Digital Artwork
Freelancers: What are your best work hours?
Jan 13th
Freelancers, designers, wahms, tell me… What are your best work hours?
For the past week, I have been really focused on working on my network of blogs and on generating quality content. This means that a single blog post can take anything from 4-6 hours to do from start to finish.
Sometimes I work on them for longer, days even, designing some related custom graphics etc and generally tweaking and retweaking the layout until I’m happy with it.
In the past I have always found that getting up early, like around 4am has worked really well for me.
I get up, put the old fluffy slippers on and shuffle through to my home office and put in a solid 2-3 hours before my kids or husband even wake up.
This week however, I’ve just been too tired to get up in the morning, looking like I seriously need the best eye cream that the world has to offer, but of course the work still needs to be done.
My youngest son is back at school after the holiday break, but my older son is still here, and taking up a lot of my day time hours. I love being able to spend time with them, but as every freelancer or wahm will tell you, that it is a constant distraction. No matter how many times I take some time out with him, I’ll get back to work having set him up with a fun task to do, and bam, he’s right back at me clanking, shooting, spinning in the chair next to mine and just generally making noise directly around me and making it nearly impossible for to concentrate on a single word.
So I’ve been staying up late nights instead.
I’m finding it even easier than getting up early lately. Maybe because of the increased caffeine in my diet? I don’t know, but I’m getting to bed around 23h45 and last night was just after midnight. I feel better if I push myself to do this, because then I can just tumble into bed afterwards, it’s not like then I have to get out of my pj’s and rush headlong into my day.
As for fun activities, today I set my son up with MS Paint, on my husbands old PC laptop.
I was *astounded* at what he came up with. I showed him a couple of the tools and how to ‘fill’ and then left him to it so that I could get back to work.
After about 20 minutes of blessed, peaceful silence, I heard the words, “Look here Mommy!” and I turned from my iMac to see what he’d made.
How old do you think he is?
He-is-just-four-years-old.
Did you see the smoke coming out of the chimney and everything?
Four.
I think I’m going to be out of job in a few months at this rate.
Kids, they amaze you all the time.
So back to my original question…what hours of the day do *you* work at your optimum capacity?
Possibly Related Posts:
- Yet Another Reason Why Freelancing Rocks
- 3 Hours Sleep
- Spontaneous Purchase or Constant Reviewer?
- Turmoil
- Baby Shower Invitations
Resources for Graphic Designers: Graphic River
Jan 11th
Graphic River is one of the Envato marketplaces.
A unique group of websites that cater to the graphic designer, and creative techies in general. There is something for every level of designer, and even digital scrapbookers.
Each piece offered for sale is vetted before it’s allowed into the marketplace to ensure that it meets with appropriate standards, and that there are not too many of the same type of item. I can literally spend hours looking at stuff, being inspired by some of the amazing work, and planning my purchases for the next month. They have a great way of cataloging the work, so that when you find a designer whose style you like, you can view all of their work and add your favourites to a bookmarks folder for viewing later.
Aside from the graphic river section there are other marketplaces (all linked by one user name and password) offering audio files, flash files, code snippets, video files, web themes and more and the payment method is via Paypal or by depositing ahead of time using Paypal, or credit card.
Whichever way you swing it, it’s a great place if you are a creative person, and looking for inspiration or bits and pieces for a project.
Possibly Related Posts:
- Yet Another Reason Why Freelancing Rocks
- 3 Hours Sleep
- Spontaneous Purchase or Constant Reviewer?
- Turmoil
- Baby Shower Invitations
Greetings from My Corner of Africa
Dec 29th
When I sit down at the computer to do design work, I’m amazed how much I rely on space. Head space that is.
Sure, I work with two little kids at home, so I need to be prepared for distractions, and they’re par for the course. I’ve become accustomed to having to leave tasks, to return to them, once the offspring are otherwise entertained, or asleep. What I am finding difficult right now, is the other parental unit, is currently on vacation days (and will be until the 4th of January) but I can’t seem to make it clear to him that simply because he is on vacation, doesn’t mean that I am able to drop everything, participate in every conversation and basically not do any work at all.
If I hear, “Are you on the computer AGAIN?” ONE-MORE-TIME, I may just run to the nearest hillside and break out into a fiendish blood curdling scream.
On another note, because of my freelancing status, and the argument I mention above how, when you’re a freelancer you’re *never* on holiday? Well there are ways of planning to supplement your income while you are on holiday, if you plan ahead. I generally have my finger in several pies, including a spot of online marketing, some web content production and numerous other avenues.
A new one which I’ve just discovered, which I wish I had found shortly after leaving university was a site that allows you to sell textbooks. Imagine how much cash you could regain by selling some of your old text books. When I was at university staying in residence we generally went and found a first year (or they found us) that was studying the same course, who was usually a willing buyer of our second hand stuff, but a site like this would have been so much easier to deal with. Click, ship, ka ching. I like that kind of ease of use and efficiency.
One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that I tend to use the services of business that make a real effort with their online presence (probably because I understand of the great deal of effort that it entails). Just the other day when I was shopping for a new iMac, I found a local (!) online shop that had 24/7 live chat (very rare in South Africa) and were able to answer my questions about stock levels on the spot. NICE. I will definitely send some business their way soon.
On that note, I hope you have all had a peaceful and fun festive season (whether Earthbound or not) ha ha, and I hope you’re looking forward to the New Year as much as I am.
Possibly Related Posts:
- Yet Another Reason Why Freelancing Rocks
- 3 Hours Sleep
- Turmoil
- Baby Shower Invitations
- Decking Out a New Office Space
Blog Banner for a Personal Blog
Dec 16th
The brief was for a blog banner, for the month of December. However, since the blogger resides in the Southern Hemisphere, the banner had to reflect the fact that although it was Christmas, it was also in fact summer. Come to think of it, it *is* rather stupid that we Southern Hemisphere dwellers give one another Christmas cards with snow and reindeer and snowflakes on for goodness sake, when to us, Christmas has more to do with barbequeing, lazy days by the swimming pool, oppressive heat (in most cases) and long daylight hours, spent enjoying the beach.
This particular blogger is a huge fan of the beach, so I used it as the starting point for my design. Now this is not the final one that the blogger chose for this month, but the end result was based on this, and featured her and her family inserted onto my clean and spacey virtual beach, with a slightly enhanced Christmas tree, and different text. I liked this version, purely because it’s a clear indication of my taste. Clean lines, with a bit of whackiness thrown in for good measure.
Possibly Related Posts:
- Yet Another Reason Why Freelancing Rocks
- 3 Hours Sleep
- Spontaneous Purchase or Constant Reviewer?
- Turmoil
- Baby Shower Invitations
Awesome Design Discovery!
Nov 17th
One of the most fun discoveries I have made since using my new 21.5″ iMac
It was when I loaded my backed up playlists into iTunes, and activated the ‘Visualizer’ for my 4 year old son, who loves to sit in front of it, and we (the Other Parental Unit and I) always joke about how Apple are probably brainwashing him into never *ever* buying a PC (just in case my own efforts fail or Microsoft have an original thought), and I sat back, completely, and UTTERLY MESMERIZED.
They have given it a complete overhaul, and frankly I have never seen anything so spectacular in terms of design algorithms and special effects. The actual process with which those are designed, is not my field of expertise, but it actually occurred to me, that somewhere, there is someone who works for apple, who gets paid to do amazing things! Which reminded me of a quote that Steve Jobs said, “Not everyone can work in an environment where excellence is expected.” Did you know he’s just been named as CEO of the decade? Yes, I am an unashamed, pom-pom waving Steve Jobs acolyte.
Don’t believe me about those visualisations? Check this out…
Yet another reason that Design influences the way we live, and interact with each other.
Now, go and fantasize about having as great a job as where you get to think about this stuff all day!!
Possibly Related Posts:
- Turmoil
- Baby Shower Invitations
- The Difficult Concept
- Freelancers: What are your best work hours?
- Resources for Graphic Designers: Graphic River
The Ultimate Mac Office: Canvas Print
Sep 13th
When designing items for selling (as opposed to designing to a brief), it’s unavoidable to design without using my own taste as a guideline. Which is why I added this post to my Ultimate Mac Office Series, because this design, is something that I would purchase and hang on the walls of my future dream office.
One of my income streams as a designer, comes from Zazzle.com. I love the freedom with which I can make designs, posters and other merchandise on their site. They’re also always bringing out new products to which I can apply my designs.
Here’s a canvas print that I made today. I’ve designed it to be part of a series, but it works well in a modern interior by itself as well.
Purple with Circles by macnessa
More Purple Posters
Please do stop by my gallery on zazzle and take a look at my other canvas prints, as well as photography posters etc.
Possibly Related Posts:
- Turmoil
- Baby Shower Invitations
- The Difficult Concept
- Freelancers: What are your best work hours?
- Resources for Graphic Designers: Graphic River
