Please laugh! Please. Don’t cart me away. LOL!!!

JPEG (below) & PDF versions available. Feel free to print it, pass it around the office, have a good laugh.

Apologies to the Chicago Tribune, but your excellent photos inspired this parody. Click the thumbnail for the full-sized version.

Parody of the coverage of the Inauguration of President Obama

In the brief article, Bach quickly explains what happened to our economy. The upshot is that we borrowed money against our homes (or against our credit cards) to purchase items made in other countries.

Hence begins my rant. Since we, as a whole, can’t think our way out of a financial paper bag and always chase cheap instead of keeping our money local — or at least in the USA — we’ve depleted our richest asset as a nation: our land. We’re beholden to banks for our false sense of “having enough”, and the banks are now beholden to our federal government for bailing them out, who in turn is beholden to our national debt — which is another way of saying we’ve borrowed money from other countries and need to pay them back. So who owns us? The countries manufacturing the cheap products.

And that goes from buying a foreign-manufactured pencil from Staples online through more overt methods of shipping our money out of the country wholesale, such as manufacturing out of the country or offshoring. Even if only 10% of the price you pay is paying for the foreign manufacture of an object, you and millions of people just like you are shipping 10% of your money out of the country.

So the upshot is to stop sending your money out of the country. Immediately. Purchase local or at least USA on everything, while we still have some money to spend. That goes for the holiday season. Purchase green US-manufactured crafts, toys, clothes, suits, scarves, boots — whatever you would have bought, find a local manufactured and local resourced product. If it’s more expensive, so what? Purchase less of it. Purchase lightly used, because we already paid the foreign manufacturer. Gather up Freecycled objects, fix them up, and give them as gifts. But whatever you do, keep your money in the country. And that goes for everyone.

If you use a foreign assistant in your business, it’s time to find a local assistant service, such as Daybreak Virtual Office Solutions. You won’t be paying extra because your ability to communicate with your assistant will increase.

Buy local food, it’s healthier, wiser for the planet, and better for the collective wallet.

Ok, enough rant, I have to leave soon.

I decided to stop punishing the easy logo design clients, and start rewarding them instead by charging hourly creative charges. My creative charge is $70/hour because being creative is as tough as being technical (this is the same rate for my technical skills clients). This charge is at an hour minimum, charged in 15 minute increments, rounded up. So an easy logo can cost $70, a tough case can go for several hundred dollars, and you get to choose how long you want to nitpick over details (and it’s your logo — you SHOULD nitpick over the details!!!). Designing business cards, flyers, post cards, etc. goes under this category.

So what about people who need something easier, less creative?

While it can be time consuming, some clients just need artwork cleanup rather than creatives. If you never received a clean copy of your logo design suitable for imprinted products, or scaling up, Eclectic Tech is charging less for artwork cleanup charges. In-trade (printers, promotional product consultants, screen printers, designers, etc.) the charge is $50/hour. For one-time-only clients, i.e. direct-to-consumer, I’m charging $60/hour. So please come to me if you need your logo or artwork cleaned up for a project. Most artwork doesn’t take more than hour to clean up. Half-hour minimum, charged in 15 minute increments rounded up.

If you give me anything from a vague idealistic concept of what you’re looking for through a rough sketch (back of a cocktail napkin or computer mock-up rough) of what you’re looking for, it’s a logo design charge. If you have finished artwork that just isn’t up to snuff for the project at-hand, needs a text change, a color change, etc. then it’s a “light design” charge and goes under artwork cleanup. If you already have a business card, and you want the exact same design with a change in a phone number or color, the charge is an artwork cleanup charge.

Prices may change in the future after this blog entry. Please check my website for current charges.

My first client for artwork-cleanup is Prisms Promotions — I’ve done almost a dozen cleanup projects for them, and I’ve decided to advertise the service. See my portfolio page or testimonial page for more information on who is using this service.

[tags]creative,design,economy,identity,local business,logo,money,portfolo,prices,print design[/tags]

When searching for a service online, I don’t care if you’re looking for website hosting, website design, logo design, custom graphics, or an alarm company (the only item in this list that I’m not providing), you probably want — or need — to know where the person is.

So how do you figure it out?

I wanted to use a specific set of examples in this post. Top-of-the-search engine results with fantastic prices, and absolutely no phone number or address to be seen on their website. Sites that ended up being in other countries. Websites with blatant grammatical errors that obviously still rake in enough cash to get to the top of Google search results on pay-per-click hot topics that are highly competitive.

But they asked me nicely to remove their website address and information from my blog. So I’m removing it. Not exactly sure what offended them about the post, as they were only a live example and it was true that they were in a foreign country, but I’ll remove it to keep the peace.

Some cliches exist for a reason. “You get what you pay for” is one of them. In a vast sea of choices and no education, people choose the products by lowest price. There’s either too much information, or not enough, to educate the consumer into making informed choices.

There are real dangers in sending your money to a foreign corporation. They can be of the most stellar reputation, 100% honest, hard-working people, but you are still never afforded the same protections and conveniences you have working with someone in the same town or at least the same state. It is much less convenient to do business out-of-state, or out-of-the-country. If it’s out-of-state you have the additional complications of figuring out which state/jurisdiction to interpret your contract in, and where you have to travel to in order to arbitrate disputes. In foreign matters, unless you have the type of money it takes to go to International court, you don’t have legal protections no matter what the contract says.

If you are going to a local company, you can check their mailing address, their reputation, get a real referral from someone you know to someone you know you can trust. You can track their professional affiliations, check the Better Business Bureau to see if there are complaints against them. And more.

So how do you figure out who people really are? There is a database that stores their legal domain registration information. There is real consideration to abolishing this information on the web, but in the meantime the more of us who are using it for legitimate reasons (to check on the idenitity of a service before purchase) the better. This database is accessible at http://www.whois.net/

If you enter theirdomainname.com into Whois you can see their registration record. Enter “theirdomainname” in the field for looking up domain registration data. Make sure the right suffix is selected (“.com”) and click GO!

Not all domains show legal registration information online. The domain owner can hide that information by paying their domain registrar a few extra bucks to make even that anonymous…. Then you need to get into some website gymnastics to figure out who these people are, and I am not sure it’s worthwhile. If they’re hiding, maybe they have something to hide. More often, though, people are banking on ignorance. This blog post is to help some people wake up and smell the scandal. The flip side of this idea: If you run a legitimate business, you should not be anonymous on the web, and prospective clients shouldn’t need to resort to the “whois database” method above, just to figure out where you’re located. I get a few junk mails and a junk fax or 3 for having my information up — the worst is the domain-registration related spam, but that’s a hazard of doing legit business on the web.

I suggest you look at people’s Contact Us page and check that their information matches their WhoIs registration — check their professional affiliations and their memberships in local chambers of commerce. Ask if there have been any complaints against them.

If you’re in the local region, you could ask for a face-to-face with the person you’re doing business with. The only way to see eye-to-eye on any project is to actually be able to look someone in the face.

Moral: You pay for what you get.

Good luck!

I’m exhausted. More about saving the planet when I’ve got a moment. Take care of the Earth!!

I’m a very conscientious person, so I have to scrutinize myself to justify being there. When people walk up to my table and ask me why a web designer is there at a booth on Earth Day — what can I say to defend my “position”?

• My office runs either on sunlight from a big bay window or compact fluorescent lights
• I use 100% post-consumer paper
  • loosleaf for client notes

  • multi-use printer/copier paper for my laserjet
• when I get mail or fliers that are only used on one side, I keep them by the phone for quick note jotting.
• when a paper is used on both sides, I recycle it (sometimes shredded first)
• I have a home office only
  • the same heat for my home is heat for my office (the office room adjoins the kitchen; it’s a one-zone house, but at only 830 sqft it should be!)

  • I save on auto fuel & auto wear-n-tear
• I drive a used but still energy-efficient car for business & personal use (1994 honda civic at up to 33mpg)
• I turn the printer off when not in use
• I work by sunlight whenever possible
• I leave any extra computer equipment off whenever possible so only one computer is running the majority of the time
• I use wash-n-wear clothes for the most part
  • the washer is a high-efficiency front-loader rated exceptionally for water efficiency

  • the dryer has a dampness sensor thus is self-regulating
  • I use a scent and dye free detergent
  • I don’t use a fabric softener
• I use refurbished toner cartridges
• we have a duplex printer, and I print on both sides of the page for any multi-page documents
• whenever possible I print 2-up duplex, for reference documentation, because I don’t mind reading tiny print, but I do mind wasting paper
• I save the plastic &/or cellophane windows of envelopes I receive for craft projects (they make great filling for homemade cat toys!)

There are still areas in which I’m a culprit, however. I could (always) do better. We occasionally use whiteboards in my office, and I’m not really believing the EAP certification regarding the inks. I want desperately to know if there’s such a thing as soy laser toner cartridges, or any other alternatives that won’t turn the laser printer into a hunk of waste. I could use dryer balls, and I’m considering that (if they make the dryer even a tad more efficient it’s worth a 1 time expense). I could scold my roommate for leaving the bathroom light on. I printed up letterhead I could hardly afford, it came out lousy, now I have a ton of letterhead that shouldn’t have been printed in the first place, and should have been on recycled stock — live & learn. That letterhead is now the back of any one-page fliers I produce as handouts.

So I guess instead of feeling guilty, I could try to relax and realize that there are a bunch of things about me that cause me to stand out in a crowd of web design/programming professionals that could be considered when positioning myself in the “green” community as well: I’ve been an herbalist for about 15 years, I’m an Interfaith Minister, Reiki master, & Shaman. I guess having a booth isn’t such a bad idea after all!

Please help this terrific non-profit survive another 25 years!

I have insurance, but I want exactly the RIGHT insurance. My insurance agent says that what I have may very well cover what I do, but is hunting high and low for insurance that will explicitly rather than implicitly cover both the design AND the programming portions of my business without making me broke. All she’s finding are either policies with specific exclusions for web programming, or policies that are exceptionally expensive.

The problem is that every programmer is being lumped together. That means that programmers working on the stock exchange big bucks applications with billions of dollars in transactions a day at risk are being lumped in with smalltime web programming outfits like mine. I’m a programmer on the PmWiki project, and I create custom plug-ins for PmWiki for clients before contributing what I can back to the project, or accept bounties for plug-ins made directly available to the general public. I’ve also made alterations to other plug-ins for other open-source projects, and I’m creating an open source project or three of my own.

Now, I am not belittling the risks to my customers. I know that their business is everything to them, and that’s why I’m looking for insurance. But I don’t play with the big boys and my customers are not forking over the big bucks to cover the overhead I would have to pass along to my customers to cover the big insurance policies.

If I’m installing ZenCart, and ZenCart has a bug, am I covered? I never touched the back-end of the program, but of course every application — open source or otherwise — has inherent bugs and risks. I trust open source because the bugs are squished in a timely manner and I don’t have to pay for upgrades. Would all those policies with programming exclusions cover this?

When a policy excludes programming, I see there being a really fuzzy line between “web design” and “web programming”. Certainly there’s a point at which something is very clearly web programming, but is it programming if I create a script that processes a webform to email the results to my client? Is it programming if I’m creating JavaScript DHTML DOM alterations? What about when I’m working on a design for a Smarty template? There’s pseudocode and even PHP code in there, but it’s all about the design.

In any case, what I want to know from my fellow collaborators in the world is:

What, if anything, do you do about insurance for your web application or programming company?

Do you have any suggestions for underwriters for open source programmers?

If you aren’t insured, have you even considered being insured?

[tags]insurance,programming,open source,custom programming,web application programming,expenses,design,legal,money,slashdot[/tags]

I get a little less of it than they do, since there aren’t as many Mac owners, but would you believe my dentist did that to me? Did she think I was going to offer to come to her house to fix her ailing Mac for her? Or was she offering me to take the Mac home with me and keep it?

Macs are less popular than bodies, but I’m sure every PC tech at a party has this problem. It’s never worse than when your family finds out that you do computer support, however. I don’t, really DO computer support, not really. Certainly not for PCs. But the moment they hear geeky terminology, the relatives come out of the woodwork with stupid Windows questions that a Mac maven like myself can best answer with “Hrm. Sounds bad. Why don’t you buy a Mac?” which of course leads to SOMEONE eventually actually getting a Mac. Now you’re in business. Without getting paid.

My kids have Macs, because if I gave them PCs and they broke, got viruses, etc. I would just want to install Linux on them and be done with it, and the expensive games would then be worthless.

Considering the amount of time they spend with the games, maybe that’s not such a bad thing, after all — however, I digress…

Whenever there’s a problem with the computers, the kids run in with panic, or determination to break any boundaries I assert in an attempt of procuring aid for their electronic addictions. Today my son’s computer isn’t on the network, so he has no Internet. Oh, what horror! I’m sorta happy. And exhausted. I certainly do NOT want to spend my wee-morning hours figuring out why his computer won’t talk to our wireless device. My laptop is fine, he needs to be on a bus soon, so who cares? Obviously he does, but you get the point.

Somehow the computer has become a right rather than a privilege.

My mom got my old iBook. After her first 10 questions or so, she’s been relatively quiet, until lately when it seems the modem may have died. That’s a hardware issue I can’t debug or fix since I’m 1000 miles away. So mom’s pretty much been golden.

However, I see everyone from linux to PC techies running around fixing their family’s computer issues. I’m not sure the doctors take care of family members in this way — aside from the stupid party questions, how many family members want to take their clothes off in front of you and be touched, sometimes rather intimately, by their son/father/sister/cousin? So somehow, for the doctors, I think the buck stops at free advice.

There seems to be a law of the universe that for every geek there’s at least one completely technically inept relative who has the lead touch and every computer or network they put their paws on breaks. Then there’s the Internet un-savvy relative who blunders into adware and spyware, bad offers, identity theft, etc. And the mother — usually it’s the mother (mine’s guilty too) who likes to pass along their spam, chain letters, petitions, jokes, etc. so they can share their inbox pain with you.

If you’re the black geek of the family, you get the call, the email, the questions, and have to travel to the relative’s house to do unpaid charity service in the name of family peace. After all, didn’t you ask the person with the green thumb in the family to do your landscaping? You didn’t? Didn’t you ask the one most talented in the kitchen to come over and cook for your Thanksgiving meals? No? What about Aunt Martha? She’s a neat freak and keeps a perfect house — didn’t you ask her to wash your kids’ underwear and scrub your kitchen floor? You didn’t do that either? Sheesh, what type of relative ARE you??

What is it that makes being a geek one of the few areas that people can trounce your personal, familial and professional boundaries? Doesn’t Uncle James know that if you’re fixing his computer, you’re bound to find his porn folder?

I think it’s one of the mysteries of the family moral and ethical system that I won’t understand. I mean, my mom’s a nurse, but I never asked her to take my blood pressure, administer an enema, draw blood, or give me chemo.

My family’s pretty good on the scale of things, too. I watch others suffer under the burden of having done the family a “favor” and set up a computer network, which then they also must support when it’s broken. It’s true that people have much more respect when you set up a fee schedule. Suddenly they think twice about what they’re breaking on the, computer or network, since they’ll have to pay. Otherwise it’s “what the heck, my nephew will fix it.”

Maybe it’s a good thing my family hasn’t really realized that I do graphic and 3d design. All I need is for requests for unpaid or speculative work in the design area. Make my logo, do my website, I need a brochure…No one seems to think that time is limited, no one wants to take their work home with them, and we all need money.

[tags]family, rant, humor, life, interruptions, personal, prices, truth, spec work[/tags]

I’ve been reading and commenting on NO!SPEC articles for a couple months, and now I come across an interesting post on Craigslist:

Date: 2006-07-12

Carnegie Hall Seeks Original Art for Its Playbill Covers!

THEME “Music as a fundamental expression of the human spirit”–using Carnegie Hall’s 2006-2007 season as inspiration. Please visit carnegiehall.org/subscribe for complete season details.

ELIGIBILITY Open to all enrolled students (valid identification required)

STYLE AND MEDIUM Any style and any medium, including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and computer-generated art

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS jpeg, tiff, or pdf digital format only; file size not to exceed 2 mb; e-mail to artcontest@carnegiehall.org

PRIZES Each of 10 selected entrants will receive $500 and 2 tickets to a performance at Carnegie Hall.

Deadline: August 31, 2006

Selected artists must be living, reside in the United States, provide their Social Security numbers, and sign a release for the use of their work.Winning works will appear on the covers of Carnegie Hall’s concert program books throughout the 2006-2007 season. Please note that while we encourage all forms of artistic expression, some controversial subject matter may not be suitable for publication. Submissions should not be literal representations of musicians appearing at Carnegie Hall. Also note that while artists will retain ownership of their original works, the photographic representation of each winning work will be considered a work made for hire for The Carnegie Hall Corporation (CHC), and CHC will own all copyrights and other rights in it, including, without limitation, the exclusive right to adapt it and to use it for any purpose and in any medium now known or devised in the future, perpetually and throughout the world.

no — it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Compensation: $500 and 2 tickets to a performance at Carnegie Hall

This contest is of course a contest. Carnegie Hall is looking for dozens of people to pour their time into a project, and looking to reward someone and use their work. Only this time there are some key differences. It’s open to students only; not many speculative work contests are only open to valid students. There are 10 prizes — that certainly increases the chances of winning, and means that it’s less likely that there will have been ties for first place and the winner chosen by the flip of a coin. Knowing PlayBills, it’s possible there will be 10 covers printed, and all the winners’ pieces distributed to a very mixed audience (and making a terrific portfolio piece). The prize is pretty fair — they’re giving out a total of $5000 to 10 students — and how many students couldn’t use $500?

Other interesting things to note: It’s mixed media, and there aren’t many chances for students to get that type of money for a media of their choice. It’s not a venue where the student would be needed for branding advice, or future support, unlike logo or website design contests — they need 10 single photos/pictures to print for the program book covers. The work produced by the entrants would be able to be generic and useful for other purposes (unlike a logo or web design).

I’m not saying it’s a good contest; I find it difficult to judge this one. What I am saying is that of the contests I’ve seen, this one is different, more fair, unlikely to hurt Carnegie Hall in the way that most speculative contests I have seen are eventually going to bite the company holding the contest.

Would anyone care to comment on it?

[tags]activism, spec work, competition, rant, time[/tags]