providing graphic design, branding, photography and marketing expertise to denver and the world

Quote of the Week:

Love those 18-hour workdays!

I am currently getting over my annual spring cold, and therefore it should come as no surprise that I was awake early this morning. 3:30, to be exact. After an hour of flailing around, trying to get back to sleep despite clogged sinuses and a raving headache, I decided to head down to work.

This is one of the many advantages of working from a home office; I was downstairs, drinking coffee and booting up my Mac before most of my east coast clients had even had breakfast. This is a first for me--I pride myself on not using an alarm clock to get up, so being up this early was remarkable.

To my amazement, I accomplished quite a bit. Some stock photo research (using Adobe's Bridge CS3, which isn't all bad), some invoicing and bill paying, some vendor RFQs, and even a little bit of creative work. All before I saw clients' IM avatars showing up as "active". For a while, I thought about the possibilities of working this early every day. But I am not a morning person, unless forced into a sunrise photo shoot or a night shift press check; my body would rebel after a week or so of 5am wakeups (my condolences and awe are due to all of you who actually are up and moving that early as a matter of course, of course). After about six weeks of stumbling around at all hours tending to newborn twins, my body simply stopped responding--I just slept through it all, to the chagrin of my wife.

But today was a nice exception. I got a lot done, and was on my bike for a morning ride by 7:30. The downside came with some catch-up work this evening, which I've just wrapped up (at 10:45pm), and I am only now realizing I sort of, uh, forgot to eat dinner (do you think the two cups of coffee, three cups of espresso, two mochas, and three cups of green tea make up for it?)

And now, it is time to surrender to the bliss of slumber, only to be interrupted by the sound of the newborn hatchlings outside the window, saying good morning to the sun.

Unless, of course, I can't sleep again.

Labels: adobe, early morning, illness, work

posted at 10:34 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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4.23.2007

Adobe CS3: not because I want to, but because I have to.

I am currently downloading the 3.4 Gigabyte monster that is Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium, a suite of software that I am sure I will get a lot of use out of.



Unfortunately, I had to pay $1,599 for the upgrade. I own CS-level versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, and the latest version of Dreamweaver, to boot (all these programs, plus Flash and Acrobat, are included in this version of the suite). Now what really steamed me when I was pricing the upgrade is that because I bought all of these items separately, I had to pay a thousand dollars more for the upgrade than if I had bought all of these as one of the earlier Creative Suite versions. I paid more to buy them separately (I was upgrading older versions of the programs one by one), and yet Adobe is AGAIN making me pay more to upgrade. This smacks of double-dipping.

I priced individual upgrades, incidentally, assuming I had to buy a full version of Flash (I had a copy years ago but no serial number or install CD survived two office moves) and upgrades of the rest, I would spend about the same amount of dough...a hundred bucks less, if I didn't upgrade Dreamweaver, and didn't buy a new version of Acrobat--both programs I could do without. But I really need Flash for a project that I am working on ASAP, and so there you have it.

Adobe: I love your programs, but this upgrade policy is dumb. You are penalizing some of your most loyal users by making them pay more--twice. Please rethink this policy. Allow people who own a majority of programs in your Creative Suite packages to upgrade for the $599 price--you'll probably see a whole lot more people paying for it if you do.

posted at 7:57 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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4.19.2007

Congrats, it's a website!

Launched another one of my babies into the world last night: ClearCreekWater.org is the website of the Clear Creek Watershed Foundation, an organization devoted to "sustainable watershed management". In english, that means they want to keep threatened waters safe to fish in, cycle by, play in, raft through, and drink--even when it's used my countless thousands of people each day. They have a very holistic approach to watershed management, and their site shows how important that is.

The site is four months in the making, on my end, and involved many hundreds of hours on the client's part, organizing reams of content into useful areas for their prospective users. While the current version of the site is fairly content-heavy, there's a lot of relevant information for their audience. In phase II of their web development plan, they will be adding more educational resources for teachers and students, and creating useful sections for the layperson with a casual interest in what a watershed is. Phase III is anticipated to bring forums and interactivity to the site. Stay tuned to their site throughout the year to see how it evolves!

For my part, this site was a great opportunity to use the Jello Piefecta self-adjusting CSS template from the folks over at PositionIsEverything.net. It's a nice, very compliant and accessible design model, and let us place a number of content areas on the page with minimal confusion and stress. I also experimented with some pop-out menus, using CSS, but they don't work in Internet Explorer without a little JavaScript help. I think it works well. Let me know what you think of it, if you have some time.

Labels: ccwf, clients, web design

posted at 3:30 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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4.11.2007

Simplify, Simplify

Having just finished organizing all of my expenses, &c. from 2006 for late-season delivery to my CPA, I would like to ask the federal government to do what good designers do everyday:

Simplify.

While I am the first to admit that, being a one-person shop, with no inventory or property or employees to deal with, my experience at wrangling all the relevant information necessary for accurately accounting for my business activity makes me think that there must be some way of making this easier for the small business owner. What that is, I don't know; I'm not an accountant, and any big suggestions here would probably be laughed off by anyone with half a degree in money matters.

I won't let that stop me, however. What about:

Blanket allowances for expenses on common office supply goods, with itemization required above that amount. This is similar to the blanket deduction for donated items up to $500 in value. I mean, how much time do you spend this year tracking down that receipt for the paperclips you bought last January? This single category was the biggest time-suck of them all, for me, probably because when I go to the office supply store, it's because I am out of something I need at that instant, and once I get home the items get pulled out of the bag, and the bag (with the receipt inside) ends up on the floor (or worse, in the trash) before I remember to pull out the receipt and file it.

That's the one that I can come up with for now. Anyone have any other ideas?

Labels: small business, taxes

posted at 10:04 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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