Dear Yahoo:
Mar
6
2008
I am pretty much a constant bundle of stress. And while I realize your article is more of an advertorial than anything, I still have to disagree. (continue »)
Dear Shawn:
Mar
6
2008
I have hated the blog thing for so long, despite having spent a good deal of my formative years keeping online journals. But if I buckled to Facebook for the pursuit of fame and fortune, I can buckle to the weblog world.
That is, if I can actually do it consistently.
The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre
Feb
26
2008
I have a total love-hate relationship with Valentine’s Day. (Yes, I know this comes a little late, but I’m about a week behind on everything else right now, so it seems somehow fitting.) Yes, it’s trite and silly and you should be nice to the people you love all year long, and not just when you’re obligated to. Honestly though, I know I sometimes need a little extra push. And the girly side of me is always disappointed when I don’t get flowers (I’ve had a lengthy string of boyfriends who’ve committed this sin, thinking that I’d dislike being given them. Seriously, who dislikes being given flowers?)
At any rate, every year, I have the best intentions to lovingly handcraft gorgeous cards for everyone, and every year, I never get around to doing it. (I guess at least I have my traditions, even if they involve disappointing myself!) This year heralded a near-success, as I threw together a card at the eleventh hour (literally, it was eleven o’clock):
Aren’t I adorable?
It’s amazing how good it felt to spend just ten minutes drawing for fun again. Ten minutes! You’d think I could get into this habit, no?
On a side note, I’ve been insanely busy. Added two new projects: a logo and a website.
The Week that Saw Four New Websites Get Released
Feb
6
2008
It was a busy week:
I love releasing new websites.
My One-Year-Old Monsters
Jan
30
2008
It’s been officially a year today. A year of no paycheques, no health benefits, no vacation time. No nine a.m. starts, no staying indoors all day staring at a computer screen, no monstrous amounts of unpaid overtime. (Okay, I lied, all of those things have happened, and worse.) I love that I can say that I’ve been running my own business for a year and I’m still in love with it.
I’ve had the chance to work with a huge range of companies and people over the past year, producing a range of different projects. I’ve done newspaper ads, illustrations, resumes, and a whole slew of websites, logos, business cards, and brochures. I’ve learned how to use Quickbooks, I’ve streamlined my processes, I’ve learned some AJAX techniques, I’ve rewritten my CMS code base, I’ve read about grids and typography and golden ratios. I’ve lost out on contracts, and I’ve taken on projects that thrilled and challenged me. I make an awful lot less money now than I used to, and I probably work harder. But it’s just so much fun.
However, my one-year-mark is a time for serious consideration. What’s my goal here? Where am I going? How is my little business going to grow up? And, most importantly, how can I keep doing what I love, stay sane, and make enough money to keep me in chocolate and red wine for the rest of my life?
I am coming to realize that:
- Delegate, delegate, delegate. I am a creature of many talents, but I am not any of the following: Salesman. Accountant. Programmer. Mechanic. Stop thinking you can do everything, and start spending more of your time doing what you are good at and do enjoy.
- Nothing comes quickly. Projects will take longer than you expected to reach completion. A two-minute fix will turn into a two-hour session of slamming your head against the wall. Sometimes you’ll put an inordinate amount of time into researching an estimate for a project you’re not awarded, only to be handed a bigger and better project a year down the line. A lot of what I do is investment.
- It is great to be a workaholic, but make sure you get at least three seconds of fresh air every day.
- Stop taking things so personally. Not everyone can think you’re the next coming, and some days, you will just suck. This does not necessarily mean that you are a total failure in all areas of your life, and it is certainly not cause for a mental breakdown.
- Nancy Reagan was right, sort of. Sometimes, you should “just say no”. As a small-business owner, it’s easy to fall into the trap of jumping at anything that dangles a cheque in front of you, but that’s not really why you’re in this business, anyway, and it’s certainly not the most important factor to consider.
These are my monsters. I’m hoping that, by this time next year, I’ll have massacred at least half of them.
Mid-Winter Jump-Start Special
Jan
23
2008
Start your car-related-metaphor engines! I’m offering a limited-time-only small-biz “jump-start” package: everything you need to get your marketing started for your small business, at a fraction (that fraction would be something akin to ½) of the cost! It may be totally insane of me to be offering this special, given that I already/always seem to be super-busy, so it may not last long! Grab it while it’s hot, and I’m still crazy!
For more details, read all about it.
Burnout and Snowy Seasons
Jan
8
2008
I did the craziest thing this Secular Holiday Season: I took time off work. I drank brandy with my Granddad and went pretty-dress-shopping with my little sister. I adopted an almost-semi-regular sleeping pattern. I drove a snowmobile for the first time ever. I went to midnight mass, also for the first time ever. I curled up with good books (not for the first time ever). I even went a few consecutive days without checking my email.
It was fantastic.
The week before Christmas, of course, was utterly insane. Ever since I was little, I used to spend the month of December staying up late, gluing and building and painting, frantically trying to get everyone’s handmade presents finished on time. A few years ago, I stopped this entirely. One year, I did all of my Christmas shopping at the liquor store (various pretty bottles full of sauce for my alcy family) and grocery store (Hershey’s Kisses for everyone I love). It really did make things easier.
I’m not even entirely sure how it happened, but this year, that beautiful idea flew right out the window. I had a week, and a to-do list of other things on which I ought to have been focusing, but somehow I found myself up all night again, trying to teach myself to solder and etch glass and quill paper, all with varying degrees of success. I was stressed out to the nth degree, my hands were black and covered in cuts, I was rationing my sleep and avoiding my work—but I think that it was really good for me, too. It’s been too long since I sat down and did something with my hands, and I forget how nice it is to get away from this screen.
And I think, in the end of it all, I made pretty neat stuff. I made ornaments (relatively successful), and gingerbread (successful in terms of my baking ability, which is nil), and monogrammed glasses. I spent hours making a stylized portrait of my little-sister/best-friend (which I’ll be sure to post once I’ve finished the final details, so maybe by NEXT Christmas). But by far, the most ambitious endeavour was a set of throwing stars for my boyfriend.
The target wasn’t hard:
Although I should have put cork on the top layer, and painted that. It’s composed primarily of banker’s box lids stuffed with copies of this awful free barhopper’s magazine that I stole from around town, and it’s going to fall apart pretty quickly.
The throwing stars themselves were a little hit-and-miss. Only one is actually soldered together, and it took three nights of sanding, soldering, and cursing to get that right—and as you can see, it still came out angled wrongly and tarnished and covered in bits of extra solder. The rest are held together with various different glues, electrical tape, and wires, and though they don’t look as stunningly beautiful as I’d been hoping for, they’re all razor-sharp and they stick into things you throw them at.
I’m back into the to-do listing and manic, sleepless nights, but I still feel refreshed, and as though I’m attacking things with new vigour. Over half of my to-do list contains unbillable tasks, and I keep getting ideas for new projects and processes. Maybe it’s just because the snow is melting outside and birds are singing, but I feel like my burnout might be rekindling.
Happy New Gregorian Calendar everyone!
P.S. Hey, look! It’s a crazy Art Deco logo!
No, Your Other Left
Nov
29
2007
So according to the Gospel That Is the Internet, I have an ambidextrous brain. (See: pretty balanced between the left and the right sides.) As with most self-evaluations, this came as a monster of a revelation to me. Suddenly, all my years of confusion and ambivalence seem less like a personal failure. For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt like I’ve been constantly fluctuating between two ends of a dichotomy, and it caused me a great deal of anxiety when I was a kid. (I still haven’t learned that I have better things to worry about than my self-identity.) I like math and art. I’m inherently chaotic, but always hyper-detail-oriented, and, every now and again, neurotically organized. I always assumed it had something to do with my bipolar nature. I’m a woman of extremes, and don’t often do the Middle Ground.
Antisocial Networking
Nov
19
2007
For someone who spends such an extensive amount of her day online, I ignored the “Social Networking Revolution” for a surprisingly long time, mostly for the same reasons that I never owned a television—I tend to be a little wary of things that suck up time without creating anything tangible.
Oh, and I’m not particularly social as it is. And networking? I’m starting to think I’m biologically incapable of doing it.
But hey, I own a television now. I’m no less productive (probably because it’s off almost all the time) than I was before. So the social networking thing? I could bite the bullet.
I’ve been making use of both Facebook and LinkedIn for a while now. I recently broke down and got on MySpace, which gives me headaches to look at, but lets me keep a list of bands I should check out on hand. I’ve been starting to take a look at Facebook’s developer tools—I’m interested in the prospect of being able to integrate the sites I build with such a widely-used site. And, as I was doing it, I came across Facebook Pages, a new feature that allows you to list your business. Neat!
In short: Triggers & Sparks is now on Facebook.
As everyone who knows me is aware, I am a complete feedback junky. I’m hoping that this will give me a venue to present some works-in-progress and get some other opinions…sort of like a focus group for designs, which is something I could really use.
Interested? Well, of course you are! Feel free to become a “fan” (the egomaniac in me likes that term) and shower me with thoughts, ideas, and opinions. Harsh criticism always welcomed—I like the idea of making design a more interactive sport. Get involved here!
Oh, and if you’re more interested in completed projects, I’ve added another logo redesign to my portfolio.
How To Take a Screenshot And Get Your Problems Solved Faster!
Nov
19
2007
So, let’s say you’re having a problem with your email, or if you’ve found a bug in your website. Your first instinct, naturally, is to fire off an email to your trusty web-person. But wait! Before you hit send, make sure you’ve included as much detail as possible—what you were trying to do when the error happened, what sort of error message (if any) you got, what software you were using at the time, etc. This will help your trusty web-person track down the problem far, far more quickly.
An excellent way of supplementing this information is by sending along a screenshot. I’ll often request this of clients when I can’t replicate a reported bug—if you’ve sent one to begin with, I can be that much more effective.
Here’s how you do it.
(continue »)
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