike' method and having cards to whip out in the middle of a conversation could be a good thing.

So, about two weeks ago, I finally designed and ordered my own cards. I decided to go with Vistaprint based solely on the fact that I was familiar with them and their prices seemed on the lower end of the spectrum. When it was all said and done, I ended up paying around $9.00 for 250 cards with front and back custom designs, which doesn't seem too bad to me. Here are the designs:

Front

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

A Busy Weekend...

Living in the middle of nowhere (as far as production environments go) you take anything and everything that comes your way. That means as long as job dates don't overlap, I'm going to keep adding them to the calendar. So when two jobs that were originally weeks apart got shoved together into one weekend because of a schedule change, that meant covering 322 miles of highway and working over 16 hours. Luckily both jobs are with regular clients that I always look forward to working for, so I knew roughly what to expect outside of some random surprises.
Hey! That's me, over there!
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