Morning work blog

So last night my wife turned in a little early and I got a head start on working on the Bike Bug store in ZenCart. Not knowing PHP, I did manage to find my way around the template a little bit and make some changes for testing purposes.

Someone else approached me about a Joomla website. From the development side it seemed like a big handle from what I heard, but I will see what happens. I need to continue to expand my knowledge base on many things.

At work, we continue to make our transition to Streamline. More kinks are being worked out along the way.

Goal wise, I look to get this BikeBug store up with the custom template and practicing an order or two. Hopefully will tie that up by this weekend. Plus I got some invoicing to do.

Personally, I hope the remaining issues form my recently removed wisdom tooth go away by Monday so I can get back to normal! Ouch.

Where Did You Go?

Having not posted since July 2010, let me explain myself.

The remainder of July was busy with job interviews and follow-ups. After creating the previous entry, Job Search Organizer, all I really needed as a spreadsheet to keep track of my job interviews and resume submissions.

BASS COMPUTERS
After a few failed interviews, I got a job in August with Bass Computers in Houston Texas as a Web Designer/Developer. Although I accepted the job, the pay was much less than I hoped for but more than nothing ( and about the same as unemployment). My days contracting for Jenobi were inconsistent and almost over. I was told my pay at Bass was a starting pay, and without asking more questions about benefits, I started the job.

My daily responsibilities were to update items on the online store and print flyers for the front lobby store. My ongoing project was to update and improve the quality of the website. I lacked the confidence to grab this opportunity and do it right and my enthusiasm quickly faded. I was in an office with a nice desk and the women in accounting. I got to use a digital camera to take new product shots and I think the detailed descriptions I was adding were much better than before. The downside was I didn't get a good feeling there - and I wasn't clicking with people - it was not an interactive environment - it was very fast paced.

I got a call about a new job and decided to follow up on it. This new offer came with a salary, benefits and better everything. I got hired two weeks later.

Consolidated Graphics
I started at CGX as a Programmer in September. Although the first few months I was scared of my abilities, it has improved since then ten-fold. The lures where immediate. CGX met me halfway on the interviewing process, allowing for after-hour calls and lunch time interviews. Right away in the first week, I had met more people there in my first week than in my month with Bass.

I have been working in postscript and javascript as well as html, xml, and graphic programs such as illustrator. I picke dup pageflex and have gotten to work with high-end clients. Although I thought Bass was doing great stuff with thier recycling programs and got to learn alot about computer hardware, this was more up my alley.

PERSONALLY
In November, after putting my girlfriend through a year and a half of shady employment and stress I proposed to her with more promise than before. We got married on April 30th and now are trying to get into a house.

Thank God for change.

Job Search Organizer

Applying for jobs this year and keeping up with everything else, I opened a spreadsheet to keep track of my jobs. As I started creating the spreadsheet, I figured I could create it in Excel, and maybe create a section on my development server to organize my jobs through the web.

And the question that always comes up when I come across these tools of procrastination is that someone else has already done it. Question is where do I find it?

I figured creating a database where I could enter the job details, the date submitted, the status of my position search (apply for, submitted, followed up, scheduled interview), and other details. I would create a notes field where I could copy and paste info into and a page that would print out my results. I would a field that would alert me by email when interviews are scheduled or reminds me to follow-up on positions.

Agents
I have one agent/head-hunter or whatever you call it working with me through one company. I have job profiles through dozens of site and several job search queries bookmarked on Firefox that I run through daily. It all seems so overwhelming. I want one place, one location to do it all.

Agent Software? Head-hunter software? Do I even need it?

Our History (Moved from our website)

Recently, I decided to update my website again. Although I was comfortable posting a brief history of my experience on the About Us page of my website, I have decided to replace that history with more explanation of the services I could provide as a company. But never fear, (if you did fear I am sorry and concerned), I have moved that history to here.

Our History

From the stage to television, from logical to creative, the experience that comes from us is more diverse than your average designer. My name is Brad A. Haines and I am the person behind BH Creative Design. Growing up, I felt I was going to do something creative. Art, band, photojournalism and computer science were among my favorite classes. Entering college, I found myself wanting to study interests such as architecture and motion graphics. I took a detour through theatre where I explored my creativity in scene design and directing. Enjoying the directing aspect of setting up a stage for something to happen for the audience, I also explored video editing. I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Directing from Texas State University.

I went on to explore my interest in editing, seeking out television stations and companies looking for video editors. I took up video editing as a hobby, but found I could expand my technical knowledge about video editing and motion graphics. I earned an Associates in Multimedia from ITT Technical Institute, where as a student, I studied everything from HTML and Visual Basic to 3D modeling, animation, flash and graphic design.

I began building my portfolio with a few video projects. I built my first portfolio website and then my first client website. I left my position in television broadcasting and began working as a web and multimedia developer. Over the next few years I built numerous interactive presentations and maintained dozens of websites for our company's clients.

Busy week for a vacation

I found myself planning business trips and tasks during my upcoming vacation which was planned months ago. I feel grateful to have business tasks to plan and realize it'll help me divert from the mindless eating, smoking and slouching these vacations usually permit.

Didn't have enough time today to get everything done and got a busy week ahead. Went through the first client review on the development phase on my first CSS site. Contracting out my friend Jay for additional CSS work even though I realize I have broken ground on my learning and application of CSS. Realize I am behind from other developers and designers but it feels really good to have a tableless website now - and one I will be proud to display.

Realize I have 6 clients I have contacted in the last few days. Every once in a while I write this not to boast but to realize I am already living my dream and not far off or fooling myself on this. I am so thankful for some of my clients' positive feedback and the confidence and motivation I get from that feedback.

Social Media Seminar for Business

Tomorrow I will be attending a Social Media Seminar for Business sponsored by Katy Check-A-Pro with as a guest of one of my clients. They will cover social media, getting lost in the buzz, where to start, etc. I am very excited about this as I am participating in this search right now with my own business, and doing it for myself so I can do it for my clients later on.

I started this blog last year under a different name, and finally I have began to integrate social media for business into my web design business. My Facebook page receives from 0 to 10 hits a week. It seems like I put more effort into it than desired, but I love doing it. With 150+ friends, I would hope to catch a primary or secondary reference or visit. I haven"t seen many hits from Facebook yet. Yesterday I added one of my friends company page as a friend. I was very surprised to see his page and will check it out tonight or this week.

A few weeks ago, I received an email that looked like a job op, but instead was possibly a spam. The idea seemed very interesting though and this morning, broken links left me with a broken spirit for this email. Here is the link that works: http://atticusgraphics.info/. The product being pushed was called FanPagePop. Maybe it had overwhelming traffic and is having issues, or maybe it was all a hoax. A very well thought out idea but a hoax. It advertised a customized Facebook page in the same manner everyone pushed out customized MySpace pages and layouts years ago.

Is that right? Years ago? MySpace? Will Facebook be the same. It will if they charge for it and very quickly. If Myspace guy, Tom, wants his people back, he should be ready to welcome back his people - if they will come back. How many people go back and get the old dog from the pound when the puppy got hit by a truck? That old mut is still as cute as ever. My sisters dog is about 8 years old. Last year, my sister got a kitten, and that dog has more life now than we have ever seen. Could these social media networks work together to improve each other. It seems like they started. Myspace changed it's layouts. Facebook integrated music apps. But it seems both just went stagnet after that. Twitter came up and stole their thunder and like an old juggling act, they seemed to have went to the dressing room and cried.

Last week, out of curiousity, I finally looked at a Twitter page. I let myself get overwhelmed ad shelved it for the time being - knowing it may benefit me rather than hurt me.

So much more to discuss, but I gotta go to work.

I will report on my experience as soon as I can. I am in the process of getting ready to move again. I have much excitement about my new office space and will be going with my woman to pick out a desk in these next two weeks.

Waiting for gold

Yesterday morning I spent my pre-work time signing up with webdesignfinders.net. I opted not to pay $190 for a platinum listing and went for gold. The gold listing requires you to cross link on page your home page back to the website.

I immediately woke up this morning and checked the analytics on my website to see if I had any new traffic. I am on a mission to spread out my traffic sources. Currently ( am very heavy on direct traffic and very sparse on search engine and referral traffic. My two clients have signed up with local agencies for their industries - their traffic on their websites have been even spread.

I did come up as the last listing on the first page for houston, tx, which I was plased with. Here are the links for the search results and the link, I think, to my info page:

http://webdesignfinders.net/texas/houston-web-designers.html

http://webdesignfinders.net/details/7765.html

Marching On

Every once in a while, I have to advertise and sell myself on my business. I have to put the dreamer against the accountant and hope they come to an agreement. I have to believe I can do what I do. One day came recently where I wanted to throw in the the towel for a round. The respect for a boxer comes after he fights round after grueling round, and he only breaks for water and fix up before he gets back in the ring and continues to fight. Many of us wouldn't last the first few rounds, especially after brutal blows, our confidence gets shaken.

I lost my first client last night. After getting paid for designing the website, the client had not responded to proceeding on to develop the website. They went with an industry organization that sells templated sites. I went through my natural reaction of disappointment as I read the news on my Blackberry in bed with my girlfriend. My curiousity is why she would pay for the design and not extend the payment a little further for the development. And I fell asleep forgetting my victories and remembering my losses.

Currently I am working with an old employer as a contractor. Recently, my hours have increased and at one point, my business was quiet. I had a thought of trying to approach my old employer with hopes to work my old job again. I was going to do it with a need for stability. But before I approached it, I put out the feelers to all the quiet clients. Out of five quiet clients, two of them got in contact and are active clients again, two have not responded, and one chose something else. The victory was the two that chose to proceed on. As promising as the lost client site was, the active clients' site is just as promising. The most positive aspect of the lost client is that I now have a templated site to sell to a future client.

And in the corner, I have my client that has been supplying me work for the last couple years. Although his website has no bells and whistles, he is the client that I have developed a work relationship with that I shoot for with other clients. And as I write this, I become as grateful for this client as I do for the active clients and the lost clients. Regardless of the outcome, I have had the opportunity to do this work. I have a computer, the skills and the know how, the time, and the home to work from. I have the family and girlfriend and friends that support and encourage me in my endeavor. I have the fans, the cheers, and the manager in the corner that takes my spit. I have the ability to change my perception of what is going on and how it affects my present and future. And finally, I have the present and the future which means I March on through the end of the March Madness and continue to work.

March Madness Update

With one week left in March Madness, and one week left before I turn older by another year, I am somewhat satisfied with this month. I have felt like the Madness and the March have both been present, but will I reach the finals?

Maintenance clients have driven the court for these games. The guys on the bench stepped up and scored financially while the draft prospects and future stars trained for their day in the sun. And it's the quiet ones on the end of the bench sometimes that give you the reward.

Two web designs were completed. And I am waiting on the clients' responses. One client has been promising, the other has gone dark for now. A T-shirt design came out of nowhere and was completed and printed. A maintenance client returned for an update to his site and is now working with a technical writer to enhance his content. Another client has increased his speed ad kept me busy throughout the month, developing a new photo gallery for his site.

More details later, as I write this hours after I should be sleeping, and now am ready to sleep hard and well.

Excited about March Madness

What I hope March Madness to be in terms of this business is an addition of many new jobs to work on and a closure to the handful of jobs in design and development.

Currently working on two website designs, one which the design is done and I'm waiting for the client to give the go ahead on the development, and the other is a new design in which I have created two design options and have to finish up the secondary page on the first design and finish the entire wie screen design.

Also working on a business card in which I have a little bit of cut and past and doctoring to do to a background image. If all works out, it will be a very nice business card with a new logo to post also. If not, I will be stuck with an overworked project which I had high hopes for. In addition, I created a t-shirt design a few weeks ago. The client said he had put the printing on someone else and feared it would not work through to an actual shirt, but if it does or doesn't I will still post the design somewhere. Probably on this blog if it never gets printed. Finally, back in January, I created a half-page ad for Yellowbook and am waiting for the new phonebooks to come out so I can add that sample ot my portfolio. If all works out, I will have strengthened my graphic design portfolio. And let's not forget about the new BH Creative Design logo.

For the business side of BH Creative Design, I have recently drafted an Agreement and a Website Form which are both in review. I also look to create a Rate Sheet and post portions of that on my website. I still have to gather generic samples of alot of my work with my former employer. After 3 yrs and many projects in Flash and other interactive project, I have little to show that reflects my experience and skill becuase our main client and those projects were not for public viewing.

So, February was a bit of a frenzy. Hopefully March Madness will get the gears turning and then April will result in more consistent and continuing projects and clients.

Ads on Craigslist

Recently, at the suggestion of a very kind supporter, I was reminded of Craigslist as a route for finding work. When my girlfriend, oops - I mean this kind supporter, sent me a bunch of links for possible jobs, I was enthusiastic. I sent replies back to those ads, but none of them panned out.

A few days later, I posted an ad under 'creative services'. The following morning, I posted a new ad which I created in Illustrator. It was a graphical ad. I noticed some ads have a very nice and formatted mixture. View the Ad.

At my first response I was excited. It sounded like someone was going to send me to a site that could also help out. When I followed the link sent later that day, it didn't make sense. The following day, I got a similiar email. And as of now, all Craigslist has yielded on my ad is spam.

The jobs out there seem legit and some of the other companies advertising had valid and impressive work. Have I found an avenue or stumbled onto a road under construction? Much of what I have seen and experienced on Craigslist has matched my contempted opinions before this experience.

To create an ad under creative services, which is free as opposed to creating an ad under jobs wanted which cost $25 an ad for people in some of the major cities, you have to re-post it daily to be competitive and found. I'm not so sure of the spamming rules there, (obviously they are weak in the way of email), but they do warn you that deleting existing ads to re-post the ad immediately or within a two day period is considered overposting or spamming. So, I will have to research a little more and see how to approach this.

(In testing Craigslist on deleting the post, my previous ad was deleted without asking me if I was sure I wanted to delete my ad, so I guess after that spamming period has expired, your ad gets deleted immediately when you hit the delete button, BE CAREFUL! I quickly had to re-post the ad! The link above has been updated.)

In each of the 3 ads I have posted, I have changed the title. Am I spamming or over-posting? I saw one company there on multiple days, so I figure there is an allowance of some type of repetitive advertising under the creative services.

I guess the point or moral of this post is to figure out the advantages of posting on Craigslist. I can"t hurt and the spamming on my email hasn't been overwhelming. Only time will tell. I had much contempt that Craigslist was a bunch of spamming and quick online dating results (after hearing a story a few years ago about someone who got caught using Craigslist as a way to hook up), and although it may all be ture, it still may be a valid way to expose (should I use a better word?) or advertise my creative services.

Playing With A New Logo - Part II

In 'Playing with A New Logo - Part I", I displayed some logo ideas I came up with the other night. Basically all are the same logo and color, just different fonts on the name and tag.

Years ago in college, at ITT Technical Institute, I was taking a clash in Flash animation and we had an assignment to create a short animation for a company logo. That is when I created "BH Creative Media & Design" - now shortened to "BH Creative Design". Back then, I created a flash animation which I never did live down during that class.

Before I embarrass myself with the link, (and most of you will scroll down anyway and find it), the idea of my company was to inspire creativity in every person. My thought was that if I could be creative, so could the next student or person. Throughout my life, I was fascinated at people's creativity. So I created the idea of, "Deep Down A Creative Fire Burns", then came the punch line, "Let It Burn". Once I overcame the humility of all the ointment puns, I realize this was a marketing strategy that would just backfire, no pun intended. OK, so here's the link, please keep reading though: http://www.bhcreativedesign.com/samples/bhcreative_burn.htm

The next thought I put into the name and logo came after a few therapy sessions and months later ... and no ointment! I wanted complex simplicity. Yes, I realize how it sounds and how it looks. I created the logo currently used. If you look at it, between the "b" and the "c" there is a small line connecting the too letters, whose purpose was to serve as the middle stroke of a very curvy and inter-twined "h", all representative of "BH Creative". The biggest ponderance out of this logo was what "bc" stood for. So I had failed again and given in to a new idea for awhile. This and I had a delusional self-serving thought that it didn't matter if others understood it, or that the artists in the room woud see it as I saw it, because I was an artist. Eventually, the flaw in much of that last thought came through. Other artist aren't looking at my site, employers and clients are.

The New One
So for this next venture into self-expression. I created the logo that upon inspection, represents all the letters, "BH" and "C" and "D" for creative design. Upon looking, it looks like a box unfolded (the C and D) and a box coming out of the other box (the B and H), so is born the theme of hinking outside the box, represented by various ads in a box - we'll work on that one. Hopefully, this can evolve into a permant idea, or at least a more sensible anc clear representation. But you can email your puns and jokes to me, you just have to track down my email address! Enjoy.

Playing With a New Logo - Part I

BH Creative Design plugged into the networking

After finishing a recent website, (although I have a little work to do today on it also), I went crazy last night and today with the social networking.

For my website, bhcreativedesign.com, I created a Facebook page, a LinkedIn profile, linked to this page as my blog, but didn't link to my MySpace page yet. Now I think in my spare time, I'll ahve to re-create the MySpace page and separate it from my personal page. Right now the two are intertwined.

I have three fans of the Facebook page as of day 1. Myself, my lovely girlfriend, and my friend Art. Thanks to my Art and my girlfriend for the immediate support. Especially her. she was a fan just minutes after we hung up even though she was tired and this is not about my girlfriend! Anyway.

I have that curious, unaccountable resistance to Twitter right now. I already noticed an increase in web visits from the last two days and happy about it. Now I await for one more client website to go live to add their site to my portfolio.

I think the social networking realm is good for small business to grow and look forward to see where it takes BH Creative Design.

What I came to moments ago about my "company" name is that I eventually just need to find a better way to market and display this name because I have been extending the name out there beyond the website and a new identity would cause a bit of re-painting the name and image. So for now, we stick with BH Creative Design and move along. Be sure to visit us on Facebook and LinkedIn and also on our website.

So your client used a WYSIWYG?

The Designers' Sympathy - The Clients' Education
Dear God, if I could provide some of the screen shots from the sites clients brought to me based of their own WYSIWYG website builder! This is both maybe one of the most frustrating and also the most promising situations that arise in my experiences. Two quick experiences I'd like to share.

The first one came with a client I had about 3-4 years ago. He had built a site to promote his product and the site had become so clustered, he finally decided to direct his look and feel to something more "webby". Previous to my re-design, anything that could rotate, blink or flash DID!! Links flashed, stars rotated, etc..

He asked for a re-design for a site that had a lot of good information and alot of bad "webby" stuff. I was excited at the possibilities. At the time I was still somewhat unexperienced myslef and solutions diverted to sites with white text on black backgrounds - you know, to stand apart from everyone else. Both of us had gone in the wroong direction with the best of intentions. In those days well written content, optimization and non-distracting design, unfortunately weren't well-interpeted practices.

My client wanted to present the site well, but in sharing the design process with him, he still requested an appealing site, but hoped I could keep as many of the blinks, flashes and rotating thing-a-ma-doos as I could. I killed them all in the first design. And now that I looked at it I may have moved it from one bad design to another. It was terminated by the client within a couple years. The site was off a reasonable builder if I remember right. And I think they may have even offered some templates.

The other WYSIWYG builder was more of a pain to work in. The website builder converted your files to it's own file extension. I guess this is good for some form of protection against something down the road. When uploaded, the files seemed to save as regular html files. Somehow we got around this after a half a day of trying to figure it out, but it was a painful process.

This particular client didn't have the flashing, rotating or blinking circus pages, but instead had linked extremely large image files that were sized down in the code to his pages. Some of his pages took minutes to load. That's loss of viewers who, like myself, click away after seconds. being that most small clients don't know or don't care to reduce the sizes of images or create thumbnail versions, I had no problem fixing this for him.

To The Clients
So here's one for those who don't want to spend the moeny on a designer now, but hope to later. USE THE TEMPLATES!! They are most likely built correctly by professionals. Look for the templates which are layed out in your desired style and have imagery layed out in your style. The text is easy to update. Ask yourself how much information will YOUR site have. If you go after a template that holds the information/content you think your business will have in five years, keep in mind without all that content it will look empty for five years. Is the time spent searching templates that fit your content and size worth it? Yes, I believe so. Isn't your business worth taking that time?

You can provide the designer with all of your largest images and we'll compress them down for you. Also, if you want a sharp design, don't send poor and pixelated images. Track down or create vector images for logos and artwork specific to your business. Find stock images related to your website and mark the links to these images. I now tell my clients to go to http://www.istockphoto.com and create a lightbox or send me the links. They have cheap images there with high quality.

Web Design - Business Interface Engineering

My most recent project was pro bono (free) work I did for a friend to help him in his career search.

Two positive aspects of the result were the header and the push for a more professional look. Now I'm gonna give my current boss some props ... in our small discussions about sites with a white background versus sites with a colored bg, the white bg in the content area proved a plus. With a simple small site such as this one and a learning experience from previous sites (white text on dark backgrounds and I watched the project dissappear into oblivion), I made a different choice.

The other aspect was the header background graphic - a mistake that turned out better. When doing the background graphic for the header I was going for a simple gradient. In my Photoshop file, I made the image 1 pixel two wide and when I saw the result, it looked better. It added something to it, not sure quite what it was; but it just looked better.

The client liked it and the Google analytics on the site's first day were better than expected. Some of those stats may have been carryover from last night's tweeks, so this next week will tell more. But I can share with the client areas of interest. He had a targeted location where this site was to be primarily viewed from, and although those results didn't show, he made it out of Texas.

The improvement on this project was that I learned I need to get to a design quiker. Although I did work in more of a development process (put the content in and worked the design around the content instead of the other way around), too much time went into finding the right design. I stopeed looking at dozens of templates at one time and just continued to build the site then come back and upgrade the design features to more attractive design.

Here's the remaining pages. All the content, including images within the content, was supplied by the client.

3D Model Treats: Animation, 3D

While studying as a student at ITT Technical Institute, I had the advantage of working with 3D Studio Max for a few years. Below are varous samples from the 3D Collection.

Not too broadcast: Video - Pick 5 (KPXB)

The sister promo to "Customer Profile" was this spot.

Again, Charles Pape was the person that allowed this oppurtunity to edit this, as he was the public affairs producer for the station. I just got to slice-n-dice a little and used two or three provided clips with motion and transparency settings for the background effects.

And using a countdown, I utilized that infamous countdown clip always seen in film. In te end, the sound, voice, script and graphics came together well. The promo aired for a while until the station identity changed.

If I remember right, I may have changed th blue background coolor to a color more in the greener tone for the revisions that came later for a sister station.

Not too broadcast: Video - Customer Profile (KPXB)

After working for KPXB for a few years, I finally got a chance to do a promo. The script, graphics and voice over were provided. I used the graphics with a few layers of moving bars and some stock audio to create the clip which aired for a few years. Charles Pape was the producer and I was grateful for the opportunity he gave me on this.

I enjoyed this project and it seemed a long time waiting. Later on, this script was altered for a sister station and the promos aired over there. Eventually, PAX changed their marketing material and then their identity and the promo was expired.

(After initially uploading the video file, I removed it - to view the promo in full length - send a request through with yuor name and company)

Meanwhile, enjoy the screen shots ...

Until SWF ... Animation - CF Ware

So that whole Starbucks networking system thing does actually happen occasionally. I went to Starbucks and was studying some design and development. I took a ColdFusion book with me and ended up in a conversation with a prospective freelance client.

I was still fairly new to the filed, and think I stay may be in the beginning stages of it now, 3 years later, and I found a few revelations that day. One revelation occured in a conversation about html, and it was that I wasn't as stupid and uneducated as I thought I was. As the conversation continued, the other revelation came to my while my eyes glazed over; I was, maybe, in fact, stupid and uneducated as I thought I was.

And at this time, I was still writing my contact number on the back of other peoples business cards, some how a potential job was created out of this. What the clientr asked for was a simple but sharp animation for his website. Living at my sisters at the time and working on two other projects (my portfolio site and FreakoSuave) and less than a year after getting my degree in multimedia, I was starting to think I had finally arrived. I was busy, but this took priority becuas eof the prospect it could have for future work.

He wanted a lightning effect and the orange lightining was part of his identity so I couldn't alter that or the final location of it above the name. I went for the lightning effect inside the blue sphere which was also a part of the final logo - if I remember right. I ended up creating a simple frame-by-frame animation. The animation was a 10-15 second animation.

I never got the final feedback on the project and upon a follow up later on, he had shut down the website. Who would shut down their website? (My own future had not arrived yet to assist me in my judgement).

As of today, May 29th 2009, whatI have to showcase this is some screenshots. Until I get my portfolio site live again, I couldn't upload SWF's. Or can I? I think most blogger SWF's are linked to an external location. Check back on this later for a live version. In the meantime, here's the screenshots.