Getting on the right track.
If I am going to be making this business work, this time, for real, then I need to set up the right organization and system in place, to maximize workflow.
Mac OS X’s Finder works great for organizing my projects, and I will show you my system with this handy screen shot. This should hopefully keep things simple for me. I adopted a numbered, in order, file naming system to keep track of version control. After each modification to future works I will re-save and give it a new number. I keep each project in a separate folder, and in each project folder, I have a more subfolders to organize my files. Honestly, I can say that this seems like too complicated of a system for a Mac. Is there an app for this?
Another thing, I have been playing around with this logo of an æ ligature. If only ae.com wasn’t already registered with American Eagle. And the chances of purchasing it from them with my budget, well, that’s a joke. If only…
But if this business is really going to get on track, then I am going to need to start living a more productive lifestyle as well. I set myself a goal/todo in The Hit List to wake up tomorrow and go for a run. This should wake myself up, and push aside my afternoon grogginess. Then, I will read a chapter or two out of my current novel, then after some quick nourishment, my creativity and productivity should be running smooth.
I have until the 26th before things start getting really busy again, so hopefully I can get things set up in time for that. Tomorrow I plan on finishing up re-organizing all of my previous work, and then I will expand more on how I set up my filesystem. Check back soon.
I need a new business model.
It sprang to my brain as one of those late night epiphanies. AetherFunk Design needs a new business model. I believe through my 21 years meandering around this earth, coming mainly from Minnesota and lately California, I have found my desire to experience new cultures and surroundings to lead my life decisions and drive my life. Perhaps I could somehow entwine this with an area of work I also enjoy, and have a knack for– web and graphic design. It just might work.
Communication, your best friend. Kinda falls into the umbrella of Networking. I believe through communication and networking would be the most efficient ways to fuel this. Perhaps I could offer services to meet the client at their local coffee shop, give them a more personal touch. You might be thinking this would get really expensive, really fast. That entirely depends on how you look at it. With my life goals in mind, travel and new surroundings, traveling to your local coffee house in, hopefully, Boston, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco, hell, even your little town of 5,000 population is worth seeing, it’s all adventure to me.
Customer Satisfaction is really important too. Also called, “delivering on the product”. Finding a way to incorporate travel into this is difficult. (Hey, comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated) The only obvious one that comes to mind is to perhaps hand deliver the product to the client, all professional presentation style. But to me that just falls into communication.
Work-flow is something I mostly deal with solo, and there are opportunities to use travel for this, such as going to The Louvre to get inspiration from the Mona Lisa. However, getting the funds to pay for this would be difficult, unless it was on the way, somehow, once again, if I were flying to the clients coffee house, in Paris.
Consider this post an announcement that AetherFunk Designs is going to undergo some core structural changes, which will hopefully end up making us both smile.
I Absolutely Love Sleep
Ok, so I love sleep. I love to sleep, and I love researching everything about sleeping. My interest in sleep revolves around dreaming. In this post I will outline my previous experiences and my future goals regarding sleep and dreaming.
I feel that with excellent control over your dreaming mind, as well as excellent dream recall, you are able to utilize the time you would be dreaming consciously. You dream every night, and the amount of time spent in your dream is not relevant to the time your body was dreaming.
I have done some experiments to see how they help my dreaming. I have downloaded an application which records me while I sleep, video and sound capture. It is supposed to detect your sleeping patterns, although I have not recorded myself sleep enough times, yet. It’s called Dream Recorder 2 and you can check it out here (Mac OS X). I have also been experimenting with how melatonin effects my sleep. I purchased a bottle of 3mg melatonin pills, and started taking one occasionally. Melatonin nearly knocks me out around 40 minutes after I ingest it, and I sleep like a baby through the night. The best part of melatonin, is it’s effects on dreaming. With a single 3mg pill of melatonin, I will remember a dream or two a night, vividly. Lately, I have not been on top of this, but I used to keep a dream journal, and would record 2 to 4 pages (8.5×11 in) every night. I would remember 1 or 2 dreams a night, and remember them clearly enough to write 1 or 2 pages on each dream. I have only once became lucid in a dream, and as soon as I realized I was dreaming, I got so excited that I woke myself up. Another experience of mine, was allowing my physical body to enter sleeping mode, while keeping my mind awake. Read about it here. However, I made the mistake to not concentrate hard enough on dreaming, and eventually I fell asleep, shortly after I realized I was going into my dream cycle.
In your dreams, you can actually accomplish things that will be meaningful to you when awake. You have the ability to ask your mind a question, and get a subconcious answer back. You can learn a great deal about yourself by dreaming, and also have some great adventures. Over the next few months, I am going to work hard on a dream journal, and continue to work on improving my dream recall. I am going to work on various methods of becoming lucid, and hopefully will soon experience a lucid dream I can remain sleeping long enough to experience.
Stay tuned, I will be posting some interesting dreams I have, and updates on my venture.
Anatomy of Type
I would have to say that this defines the anatomy of type pretty well. Can’t say I am not intrigued by this clever design by Ahmet Eken.
A Good View on Freelance Pricing
I have found some very enlightening views on freelance pricing, located here.
“Your price and your price flexibility send a very clear message about the value of your service. Offering a huge discount without any type of concession from the client sends a clear message that you are desperate for work. The client can then assume that no one else wants to use your service either. In the case of Joe, Anonymous Corp suddenly decided that he wasn’t worth what they were spending.” -Mark Shead
Skulls+Design=Win
A Bug in the Apple
Yesterday when exploring the new features of Apple’s iWork 09, I happened across a fairly major bug on Apple’s iWork 09 Keynote website. The error is hidden within the video playing on Keynote’s “Magic Move” section. The bug is that an section is removed from the page and can no longer be accessed without refreshing, if the following procedure is followed:
- Load http://www.apple.com/iwork/keynote/
- Click the green “Magic Move” shortcut highlighted here.
- Click the small video preview highlighted here.
- After the video player screen appears, scroll down to the bottom of the page.
- Scroll back up to close the video player screen.
If the above steps have been followed correctly, then the entire “Magic Move” section of the web page should be gone, and no longer accessable.
The Relaunch
It appears as though you have found my niche of the web, my personal blog, home to my experimental design, and my portfolio, all conglomerated to form my little online empire.
You can probably expect to find yours truly journaling about: life, design, anatomy, and dreams/dreaming. Less often there will be posts which do not fit into these categories.
You’ll find lots around here, so stick around, maybe even subscribe to the rss feed.
