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.

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.

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.