Here to help and such

This blog was created not only for me to express my life as a graphic designer but to also be a forum for others to come in and participate with questions, suggestions, comments and so on. If you happen upon this blog, feel free to chime in your thoughts.
I start tonight's blog after having a night out with my little girl. We live close enough to an area that we can walk to and have dinner. I chose a Chinese buffet. I love sushi and she eats the eggdrop soup with lots of rice mixed in. We call it her "yellow soup and rice". Tomorrow morning I go to my weekly yoga session at the gym. That stuff is amazing to me as is pilates and any other workout I get in.
As for my design world I have been focusing on one of the websites that I design and manage at www.foreversilkcreations.com I am having problems with a ftp setup that yahoo's server will not recognize. I was using Dreamweaver to send the files but then it suddenly wouldn't except them based on how yahoo reads the Dreamweaver connection. This is all so much internal stuff that it is confusing to me. When there are no snafoos, I do good but the technical troubleshooting can make you go wacky. I am a designer, not a technician. I am trying to find that wonderfully perverbial line that exists between the two with this.
I have downloaded smartftp but that isn't working either. I will move on to another free one that has good reviews. I have heard of smartftp alot of the years and thought to give them a try but to no avail.
I also have my daughter's birthday in a few weeks and I of course did the invitations with a seperate direction print out. I am making the gift bags to suit the party theme instead of relying on the store to have what I want. She is having a pony ride, horseshoes and hopscotch for the party activities so the invitations and bags reflect this.

I am working on a larger selection of templates for customers to order if they don't want the all out personalized greeting card. The templates will be available soon and customers can pick any six for a set. The set can be mailed wherever the customer likes. The prices of the box sets differ from the personalized greeting cards so visit my site to see it in all its' glory www.chumneyvisualdesigns.com

The April calendar is just a little something else that I put on my site to give viewers some ideas of what the month has to offer. Take care and thank you for reading the posts. lisa

Incentives

Greetings.
Children are definitely give us the incentive to prosper in our careers. Owning my own design business, it is rewarding to be at home with my 3 year old and set the pace needed for her. At times, it can be frustrating trying to work and then having your child want to play, talk, make distracting noises and such. But all in all the children are our motivation and encourage us in their unique ways.
As of lately, I have been active in finding more free advertising such as free banners, backlinks, Google Adsense to name a few. Some are very basic with their free service but in the long run it will be worth it. I do get confused when signing up for these programs when they want you to pick your catagory of service. Graphic design falls into many realms of services. We can do design for anyone or any industry of any size. It get complicated when breaking down the catagories into SUB catagories. From there, I make a habit of reviewing my current submissions for the free services. With the old email correspondences, I click on them to see if anything has changed that would be of greater service to me. Some of the basic paying features are good but not to much more extent than the free one. Without anyone else to help out, the owner deals with everything and hopefully finds time to actually do some designing rather than financing, marketing, troubleshooting, technical issues and so on.

Dreams and Things

In an effort to show what a creative such as myself is like, we are just like the rest of you. I feel that everyone has a talent that is worthy of sharing with others and it is fair for them to do so. Whether it is as a physician, teacher, therapist, (you get my point), it is wonderful to be whatever we are. I am not sure why I have gotten on this tonight but I felt it needed to be said on my part.
Anyway, I was thinking about all of the wonderful things that I get to do as a designer. I am always thinking about design. It is just something that overtakes me in everyday activities. I spare my family from all of these thoughts since, not being a creative, it would turn them insane or away, lol.
My favorite part of design is getting to really use my imagination. With any project, I still have to learn to curb my enthusiasm in that it takes every effort for me to be able to settle in on one idea and not to go overboard with too many unnecessary elements. The "keep it simple" concept is always applicable with design. Too much can turn off the client. With the personalized greeting cards that I specialize in, customers lately have been wanting very simple lines and colors. To personalize the cards I get to use nearabout any element that the client wants. I lean toward more monochromatic color schemes which allows for continuity in the colors and the other elements can be more free willing. A card with mostly text can be very fun. I like to go black and white when doing that style. A very bold and large lettering can be dramatic yet understated. As for baby cards and such, the pastels are usually what clients want. The pale green is very popular as is yellow, tangerines, and such. http://www.pantone.com/products/products.asp?idArticle=513&idSubArea=0&idArea=1
Pantone puts out some great articles about design and how color affects the visual integrity of the product. http://www.pantone.com/products/products.asp?idArticle=400&idArea=1&idSubArea=0

I find a challenge in searching for color in shadows, clouds, food, and most challenging is water. As mentioned in the articles above, color has a very powerful impact on a design whether in print, fashion or interior design. It is the single most important decision in any project.
Hopefully somewhere in my words you are inspired, educated, more understanding or just plain don't care, but whatever the outcome, thank you very much for reading. Lisa

Loving Design

Greetings. Another day here in the design world. Not much other than the usual with business and such.
I was out shopping at Border's book store last week and came across a great deal on embellishments for the personalized greeting cards so I picked up alot. The girl at the desk asked me if I did scrapbooking and I told her that it was for our design company. She seemed a bit intrigued and I didn't have not one daggome business card with me to give her. I think that is the very first time ever that I have not had a card with me. This is how we learn though.
I came across www.CafePress.com a really great site. It seems alot like Ebay but from a more creative approach with things. They do print on demand so I am eager to hear back from them to see if they can do the personalized products of tissue paper, wrapping paper and bags that we are working on providing to customers. This is something that I have really been wanting to do for a very long time along with the personalized greeting cards. So it would be great to see it all come together under one place without having to bounce around to printers and such.

personalized greeting cards

Greetings everyone. Today was yet another good one for me. Outside of my design work, I am getting ready to do some planting for vegetables, trees, bushes and strawberries. I love this time of year when everything starts turning with bright new colors. Spring is almost here so there will get to be more fun outdoor activities. I have some painting to do along with the usual Spring cleaning responsibilities.
The weather here in Clarksville is getting more desirable since I don't do well with any cold weather. The warmer temperatures are definitely doing me good.
I came across an error with my Ebay listing http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6040822221&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:US:31 that I had to text message them about and they were very helpful. It was a very simple fix but Ebay is a bit confusing to me as far as selling. Buying is much less complicated.
Right now with work we are brainstorming on fresh, Spring like designs for clients wether it is a color issue or other elements. Stripes and dots are still really popular. It is such fun to work with fewer elements when designing. Some would think that it is much easier but there are so many possibities. For example with text alone just image all of the font choices, colors, sizes, mix and match them and so on. As for the web site www.chumneyvisualdesigns.com we will be adding newer examples and other features in the next few months. Stay tuned for that. We also offer a new concept to us which is digital scrapbooking for those who don't want all of the embellishments but like the look of scrapbooking. We can do it with all of the fuss on the clients end. Transmitting images through the email system has never failed so that is an easy approach for clients to handle. We are considering a more interactive site for transmitting files but until anyone complains, we will stay with our current style. Thats it for now. Peace, lisa
personalized greeting cards

Different aspects

This time of year tends to be a bit slow with design work. Staying busy with smaller projects including keeping web sites current and clients happy. Just finished up a monthly newsletter for a military unit here. Getting ready to design birthday cards for family and friends for April. Taxes are coming due so we have to organize bookkeeping and get off to the accountant. It is extremely important to stay on the good side of Uncle Sam. We are constantly looking for ways to advertise that won't break the bank. Word of mouth is good but a wider (worldwide) client base is important.

There are so many aspects to graphic design that it is challenging to stay within a specialized area. The training one gets in school is so wide range and the creative side of you is just wanting to burst out and go crazy with what goes through our heads sometimes. My focus right now is getting the word out about us specializing in Personalized Greeting Cards, a concept that came to me while in college. I appreciate want these cards do for the people that receive them. I want to start including a larger card format and perhaps even jumbo ones. To me it is such a fun and thoughtful concept.

Peace everyone, lisa