Moving my blog site.

This is my last entry on this blog. To view my current blog, go to http://www.frogg.com

Designers need to eat too...!

Contrary to popular belief, Designers do not live on tea, cigarettes and stress alone (although we would die without those...) They occasionally need to work for money. In an ideal world, we would most probably be content to work on a bartering system, but life is not like that. We, as freelancers do not have a company paying our medical aid, we have to foot the bill ourselves. We need medical aid, because if we keel over from exhaustion, we are no good to you, nevermind ourselves. Our computers run on something called 'Electricity', which, as we all know, is expensive in this country. That is why we need our clients to pay us for services rendered.  Our overheads may be lower than the average bear, but they are there, nonetheless.

I find it strange that people would pay thousands of Rands for fliers, yet they do not like paying for webpages, as it is not something that is tactile, it's a virtual thing, so the worth of it is considered less.  Webpages are your online brochure. 24/7, and the hours spent writing scripting and converting images, is worth the money. That flier will be binned long before you update your website. Think of how things have changed over the past decade. Remember Yellow and White pages? That was where we looked to find telephone numbers. Nowadays, we Google them.  People are online daily, Facebooking, researching. Remember the days of Encyclopaedia Britannica? Now most of our information is available at the touch of a button, the flick of a wrist (iPhone).  Is it therefore not rational to spend a little more money on your website than you do on printed work? Send an electronic invitation or an ebrochure or mailer. It makes sense,  it is immediate, and you are not cutting down any trees.

Create a classic web presence that can stay online longer, link it to your blog, and you can then write on your specials etc, without cluttering up your website. Keep your front end website clean and to the point.

A Sticky Situation.

I worked as a 'Commercial Artist' in Zimbabwe on Pioneer street for a printing company, in what seems to be a lifetime ago. I had just spent a few months working as a silkscreen designer, and had landed what I considered a 'plum' job. Granted, it was in a dodgy part of town, where prostitutes hung on the corners of the streets, pretty much like bats in a cave. I was young and adventurous, and excited about working with 5 other designers in a buzzing art department. Imagine my surprise, when i walked into an abandoned Art Department - I was to be the only designer there, coupled with Mrs Robinson, the boss's mother-in-law who was soon referred to as ''Dragon Lady". She was the typesetter, receptionist, bookkeeper and the one person who made my life a living nightmare.

It was in the days of Letraset and Rotring pens, rulers, rubber cement and set squares. Those were our design tools. The only electric thing on the premises, was a state of the art IBM Golfball typewriter and a bromide machine. Artwork was not initiated by the oh, so fabulous and familiar 'dwang' of an Apple Mac. No, artwork was a PROCESS. And I believe I am divulging my age at this point...

You started your day with a cup of tea. Naturally. Then you found the off cuts of cardboard neatly stacked by the printing staff next to your desk. These were then primed with rubber cement and shiny label paper glued onto the board. You had to be careful to start at one end and using the long end of a set square you 'wallpapered' the label paper onto the board. Then you cleaned off all the rubber cement. ( A clever designer would prep about 10 boards to save time.) If the glue wasn't cleaned off propery, it would affect the quality of the artwork. Any air bubbles had to be pricked with a pin, and flattened. Then you were ready to begin. Depending on what you were designing, you would use a 2H pencil to lightly mark out the artwork size, using a ruler and set square. Accuracy was key. Then you would start your Letraset headings on a separate piece of paper, remembering that pencil marks were picked up by the camera, so the lightness of the lines were important. Main body text was typed on the Golfball typewriter and proofread. When all text and headings were done, they were cut out using a ruler and a scalpel, and positioned on the artwork area. Then, out came the rubber cement, the papers again 'wallpapered' and stuck down whilst using the ruler, set square and dividing tool to align and position the text in straight lines. Lo and behold if you stuck it on crooked!
Then you would clean off all the glue.

Any drawings and logos were glued in position and all lines and cut marks were drawn in with a Rotring pen. Authors corrections are always a nightmare, but in those days, we would have to pull off the stuck down captions and carefully reposition them without cracking the Letraset. Typing corrections were difficult, as one word corrections, sometimes in 6 pt would have to be pasted over the incorrect word, once the word had been neatly cut out of the stuck text. The final product had to have one depth.

The bromide machine was used for large headings. Each letter had to be exposed onto light sensitive paper in a darkroom and then developed. Great for larger headings.

Seems so far removed from vectors and pixels and the fact that you can 'add all printers marks in the PDF' doesn't it?!

Perhaps you'll appreciate those boring print jobs now...

Letraset

Rotring Pen sizes

Working at a College. Fun times.

Working with a college is always an experience. As a contract designer at the time, and working both on and off the premises, one cannot help but get caught up in all the activities on the premises. Photographing all main events, Speech days, New Boys day, along with all the sports events, posting the photographs on their website, executing the artwork for the various programmes, church events, house dinners and cultural activities, posters, invitations, not to mention roll ups, more updating of the website. Life was hectic, and although the pay was not brilliant, one couldn't help but get caught up in it all. Working with the various departments of the College, I soon became adept at learning which of the staff members operated in a conservative manner, and with which staff member I had more of a free reign in creating more adventurous design work. Everything was always a rush job and in all fairness and not a little pride, I met all deadlines the College set me.

Working in an all boy environment was lovely. The boys were always well mannered and polite, and I often used their photographs on my design work. At first they were a little reserved and reluctant, but as time passed, I could see them all pour over the Mitre ( the term magazine) pointing out their or a friend's photograph. Laughing. Teasing. The next time the boys saw me wandering around with the camera, it was not unusual to hear them shout "Me, ma'am, photograph me!"

Six years I do not regret. They were great!

Why making your Website Mobile-Friendly is important to your business.

How do you communicate on a daily basis? My guess is your mobile. Take a look around you. We are all reliant on our businesses and conduct our business via our mobile phones. You even sleep with yours next to your bed. Am I right? We are a mobile phone generation.

There is currently an market explosion for mobile websites overseas. The reason? Statistics have proven that in 5 years time, 85% of your business will be viewing your website on their smartphones.

How does your website look on your phone?

Go to your website and see how it looks on your phone. Pretend that you are a client and trying to find out about you. Is it easy to view your product/service? Most of you will be reaching for your glasses and enlarging text, waiting for images to load, get confused about where you are on the website.

The internet was originally intended to be viewed on a desktop computer, whilst having plenty of time to peruse the site, navigate from one place to another.

Your clients are more mobile than you think and use their smartphones to surf the net, whilst waiting in queues, collecting the kids from school, and looking up numbers.

Consider this:

25 percent of Americans use only mobile devices to access the internet (as opposed to desktops).



By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common web access device worldwide.



45 percent of mobile phone users now have a smartphone (this was 18 percent two years ago).



Nine out of 10 mobile searches lead to action, over half leading to purchase.



Mobile coupons receive 10 times higher redemption rates than print coupons.



70 percent of mobile searches lead to action within one hour. It takes one month for the same percentage of desktop users to take action.



Nearly 60 percent of web users expect a site to load on their mobile phone in three seconds or less, and 74 percent will leave the site if a single web page does not load in five seconds or less.



43 percent of local searchers on mobile devices physically showed up at the location, and 22 percent made a purchase.

Reasons to go Mobi

• Content is condensed and easy to consume
• Graphics are quick to download
• Click to call, instant directions, click to email.
• Higher rankings in search engines (mobile ready sites are getting priority on mobile search engines)

Can your site be adapted or do you need a new mobile site?

A mobile site will appear slightly different to a desktop version. It will contain fewer graphics and condensed text (Think of the mobile as a ‘mini me’ version of your desktop site. You will have a link to your desktop site on your mobile website, should the client want to spend longer on your website or read in more detail, however your most important contact information, email and product/service will be on the mobile site, and you will find that people will call you.

It’s easier than you think to convert your website to a mobile one! 

A mobile web site does not replace your desktop version, it just creates a friendlier experience for your mobile visitors, although the look and feel of your desktop site can be maintained in a different format.

Get with the times and beat your competitors by going Mobi

Currently, only 20% of businesses have a mobile website, but with modern technology and companies like Boots, Tesco and Facebook, as well as mobi banking, isn’t it time you consider that a mobile website can make your company look progressive and up-to-date? Going mobi is the future.

• For your mobi site mail me : frogg@frogg.com

DIY blonde.

In a bid to save money - January is always tough - I decided- very wisely, I might add - to do my own foil highlights. A good deal @ 59 rands. How difficult could it be? Part, foil, colour, wrap. I have a degree forgawdsakes! Well, last night I struggled but sort of got it right. I had to kind of bend over, lean sideways, try see the back of my head... The highlights were a stunning platinum blonde, not even the hairdressers can get it that Colour. Great stuff, barring for a slight misjudgement in placement and lack of uniformity in widths. My hair looked just a little mottled and as I walked to buy my cigarettes today, I saw a hairdresser staring at my new blonde streaks in total fascination. Needless to say, after much inspection from all angles using mirrors and parting my hair in various places, I was too embarrassed to approach a hairdresser to fix it. How exactly was I going to explain that I had tried to do it myself? How was i going to bear the tittering and tutting when he saw the light ping pong ball shape on the righthand side of my head? Was I going to blame another hairdresser for the abortion that now was my hairstyle?! Of course not! I would have to do it myself and save face (not to mention hair...!) The good thing was that the colour in the various dabs and lines was great. It was just the stripes and dabs that were the issue...

So I sent my son to buy the dye, I did not want anyone to see a woman who had truly messed up her hair buying dye. THEY are going to know and snigger. When he returned I asked him if he could somehow fix it. Even out the stripes, make it seem like a really funky hairdo. He muttered that he 'would try'. I saw the doubtful look in his eyes. I didn't want to end up looking worse than the circus freak I was, so it was determined at a rather late stage, that I would use the highlight powder as a tint and not for highlights. Obviously, in that case, I wouldn't have enough to cover my whole head, so off to the shops he raced again to purchase some more dye before they shut. By the time he returned I had managed to cover three quarters of my hair with dye, and half my head was already a lovely butternut yellow. Not phased, (how bad can this be?) I put the rest of the dye on met head and covered it with plastic. Lovely and glam too! (not). Well, the concoction heated up and it felt like a thousand Matabele ants were attacking my scalp. The instructions said to leave it on for an hour, but because the second mix was put on 50 minutes after the first mix, I had to bear the pain for an hour and forty minutes, by which time I was climbing the walls with the itching and burning. ( I reminded myself that it took pain to look good).

Ecstatically I finally washed the colour off. To find out that not only was I blonde, I was a white blonde. Witch blonde. Doll blonde. It has been a few hours now, and I still scream when I see the ghostly apparition in the mirror.

Let's hope things look better in the morning... On the plus side, they say blondes have more fun, I say blondes can take pain and have a sense of humour. My son said that my IQ has dropped by 60 points...

A living loss.

There are times in your life when you suffer a living loss. A death would be easier. To know that a person walks this planet but wants nothing to do with you, when what you would want to do more than anything in the world, is rectify the situation and you can't. That is a living loss. Through perhaps a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation of a situation, a harsh word when a loss of control is experienced, is no doubt the most bitter pill to swallow. It is a time for reevaluation of self, of idealistic, unrealistic expectations of another being or a loved one, and realisation that perhaps if you could somehow set it right, you would, but no matter how you look at it, there seems no way to explain or understand, because they choose for you not to find them. A sad, sad place to wander in. It feels almost like an unexplained suicide. Somehow from somewhere, a survival instinct resurfaces. A belief that if they have found the happiness they deserve in life, even though you cannot share it with them, that would be a reward within itself, in some bizarre process of reasoning. The hollowness inside must surely die, yet the missing continues. I will miss you every day of my life and although it is not a conscious thought, it is with me all the time.

I found a paragraph somewhere on the Internet - perhaps lyrics, perhaps just someone writing down their emotions. Somehow it rang true, because I saved it. I cannot read it without becoming emotional. Hence, I am aware that much healing still has to be done. This is the paragraph:

“I miss you when something really good happens, because you are the one I want to share it with. I miss you when something is troubling me, because you are the one who understands me so well. I miss you when I laugh and cry because I know that you are the one that makes my laughter grow and my tears disappear. I miss you all the time, but I miss you most when i lay awake at night and think of all the wonderful times we spent with each other; for those were some of the best times of my life.”