Layout must be vibrant, dynamic, visually appealing, and consistent with brand guidelines.
Wow. Lots of buzzwords. Wait for it…
File must be a Word document
Of course it does.
Tag: government
A little bit longer in the making than I had hoped, but better late than never.
The following post was originally written on March 5, 2010. I told myself that I would not post this until I effectively gained full-time employment. The fact you’re reading it now means only one thing, which is excellent news: I now have a full-time job. The company in which I have been freelancing for over the prior eight months finally decided that paying contract rates for me was getting old, and that it was indeed fiscally more cost-effective to pay me 70% of they paid my creative agency instead.
It’s been a long, long time coming, but I am extremely pleased to be back on the path of stable employment. And with that, I present to you my swan song to the freelance life.
Continue reading “A little bit longer in the making than I had hoped, but better late than never.”
I like coffee, if you haven’t heard
This is my actual desk at work right now. I have not been working at this place for just 56 days, it’s certainly been much longer. I used to have a different cup sculpture up, but it was during a time in which I would get a size of coffee depending on how much caffeine I needed. But then I realized that I could just get a small coffee, and go back for as many refills I needed, if any at all. Plus, I’m a stickler for symmetry, so I started this when I started just getting smalls on a regular basis. Naturally, this is interrupted by weekends, and on rare occasions where I use a coupon or something, and get the biggest size they have. And I do not accept the cups of others, there are all cups that I emptied myself.
I have a disturbing feeling that the winter holiday red cups will cease to be used at an inopportune time which will necessitate a reconfiguration in order to maintain a symmetrical appearance. But whatever, the show must go on.
I don’t know why I’m at work, so I’ll muse about 2011
I’m pretty sure I can count on one hand just how many people are in this office today. Granted, I’m not complaining at the fact that I’m getting paid to sit here and do absolutely no work, but man, I certainly wouldn’t have minded sleeping in this morning. But instead, I trudged out of bed at 6:30 a.m. to go run around the ‘hood in 36 degree weather, and here I sit, waiting for a few hours to pass, since I made it all the way out here already. So with that in mind, and since I’ve pretty much seen the entire work-safe internet now, I suppose it’s not a bad time to sit back and catch up on some writing. And with the end of the year literally right around the corner, why not use that as a topic?
Since I’m at the office, and don’t ever visit my own sites on the network for paranoid fear that they’ll one day find my online identity, I’m musing most of this based on what I can remember off the top of my head. But the good news is that, as a whole, I don’t think that the encapsulated 2011 year was a very bad year at all. Compared to 2010, it was a much improved year. At first blush I want to say that it wasn’t anything magnificently spectacular, but the more I think about it, I guess I can say that 2011 was a pretty decent year overall.
Continue reading “I don’t know why I’m at work, so I’ll muse about 2011”
PSA: Microsoft Word is not graphic design software
MICROSOFT WORD IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT WORD IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT WORD IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT WORD IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT WORD IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT WORD IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT WORD IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT WORD IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT WORD IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT WORD IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT WORD IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT WORD IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT WORD IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT WORD IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT WORD IS NOT GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE.
Continue reading “PSA: Microsoft Word is not graphic design software”
A feeling of validation
For my office’s holiday potluck party, I contributed a giant-sized side of chips and my homemade guacamole. I’ve been making it for a few years now, and all my friends and acquaintances seem to like it fine, and I happen to think it’s pretty decent too. But it was to the test, being served up to 30 or so of the people in the company I’m currently working for. It was during this test that I kind of learned that maybe it’s pretty good on a slightly larger scale sample.
One of the IT guys is Spanish. I have no idea to what his specific ethnicity is, but it’s clearly Spanish. At one point, as he was going through the line, he remarked about how there was guacamole available, and asked who made it. I said that I did, and watched as he took a heaping serving of it, with a fistful of chips. I told myself “man, I hope he likes it,” which was a relative feeling, but applied more to this guy because he was Spanish and much like people would assume of my judgment of Korean food, I was hoping my guacamole would warrant his seal of approval.
So you want to be a graphic designer 101
Where’d you go to school? Savannah? Parsons? Ringling? The Art Institutes of Blank? Awesome, that’s a great start. I assume you have mastery of one or several Adobe programs? Excellent, that’s good to know.
Well guess what? None of that means absolutely shit when you’re in the REAL working world, because 90% of the jobs you’ll be doing on a regular basis in working America will involve you primarily working with Microsoft Office products! The holy grail of computer software, that can do absolutely nothing everything for absolutely nobody everyone!!!!!!!
Adobe InDesign may have trounced Quark as the standard within the Creative class when it comes to layout and publishing, but in the Corporate class, InDesign isn’t even worthy enough to take the soiled tissues that the almighty POWERPOINT uses to wipe its ass, and drop it into the toilet for it. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s the sad and unfortunate truth. PowerPoint is the crown jewel of software greatness, as it’s WAY “easier” than Flash at embedding/playing video files, and so MUCH more “efficient” when it comes to creating forms and performing layout tasks!!
Adobe Photoshop may be an efficient tool amongst you nerds for making your memes and cheezeburgers, editing pictures of cats and putting esoteric jokes on top of existing graphics, but when it comes to true graphic design excellence, look no further than MICROSOFT WORD as the gold standard when it comes to getting shit done. It only takes a genius level intellect to realize that none of the functions are decipherable without the assistance of Google to look up how the most logical of ideas are executed. Word does everything. Photoshop can only crank out lame jokes, while Word CAN WRITE. Not only can it write, it comes with a library of pre-existing CLIP ART which are fail-proof when it comes to accentuating points and messages. And you can drag and drop graphics from the internet RIGHT INTO Word, without needing to concern yourself about copyrights and photographic rights!
It’s cute that you guys went to art school or have a wealth of experience when it comes to using “design pro-grams,” but let’s get real, you guys. If you want to make it in the real world, you got to be able to use the almighty Microsoft products in order to get there.