The Creative Tradeoff

It’s a tough question for creatives – do what you love, or be paid for what you do.

Fulfillment or security. Freedom or Friday. (By Friday, I mean payday. I couldn’t get used to having inconsistent paydays as a freelancer even after I saw that it was working out overall).

 Growth is really hard work. It often means you have to do both – both the things you love and the things you don’t love. One to grow and one to get paid. This means a lot of overtime.

The Armes brothers have some wise words for creatives who are reaching forward.

“Barry - I think there is a kind of a tradeoff if you want to do what we’ve done – you know working for rock bands and snowboard companies. The tradeoff being you’re not going to get paid for it (laughing). We always knew that and we’ve managed after years to find a balance. A lot of that work that we did and didn’t get paid for we were able to take it to ad agencies and get some higher paying jobs and bigger exposure. So, one hand kinda washed the other.

To build up a portfolio of exciting work usually comes at a cost. It took quite some time before we were earning a reasonable paycheck. We had friends that got jobs at places like Microsoft and they were making four times as much as us. We felt like idiots at the time that we chose the direction we did but in hindsight there were certain types of people and work we wanted to do at any cost.”

Their article is well worth the read. Find it here.

It’s that “building a portfolio of exciting work coming at a cost” part that jumped out at me. There are turning points in your life as a designer that you know you have a choice to make. One of those was when I quit my full benefits well paying, get a consistent raise job to go it on my own at MPDesign.

A more recent one was when I realized I was going to have to say no sometimes. Building your portfolio is a process. Whatever you have in your portfolio, you tend to attract more work of the same. I have done some very fulfilling projects for companies and organizations that I like working with. Some of them have shared a similar design vision. It’s understanding how important that is that inspires you to begin to be more targeted in your marketing. As a designer, it’s your job to seek out and market to the organizations you want to work with, and that will share a similar passion for their brand. To build the portfolio that’s going to get you the type of jobs you want – you might have to say no to some jobs. At the beginning, I didn’t think I’d do that. But it’s one of those crossroads decisions that you understand you either grow, or you lag behind. I choose growth.

The other part of the Armes brothers article that stands out to me is the concept of the tradeoff. Sometimes you take a risk and don’t see until months later that the risk has paid off. Like the Armes brothers work that they really loved that they were able to sell later after the fact, or like their T-shirt company that they started – hey it’s all about being your own biggest fan. When you’re passionate about your work and message, others begin to believe it, too.

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I’m Inspired by Nebraska UX

This is a screenshot taken of the website Nebraska UX Professionals.

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Airy. Open. Self-confident but not overbearing. White space to let you breathe. A textual hierarchy that says “I know what to emphasize.” A color scheme I keep trying to convince clients to consider. And most importantly to me (really), a font treatment that says experienced, sophisticated, thoughtful, considerate. It says, “I’m not a ransom note, and I’m not trying to scream everything at you at once.”

Of all things I love in design (space, color, layout, design, typography), typography and typographical treatment are my favorites. I love type. Letters are beautiful. When you design with elements, Type is the one element that is ancient and modern, already created, ever-changing,  of which there exists more variations on a theme than Beethoven’s 5th symphony, something to be appreciated and played with but that you, the designer, don’t have to recreate.

Not that I won’t try it someday.

People just don’t understand how much time typography and type treatment takes. On a layout, it’s easy to spend 2-3 hours on the type alone. The headings and sub headings, the copy and list styles, the kerning and tracking. Typographical treatment is an art in itself. What to leave in, what to take out. The art of typography is as closely tied with the content itself as muscle is to bone. Often when I’m designing something for myself or a client and I have the copy, the way the elements interact with each other, and the necessary hierarchy that must be considered, begins to ask questions: “What is important? Is this statement making the same as that one? Is the copy redundant? Is the copy restating the heading(s) in a way that is insulting or will seem silly to the reader? What simple message do we want the viewer/reader not to forget? Is the main point emphasized in the boldest text?”  Most importantly, “What can be cut away so that what you actually want to communicate has a chance?” Clients that don’t realize how much time and thought is put into typographical treatment don’t realize how much I equally think about the message and the content. A second or two is not very much time to grab a reader’s attention. And in today’s fast-paced world, that’s all we have.

 

 

 

There is no I in UX reblog, by Matt Moore

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Interesting how much more human the concept of UX is than the ancient predecessor GUI. Experience replaces interface and the obvious G has long been dropped. In this article, Matt Moore talks about the similarities between true leadership and creativity, and the reality that “UX isn’t just design. UX is a mindset. UX is culture. UX is everyone’s business. A team of one can’t do it alone.”

READ THE ARTICLE HERE

http://nebraska.aiga.org/there-is-no-i-in-ux/

Stand out from the Crowd with your Direct Mail Piece

One of my clients was thoughtful enough to put me on the mailing list of a direct mail piece I designed. Let me tell you, this stood out against the junk mail and caught my eye – and it took me a few seconds to recognize it as my own piece. The color palette, thoughtful design and refreshing vibe catches the eye, even with a couple of raindrops.

Want to stand out from the crowd? Have Marisa Porter Design design your next direct mail campaign!

robert lewis postcard

robert-lewis-direct-mail-postcard

Displaying custom post types by category or taxonomy

If you run from the word taxonomy, then Types – Custom Fields and Custom Post Types Management plugin is for you.

You want to take a careful look at their documentation and example page to call the fields and types in your theme here:

http://wp-types.com/documentation/functions/?utm_source=typesplugin&utm_medium=intro&utm_campaign=types

 

And to begin your custom post type loop use this:

Thank you wordpress stackexchange, member ”rise” for a simple and clear explanation of how to call your posts:

URLS is your custom post type, URL Types is your custom taxonomy type, and Reporting is your custom taxonomy.

<?php
if ( get_query_var( 'paged') ) { $paged = get_query_var( 'paged' ); } elseif ( get_query_var( 'page') ) { $paged = get_query_var( 'page' ); } else { $paged = 1; }

$query_args = array(
'paged' => $paged,
'url-types' => 'reporting',
'post_type' => 'urls'
);
query_posts( $query_args );        ?>

<?php if (have_posts()) : $count = 0; ?>              <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); $count++;
?>

<!-- begin your post styling below -->

 

http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/45577/get-posts-by-custom-post-type-taxonomy-and-term

Gmail and free disposable email addresses

 

I’m testing the modifications I’m trying to make to email invitations for WordPress Multisite and I ran out of email addresses. For some reason multisite doesn’t let you resuse the email addresses even if you’ve deleted the users, at least not for a few days.

I came across this article, which shows how to create free and quick disposable email addresses in gmail. Perfect for my purposes.

  • Click on the ‘Create a filter’ link (just next to the search box).
  • In the ‘To’ field, enter your disposable address: [email protected]
  • Click on the ‘Next Step’ button.
  • If you just don’t want to see messages sent to your Gmail account, select the ‘Skip the inbox’ option. If you’ve used a specific address to identify (say) a mailing list, you might want to apply a Gmail label instead.
  • Click on ‘Create Filter’ and you’re done.

In place of the word “useless” I just inserted whatever project I’m working on.

This is cool and you don’t have to pay $20 for yahoo mail plus.

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