Stouffville, Ontario Canada (647) 962-1997 gwstudios@rogers.com M-F 8:30am - 2:30pm & 8:00pm - 11:00pm

Tag: Graphic Design

Getting busier with work.

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The lull period is starting to become a distant memory as event season has kicked off with a flourish, which means report season is now starting! Phew! Glad for the work, not that I mind being a SAHP most of the time, but it is far easier to keep my business running if I have both outgoing, and incoming invoices. No good going weeks or months paying subscription fees waiting for a season, or quarter to kick off. Not that I have much say in the matter. Helps I’ve done this for nearly twenty years, and can plan for extended quiet periods. This too shall pass.

Now I play the time management tetris game where I carve out 3 hr blocks to tackle whole sections of my report, interweaving smaller projects in between that require more frequent review & edit sessions as the projects evolve. I also need to not try to do the whole lot in one fell swoop as that would take me 24 hours straight, and would ruin my wrist, and end my week with injury three days in. So that’s not the plan I’ll follow.

If I utilize four eight hour days, plus an extra eight hour day for soft proofing, and minor adjustments then I can hopefully get an 85+ page document off for review inside of a full workweek, including other clients work on top.

I do love my day planner & desk calendar combo. Not as much choice over at Staples as there once was. Not sure how, or why, but I have been using that combo which ends in July. And what I see available for 2025 starts in January. Very few 24/25 options that I could find, under $30.00 CND. I like the open flat, spiral bound day planner, not the week on a single page type. When things get busy i need a page per say to track edits, reviews, approvals, and printer contact info.

I like to track family stuff too, so I need room, when I need room. Which isn’t every day, week or month, but I’ll be sore if I don’t have it when required. The quality of desk calendars was lacklustre too. The ones laid out how I like were too large, and started on the wrong month. I suppose Amazon would have a greater selection, but I need to have it in hand now. Oh well.

I would like to buy a new office chair, and a larger white board. Things I can make do with what I currently have. Profits and productivity are way, way down this year compared to last. So fewer expenses the better, right now. Though I do enjoy lists, making lists, and working off of lists. The benefits of a larger whiteboard are minimal beyond just having the room to breathe while writing out longer lists.

It didn’t help that I needed to run errands this morning before I could start work. Bank was not accepting cheques in the machines, so that was an early time waster. Staples was open, nay – empty, but didn’t have the selection I was hoping from from years gone by. So I had to really gauge and weigh my needs against what was available,  and what I know would work for me. Doing the rounds inside to triple check all spots where more, better, day planner/calendar options might be hidding. Unless I wanted to spend $60.00 or more, my options were fairly tight.

Afterwards I of course walked past the Apple laptop selection to see what sort of machine I could get, and how much I would have to look at spending. Not great. Very pricey, and not much going on inside the showroom demo versions. I need higher operating memory, and I need 1Tb of internal storage space. I work with too many photos, and design elements to skimp on storage. I’d love to be able to put a laptop in my bag and go anywhere, as my desktop is really unpleasant to move around. It can be done, but it’s a chore.

And thanks to an Apple update my printer nolonger works even though the extended ink cartridges I bought last September are still about 23% full. Something to do with nolonger supporting 8bit printers or something along those lines. My Canon inkjet is now a fancy anchor. Well shit. One day it worked, the next day they launch this patch, and my technology is bricked. Perfetto. Chef’s kiss. Fuck you. Couldn’t even opt out, just work up and the patch was live inside my computer. Love it. Fuck you.

Looks as though we are instore for a rainy Wednesday. Lord knows the farm needs it. That concrete level mud could do with a softening up. Ciao Bella!

Acerbic Anaerobic Excercises for the forthright and direct.

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Some days the hardest part about writing is coming up with a useable title to follow. Usually I utilize it as a lead in for my one sided conversations, other times it’s a click baity nonsense jumble to attract attention, and other times I think it’s a funny thing to say. Doesn’t really matter. I don’t think a mere title has ever gotten me more views, clicks, eye balls or deeper reading into the ole back catalogue of 555 days of entries. Some will say it is a numbers game, others tap into rage, some humour, and others technical skills or an educated treatise on a subject worthwhile of attention. Not this guy. Domestic Duties Monday, or Wednesday, Hump Day, Middle of the Week Day diatribes about laundry, messy kids, the local weather, and jabbering on about freelance graphic design, or attempting to finish my short story collections, and an illustrated children’s book. You won’t find Nobel Prize winning content here. A fair bit of snark is available though. Plus TMI stories of Crohn’s Disease, and intestinal distress. Glory to those whom behold such words. Words, I say! Explicit, delicate, sonorous words. Munch. Blather. Bile. So many to choose from.

I have some website headers to produce today, a few more photo edits to make, and a series of event posters too. Work is a bit lighter this week. I do need to hit up the local Lifelabs for blood work this afternoon, so that’s there, sitting on my mind. Here’s hoping my requisition form is still in good standing, or it may be a shorter visit than intended. Then a late day school pick up for my oldest, whisked off for an indigenous day downtown with a school club for a speaking event. They all seemed pretty excited about it. Happy to see it. Now I just need to wait around between 3:00pm, and 4:30pm or potentially later for their bus to come in. Hopefully they will update us using the parents Facebook group. That would be a really great service.

Pretty sure today is Thursday. Mid to late June all ready, I can hardly believe it. I mean I should, my Visa bill came in all ready so that’s always a strong indication the month is about to close out. Had another birthday party invite for the kids today, up to four now for the next two weeks alone. At this pace I’m going to go broke buying Lego sets for other families. Ha. Ain’t that the truth. Thus far I have planned nothing for the summer. To be totally honest I haven’t had the time to think. Well, up until this week I had been going pretty hard with work, but I saw a real slow down very recently, and I did some additional tree pruning, and house cleaning. But I haven’t given much thought to summer activities beyond the park, the farm for weeding, rock removal & watering, or swimming at the in-laws. We can visit area splash pads, but the pool is more private, and has far fewer interlopers. I don’t expect I’ll be all that busy until late August and beyond. As the events have to happen before we can audit them, or conduct research. I have done almost no wood working this spring either. Was too busy with freelance design work (which is a good thing). And what little extra time I did have available I spent cleaning up, tearing down, and reorganizing the space to make it feel more open, and less cluttered. Now I can fit my lawn mower down two aisles from front to back of my shop space and not get snagged on anything. A miracle. That allows me to move bicycles around for repair & maintenance work too. A true boon. I do have a big box full of burnable stuff to go out, but I’m not that concerned about it right now. I have done a pretty decent job of decluttering and opening up floor space, so for now I am satisfied.

Well, I need to eat breakfast and send some proofs off for review. Talk again soon. Ciao Bella!

Are you an over the knees or around the ankles kind of a person…

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Well now, that’s a deeply circumstantial – and awfully personal question. And the answer is, it depends. Am I home, away, early in the am, very late at night, inebriated, hung over, under gastrointestinal distress? Everything factors in to the answer. No way would I let fabric touch a public men’s room floor. Nu-uh! No way. Never. But if fighting for my life on the seat, may strip down entirely (when at home). Who needs clothes on when it feels as though your entire life is draining into the porcelain. Unwanted firehose spray back is a powerful deterrent. Like I said, that is deeply personal, and I thank you for respecting my privacy at this time.

Tuesday – forgot it was recycling day today. Saw the neighbours gear out front and twigged to it, luckily before the green trucks came through. I didn’t even register it was going to be Tuesday while prepping for gymnastics last night. Usually I pull the bins out of the guard box on Sunday or Monday to load them up, and be ready to spring into action anytime after 7:00am should I hear the grumble of the green trucks on our street. But I completely blanked on it. How odd. I have been fairly busy straight through since January 2nd this year, which is – really, really rare for me. No major breaks as of yet. Oh I know they’re coming. Highly unlikely I’ll be this busy all year long.

I had to put the Urn build on hold due to the cold, and volume of work I had on tap. Glue doesn’t set properly in deeply cold weather. And as mentioned before, no major heat source out there right now. I have it partially insulated, but I have a long way to go before the temperature would stabilize enough to work comfortably between December and Mid March. The base is done, the exterior chamber is done. I have the pieces for the interior cut and ready to glue in place. I have the top of the cover ready, and can build the tray and cover fairly quickly. Then it’ll just be a matter of scraping, sanding and then a highly polished finish to make it shine! I’m ok if they decide to not want it. I’ll put it in my office closet up out of the way, and can hold on to it for myself.

Started a Richard Morgan book I’ve had in my possession since 2007. I remember how much I loved the Altered Carbon book series. This is in that universe, but not directly related. I have a fantasy novel he wrote from 2008 in my to read pile too. I usually tend to buy more books than I can read in a year, so I’m happy to oblige historical me, by actually getting around to reading books that have sat on a shelf for ten-fifteen years or so. I know I have a Mo Hayder book I haven’t read yet too. I’m usually not into horror / murder books, but she writes great, creepy, gripping stuff. The current Richard Morgan book I’m reading is “Black Man”. Longest book I’ve read in quite some years. Over sized paper back with tiny type. So I feel like it would be a much longer trade paperback than the page count it currently has. I’m two fifths of the way in. Lots of action, lots of science fictiony hand waving tech jabber, and lots of mystery/suspense. For some reason I thought I had read this when I kept seeing it on the shelf, but it’s not ringing any bells no matter how far I get into it. Which is great. I hate when I forget I’ve read something before. Invest all that time to read it, and then PING! oh! I know how this ends, oh I’ve read this before! Damn it! On to the next book.

I haven’t put any time into sculpting yet this year. I know I will at some point. Just not right this minute. I haven’t put much thought into finishing up the illustrations for my childrens book either, come to think of it. I really should get that stuff squared away. Not that my writing career will ever go much beyond this space, and self publishing. Sometimes I just gotta get a story out of my head. Doesn’t have to mean anything more than that. I share it, if anyone besides me reads it, or enjoys it, all the better. Hope I made you smile, or wince, or chuckle, or cringe. Better than straight up apathy. You know what I think? I think that many of you out there have a story you want to tell. I think you should put pen to paper and get it out. Just let it fall out of you. Don’t worry about style, voice, the hook, or any of that. That’s for the editing stage. Right now, go jot down some points, and just plop it out on the page. The good, the bad & and the ugly. You’ll feel better when you do. Way easier to tweak and refine what you have in your hands than wish you wrote the perfect thing in one go. But what do I know. I’m just some dude talking on the internet to the three folks that read me off and on. Hey guys! Hope you are well. Ciao Bella!

RULE #361 : Never underestimate how much more people are willing to pay a big named company to do the same thing you (a small boutique company) can do for them, with higher personalized quality and more cost effectively, while trying to not pay YOU at all.

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Oh the joys of self employment. I ran into this all the time when I worked in-house for a few companies over the last two decades. You’d pay a half a million dollars or more for an idea, and in the end you would only be supplied with the raw pieces, and a little lone production guy (formerly me) would put those elements together while getting paid a tenth of that over a whole year, and not just for that one campaign element. If you want the creative folks to put it all together you need to cut a different, equally high Studio cheque to have it put down so it can be printed, or go live on the App/Website.

Now I get to do both, which is very creatively fulfilling. Production work is the bread and butter which funds the time it takes to create new and exciting things. Can’t spend your time contemplating new ideas if you’re dead ass broke. Have to fund that kind of time with the more straight forward stuff. Things like moving a line of products from one die line to another. Taking existing artwork and rejiggering it to fit new parameters, and tech ical specifications. Like migrating web banners of a landscape orientation, into a bus stop print ad in Portrait orientation. It takes technical skill, and compositional know how to get one to look and feel like the other. To carry over the essence while being almost entirely different. Which is challenging, and fun all at the same time.

I don’t make a habit of chasing RFP’S, and bidding on work. That all takes an awful lot of time, effort and opportunity cost to do. Whereas if I build relationships with people, you can be assured that those positive experiences can, and will carry over as Marketing people, Brand Managers and such move from product to product, and industry to industry. You don’t forget the ease at which you can work with some folks. And when the opportunity presents itself, they will seek you out to further that working relationship. It’s rather nice. Word of mouth is a real help too. But mostly if your friends, are friends with people whom are Managers, Directors, CEO’s and persons of clout. That helps a lot. Hard to pull in new clients from the very ground floor. It is doable, but good grief what a slog that is. So many hurdles and obstacle to jump. Not to mention the constant harassment about compensation vs. Exposure, or timely payments. And the endless nitpicking over your invoices, asking for by the minute break downs to account for every single penny. Makes being creative very difficult if you spend half your time fighting for yourself & reputation.

Here it becomes readily apparent just how easily they’d cut a $50,000 or a $100,000 dollar cheque without batting an eye lash, versus paying your the $3,125.75 invoice. For that they want a line item by line item audit. Meanwhile you didn’t pull from a prearranged template like those big guys likely did, and built them something custom and totally individualized. I don’t have an account manager to massage the client into accepting the first idea. I don’t wine & dine. I tailor my work to suit, and that needs to be enough. Oh, I’ll have a business dinner, or a round of drinks with my largest clients if/when it’s needed. But I don’t do that weekly, or even monthly. That can come up once a year (Covid has impeded this practice) or every other year depending on circumstances.

So as much as I hate it, Networking is important to growing your business. That and technical skills, quality products, a high degree of accuracy with the end file, and the ability to successfully juggle deadlines, and your time. I don’t wish to grow so large that I no longer do the design work and spend all day managing people, budgets & meetings. That sounds horrendous to me. No thanks. A small boutique that caters to its clientele, and puts out great work which everyone is happy with. I’ll stay there for as long as I am able.

So pay your artists! Invest in quality photographers. And most of all, take care out there. Ciao Bella!

185 degrees of separation.

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Now we are staring down the barrel at the possibility of a 200 day writing streak, and I’m at a loss for words. Now the question becomes, can I reach 250, 300, 365? Can I do a whole calendar year of writing every single day? I don’t know. I just don’t know at this point. It has definitely become a part of my day. Same with lifting weights either first thing as I wake up, or last before I pop into bed. Making time for stuff is kinda getting easier? I’m not sure how to say it. I don’t believe it to be outside the realm of possible to do at least 5 minutes of whatever you like, almost every single day.

But a caveat may be prudent here. I for one, am self employed, and I work from home. I have my hours set up so that I can take my kids to school in the morning, and pick them up at the end of the day. I have a small list of clients, and I don’t work more than 40 hrs on a busy week. The rest of my days are far lighter on average. So I’m not single (for starters), I do a lot of the cleaning, and household work because I am home, and I have the time to do so. And my spouse makes pretty good money, so my wages are offset by what we save for not doing before and after school care for two children. Plus I take them to appointments and look after them on their sick days, so my spouse doesn’t have to miss work, unless it was communicable and she ended up catching it too.

So knowing all that. I can safely say, I find it possible, under my current circumstances (one of privilege) that if I put my mind to it, I can read, write, sculpt, do some wood working, and play my guitar, dance and sing with my kids every day, if only for 5 minutes, because that makes me happy, and life a joy to behold in those moments. When I was working in house for sixty plus hours a week, that was not the case. So there is a continuum or sliding scale. Depending on my work load I may do all of the above in a one hour stretch, because I need to work the rest of the time, but that’s the exceptional busy week that comes and goes as the quarters pass.

I should take this time to mention how much I enjoy working with Apoxie Sculpt. My second run at my Ninja Turtle has been far more enjoyable in epoxy, than the Super Sculpey firm. Which, in these parts at least, comes to your door as a crumbly hard mass that needs to be worked heavily prior to use. I tend to add one firm block to two regular pink blocks to make a pliable medium stiffness in bulk. I always use more than I think I will. Probably not filling out my rough forms with enough tin foil or tape. At $27 a block for sculpey, the $3 tin foil is better used to bulk things out. Live and learn I guess. I look forward to working on the turtle! He is shaping up to be a bit of all right. I won’t put anything like 200 hours into it, but maybe 20-30 hours will do it. I don’t reach that level of polish on any of my sculpts. That level of detail doesn’t tickle my cockles. I’ll leave that to the professionals. When it’s done, if I don’t hate it again, I’ll show you what it looks like. Stay tuned. Ciao Bella!

Ooh they do take lovely photos though, don’t they.

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I get subcontracted to produce marketing reports on the semi regular (when Covid isn’t being super shitty) and one of the external clients produces some of the most consistently amazing photos that I get to see. I don’t go to these events, but after reviewing the photo sets, oh boy, sometimes it feels like I went. The colours and composition is just fantastic. I tell you, paying a good photographer real money to capture your event is worth its weight in visual gold. You could live off of these photos for weeks if not months, building social media engagement, advertising, internal intranet posts, newsletters and what not. Don’t skimp. Just because most folks can afford an SLR now, doesn’t mean they know how to frame up a shot or get the best out of the available lighting. It makes a real difference when I get photography from a paid professional, vs a bunch of volunteers snapping random shots, that are blurry, poorly composed, or the lighting is flat, too dark, to bright. I can only do so much to remedy that on my end. But these bad mamma jammas are legit. Can’t show none of it to anybody but the client, but woah buddy, you’d like these pictures of the events.

The same thing applies to product photography. Get your shit infront of a professional, don’t try to do it yourself. Or failing a real photographer get the best 3D model/rendering you can afford. Will beat a cell phone image any day of the week. But I digress.

Hot one today. My friend who works in weather forecasting says we have potential for tornadoes in southern Ontario again, today. As well as a wind storm front passing through here tomorrow. Going to be a wild couple of days around here. Hopefully not another Derecho. Because that shit tore through our farm property and did six figures worth of damage is not more. Yikes.

Getting very close to final assembly and glue up of my small multi purpose table. I have a slight issue to fix with the shelf, but otherwise should be good to move forward and complete it sooner rather than later. I also stripped my ninja turtle sculpt back down to the armature. I hated the pose, and then a bunch of stuff was miss proportioned, so as I have no dead line nor client in mind, I took it back down to bare wire, and reposed the armature. Had to drill out new holes, but I’m ok with that. I may add water or sewer features to the base to hide the extra unused holes. A chance for some mixed media materials to be incorporated. Fun times!

I figure I will wait until my turtle is done before I do any painting. My Ogre is baked and based. Ready and waiting on my turtle to get done. Ciao Bella!

Phew! That was a mad scramble…

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But now it’s time for something a little different. I’ve been tasked with building two new replacement newel posts for my FIL. The current ones have rotten over the two decades since they were installed, so I’m hoping that the two new Cedar ones I’m making as replacements hold up just as long or longer. I will prime them in thick white oil based exterior paint, so I hope that helps.

My conundrum is that I have two slightly different pieces of trim, enough to do one newel post cap each. Do I do them in similar but not the same trim (which I have on hand, and is therefore free) or do I go buy a full length so they both match, but it’ll cost me money to do so. Hmm. The problem with being cheap/frugal is you gotta be ok with things being eclectic, or slightly off and not at all matchy-matchy. It’s for an exterior entrance that nobody ever uses, so I think I can get away with it. The Cedar I bought for a Christmas gift for my BIL where in I didn’t need all 8 lengths, just seven of them to complete my signage gifts. So the cost was sunk in another project. I think I have answered my own question.

My wrist is aflame from yesterdays mad rush of 182 images, with an additional 74 this morning. I am done on my end, awaiting review and any change orders or additional requests. Glad for the work. It made Friday fly by without any fuss. Our holiday plans changed on us by way of “The ‘Vid” so we are searching for a way to remedy that in the near future. Oh well.

Still no new progress on my childrens book. I might shelve it for the time being. Mind you, I still have five more weeks of school days in which to pick it back up before schools out for summer and my minions are home full time for 9 weeks. Then I will get very little done by way of hobbies. But I will accomplish paid work, don’t you worry about that. I think I have one or two reports coming for the summer and one more for the fall. Not terrible, not great. I hope for more than that. Or some extra can labels, t-shirts & apparel, retail signage, catalogue work or build from the ground up branding/packaging work in the alcoholic beverage space.

Though, maybe I should stop chasing the nostalgia of my alcoholic beverage packaging days. Rose coloured glasses and all that jazz. I once had the opportunity to build, from scratch a proprietary glass bottle, and it was looking amazing, but the job was put on hold during a personnel issue inside the brewery/distillery and I never got to see the design go to market. We had built a series of eight flavoured cans too for a Mimosa project, well ahead of the curve, but that got stopped too. Much to my chagrin. It was good work on my part, and that of the brand team. I was very upset to see it go nowhere.

How do you solve a problem like 51?

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But not centimeters of snow! Thankfully. We did not get the one foot of snow that was potentially forecasted, although more snow is coming later on today. My back thanks you! Four inches is manageable every couple of hours.

Speaking of puns, I added at least one visual pun into my latest report. Made me laugh, I wonder if anyone else will clue in to it. Fun tip, having worked so hard Monday through Wednesday, plus some light work this previous weekend I now get to enjoy a lighter day – Go Me! Much appreciated by my brain, wrists and sense of musical whimsy. I did bust out some music yesterday as I was nearing the end of laying out my first draft.

It’s funny as a kid, youth, teen, early twenties I could not work in silence, I had to have music on, but after working for many years in open office spaces, I’ve come to love working quietly. I can on occasion, if I don’t have to pay attention to critical elements, listen to loud music and sing along as I work. Mainly doing pie charts, and bar graphs, and scatter graphs though. Not the table portion. A mixture of Motorhead, The Beatles and The Blue Stones, followed up by Wolfmother and Status Quo. That’s my go to musical line up these days. Hood and loud too. Which is fine because I work from home, and don’t live on top of my neighbours. I guess I’d have to invest in some seriously high quality head phones if I ever go back to working on site when Freelancing, or go back to an in-house design position. I like the zero commute time too much though. Chasing dollar bills has always ended badly for me. I guess if the work/industry is amazing I could potentially do it again. But coming from large market alcoholic beverages with massive start of the year marketing meetings with air travel, fancy hotels, meetings in swanky spaces, free drinks, great food, famous guest speakers and late night parties for days on end, you’d be hard pressed to improve on the type of perks I’ve known over 16 years affiliated with that industry. Work hard and play even harder was a common refrain amongst the C-Suite types.

Yeah – so. Still writing a bit every single day, and haven’t forgotten about my short story series. I’m working through some character moments in my head before I write out anything. I am trying to get these last six or so chapters to land properly. Going to require some footwork on my end. I’ll keep you posted.

Welcome to the future…

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It’s really very similar to the recent past but otherwise it offers you hope, if only a sliver. The weather outside is pretty strange, seeing as the temperature is slightly positive in January, in southern Ontario Canada. The roads are clear enough we can ride our bikes or roller blade, which is very strange. The snow seems to hold off longer and longer, if it doesn’t absolutely dump down on November first in a 12 inch blast of school closing insanity.

We were all in bed asleep by quarter to eleven last night, because we have small kids who wake up exceedingly early, and can be a real bear to deal with by seven pm. After getting them off to bed and watching an hour or two of HGTV no one felt the need to greet midnight, and a potential 5:45am early rise from one or both kids. I was going to pour myself a drink and watch a movie, but my enthusiasm for that waned quickly and I watched part of a Jim Gaffigan stand up special on Netflix, but turned it off half way through instead. The life of a rock star over here folks.

Things I’d like to do more of this year are, and in no particular order; creative writing, sculpting, wood working, miniature painting, assemble the giant G-System Best resin model kit. Obviously if I am able to gather, retain or reclaim more paid work in graphic design/illustration & packaging, those items will take precedence. But I have made a plan to utilize my down time to be more rewarding personally. It gets all too easy to climb into YouTube or put on a movie and space out for 2hrs on any given day.

First things first though, we have to get COVID-19 under a modicum of control so that our kids don’t get violently ill at school, or develope life long medical issues due to rampant exposure. This fact alone will have massive knock on effects for our day jobs, and hobbies, not to mention the whole rest of our childrens lives. It is no small matter. It weighs heavily upon us all. Welcome to the future, the same as before, only different. Hello 2022.