Inspiration

Well I found myself in a creative hole for the last couple of days. I was finding inspiration from nothing, and couldn’t for the life of me do anything creative. It sucked. So I spent my time doing something more productive, playing partypoker. I ended up winning $30,000 (yes fake money) on a Texas Hold’em 5/10 No Limit table and went on a good winning streak. Wow, that was fun. Too bad it wasn’t real money! 😦

Addictions

Sure it’s fake money, but I find myself playing almost every night for about an hour. It’s not like I’m winning anything real but I guess it’s the fact that I love the thrill of it, just like the thrill of getting inspiration. I love designing and seeing things unfold before my eyes. I visualize by nature, and try to take on everything with different perspectives. I’m addicted to poker. I’m addicted to graphics and imagery. The first step is admittance right?

So you could understand when you have no inspiration to do anything creative. It kills me. So today I opened up Firefox and searched for some Flash tutorials. I’ve always wanted to learn more about a program I barely use. I love how much flash has evolved on the web over the years and what is to become of it as a new medium on the Internet.

And guess what… I found inspiration! What a great feeling. I hope to get a nice refreshing weekend and get some creative work done. I know it’ll feel good. I’ve been holding off a couple projects for quite some time, so I plan on working on those.

And for something completely Different

I’ve been talking with my friend who is also a business partner of mine. We both run and work for EntityARTS. Over the past years that we have been doing this, we’ve been fortunate enough to get some interesting clients to work with. Until recently business was pretty slow and we didn’t receive that many clients. It’s kind of an unfortunate turn of events that I have to be in school right now since this is probably one of our busiest times ever. We’ve been getting requests almost every week for work but unfortunately can’t take up too many because of school.

I hope to continue my endeavors throughout the school year to keep my company active long enough for me to graduate and be able to pursue my dream of owning my own firm one day. Until then, school work it is.

Vacation

After having quite a relaxing and eventful winter break, coming back to school wasn’t as refreshing as it should have been since our term doesn’t finish until 2 weeks after we come back. The whole point of a break is to be able to not have to think about work or school so you can relax and be refreshed once you get back. Why couldn’t we have that?

I would have rather started school 2 weeks early just so we could have a break with no work or worry.  But, I guess it’s O.K. to start a 14 week school streak with an existing term. I’m by no means complaining about the workload as you’ll never get a summer and winter break in the real world (usually). If you think your teacher is bad by asigning homework, wait till your boss asigns you a project. Sure, there is a difference between learning and actually working which is why I’m ranting.

In the real world you will already carry the neccissary skills to carry through with your work. For the most part, we’re not all that ready. To take in all this new material, one needs a break for rest to be able to take in new skills in the new year. Mabye next time they could start the term in September. Until then I can live with the facts.

Technological Revolution

And now for something completely different…

Our world is dependant on technology if we like it or not. Pouring a glass of water, chemical filtration controlled by a filter plant. Making a cup of coffee, machine is controlled by electricity and micro processors. Simple things that we take for granted, is we depend on.

Now, are these technologies for better or for worse? Are the byproducts of our wonderful machines worth the conveniences?

Sure you get to go to work 30 minutes faster with your car withing having the hastle of waiting at a bus stop freezing off your toes, but is the commute worth spending $10 of gas on your brand new F-350 every day? I’m definately not one to judge at all. I’m guilty of not carpooling when I could have, or turning off the tap when I was pre-occupied with something else.

But…

Would it even make a difference if I did carpool, or save that extra drop of water?

I probably wouldn’t make much of an impact on the environment, but if everyone were to we sure as hell would. Here are some scary and quite realistic facts.

• A family of 3 uses aprox. 190,200 litre’s of water a year.
• On average, a person uses 757 litres of water a day.
• leaks – even a small drip can add up to 94 litres per day.

So What can I do?

Next time you’re going out, see if anyone else is going to the same place and carpool. If you’re going out of your house for a long time, turn off all your lights and unneccissary electronics that still might be running. Turn off the water tap when brushing your teeth! All these little things do add up, so take your part and ensure that your kids wont have to wear a bio hazard suit growing up.

Letterheads & Stationary

Although I believe that since we live in a digital world that letterheads and stationary should be a thing of the past, we still have to embrace the fact that not everyone is technologically savvy and that we still will have to pass around the odd memo around the office every once and a while.

A lot of the design principals that we use for business cards are very similar to designing a letterhead. When creating a layout you will still want to follow guidelines and criteria for creating a successful letterhead.

Letterhead Criteria

Here are a couple pointers to take into consideration when designing your letterheads and stationary.

• Layout
  When designing, a good idea to start off with are concept drawings. Like what we did for our logo, create some rough sketches of the layout and where certain items will be placed on your letterhead.

• Content
  Unless your letterheads are used exclusively by you, you will not always want to supply all your personal information on your letterhead unlike your business cards. Supply only brief information about your company like your phone number, fax number, and website.

• Logo
  Don’t forget to place your logo and company name on your letterheads! No one wants to read the entire document only to find out it’s from someone else.

• Footer
  A lot of people seem to discard this piece of information. A footer is a good way to end each page in a professional manner. It gives the document some borders and embraces the content that it holds.

Designing your Business Cards.

So we finally finished out logo! Great! Now that we’re at the stage to start getting out name out there, one of the many steps in creating our corporate identity is the creation of our business cards.
A few great resources that I would recommend are an About.com entry and any Rockport Business Card Design book. What is a Business Card good for?

A business card is a great way to network. When going to conferences, meetings, or even parties, a good business card will go a long way. They can land you a bigger pay raise or even a new client.

A couple things to take into consideration while designing your business cards:

• Layout
  Create a layout that supplies the essential information to the viewer.

• The Essentials
  Make sure you have all this information included into your business card! This is very important!
  • Name
  • Phone/Fax/Email/Website
  • Company Name/Slogan
  • Logo

• Design
  Create something that is impressionable. No one wants to see the same plain white business card with black text.

Create something different!

• Make Sure it’s Scannable
  A lot of business men are starting to scan their cards to keep on their palm pilots or pda’s. No one wants to carry around 1,001 business cards, so make sure someone could scan it if needed.

• Colours
  Have the design match your corporate colours or logo. If you plan on using red for your logo, don’t pick pink!

Now that we have the essentials broken down, go out and design one!

Take it to the Web – Part 1.

Not to be confused and associated with Matt, who by the way does a great job being my trusty assistant. Today we’ll go through the process of taking about taking your ideas and implanting them in to the bowels of the Internet. Since this process is quite a long and tedious task, I’ll be doing this in parts. Bringing all this content and imagery to the web can be a very easy and, at the same time, a very difficult process (as everything seems to be).

When planning out the starting stages of your site, you will have to keep in mind a few aspects of web development.

• Why are you creating a website?
• What is it being used for?
• Who is your audience?
• What are your short term and long-term goals?
• Why will users come to your site?
• How will you market your product or services?

You can go on and on for hours about questions to ask, but these are the basics to keep in the back of your head. Always keep an open mind about your goals and make sure you do research! You would be surprised at how many people might have already come up with your “revolutionizing” ideas.

Layout
When beginning the design process of your site, think about how you will have content and your user interface arranged. Make sure it’s optimized for your audience! Do your research! You won’t want small complex images used on a site aimed at the elderly, they just wont see them! Draw some sketches and pretend you’re visiting the site. What catches your eyes first? Can you locate the Navigation fast and easily? Is the content laid out in its most optimized state?

Navigation
As you proceed to creating a navigation for the website remember that a good navigation is one that people actually use! Make sure your navigation is very defined and stands out from the rest of the site. I’m not saying you should create something that doesn’t match the design, but to have a navigation bar that will be eye catchy. This could include Bold fonts, different font families, UPPER CASE LINKS, larger font sizes, or even a different colour. As long as it stands out and can be easily recognized, you’re doing a good thing!

Links
This is also in relation to your navigation. A good idea on planning out your navigation is to find out what sort of links you are going to have. Plan out your site structure with your free mind-mapping tool and make a mock up navigation. Categorizing items is essential! When creating a site structure, you will want to keep users from having to click as little as possible to get to the information that they need.

Print: Business Cards and Stationary.

As I mentioned in the previous entry about logo design, you will have to make sure you take the size of your logo and how you design it into consideration. Vector based graphics are great for scalability and very easy to manipulate. It’s always a good idea to think ahead when doing logo design so you’re able to scale it for print.

The Printing Process
Some default specifications that you will have to take note of when scaling out your design are as follows:

• Margins
  Most printers have set out certain set area where you’re not able to place text or important information. This area is called the bleed. Certain printers have different margin widths or heights, so make sure you find out from your printer beforehand!
• Paper Quality
  Paper quality is a big factor in printing. Matte print or glossy print can reflect the slightest colour variations, and can offset the overall presentation of your “corporate colours”. Some names to take note of are:
  • 80 lb/100 lb Stock.
    This is the thickness of the paper. The larger the number, the thicker.
  • 12pt / 15 pt.
    The quality of the print. How sharp and detailed are your fonts going to be? The larger the number, the sharper.
  • Matte/ Glossy.
    Matte paper reflect soft tones and suck in a lot more colour and ink than Glossy paper which is shiney and reflective.
• Resolution
  When in the production stages of designing your layout, keep in mind the size on your screen is not the same size as how it is going to print. Standard resolutions of screens are 72 pixels/inch (or 72 dpi). Standard resolution on print however, is 300 dpi. When creating a file in any graphics program like Photoshop for example, make sure your resolution is set to 300 pixels/inch. This will insure you that what you see on your screen, even though it looks relatively large, will be a high quality image once printed.
• Colour Management
  There are a number of ways to screw up your colours, and a number of ways to ensure you’ll be getting the colours what you see on your monitor. (Keep in mind that all monitors aren’t calibrated equally!) Print is processed in CMYK, NOT RGB! Another thing to check when creating a graphics document in Photoshop, is to ensure your document is in CMYK and not RGB.
  • What is CMYK?
    CMYK stands for Cyan Magenta Yellow Black, K stands for black so you wont get confused with the B in RGB, which stands for Blue (Red Green Blue).

  When working with corporate colours, and if you have the budget, you can always print in Pantone. Pantone colours ensure you that you will be getting exactly what you want.

• ICC Profiles
  Another instance that is often overlooked and disregarded are ICC profiles. These profiles can alter the colour variations of your monitor to calibrate what the printer will print. Not all printers provide you with ICC profiles for their printers, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. If you can find out what kind of printer they are using, you can sometimes find ICC profiles on the internet. There is a copious amount of resources, just Google it!

All of this applies to both business cards and other prints. When doing large amounts of printing with a single company, ask to see what the final product will be by requesting a test run. Here are a few printers that I have dealt with in the past:

• http://www.vistaprint.ca/
• http://www.industryimages.com/
• http://www.printprint.ca/
• http://www.overnightprints.com/

Good luck and remember your process!

Logo Development

Not to go too in depth about this topic, so I’ll try to make this my last post about anything regarding logos (cross your fingers!). A few things that I picked up over the weekend were resource websites and reference books. Rockport published a couple books that I found were very helpful and is where I get a lot of my inspiration. A couple other sites that I found online were:

• http://www.misipile.com/
• http://www.iconbuffet.com/
• http://desktoppub.about.com/od/businesscards/
• http://designcharts.com/

These are great resources and I’m always looking for more. The thing that I liked about the books was that it was really easy to just pick them up, flip through really fast, and I could easily collaborate different ideas towards whatever I was working on.

No Motivation!?
I was working with a client over the weekend on designing a logo for his hosting company and for the life of me couldn’t think of any fresh new ideas. This was at the time when I didn’t have my handy LogoLounge book, which includes 2,000 copyrighted logos. Rather than poking at useless ideas, I found that indulging yourself into other peoples creative minds helped spark things that you wouldn’t of thought of otherwise. Looking for good resources can be a task in itself so please check out the ones that I have listed above and save yourself the hassle.
Anyways, I ended up working through the night getting a lot of work done and finished the night off with something that was close to a finished product. Phew! Saved myself from an unproductive evening.

The Design
Size Matters
When creating a logo, keep in mind who you are designing it for, and what its purpose is going to be. Is this going to be pasted on the side of an airplane, or on the cover of a magazine? Contrary to popular belief, size matters. You’re going to want to make sure you’re design is going to be able to look its best when its on that airplane and also when it’s being handed out on a business card. A good start when creating a logo is to start with a pencil and paper, import into a vector based program (Adobe Illustrator), and elaborate from there. The great thing about vectors is that it can be resized without loosing the detail of the line quality.

Audience

Who’s your audience? Did you just put a hockey player on that figure skating logo? Make sure you’re designing a logo that will be easily marketed towards its intended viewers. Make sure it’s easily identifiable and the viewers can easily relate to it. Simplicity is key!

Technical Aspects

Take your use of colours, proportion, orientation, and focus into consideration. Even the spacing of the text, if present in the design, would stand out more if spread out. You will also want to make sure that you have a focus. A good way to get some critiquing is from you! Open up your design, print it out, and look at it. Where does your eye lead to on your initial viewing? Make sure your focus point is what you actually want it to be.

Finally done! Go out and try it for yourself. (Maxed out word count!)

Corporate Identity, Indepth

As stated in my previous blog, creating a coporate identity is a difficult task. This ultimately is your company and it’s brand. A corporate indetity is the persona of the corporation and is used to market you business visually. A corporate identity can consist of the following elements:

• Business Name
  Who are you going to be? What are ou trying to sell? Create a catchy professional business name that promotes what your products and services are.
• Slogan
  Although not neccissary, it’s always a great idea to mend a slogan or catch phrase into your business name.
• Logo Design
  A marketable logo that will portrait your corporation. In essence, this is the most important part of your corporate identity. Take these aspects into consideration when creating your logo: type face, type style, colour, graphics, what your services or products are.
  Note: When designing your logo, also be reminded of where this logo is going to be used. Example: will this work on the side of a truck? will it look great on a billboard?
• Letter Heads (Stationary)
  These will be used to transfer office wide memo’s, documents, annual reports, etc.
• Business Cards
  A great way to give out your contact information and self promotion is through the use of business cards. These usually include your company logo, your name, position, and contact information.
• Packaging and other Print Media
  If your business is shipping information, sending documents, or sending out any other promotional material that involves printing, make sure you design these into your identity. If you have more ideas in the future but are not sure you might impliment them right off the bat, still take notes of this. It will be handy later on when you do intend to bring them into practice.

I can’t find the time to stress this enough; this is the persona of your business. This is not a lets-make-a-logo-and-publish-it-in-two-hours job. I’ve worked on logo designs that have taken weeks to establish, so this is no mickey mouse deal. Take your time to perfect your identity because you wont want to go back to it in 2 months to change it.

 NEXT WEEK: Logo Development >>

How to Create, Manage, and Market your Online Business

So… you want to start your business. Sure, you can easily think of a company name, register your domain name, grab some hosting off a reputable hosting company and call it all that… but how much other information would you actually need to obtain to create this entity into the next fortune 500. During the course of 4 months, I will outline every aspect (hopefully) of creating, managing, and marketing your online business.

Here would be a brief overview of what to expect.

So you got this innovative idea…

A business plan is your foundation of that great idea in your head. It identifies your goals, your financial statements, income statements, and the total definition of your business. While purging your ideas, consider these 4 things: what is my business providing for clients, who am I selling these products or services to, how will I get these products or services to my potential clients, and where will I get my financial resources to start my business. A great way to plan out your business is by mind mapping. A great tool that I use most often is FreeMind. This program will allow you to freely chart all your ideas and information down into one organized manner. Remember doing those fun “web’s” in elementary school? It’s just like that, but digital!

What’s this curvy swirly thing!? Oh, that’s my logo.

Creating a corporate identity can be a daunting task at hand. The establishment of a logo is dependant on what your company is, and what you’re wanting to sell. Wether you’re just a one man team, or a corporation under going a major identity crisis, you will want to create an identity that you (and your employees) will march behind it through the life of the company. In essence, this is the label of your company. This doesn’t mean it has to cost millions of dollars and years to create, but it’s important that it portraits your company correctly and effectively.

NEXT WEEK: Corporate Identity, Indepth. >>