triggersandsparks.com news

Sarah 2.0

So I’ve moved yet again and am just getting back on my feet. For anyone who may be interested in sending me lovely things in the mail, my new address is as follows:

TRIGGERS & SPARKS GRAPHIC DESIGNS
6987 Vaughan Avenue, Halifax NS
B3L 2M2

I’ve also started using a blog, despite my own protests. It's still a bit of a mess, but you can read it to get a better idea of what I’m up to on a more regular basis. Fun! Eventually I’ll integrate it into this site, probably replacing this news section.

I spent the last few days up at the AIM Conference in Moncton, where I got to meet a lot of new people and learn all sorts of new tricks. I have a whole laundry list of overhauls and additions that I need to make to this site, which it’s quite sorely in need of! (Clients do come first, of course.) I learned a lot about search engine optimization and marketing in particular, which I’m going to be able to put to good use on some upcoming projects.

If you’re concerned about your ranking in search engines, I’m now much better equipped to help you out with it—though if you’re looking for something more in-depth, I’d still recommend looking into a professional SEO company like AlphaSearch, who put the conference together.

On Websites

I gave a presentation to my BBC group last week, giving some tips and guidelines for how to make a website more effective. It’s aimed towards the non-technical person, though implementation of much of the advice would likely require a designer or developer's help. However, I thought it might be a useful resource, especially if you’re in the process of creating a new website, or revamping an old one. I’ve posted it in my resources section: Six Steps to a Better Website.

Do note that I've not been ferociously good at following all of these guidelines myself—but it’s certainly given me some better ideas about where I ought to be taking my website!

You Know…

…for a girl goes on and on about how “you should make sure to update your website on a regular basis, or else!”, I’m pretty terrible at doing it myself. I’ve been trying to get into the blogging thing, but I’m having trouble motivating myself to post at least once a week! For shame.

I’m going to say that it’s because I’ve been so busy working on other people’s websites:

I think I need to start paying myself to work on my own website.

The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre

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

It was a busy week:

I love releasing new websites.

My One-Year-Old Monsters

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

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

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

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.

It seems like we grow up being pushed to follow a particular path; to make clear divisive decisions one way or another as we grow and develop, “Jack of all trades, master of none”, you know? I’ve always found it rather frustrating. I mean, sure, I see the benefit to delving deep into something and learning it inside-out and never coming up for air, but I just can’t imagine doing it without being driven out of my head from boredom within three years. I know that people change careers, what is it, an average of three times in their lives, but somehow it seems unfortunate that we have to pigeonhole ourselves into a particular brain-stereotype. You can be a rocket scientist, or you can be a starving artist, but you can’t be both.

But then I realized—I am both! Well, I’m probably closer to the “starving artist” side of the spectrum right now, but somehow, I managed to totally luck out, and chase down a career that lets me be Captain Left Brain Rational on Monday, and Senor Right Brain Creative on Tuesday. Without even noticing it, I managed to avoid making a huge decision by making a decision.

For example, I spent all of yesterday revamping the code basis for my custom CMS system. It’s going to be fantastic when it’s done. My clients will have a stronger, faster, smarter application with which to manage their sites, and I’ll be able to customize the code to their needs faster and more efficiently. I haven’t been tracking the number of hours that have gone into it thus far. It’s become a labour of love. But in building it, my programming skills have increased exponentially. I’ve solved all kinds of logic-problems. I’ve started organizing things. I’ve learned structure and methology. Gosh!

But today? Today I spent most of the day flipping between Photoshop and Illustrator, creating curly vector vines and compositing them over grungy old photographs of notebooks. Another labour of love (I recently came to the realization that as much time as I spend working, only about 30% of it ends up translating into a billable hour, which makes my hourly wage pretty measly. But anyway. Go home, Lefty. No need for numbers today.) And it’s been equally fantastic—I’ve been making pretty things, and learning new ways of doing things, and feeling those creative urges coming back.

I remember my dad telling me I ought to pursue graphic design when I was fourteen, and I immediately rejected the idea because it wasn’t a career that would stretch my brain. Strange how I ended up here, and how it ended up being actually, rather fantastic for my brain. No Mensa for me!

P.S. If anyone knows an utterly brilliant way to convert regular old user-entered quote marks into smart, typographically correct quotes while leaving HTML tags alone, and without my having to write a hugely complicated routing full of regular expressions, please feel free to drop me a line. Both sides of my brain will love you for it, because neither of them is looking forward to making it happen.

P.P.S. I’ve added the Seaweed Events site to the ‘folio, and I like it. And there’s a new article in the Designer to English wiki, which I’m attempting to build up. (Hopefully it will hit four articles by this time next year.)

Antisocial Networking

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.

Sleeping On the Job

So here’s the thing. I realize in advance that I’m going to come off as a crazy cat lady here. I’ll admit I’ve always been a little nervous about the crazy-cat-lady thing. People tell me that three cats is enough to make you a CCL, and given my penchant for losing my beloved familiars, I’ve always managed to stay far away from that line.

Of course, I forgot to spay my kitten, and she hit puberty one day when I wasn't home. Suddenly she was weighing about ninety pounds and her belly was the size of a football. Bob Barker would have my head.

So Kalliope is a young, unwed mother. She gave birth to three kittens on September 28th. She was considerate enough to choose my bed as her birthing room, so I came home to find three tiny closed-eyed little rodenty creatures in a pile on my duvet, a bloody mess on my pillow, and a stillborn under my sheet. I did a lot of laundry.

I’ve always been infatuated with creation. Given the option, I’d almost always rather create than consume, which is why I tend to gravitate towards writing, drawing, painting, Lego sets, etc. Watching another life be created, though? That puts everything else to shame. I suppose this is the sort of thing people usually realize when they have children, but, well, I’m too much of a child myself to ever go that route.

While I’ve been feeling unproductive because most of my projects are stalled in some midphase, or they're behind-the-scenes sorts of pieces that I can’t really add to my portfolio, Kallie’s been raising three beautiful, healthy, and only marginally psychotic tiger-striped felines.

And I’m trying hard not to get attached, but I’ve watched them quadruple in size. I was there when their eyes started to open, I knew them when their ears were closed flat, and I taught them to eat solid food. Two weeks ago, they all had earned names.

This is Copernicus at about three weeks old:

Sabine, today, posing with her favourite plaything (after her Mum's tail):

And Matilda boning up on her typography:

More crazy-cat-lady photos can be found on my flickr page, if you’re really so inclined.

Oh, and in actual news, I’ve added two new projects—digitaledge.ca and a logo for Comfort & Joy (website in production!). But, really, neither of those attack my shoes when I walk into the room, so they really just seem less thrilling, somehow.

The Cat Days of Summer

Everything seems to be in a bit of a lull. I have so many projects that are almost finished, but need that last little bit of content or that last cycle of feedback. I’m told that this is normal for the design industry in the summertime. Regardless, it makes me feel as though I’m not being productive, even though that isn’t the case in the least. In fact, I seem to be getting a lot of my long-term to-do-items crossed off my list, which is a fantastic feeling!

Well, I’ve been talking about it forever, and, finally, it’s official—resumes are on sale! Get all the details here.

I’m doing a whole host of revisions to my custom client admin panel codebase, so anyone getting one of those with their new website in the upcoming months will be seeing a more elegantly designed and more user-friendly interface there. While I’m in there, I’ll also be overhauling the code base so that it’s cleaner and stabler, meaning better, stronger, faster websites for everyone!

Oh, and there is one new project I can show for the time being: another newspaper ad for the post office space. Coming up soon: an explanation for why I’ve been stealing stickers off all the apples in the grocery store, and all sorts more.

Note to Self: Update Portfolio More Often

It seems like it’s been forever since I actually added new pieces to my portfolio—as it is, it’s getting overstuffed. (See the website thumbnail pull-down. Must fix that.) Leaving it all to do in bulk like this makes it a bit of a painful process.

So, in answer to the burning “so what exactly have you been doing all this time, Sarah?” question, I have the following: a logo for Bill Smith, novascotialobstercouncil.com, atlanticgatewayalliance.com, lunenburgframing.ca, an online quilt store, a volunteer project for a Senegalese non-profit, a business card and a brochure for Smuggler’s Cove Inn, and, just in case you’re interested, a look at my own branding efforts. As usual, there’s a boatload of other stuff in the works.

Happy Birthday

I realized early this morning when accidentally entering the date wrongly on an estimate that it was T&S’s official first birthday yesterday. By sheer luck of the draw, my official date of business registration happened to be 06/06/06. Not that I’m a raging Satanist or anything, but the fifteen-year-old-boy who lives inside me thinks that's cool. (I also like the trinity aspect that seems to be sneaking into my business—my door number is going to be 3, there are three rooms and three doors in my studio…)

Mind you, numbers confuse me so much sometimes, I needed to edit this post three times to make it factually accurate.

In celebration, I would like everyone to light a firework, sparkler, or a match at some point today. (Because I only just now realized that it is now the 7th, and no longer the 6th, and thus I actually have nothing to celebrate and am probably a bad parent for missing my firstborn’s first birthday.) And then go look at this website, because I really like it and had a lot of fun trying to make it work.

Karma, Carma, Karma

I think I’m finally starting to see how everything balances out. I spent a ridiculous amount of effort getting everything ready for my launch party, and ended up accidentally locking myself out of my studio at 7am in the pouring rain. I had one nasty cold, but everyone who came to the launch (and there weren’t many, given that I’m a moron and set it in the middle of a long weekend) came in the door with a bottle of wine and I ended my night happy, blissful, and with a studio that actually looks like a studio now, and is full of colour and art and all those other things I like so much. On the other hand, the internet’s out, so I can’t seem to actually make use of it.

This morning I took my beloved Etta (my Civic) in for her MVI and was told she’s no good anymore, and it’s time to buy a new car. But this afternoon? I officially got my LGDC, which means I am now a professional portfolio-reviewed member of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada. Time for another party!

And in other news, I think I am becoming a better designer. Lots and lots of projects are in the making, and I can’t wait to show them off.

Launch Party

My business has so many birthdays, it's ridiculous. At any rate, my official "holy cow how long can you put that thing off, sarah?" launch party begins tonight at seven. 118 Lincoln Street (Lunenburg), and everyone's welcome. There will be goody bags and maybe a door prize and some wine and cheese, plus good design-y talk with a sleep-deprived over-stressed sarah. There may or may not be fireworks.

So, How’s the Business?

It’s only the most popular question asked by anyone who knows me over the past few months. And it’s always hard to answer—my stock response is “It’s too soon to tell”. And it really is, but I’m definitely keeping busy, and new projects keep coming through the door. Every now and again I sit back for a moment and think how lucky I am to be 23 years old and supporting myself doing what I love, being my own boss, keeping my own hours, and setting my own rules. I never thought this would be what I wanted to do, but I’m utterly thrilled that I get to do it.

I’ve been busy moving into my new studio and working on things here & there. A few new additions to the website: smugglerscoveinn.ca, harrisonmackay.com, and a logo for Triple R Tack.

Up next? More websites, more logos, illustrations, a PDF book, and a resume design special. More creative just-for-me work (I hope!), a quick cleansing trip back home, followed by my (much-anticipated, though probably only by me) official launch party! Mark May 19th on your calendars and keep your eyes peeled for details.

Everyone’s Moving

So contrary to what the local paper reported, I am not, in actuality, a firm made up of three people, one of whom is named “Dinah LeChaton”. Dinah has actually been missing since November, and Marigold returned to Ottawa, where she may continue doing some client relations work. I decided it was high time to bring on new staff. So I picked up Kalliope, an eager new talent whose skills include getting herself tangled in plastic bags, finding a lap to curl up on even when said lap is covered in laptop, and eliminating the evil monsters who live underneath bedsheets.

I am, naturally, enamoured.

In other news, I'm moving out of my little room in my little apartment into a commercial space just up Lincoln Street—it’s an oddly-shaped little three-room affair with hardwood floors and just the sort of character I like. I‘m hoping this will help me segregate my home from my work life and give me a little more space to stretch out in. As an added bonus, I won’t need to clean up my apartment when a client comes to visit!

A few new projects have been added to the website, and there should be more finishing soon.

Quickbooks Was Not Designed for Designers

So business is good, I think. It's still too early to tell, and there's so much going on that I'm trying to stay on top of. Quickbooks, in particular, is eating up my time like some sort of monster. I used to think I liked numbers, but I think it's time we broke up.

Lots of new work in the pipeline, along with some old projects that are being wrapped up. I finished a logo and website for the Nova Scotia Liberal Party Leadership (rather a mouthful) and am maintaining it as the campaign progresses. A few new things should be cropping up soon, but I'm going to set precedence by staying quiet about them until they're finished.

Going from a part-time to a full-time business is as much of a challenge as I expected, but I'm getting lots of support from people, and I'm learning as I go. And being able to work at 4am, and take a noontime nap? Yeah, it's nice.

No More Paycheque

Well, it's now official. As I write this, I have an hour and fifteen minutes left of my day job. I'm hoping this means more sleep in my future, but it'll also mean a lot less money—a lot of people think I'm crazy for leaving a well-paying job at a company that treats their employees like gold, but somewhere amidst the butterflies and churning in my stomach, I'm sure it's the right choice.

Things I'll miss: overcoming technical obstacles. Playing with Flash. How warm it is in the morning, when the pilot lights have just kicked in. Seeing my designs in something that ships hundreds of thousands of units all over the world. Sneaking miniscule phrases like "Rugby boys have pretty legs." into icons used in such. Medical benefits.

Things I won't miss: freaking out when my alarm clock doesn't work. Never getting to go out dancing on a Thursday night. Being stuck inside when it's sunny and gorgeous outside. Design that involves balls. Seriously, if I never see a ball again, it'll be too soon.

New Website Launches

I've been working on this redesign for a long time. It's actually been redesigned three times, and of course it isn't 100% ready to launch, but I'm quite sure it never will be, and it was about time I updated my stagnating website.

Lots of stuff is new. Everything's been restructured and rebuilt using Ruby on Rails. There's a resources section that's pretty wiki-like up. There are RSS feeds of the news and the projects. There's more content everywhere. And reason why I've been so quiet the last little while?

...plus a tonsillectomy, and computer woes like you wouldn't believe, and learning a new programming language.

Say hello to Marigold, who'll be working with me from now on. Marigold will be taking over some project management duties so that I can become more of a hermit.

Say goodbye to Dinah, who disappeared in November and probably isn't coming back.

New projects are in the pipeline, and I have officially quit my job in order to go freelance full-time. Need some work done? Now's a great time to ask, while I'm still a little paranoid about that whole not-getting-a-paycheque thing.

I'm excited. Everything is new and I am learning things at such an exponential rate. It's going to be one hell of a ride.

This Is a Lot of Filler

Thanks to combined incompetence at Apple and at my "local" (see: an hours' drive away, only open when I'm working) Apple retailer, I haven't had a computer all month, which has seriously curtailed my design activities outside of the gaming industry. I've got a few projects on hold and a few nearing completion -- expect updates soon.

For now, a listing of my favourite Google search terms that have brought people to this website:

"why don't humans hibernate"
what website can i go to to make a layout of my bedroom then print what my bedroom would look like?
jennifer arnold display and design
grunt labourer services
hrm unorthodox
"sarah pretty"

Thanks for the compliment, Google! I think you're pretty, too!

Re-re-re-re-redesign

I'm working on a complete overhaul of the website -- every day I add a few more items to my todo list and make more corrections to my Illustrator template. In deference to this A List Apart article, this isn't just an aesthetic redesign -- actually, I initially hadn't intended to redesign, but then I started reworking my logo, and everything's been stemming from that. I'm planning on more content, including a resources wiki that will contain a whole slew of explanations of the technical stuff I tend to babble about and then find myself needing to explain to all my clients. Anyway. Hopefully, that should be along soon.

In actual project news, I had a busy spell at work but now I'm in a slow spell, since Cricket '07 seems to have wrapped itself up in preparation for a November release. I'm gearing up for a much-anticipated tonsillectomy October 2nd, so hopefully I'll be able to wrap up a few ongoing projects before my convalescence commences. Ongoing projects include a website for the Bluenose Lodge Casual Dining, a redesign of the Nova Scotia Young Liberal's website, and logo/identity projects for Ninja Monkey Knits, Traveller's Joy, Inside-Out Cleaning Services, Norwood Media, and the BusStop Theater.

In other news, the Switch has just finished recording their first album, featuring a cover designed by yours truly. I also did some posters to match and the website is in progress. Make sure to come out to the album release party (September 29th at the Attic) to snag your copy and for the chance to see me introducing the band while dressed as Gene Simmons. No, I'm not kidding.

Going Two-Point-Oh

I'm on a monster self-improvement kick, starting with learning Ruby on Rails, the hot new (old) web development language that may (or may not) be posed to turn the world of web applications on its head. Either way, I plan to be prepared, and hope to be building things on Rails for clients soon -- once I've figured out how it all works, of course! For now, everything is still PHP-based, but it's impressive to see how elegantly Ruby can handle some things that, in PHP, required awkward workarounds and lines upon lines of code.

Now, for new work! I plan on posting a lot of this when time permits, but I've been pretty busy for some time now, and client work of course comes first. The provincial election came & went, and I worked for Rick Welsford and Kirk Cox, both projects which presented challenges to the programmer in me. I finished a revamp of the Halifax Cranberry Company's website, recreating the original Flash design in HTML, and creating a German version to run side-by-side with the English. I've done some business cards and brochures for Kisserup, and a resume website for Kim Stacey, soon to be transformed to a full Flash site. My most recent project was a new website for the startup Wordsmith Communications. Currently, I've got a few more projects on the go and hope to have loads of updates in the near future once things hit a bit of a lull, though I'm hoping that doesn't happen any time soon.

New Projects

I've finished the redesign of kisserup.com, and am now working on a business card and brochure. I'm also taking care of a brochure/business card combination for the Walker Inn, which my mum bought a little while ago. I'm working on various smaller projects for the Halifax Cranberry Company, and am today starting on a revamp of the VoteDarian website for a local provincial Liberal candidate, Rick Welsford. What does that mean? Yep, there's another election in the air! Naturally, I'm thrilled. The instability of Canadian government means that, since turning 18 four-odd years ago, I've voted in one provincial election and two federal. Last election night, I was so excited, I couldn't sleep, and spent most of the night refreshing the results on my browser in anticipation. Spring fever has most definitely hit, and I've got my energy back. Got a project for me? Now's a perfect time!

Russian Deficiency

The winter blues were rough this year. I'm blaming it on my having lost my Doestoevsky. The Switch's website is coming along swimmingly, and I've started work on a redesign of kisserup.com. I've got another project backburnered as I don't like to have too much on the go at once, but I seem to be coming out of my winter blues and am getting back to being Productivity Girl! Hurrah!

All I Want for Christmas...

Just when I was starting to think I was about to have a boring week, everything suddenly got crazy. First, this local Halifax band (name to be finalized soon!) contacted me about doing a website, which means I get to get put on the guest list for their shows and sit around drinking Caesars and yelling about font sizes while my ears start ringing. Then, my local Liberal MP candidate contacted me about doing HIS website, and he needed it ready to go in under two weeks. Then my car needed four hours of repairs -- and I was all set to drive 15 hours to Ottawa in a week and a bit. My Christmas shopping ended up primarily involving a massive quantity of Hershey's Kisses and a trip to the liquor store, but I pulled everything off and managed the trip in one long, steady go with my cat on my lap the entire ride, while the South Shore Liberals kept warm at home with their new website: votedarian.ca.

Nabokov and Friends

Once more the pre-winter pre-Christmas blues are settling into my bones and turning me into a bed-potato, which is essentially the same thing as a couch potato, except that instead of watching Everybody Loves Raymond six times a day, I curl up with Russian authors. That said, I'm undergoing all kinds of personal growth & discovery, facing truly living on my own for the first time, and hoping to emerge with, like, a bazillion creative exploits. All I need is motivation.

For now, I've finished COPAN Offshore's logo and business card, so those are finally up for display. I've also added some testimonials so that you can hear about how great people think I am. Since things have slowed down at work, I've been re-re-re-re-teaching myself Flash (I've been using it since version 4 and I keep having to re-familiarize myself with it!) by building a little standalone music player, which is almost finished. My next personal project is going to be a simple game -- so if anyone has any clever ideas that DESPERATELY need to be realized, send 'em my way, and I'll see what I can do!

Flash Floods, Fires, and Dances

It's only taken me about half a year, but I've finally crossed an item off my perennially growing "to-do" list: add flash to portfolio. I've always been fond of this monologue from Fear & Loathing, and not solely because it seems like a shopping list for debauchery. While I was at it, I added a t&s time capsule chronicling some of the various different designs this site has undergone (that's another strikeout on my to-do list). And then for good measure (I was on a roll at this point), I added screenshots of the Brambles Antiques website -- both the public site and the admin panel. These days, I'm working with COPAN Offshore to develop a logo for their new business, and am painting my bedroom walls a bright gold.

Inside Dish on the Worst Client Ever

Brambles Antiques is finally finished, complete with a fully functional backend admin panel. (Screenshots to follow!) I spent a good long time re-re-re-designing T&S, to what is at least a temporary satisfaction, and I've learned that I'm infinitely my pickiest, most annoying, and most demanding client. And I'm refusing to work for myself ever again.

Paint

I've finally settled into Lunenburg and am in the process of repainting my whole apartment, which is growing in scope exponentially every time I find more paint chips in a hardware store. I've just finished the Idealbikes website, and I'm currently breaking the ice with two new clients, both based in Lunenburg. New website should be coming soon, complete with a better design and more stuff to look at!

Going Small-Town

Despite the seemingly dead-ishness of my portfolio etc, a LOT has been going on.

I've accepted a job offer at HB Studios in beautiful rainy Lunenburg, and am busily working on front-end for Rugby 2006. I've packed up and left Halifax, though it's only an hour an a half away by car. I'm working on a redesign of Idealbikes' website, in addition to developing a content management system for such. I'm taking karate lessons. Fostering cats. Going on road trips. Considering taking up surfing.

In short: busy! But happy! Expect updates soon, or ... when I get around to it.

Tiny Girly Guard

I'm only just now getting the hang of writing 2005 instead of 2004.

I'm working a security job, which means I spend twelve hours a night playing with my pencils in an empty building in Eastern Passage. If I only had a laptop, I would be the world's most productive moonlighter.

I'm currently negotiating what could end up being a fairly large freelance project -- and it's coming with the promise of distribution in impressive-looking numbers like "50,000". I get excited enough seeing 100 reproductions of something I've done. If I have to pick up 50,000 at the print shop, I may end up trying to wallpaper my apartment with them!

In other exciting news, I recently got my first photo-of-a-dead-fetus piece of hate mail. Now, my site isn't often into promoting innocent baby slaughter, so I can only assume she found me via the Pro-Choice Action Network, who recieve a lot of these sorts of letters (I can't read very far down that page because steam starts coming out of my ears and I get all twitchy). Hey, Moon Flower? Thanks for the pretty picture. It's a shame you couldn't have actually typed anything to go along with it, or I might have been convinced to change my Satanic ways.

The Virgo and the Pixel

I'm beginning to learn my life would be far easier if I were capable of just letting things alone already.

Instead, I redesign, I redesign, I redesign, and I'm never happy with what I've come up with after having spent forty hours staring at it at 400% magnification, trying to get divs to line up pixel-perfect.

I'm in the process of adding a little bit of explanatory text to each entry, having finally succumbed to the wiles of exposition in the "do I or don't I?" conundrum, and as a result, I'm adding some pieces that might have seemed a little off-kilter without proper narrative.

The winter blues have their claws firmly entrenched, and I've finished my Doestoevsky (which was my "beat the winter blues book", the rationale being that Russians are colder and more depressed than I am), so I'm busy trying to maintain a feeling of productivity.

Design: 0. Madness: 12.

The last few months have brought about a lot of personal madness. Design work, as I'm discovering, isn't as accomodating towards mental chaos as other forms of artistic expression are, thus I've let things stagnate. Why don't humans hibernate in the winter? Nothing would make me happier than eating a lot and sleeping through the blizzards, ice rain, and cold winds that give me constant headaches.

My Grande Olde New Years' Resolution is to spend less time organizing the 4829 songs on my hard drive and more time doing actual design work.

I found a poster I designed in front of the Spring Garden library a month ago and got so excited I had to be dragged away. Later I discovered that some rat-bastard was TEARING THEM ALL DOWN, which still makes me angry. Hey, poster-rip-downer, way to spoil my idyllic joy! It's YOUR fault that I'm bitter and jaded!

The Pro-Choice Action Network website is finally live, after much tedious formatting and eyestrain on my part. I may not be the most impartial judge, but I think their redesign is about 1,000,000 times better than their old site, which was suffering from some major "FrontPage-Generated Useless Code Syndrome".

I'm currently working on some super-secret projects, of which I will reveal no more than this: I am doing movie titles. I am SO the next Saul Bass.

Getting Modern

I converted my layouts to XHTML/CSS only (finally saying adieu to tables) and am butting major heads with MSIE, the scourge of the web world. Everything works in Opera, Safari, Mozilla, and Netscape (Mac and Win, when applicable), but IE5 Mac has this tendency to create major random glitches in my page layout. You know, like rendering links non-clickable, or evaluating 20px as 250pt. All skins are at this point functional even in the sad scenario that you're using IE Mac. But really, if you're using a Mac, what are you doing using a Microsoft clunker of a browser?

Oh yes, and I'm still working on some of the work term projects, which are turning out to involve the archiving of ten years' worth of badly formatted FrontPage code. I'm hoping to get through this lot by the end of the week and potentially taking a trip home before my childhood home is sold.

Oh, and following my work on the Steeleworthy wedding site, I've designed and printed their invitations, which came beautifully shrink-wrapped, much to my delight.

When News Was Just News

I'm at the end of my work term with Lefty Lucy Communications and am trying to get everything finished. I've been working with a few clients, going through cycles of prototype layouts until we hit on something perfect. Let me tell you, I can now create a thumbnail in Illustrator about 6,000,000 times faster than I could before.