Back from vacation
I am officially back from vacation and spending this lovely Monday catching up on all my work. Ever feel like you need a vacation from your vacation? Fortunately when we arrived home we found that the weather in Minnesota was far nicer than that in Nevada, go figure. Yes, we were there for the SNOW IN LAS VEGAS!
My husband and I spent the week in Las Vegas, neither of us had been there before. Wowee, there is a lot to see! If you like to sight see its a great place to visit. We both loved the visual aspects of Vegas, the lights, the architecture, just everything. My husband has just picked up photography and was constantly stopping for pictures and learning how to use his Cannon SLR. I, on the other hand, stick to my point and shoot camera which I find does amazingly well for such a tiny camera. Aren’t those umbrellas neat?
We did find it funny how work and simply life follow us on vacation though. When taking pictures I was constantly looking at composition and layout in the way I would for web or graphic designing. When going back over our pictures you can tell which one of us (between my husband and I) had studied more in terms of layout. His excuse? “Oh honey, you can crop that for me”. Haha. I can tell you that on more than one occasion my husband stopped and said “Kristine, why are you taking a picture of THAT?” Can you tell by the look on his face in the above picture? That has got to be one of my favorites.
I love to grab images that I see around me to stick away for future inspiration. I find myself commenting on colors or the pattern or simply the layout of things around me. When you work in design its easy to fall into a pattern of doing the same stuff over and over, therefor I make a effort to watch for new things around me in my every day life. I think this is important for creative woman and is true for a lot of my clients. When was the last time you noticed a billboard’s unique use of color or how the reflection of a fountain dances on the water. I dare you to find one new thing that is inspiring to you the next time you are out running errands, or something that just looks neat. You just might be surprised at what you find!
Web Savvy Mama Vacation
I will be out of my office from the 8th to the 12th of March. As some may know, not only do I run Web Savvy Mama out of my home, I have 3 children have another job AND I am a full time college student studying nursing! You can say things are pretty crazy in our house! After 14 years my husband and I have decided it was time to FINALLY take a kid-free vacation, perfect time since we are both on spring break from school next week!
I will have access to my email during this time to answer questions and handle emergencies, but will not have access to client files. I hope you all have a great week and enjoy the weather! -Kristine
Wordle… fun with words
What a fun website! There goes any chance at a nap today! Poking around I found this gem of a website that allows you to insert a link and create a Wordle graphic design image based on the words it pulls from the feed of the site you linked to! Based on the Web Savvy Mama blog this is what we got.
How fun would it be to accent a blog post with words like this? Who knew typography could be so easy? Check it out for yourself and see what you can can up with! A heads up, if you do use any part of the created Wordle a link back is required, don’t forget to add that to your site if you do use it.
Try Wordle
Old Man Pickles joins the WSM team.
Old Man Pickles is the creation of my highly imaginative 9 year old son.
He’s a spit fire of an old man with lots to say. He can’t help but stick his nose into other people’s business and is always anxious to pass on the tid-bits he finds interesting!
What better way to celebrate my son’s birthday than by bringing his favorite character to life? Happy 9th Birthday Andrew!
Old Man Pickles will bring his readers random quirky news blips all while demonstrating that blogging doesn’t have to be hard and scary.
If Old Man Pickles can do it, surely you can too! Read about Old Man Pickles and his quirky blog here. This blog demonstrates some of the out of the box creativity WSM likes to implement when it comes to blog and site format.
Intuos4 Wacom tablet, the designer’s BFF
I had tried tablets before, even Wacom tablets. Having a digital drawing tablets were a requirement when I went to college for web design. Unfortunately I had never felt the tablet love before now. Previous tablets I tried felt awkward, were not accurate and had few options to really make me want to use them. Sensitivity had been lacking and static cling on the drawing surface made the last one wig out on me. I knew there were good tablets, but I didn’t want to spend $2000 on one! I wrote tablets off and learned to perfect my craft via mouse.
That is, until I saw the Intuos4 at the store. I sat there staring at it, pondering whether it would really be worth the $350 price tag. A sales lady approached me and we had a nice long chat about the features and previous issues I’ve had with tablets. I was sold. I then turned to the lady and said “Hey, that man over there in cameras is my husband. He’s looking for a new SLR. Do what you do best and get him excited about his camera purchase, then he’ll happily agree to buying me this cool new tablet.” Yes, wives are evil sometimes. Hey, it worked and us girls have got to work together. He did get a chuckle out of the scheming.
So I get the tablet home and giddily rip it out of the box. First, I have to comment on the size. I purchased the medium one and the drawing space is perfect! I was afraid that it would be too small to get a good feel for it or to feel natural, but its definitely adequate. By the way, the Wacom Intuos4 comes in several sizes ranging from small to extra large, so there is a size (and price) for everyone. Next I notice the pen holder, when you open it up it has 11 extra tips for the pen. I haven’t had a chance to play with those but I presume they give a different feel when drawing. The tablet itself has programmable hot keys that you can set in accordance with your drawing program. I use Photoshop and Pixelmator and found that these come in handy. Not only are there buttons but also a LED display right next to them to tell you what they do! You can also set your hot key buttons based on program, so if you use specific shortcuts in one program and not another it will recognize that.
Actual use of the tablet is awesome! It feels like you are writing on paper, just the right amount of feedback and grip along with a smooth (static-free) surface. The sensitivity is nice as well and allows you to press harder for a thicker line as if you were really painting or drawing. I have to say, that after only 2 months of use I really am enjoying this tablet and it has made my drawing time significantly shorter.
All in all, this is a quality tablet and if, like me, you were afraid to try them again (or for the first time) I think this would be a good no-regrets digital tablet.
Ah, the joys of email
Sitting up at 1am my husband asks “Kristine, what are you doing?” My response is usually simple: “Emailing”.
People don’t really look at email as taking up much time. Email was supposed to make things easier, right? Today, while looking through sent messages looking for a specific email I realized just how much time I spend emailing! I thought this was interesting and would like to share my find with my readers and clients. I think we can firmly stick this one into the hidden value of my web design services. Unlike a lot of businesses, I have always offered free support and try my best to answer emails and help clients with learning their site or simply making sure the design process and site vision are are on track. All of this adds up and I just thought I’d share a few numbers.
4-8. The average number of emails sent back and forth during the quote process.
30-60. The average emails that are sent from me to clients as part of back and forth during the design process on small projects.
100-130+. The number of emails I’ve sent out to clients on average on larger projects.
And when I say that I mean that range would be one person! So during the design time frame when I take on 4 projects at a time I could easily sent out 400 or more emails to the 4 clients. The design time frame is 6-8 weeks. Some emails are quick, 4 minutes to write. Others take more research, 30-40 minutes. Lets say the average is 10 minutes per email. That’s roughly 67 hours of email time, or 10 hours per week and this is a LOW estimate not including the quote process.
Email! I never thought it would be so time consuming! So there you have it. This is the reason my husband finds me up in the middle of the night working, wondering what I could possibly be doing.
So when considering the value of my web design services, here is a hidden value that you are getting when you work with Web Savvy Mama. The one on one attention from me when I am making sure there is good communication and that you fully understand how your site functions.
By the way, check out Thunderbird email client. Tabbed email, filtering, sorting and all your email accounts readable right in one inbox. I love all the features and it does help me save some time!
