The Year That Was

2009 was a year of firsts. Moving out of my parents place for the first time, moving in with my boyfriend, moving across the country, having to fend for ourselves for meals, dealing with household bills, starting a new business, making new friends, going to new places. It was scary, it wasn’t always easy, I didn’t always get it right, but looking back I think overall it was a great year. You learn so much faster when you have to strike out on your own – which is what I had to do with both my living situation and work – and even though it’s tough in parts, if you survive you come out with a ton of knowledge and confidence that you didn’t have before. And it’s exciting, especially when things work out right!

These were my resolutions from last year, and this is how I did:

• Get fit and healthy – Okay, failed and went backwards with this one. No wonder it’s always on my resolutions list.
• Learn to cook – I’m not going to claim to be a brilliant cook, but between Jeff and I we’ve been cooking and eating pretty well for the past year (with only the occasional instant ramen or baked beans on toast). It’s become more than just a necessity, and turned into a hobby that we both really enjoy.
• Run a successful business – While I earned a little less than I might in a full time job and didn’t save quite as much as I would have liked, I’m still going to call this one a success. I love the freelancing lifestyle, and now that I’ve gotten the hang of things I think things will be going up from here.
• Keep on top of paperwork - Sort of? I still hate paperwork and am incredibly happy with my decision to hire an accountant so I don’t have to deal with the complicated stuff, but the rest I have pretty much down.
• Keep improving – I think my design work, business skills, crafting skills and general interpersonal skills have improved last year, so gonna call this one a success too!

The Year That Will Be

While 2009 was a year of firsts, 2010 will be a bit of an in-between year. We’re spending another year in Canberra before moving back to Perth and getting hitched, which means that a big part of this year will be preparing for next year – saving money, working hard to build a solid business, planning a wedding… Doesn’t sound quite as exciting as last year, but you never know what life will throw at you.

Here’s some resolutions for this year:

• Be healthy, drop a couple of dress sizes and stay there – every year I aim to be more healthy, and every year I seem to get worse! This year I’ve joined a gym and have a more clearly defined goal than ‘be healthy’. I’m sure some people who know me might say I don’t need to drop any sizes, but the fact is that I’m 1) very unfit, 2) bordering on overweight and 3) not completely happy with my appearance. In the end it’s an incredibly personal thing, and I’m not at all judging people who are comfortable at a weight and size larger than mine – I’m just not happy with the way that I am, and the direction I appear to be heading in. Likewise I need to stop assuming that skinny people talking about losing weight are judging me!
• Eat fruit – yeah, I rarely eat fruit. It’s not that I don’t like fruit, I’m just… lazy? Undisciplined? I think mostly I need to get into the habit of eating fruit regulary.
• Save money - moving interstate, weddings (both our own and all our friends who seem to be getting married around now), going on holidays, buying a place and everything else costs money that we don’t currently have enough of. Just need to be more disciplined this year and save save save!
• Work more – to help with the above.
• Work and manage time more efficiently – again to help with the above.
• Keep improving – gotta keep improving!
• Get out more – because spending days at a time where your only communication with people is with your fiance whom you live with and a ‘hi’ to the check in lady at the gym is probably not healthy.
• Be awesome – I think this is self-explanatary.

2009 was a tough year for a lot of people that I know, so I really hope that 2010 treats you better!

I’ve set up a super quick little blog to put down my wedding related thoughts and ideas, to save anyone who may be reading ChiGarden and is completely uninterested in dresses and centerpieces! I’m determined to avoid a typical wedding and really put my own style into it, so if like me you’re a bit bored of the kind of weddings they show in bridal magazines you might find something interesting there :)

Being the dorky designer that I am I’m more interested in deciding on colour schemes and fonts for my wedding than anything else, but I have been looking around for venues and some of the websites out there are really just appalling. My mother insists that this is just a matter of taste, but I think with something like design that has a purpose, one that fails this purpose is simply a poor design, regardless of taste. So, although I don’t think there are many people in this industry currently reading my blog, I thought I’d offer a few suggestions.

Have a website

Most reception venues seem to have this one covered, but there’s still a few out there without a website. We’re reaching the point where you don’t look up services in a big directory book; you Google them. If you don’t show up then to people who only use this medium, you don’t exist. Word of mouth and recommendations are wonderful things, but do you really want to risk potentially losing a portion of possible clients? Specifically in the wedding industry, a large percentage of clients will be young and tech savvy people who will expect to be able to find what they need online.

Get a pro to do it

Too many of the websites I’ve looked at look like they weren’t done by a professional, and it shows. There are also some really very polished ones out there, so to compete in this digital age you really need to be up to scratch.

Get some decent photos

It doesn’t matter how nice the venue is – bad photos will make it look bad. Just like having an amateur website, having photos that were clearly taken on a compact camera in poor lighting by someone who doesn’t know anything about photography really doesn’t encourage potential clients to see your professionalism. I haven’t looked far into wedding photography yet, but if you talk to the client and their photographer you might be able to make an arrangement to use their photos for promotion. Otherwise, get a pro in to get some quality photos of your space – it will make your website and other promotional material look far more professional and enticing.

Use decent fonts

Papyrus, Comic Sans, Curlz MT and Times New Roman don’t look for anything, wedding services included. Scripty curly ‘nuptial’ fonts are often used for and associated with weddings, but don’t go nuts – people still need to be able to read it!

Have decent copy

Writing is one of those unfortunate things that everyone can do, but not many can do really well. You might be the nicest, most professional and most flexible service, but if this doesn’t come through in what is written on your website you could potentially lose people. For weddings in particular people like to feel looked after, and since viewing your website will form their first impression it’s really important that that impression is a good one – both visually and in what the website says. Once again – unless you’re a talented copywriter yourself, get a pro to do it.

All of this is very much applicable to any website of course!

Don’t forget that your clients have talents too – I know I’m going to try and trade my skills to cover as much of my wedding expense as I can, so if you need a website feel free to get in touch :)

The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’

The Owl and the Pussycat, by Edward Lear

‘Music’ was a difficult topic for me, simply because it gave me so many ideas that I don’t have the skills to draw! Failed attempts include a Kanye West caricature, belly dancer and the music accompaniment for a Chinese lion dance. I did a similar sketch to this final one for today’s lunchdoodle topic – ‘boat’, and decided to rework it to include the details I’d left out due to only half remembering the rhyme.

Understand the value of a good logo

For any business, organisation, group or whatever with a public face, branding is a big part of how you are perceived. It might not be completely obvious – in fact it shouldn’t be completely obvious, but the way something is presented greatly impacts the way you feel about it, even if you don’t specifically register why. A logo is a large and essential part of this branding, which is why you really want to get it right. If your logo design looks messy and unprofessional, what traits do you think people will associate with your business when they see it?

Get a pro to do it

As talented as your next door neighbor’s cousin’s niece’s best friend might be with MS Paint or a pirated version of Photoshop, it’s not going to be the same as getting in someone who actually knows what they’re doing. Sure, a professional will most likely not be content to be paid in pizza or a slab of beer, but at least you’ll end up with a logo design is clean and professional and accurately portrays your business.

I have to say I’m also really not a fan of contest websites such as 99designs – I’d go into more detail, but I think this post on graphicPUSH sums it up nicely.

Get acquainted

So I’m assuming you’ve found yourself a nice talented designer to work on your logo by this point – well done. Different designers work in different ways, but personally I like to start by having a chat and getting a feel for what the business is about. While briefs and questionnaires are very useful tools, actually talking to people can go a long way to understanding what they’re about and what they’re after. Besides the basic purpose of your business, think about who you need to appeal to and what kind of feelings or ideals you want to be associated with.

Throw some ideas on the table

You might think that telling the designer they can have free reign and to do whatever they want is the best way to go, but honestly? In most cases it isn’t. Even if it’s something vague, like some buzzwords or a particular style, it can go a long way to narrowing down what you want. Don’t be afraid to throw some suggestions on the table, even if they aren’t fully formed ideas, because in the end you need to be happy with the end result, and clear communication about what you want from the start can make the whole process faster.

Listen to suggestions

While you shouldn’t be afraid to suggest some ideas, listen to what your designer says about them – they know what they’re doing. If they suggest that a rainbow gradient might have connotations that you don’t necessarily want to be associated with your brand, or that using a photo as a logo will create a lot of problems, or that Comic Sans maybe isn’t the best font, pay attention. If they’re worth their salt they’ll be able to explain why these things aren’t a good idea, and suggest more suitable alternatives. Of course you don’t necessarily have to follow their advice, but really consider what they’re saying before disregarding it.

Scribble on it

Some people think that scribbling changes onto my design will offend, but it’s actually incredibly helpful! You don’t have to be an artist or use any fancy software, just get the general idea across visually, especially if it’s something that’s difficult to explain in words. Once again, don’t be afraid to suggest changes but do listen to your designer’s reasoning if they don’t completely agree with what you’re suggesting.

Have patience

Designing logos is actually pretty difficult, even if the end result appears very simple!

Make sure you’re happy with the end result

It is your logo after all, so make sure that you’re happy with the way that it turns out.

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Of course other designers might work differently, so if you’re not sure about what kind of input is required of you as a client, ask them what their process is. If any other designers are reading this, I’d love to hear how you prefer to work!

I decided to submit my last IF illustration to Threadless! This is my first time submitting, so please be gentle :) I’m not too hopeful considering the incredible work that tends to get through, but it would be really wonderful to see my design on a t-shirt!

For those not familiar with Threadless, artists and designers can submit artwork to the website which is then voted on by the public for the next 7 days. The Threadless staff then look at the top designs and choose some for printing. I’m a big fan, but never really had the courage to put up a design for voting until now. So you see, if there’s enough of a positive response to my design it could go through, which is why it would really really help me if you go and vote it up. Please?

Three grey elephants balancing
Step by step on a piece of string
Thought it was such a wonderful stunt
They called for another elephant!

I suppose this isn’t perfectly to theme because they are balancing quite nicely so far… but will it last?

Illustration done for this week’s Illustration Friday topic: unbalanced. The elephants were done in Illustrator and put together with textures in Photoshop. Wall texture from cgtextures.com. This song is very nostalgic for me, I used to love the shadow puppet version on Playschool!

So I’ve finally made the time to do it, and here it is!

The design and colour scheme is a more subtle version of the ChiGarden colours, with a bit of a paper cut theme. The intention was to be clean and professional without stifling the fun and casual aspect that clients (hopefully!) value in my work. I wanted to try a single page design utilising spacing with anchor tags and scrolling effects to create division between the different pages, inspired by sites such as Peter Pearson and Voll. I’ve done all I can to make it useable and accessible without sacrificing aesthetics and the interesting navigation style.

Teresawatts.com is built on Wordpress for easy updating; the scrolling effect is from deziner folio; original background image from cgtextures.com; all illustrations, graphics, design and theme development by me.

If you have any feedback, negative or positive please let me know!

This week’s adventure: soufflés! I’ve tried these a couple of times before and they’ve just collapsed as soon as i took them out of the oven. Probably mostly due to the fact that even using all of my strength and perseverance, I can’t get peaks out of egg whites with a hand whisk. Now we have an electric mixer I seem to be having more luck. Hurray!

Having never actually tasted a ‘proper’ soufflé before, I don’t know if what I’ve done is correct… but they tasted light and fluffy and delicious, so I’m going to count this as a success.