Charleston Energy Works - rack card

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:59:06 -0500

Rack Card designed for Charleston Energy Works

Which is better?

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:31:46 -0500

High Street Auction

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:55:31 -0500

Website design

Wed, 8 Oct 2008 19:13:14 -0400

It has been awhile since I worked on a website. Back in 2000 I was working for a design agency and I designed several of them. The Flint Energy one won some kind of reward, but I wasn’t working there anymore so I just barely know about it. Kind of like the awards I won at the Reporter - I only know because some nice person who I once worked with told me. And right before I left there I designed the banner they are using on their website.

First we need a header. My first attempt was wonderful eye candy.

But Myrtle called me up hemming and hawwing for a few seconds and then confessing she really didn’t like it. Too busy, too complicated. Not simple enough.

I love it when a customer can communicate like this with me. I don’t have to be right when I put I put something out there. If I don’t do something, the conversation never begins. Therefore I get a request and I have a vision and I go there. If it doesn’t quite match another’s vision, then we work together to come up with what does work.

For this we needed something clean and professional.
Next rendition:

Hmm. I didn’t even send this one off because Myrtle had said she wanted the logo on the left. I can do that.

Ah yes. But the next constructive criticism came from Phillip. “ I can’t use a photo on the front page with this or the other one.” Hmm. Sure you can. It is perfectly suited it for it. Let me prove it. And then I am hooked. Here goes. I am laying out the entire page using the same information and photo already posted. Oh my goodness it has been almost 10 years since I have done this!

Ahh, another board member chimes in - the address and contact info needs to go to the bottom of each page. Of course it does! And small photos on the left would look good. Yes! Yes! I am with you.

And now we are all on the same page (except I haven’t included the info at the bottom) Hey Phillip can do that. This above is just a jpeg. Nothing about it is programmed except that IWeb has allowed me to put it here in this blog.

Phonebook Gestalt

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 11:46:09 -0400

This morning I took an hour or two for an art therapy project and I created a collage - to help me come to terms with the gestalt of what I have spent since March doing.

This was my art project. I took a box off of a shelf in my office - the box once contained some piece of equipment that was necessary to produce this phone book. I took a pile of used paper from the last three months, scissors, and glue. I covered the box inside and out with scraps of used paper from the phone book production. As I did it, I saw so much of what I had done, what it meant to me, how it has come together and how I feel about the the process of producing this book.

I love phonebooks. This particular one is about who we are in Monroe County, where we live, what are phone numbers are. It shows our elected officials, our schools, our businesses. It is a book of information about a place and the people who live there.

I discovered in creating this collaged box that I am proud of the where I live, proud of my friends, the schools, the places, the businesses and of the entire product.

I am glad that I took the difficult risk of quitting a job, starting a business with my husband and producing this phone book for a local publishing company. It was a great first project for Woods Graphics.

After gluing bits and pieces of the phonebook all over the box,  I took this art project downstairs and put it as the centerpiece on my table. I am going to invite my family over for dinner today. I will let them examine this box and then I will give them some more scraps of paper and ask them to write on these scraps what they wish from Woods Graphics, how to grow this business so that it will serve us as a family. Then one day soon I will have a ceremonial fire and burn the box and the wishes and let the smoke carry these to the universe as prayers.

Woods Graphics became a family endeavor over the last few months. Work was all mixed up with bedtimes for children, suppers for the entire family - two of our grown sons, my grandchildren and my husband and sometimes even my mother. We all played a part in this book. One of my sons has expert experience with office printers and making copies for spec books and he kept the technical end of my printer/fax/scanner machine running smoothly. He made millions of copies of contracts and put them together for me so that I had books that showed me businesses in the white pages and headings and businesses in the yellow pages.

My other son sat down and learned how to use Numbers, an Apple spreadsheet program. There he keyed in every contract, every sold listing and corralled the information for us. Then he made folders, real ones and virtual ones. He typed in all the contents of each ad for me and learned to use Illustrator, the program in which most of the ads are created. By the end of the process he was had designed quite a few of the ads in the book.

My husband and half owner of Woods Graphics took care of the finances, the lawyers, the banks, the bills. He made a loan to our company so we could have a state of the arts computer and programs in which to assemble the book. He cooked many a supper when I was too busy to come down and see to it. He helped Holly with her homework and sometimes put her to bed with out me emerging from my office.

Holly’s father, the spec book man, took care of Holly, and his children, staying around to help us with what ever came up. He and my husband called telephone numbers in the informational pages to make sure they were correct. My mother could always be depended on to fill in when one of us was too busy to pick somebody up from school or take somebody else to some necessary appointment.

My daughter-in-law spent hours assembling our contract books so that we would have a map of how the book should be assembled during the final pagination process. She did this when she wasn’t working at her full time job at Geico.

All in all it was a big family endeavor.

Why do we work? Why do we have careers? I think I sometimes get confused about it. I enjoy work. I love to design, create, manipulate, produce and print. I enjoy the people I meet along the way and the friendships I make. But working just for workings sake is not generally why we do it.

It is to pay bills, to have enough food and shelter so that we can be a safe harbor for our families. We work to support families, to have homes and food.

Balance of work and family is a big issue for me. I choose to do design, layout and paginate this phonebook so I could come home and work. So I could have flexible hours and still earn a living. So I could be more a part of the life in my household. Instead I swooped everyone into the mania of my work and turned my entire household into a cottage industry.

Who is to say that is a bad thing? My family worked together tag teaming and helped to get this thing done together. It took every one of us. And we were there for each other. And we did it.

Entrepreneurial Epistles

Charleston Energy Works - rack card

Which is better?

High Street Auction

Website design

Phonebook Gestalt