The bottom one with the square seems to be the most liked and will most likely be the new logo for VS! Very exciting, no? Well, for me it is. Especially since I LIKE this logo. More often than not, I hate all my designs but everyone seems to love them. That’s good though, cause a designer should design for their client, not for themselves (unless it’s their own company, duh. lol).

Now that the logo is out of the way I can focus on doing a new website. Currently both the blog AND my website have templates. I hate templates, but over the last year or so I haven’t had much time to do a new site much less learn Joomla or Drupal. My husband usually does the CMS stuff for me when I’m on a crunch. But now that I don’t have a job and my freelance jobs are few I have time to design a new site and try to teach myself CMS coding. Yay? Haha.

Well, enjoy the new logo. Hopefully next week I’ll have some sort of website layout done. You’ll also see some of those photos I promised and I have a site for a book to come up with. Keep checking back!

For those that haven’t noticed, or have been following along, my husband and I finally bought a house and we’ve moved to Austin, TX! But don’t worry my Florida friends (or any other state!), I can still do work for you! I just can’t meet you in person. But unfortunately not all the changes here at VS are because of good news.

Recently some clients who I’ve trusted and done some pro-bono work with have tried to take advantage of me. Because of such, all pr0-bono work will be treated like a paying client and have contracts, invoices (with nothing due of course) and paper/e-mail trailed communication. I will only take the initial contact by phone or in person. Everything else must be written down and signed or sent from a valid personal or official business e-mail account.  So if I do pro-bono work for you, please don’t think I don’t trust you. It’s just to cover any miscommunication and will help and protect both of us in the long run with any confusions.

On a happier note, I have LOTS more photography to put up soon! I have a Baby Shower and an infant session to put up as well as pictures from my new house. Keep checking back! I’ll have them up soon!

Being inspired by this simple yet effective background I decided to take it further and make some kind of poster. Not having a client or any kind of intent I really wasn’t sure what to put. I then thought I should do a poster for myself and/or Visually Speaking. Then I thought of all the design posters I’ve seen on contests or DeviantArt about what we thought graphic design was. As I thought about it I came back to Visually Speaking but I didn’t want to just put “visually speaking” under “Graphic Design.” Eventually I came up with “More than meets the eye…” I know, very “Transformers” but if you think about it, it’s true. There’s always a deeper message in the design than people give it credit for and often there’s much more that goes into design than one would think.

In the end, this is what I came up with (and boy do I love the fonts I picked ). Enjoy!

Background Before:

Background After:

Speaking of thinking outside of the box, I’ve had a bit of trouble with it lately. Well, at least controlling it. These tutorials, though, are helping me. I have so many designs in my head that I’d love to put on paper but I’m just not sure where to find things to use and how to put it together and get the right effects. With this in mind, my whole time off from now ’til the end of March is going to be filled with tutorials and sketching ideas and even executing them. So, to show proof of my tutorial work, I’ve put the “Illuminate” image I made using the 3D effect in PS below. Enjoy.

My husband just recently got a job in Austin, TX so naturally, we have to move. For us, though, we needed to pick a mover that had storage as well as the full package. While we did our research and read lots of good, bad and horrible stories of moving I found my self judging the moving companies based on their website! Several places we checked out that had poorly designed websites tended to have bad ratings and bad stories to go with them. When we finally picked our place, Compass Van Lines, I still had doubts about the company, even though it had good reviews by the BBB and other customers, just because their site was still not all that great.

Now, being a designer, that’s kind of a given that I’ll judge a company by their site, but to be honest… most people judge by the website. It’s like judging a book by it’s cover. You’re not supposed to, but it’s what humans do. So the moral of the story is to keep your site and logo updated. It’ll bring in more business.

Websites aside, I am now free of anything to do and will be doing some self-assignments that have been put off for way too long, so keep a look out.

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If you’ve ever been horrified by the design of a small or local business website, you’re not alone. There are so many aesthetic travesties out there, and worse, many small businesses still don’t even have a website. One recent study concluded that a paltry 54 percent of small businesses maintain a home on the web.

Your business doesn’t need an elaborate multimedia site, but you do need an eye-pleasing and informative destination. After all, you wouldn’t (purposefully) hang an ugly sign on your storefront or office. Why would you present an ugly website to your prospects?

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This same idea is applied to not only websites but print work such as  flyers, postcards, advertisements, and even your logo and other types of design work. Design is the first impression that your clients get. If you don’t care about your design your clients will most likely feel like you won’t take good care of them.

In this economy more and more businesses, especially small businesses, are cutting out design from their budget thinking it will save them money. Most businesses do not realize that design is what drives people into their business. With out design they loose money by not having the design inform more people about who they are or what they do and have to rely on word of mouth which is a very slow way advertising.

Small businesses shouldn’t skip on their design however they should be more cautious of who they use for design. It’s important for a small business to shop around going from designer to designer or studio to studio to get the best prices for design but they shouldn’t just look at price. Make sure to look at the quality of design you’re getting for the price you’re paying. In this market designers are very competitive so get quotes from other places before deciding on one.

Just because the economy is bad doesn’t mean that your design should be. Remember that your website, logo, print work, etc. is the first impression of your company or small business. Put a little money into your design and it will go a long way.

I haven’t touched Flash in 3 years…. I was very good at learning actionscript when I did stuff in flash but now that it’s been so long, I hardly remember any of it. So to brush up my skills in Flash, I’ve decided to make a “Decorate Your Own Christmas Tree” thing. I’ll have a bunch of different things you can put on your tree and you can drag them and place them on your tree as many times as you want. It’ll be fun. I’m going to do a snowman one too. You’ll have to wait and see it.

99Designs is still in the process with me. Gotta figure out this job thing first, then I can focus on getting extra money. Until then, ciao!