Happy New Year

Another Christmas came and went. So fast! I hope all you silent readers out there had a good one this year.

Mine was pretty good...my 1st Christmas actually spent together with my wife. It was nice...we really didn't do anything particularly fancy. We didn't buy each other any gifts, or go anywhere special together. We simply bought a board game for "us" and played it together with my parents on Christmas Eve.

You know what...that turned out pretty nice. I can't remember the last time I sat around a table playing a simple board game with the folks and this was quite nice. Florence recommended this game called "Blockus" that she played back home with friends.

It's one of those games that you can learn in 5 minutes but can probably take a while to master. We all liked it. I thought I'd be decent at this game because of the spatial relationships with the blocks, but it turns out that didn't help me at all.

We did get a new car this past week.... yeah that's a big thing I suppose. The last thing we wanted was another overhead payment, but when your old 13 year old car starts making you feel unsafe I suppose its time to move on. It was sad letting my old Acura go though... I nurtured that thing over the years.

Now at least when I greet clients they won't ask my why my car looks like crap. I keed you not, I had a client comment that my car was crap and I needed to buy a new one! How's that? Sucka.

Business is good but I have this one project that's turning out to be a big challenge. I've tried everything I could to come up with ideas for one of my client's logo and stationery, but I simply can't seem to nail it down. She remains OK at it. She says she can live with it but I can see with her reaction she isn't thrilled with it. Meantime she has had a hard time expressing to my why she doesn't like it.

So what do I do? If I follow the books, I'm going through the standard process and she's paying me for my time. I can consider this a "success" by those standards -- I delivered the product and she paid me. So is this pau? I know back in the day I questioned this kind of outcome with my managers and they told me this was an acceptable outcome.

But somehow this just doesn't sit right with me. What do I gain out of this besides just a few extra dollars in my pocket? If I walk away from this, my client is left with an experience that's just "OK". If she doesn't like the logo or whatever, she's definitely not coming back to me for more future work, plus I'll simply end up with no future referral work from her. It's like a burnt bridge.

I can't ask her to pay more. Well, I guess I could, but that would be a tough sell on a situation where we've already come this far and failed to click on any idea so far. And it would be difficult for me to give back money on a lot of time that I've already spent on the job.

The only thing I can think of doing at this point is to keep working on this project on my time till I hope she's happy. On the books it looks bad because I'm giving away free time (all the books I read say I should avoid doing this), but my instincts tell me this is bad business if I be a hard ass about it. I figure if I put in one last effort on this project, I still have the chance of turning this situation around and winning favor back from the client. All the other outcomes just ends up with a burnt opportunity and a failed relationship. My only remaining fear is just putting in all the extra time and getting no further then I am now in trying to get her something she likes.

Another standard situation client-relationship thing that isn't taught in school. I'll let my instinct drive me from here....I can't wait till this issue is resolved. I had to think about this situation all holiday season.

Hopefully next post I'll have the good news that I found something that works and I'll get to show a sample.

Happy New Year everyone!

Super Chair

Well, I finally plunked down and got one... I got this $890 ergo chair called the Steelcase Leap. You know something is a bit more serious when its got its own name...a bit like buying a Lamborgini "Countach" or the "Diablo". Only this is FAR less exciting and quite a bit more geeky. In the world of desk chairs, I found out there's only 3 chairs mentioned over and over again by name...the Leap, the Freedom, and the Aeron.

The thing certainly doesn't look like much. I paid that much money for THAT?!! Yeah I'm still kinda slightly reeling from it. You know I'd pay $1000 for a nice sofa, mattress, worktable, etc etc. But it was hard to justify paying that much for a work chair.

But I was reminded that I spent more time sitting my ass on this work chair then anyplace else in my house. Plus I couldn't argue my consistent lower back pain I experienced every day after sitting here for hours. So I guess it's finally time to try see if these ergo chairs really work. I'll let you all know.

I sat in it at the showroom it felt pretty good. But the real test comes only after I have it at my office for a few days and see if it really helps. But this particular chair is quite adjustible...its even dumbed-down with labels for all the adjustments so you don't have to flip things all over to figure out what it does.

I figure now is the time to buy it or else Uncle Sam takes my money and buys all the useless politicians some nice chairs for their fat asses.

Mele Kalikimaka & Hau`oli Makahiki Hou

Here's what I've been sending out lately for the Holiday Season. This year I've upgraded from the homemade cards on my office printer to having the opportunity to send this out to get printed.

I barely had enough time though...I simply didn't have anything inspiring me this year for Xmas. There's only so many tree, ornament, and santa illustrations I could find or make-up myself. Last year I went down to the Honolulu City Lights thing in downtown with my camera to find something to use....but god, we all know that hasn't changed this year (AGAIN), so I can't go down there expecting anything new to take a picture of.

So I gave up...

I figured it's too late for Xmas I might as well make a New Years card this year. This way I could at least try to come up with just about anything to lift my creative block. Overall I like it...it's sort of this funky tattoo theme thing. You like how I describe my work? "Funky tattoo themed thingamajiggy" Yeah my former art professors would have ripped me a new one in art critique for saying shit like that. Whatever.

I got a small stack of them left over. If anybody wants one, just give me a holler and I'll just send you a personal greeting for the New Year! This limited edition card may be worth at least $2 - $5 when I die someday. hehe

As we say in Hawaii, "Mele Kalikimaka & Hau`oli Makahiki Hou" Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everybody!

How much for a Logo Design?

You know it's funny the longer you do your business, you begin getting a better idea of the type of people that contact you. I can fairly accurately predict how serious someone is about doing business within the first 15 seconds of a phone conversation by now.

Not to say that's a good or bad thing...I'm just saying I kinda get an idea these days the minute someone calls me up and asks, "I want a logo designed by the end of this week...it's just super simple...how much do you charge" -- this person doesn't want to pay anything more then $100 for a design.

I can be bitter about it...go into a tirade about how much real work and effort it takes to create a good logo, how much study a designer has to go through to get experience in this field, yadda yadda yadda. But I found that's just too much effort with very little reward. It's best just to tell people, "look, you can easily get bargain basement logo design for as little as $75. But do you trust your whole permanent business identity to something that might have taken someone 30 minutes to whip up with clipart? If you do, there's a great tool called Google that will find you a few logo design houses that will charge you just that"

This guy has about as good an explanation as I've seen so far: "How much is a great logo worth?"

Here's a site that has some interesting backstory on some of the more famous logo designs: "Logoblog.org" (along with some links to some low priced design houses)

The casestudy about Nike is one of the most interesting ones that is sometimes used to improperly justify lower cost logos. Nike paid their designer just $35 back in 1971 for their now-famous swoosh logo. The designer was then just fresh out of design school. Was she robbed? You decide.

Years later, that same designer was awarded a diamond ring and an undisclosed amount of stock in Nike. I don't know how much she got, but I've read she's not strapped for money that's for sure. Typically though, you can assume big companies pay top dollar to make sure their brand communicates the right message.

So how much money should you spend? That's still ultimately up to you, but know that a good logo only comes after hours and hours of research, experimentation and consultation. It isn't just something that is just whipped up overnight.

Finally something I can show

Here's a recent logo design project I finished recently. It's for a custom women's jewelry and accessory line. The target market here was for more mature women between the ages of 30 - 50 who still had a lot of attitude. I had to struggle to avoid making this to teeny-boppery because of the name but I think in the end my client felt like she was able to identify with this.

The only thing I'm a little hesitant about this is that it feels like I'm kind of designing around this one type of style. I've had a few logos that are kinda in this same vein already...I've been trying to break myself out of it. But I think this is a good solution for this particular job and that's all that matters.

Scrooges

December always seems to fly by. Unlike a lot of people who find this season to be a pain in the arse, I've always had nothing but positive experiences this time of year.

Sure, some people might be impatient and rushed right around this time, traffic might be bad, it's harder and harder to find parking at the malls...but overall things are better. The days are shorter, the nights are cooler, people you haven't talked to in a while resurface to say hello, the city looks a little nicer with all the decorations...

(Am I the only one who's a little sick of the SAME Honolulu City Lights that's been the same for the past decade? For goodness sakes just change the color of the lightbulbs or SOMEthing. Is that so hard to do? Ho ho ho I digress...a little bit of Scroogy McDuck there)

As much as I try though, everyone around me is a little BAH HUMBUG. My wife isn't really into the whole Xmas thing...she's basically just allowed me to put up some lights in the living room. Mind you I don't actually have it hung or wrapped around anything, it's literally just tossed on the floor surrounding the TV. That's about the extent of our decorations this year because she didn't think we had room for a tree. /SOB

Mom and Dad haven't had a tree for some 10 years now because they say after my brother and I moved out..."What's the point?"

And now as we get older, I don't really exchange much gifts with good friends anymore since we usually just tell each other to save the money and we'll just go out to eat a nice dinner. That's fun too but it's a little sad some Xmas time and there's no tree and no gifts either.

Anyway, I try to make the best of it and just enjoy the month as best I can. But December just flies by like nothing. Here it's in the middle of the month and I haven't even designed my Xmas cards yet. At this point I should just do a New Years card.

Boy I'm getting fucking depressed just talking about this. BAAAAAAH

Nothing much in the design realm. I've got some new logos and work I'd like to show...but since these are often new businesses yet to be launched yet, I figure it's better to keep these under wraps until my clients are under way. Last thing I want is to be sued because I gave away an idea too soon hmm?

There's a photography cruise thing coming up August 2008 here in Hawaii (http://cruisingthroughlife.com/) which is something I might consider. Sounds kinda fun cruising through the islands and getting expert photography tips.

I just rented a documentary called "Helvetica" (http://www.helveticafilm.com/) from Netflix this past week. It's sort of interesting if you're remotely interested in graphic design and typography. OK, who am I kidding.... you'd have to be practicing design to really want to watch it. Other people might want to steer clear. It's certainly eye opening how much detail some of the "legends" in design put into thinking about things like signs and displays. It goes to support my philosophy that EVERYTHING we see around us has design in it if you're just willing to look.

Alright I better stop typing here...I'm depressing myself.

Thursday Night

Um... I'm not sure any of my friends are into this kind of music anymore. But if anyone's interested in hearing some Hawaii-flavor punk music (how punk can people get here in Hawaii huh?) then come check us out this Thursday night over at the Lotus Soundbar.

My first time there as well. We're playing first, which is good...I have to get to bed early that night for my root canal on Friday. GOD that is so un-rocklike of me. I should be in a jazz band by now.

Monkey Camera

So the Photoshop Lightroom seminar yesterday turned out ok. As I feared, I knew about 95% of the program already. I maybe learned a keystroke or two and that's it. So maybe I was slightly disappointed, but then again it was fun to be away from the office for a day and just do something else. Picked up a few photography books that were discounted for NAPP members as well.

I was surrounded the whole day by photographers. The guy on the right of me was talking about lightboxes, the guy on the left of me kept talking about Aperture on the Mac. Meh, that was ok...I think I know enough about photography shop talk now to hold a decent conversation. They had a Nikon rep there unveiling this D3 camera which shoots 12MP at some crazy 9 frames per second and has 51 points of focus. You'd have to be running while taking a shot before you'd get a photo out of focus on this thing. It's yours for the low price of $5000. Uh huh.

Here I am STILL saving up for my next camera. How long has it been since I was oogling that thing....almost a year? A new model came out already in the time I've been wanting a new camera hehe. SOON soon. With my wife's talk about a new car and a house deposit, I've had to re-prioritize things.

Anyway, as I was sitting there listening to photography all day yesterday, I thought about what makes it so fun for me -- I think I know the answers:

You can create beautiful pieces of art, with a lot less effort.

I think my best friend Derrin once explained it best to me -- you can give a monkey a camera and have him click the shutter a billion times. Every so often you might still end up with a beautiful shot. This is not to downplay any professional photographers...they have the skills to make beautiful shots with every shutter click, but the point is even a novice could get lucky.

This isn't true of any other design form I know...you can't sit a monkey behind a computer and ask him to build you a website or lay out a 6-panel brochure. The monkey sure as hell isn't going to write you code for your PHP membership system. I wish monkeys could...I'd save money on vendor costs for sure.

Sure enough, I've gotten lucky a few times so far. I had no idea what I was doing and I took shots that I ended up really liking. Other people liked them too. I'm the MONKEY! I'm the MONKEY!

Deeep. Eeep eep!