My process of designing a business card for a performer/singer-songwriter

My GypsyGoods

When Shimona asked me to help her design her business card, I was ecstatic!

Despite of the hugeeeeeee pile of workload I have in the office, I’m always psyched up to work on something fun and creative. Trust me, nothing feels more awesome than to do something you’re passionate about. Also an A+ for helping a friend! 🙂

Shimona is having a gig at the #BKKtweetup’s gathering this coming Saturday night at Coco Beach, Ratchathewi BTS station Exit 4, so I needed to finish the card designs by the middle of this week (which I did, yesterday night!).

What Do You Want In The Card
Before designing, what I usually ask is the information they want in the card, any particular images, size, color, etc. Besides her contact details and minute info, Shis gave me the liberty to wing the design (a dream, a dream!). But I had to make sure that the design is: simple, sweet and stylish and the color is reddish-orangeish.

I also added another element: minimalist.

Brainstorming
Every designer has different ways of brainstorming. For me, I start working on the card itself in Photoshop by first choosing the font. After scouting and trying, I finally settled on Segoe Print (free for download!) as the brand font. Friends following this blog knows my personal obsession with typography – so I believe Segoe Print embodies what Shimona wants to bring out – simplicity, stylo and a touch of carefree-ness! 🙂 The other font I chose is Tw Cen MT, a sans-serif minimalist font used for short information.

Then I googled on business cards just to see what other people have designed for performers. After dozens of pages, I saw one that I really like: a B&W portrait of a singer, smiling carefree off-camera with her hands crossing over each other, and the contact details at the bottom of the card. I knew right then I wanted the similar sentiment for Shis’ card.

Version 1: Orange.

Version 2: Orange – Twitter info at the back.

By the way, I got the Twitter logo from here.

Shis really liked the Twitter-at-the-back design. With a better high-resolution profile picture and a change of color, the final and chosen design became this:

Shis is also going to print another version which I made: City Skyline

Shis also wanted another business card that has her profession as a counselor/teacher stated. So below are the initial designs:

Version 3: Color-Combo

Yup, you can see I experimented the colors by picking color from Google images. You can say that what appears nice on other things doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll work on your BC. A very good lesson to learn, haha!

So Shis suggested baby blue with lush purple. And this is what I came up:

Version 4: Blue&Purple-Combo

I was getting somewhere with the 3rd design (on your lowest right). The top looked a little bare, so I experimented more:

I didn’t design the treble clef, by the way – Shis found it!

So the final chosen design was:

Can’t wait to see these designs printed on hard copy!

Sharing my favorite inspirational quotes

My favorite logo/web/graphic designer Jacob Cass shared responses towards his Twitter on “What’s your favorite inspirational quote”.

He shared about 40+ quotes and here are some of my favorites:

AIU (formerly MC) at Muak Lek

1. “Unless you move, the place where you are is the place where you will always be.” ~Ashleigh Brilliant
Note: DEANNA, MOVE. You’ve been in Muak Lek far too long (7 years+!)

2. “Do what you love to do, but don’t do it to the point where you don’t love it anymore.”
Note: I’m concerned for those who loved what they’re doing, but slowly burning out. Don’t burn out! Hang on.

3. “I don’t want to be one of those who say ‘I wish I had’. I want to be one of those who say ‘I’m glad I did’.”
Note: Deanna, be brave! Take courage. Take a leap lah you adui.

4. “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
Note: This is the ultimate dream.

Designing MC Christmas card using Adobe Illustrator for the 1st time.

5. “To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” ~ Joseph Chilton Pearce
Note: Deanna, don’t be afraid of making mistakes. It’s okay. Let go of that perfectionist-a attitude.

6. “Be a fountain, not a drain.” ~Rex Hudler
Note: Don’t be stagnant, Deanna. Move it! Always think of what you could do better.

7. “Graphic design is the spit and polish but not the shoe.” ~Ellen Lupton
Note: The learning process, Deanna. The Journey.

8. “Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water.” ~Li Zhènfan
Note: Don’t be a drain – be a fountain!

My very first Newsbyte. Cried a lot especially in the first few months; people calling it names and whatnot. But with lots of trials and errors and perseverance, fast forward 3 years and Newsbyte news and design does not look like how it first came out. We came a long way.

9. “Success is falling down 7 times but getting up 8.”
Note: Persevere. This is going to be hard…

10. “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.” ~Jim Jarmush
Note: Continue blog-surfing. Read up. See what others in the field have done. Always want to keep learning.

11. “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.” ~Jim Jarmush
Note: Continue blog-surfing. Read up. See what others in the field have done. Always want to keep learning.

12. “Keep her lit” ~Anyone from Northern Ireland
Note: My point exactly (refer #11)

Subscribed to dozens of blogs and sites that promote inspiration, design and creativity. I use Bloglines to handle my rss reads 🙂

13. “Art is creativity, creativity is passion, passion is love.” ~Andrew Brynjulson.
Note: I think I know my passion, but I’m a little afraid. I mean, what if what you think is your passion is not your passion? What if I’m wrong? Argh…life.

14.“Design that doesn’t take a chance doesn’t stand a chance”
Note: TAKE A CHANCE lah, Deanna haiyoh you really scared is it

15.“In order to know what is right, you’ve got to know what is wrong.”
Self-explanatory

16.“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” ~Mark Twain

Note: Refer #3.

Joining my first 5km jogging-marathon called Joggerthon in February 2008. Also my first medal for a ‘sports’ activity.

See more inspirational quotes here

My first Twitter experience: Why every Twitter user should get TwitterFox

When the Facebook craze started, I didn’t join it immediately. In fact, I put it aside and yes, I was a little skeptical. I mean c’mon, ANOTHER Friendster-like application? No offense, but after the mushrooming of online communities like Friendster, Hi5!, MySpace, Ning (and the list goes on and on), I thought Facebook was just another community where you can put your profile picture and write your About Me section, upload photos, yada2…nothing new *yawns.

But Facebook became bigger and I eventually got sucked into it. And after being a FB user for more than a year, I do see a reason to keep/stick with it.

I mean, there’s nothing cooler than to view pictures of your long-lost childhood friend and her first baby, tagging photos of the recent Banquet (so you virtually “have” the pictures), writing comments, clicking “Like”, etc. Though I really hate the FB applications like being a vampire slayer and buying your friend. Kasih clutter only my page, chis…

Then Twitter came along. And similar to my FB experience, I was skeptical. C’mon, not ANOTHER application!

But months passed by, and my favorite bloggers have Twitter updates on their blogs. Uhm, they also rave about it, like my favorite wedding photographer-blogger Jasmine Star:

Then there’s Jacob Cass aka me fave web/font/graphic designer who’s currently studying at University of Newscastle ohhh DARON please deliberately fall to your knees, giggle and say hi for me if you ever stumble into him was interviewed about being a top Newcastle twitter and shared his insights on why he thinks Twitter is cool (read here)

Also not mentioning during the whole Red-Yellow shirts commotion thing in Bangkok, a friend helped me to check out the situation by corresponding with a journalist who was tweeting almost every minute from his phone in Bangkok.

Whoa.

AND Shimona sent me something to check on Twitter and not having an account, I decided to make one.

During my first few minutes in Twitter, I started to yawn. So I need/should type something about “What am I doing?” Hmm. How is this different again from Facebook’s What’s on my mind? It’s like, why should I have two open tabs aka websites that have more or less the same function? I typed anyway on some ramble thoughts, and having only very few friends — okay, make that 1 active friend aka Shimona –, it was a pretty dead experience.

Then Shimona replied. And then I replied. And then she replied some more. And I did too. Okay, things started to get pretty exciting when I saw this:

Shis tweeting from Twitterfox? What’s Twitterfox? Wait, isn’t she tweeting from her Twitter account website?

I clicked TwitterFox and saw this:

Here’s a formal description on TwitterFox:
TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets on Twitter.

This extension adds a tiny icon on the status bar which notifies you when your friends update their tweets. Also it has a small text input field to update your tweets.

This gives Twitter an edge because now I don’t have to open a new tab, log into Twitter website and tweet from there! I can access Twitter from this awesomely cool and small application conveniently placed on the bottom right of my Firefox browser and it’ll update me whenever my friends tweet AND I can also tweet too!

Okay, enough words. Perhaps pictures will help illustrate Twitterfox better:

After you download and install TwitterFox, you need to restart your Firefox browser. Then, you will notice a small, blue uncapitablize “t” aka Twitter logo on the bottom right of your browser (see pic above and below).

Here’s a closer look on the “t”.

Notice there’s the number 1 next to the “t”? It means I have a tweet update from one of my friends.

So all you need to do is click the “t”, and this is what you’ll see from your browser:

Let’s go for a closer look.

You can type in whateveryouaredoing in “Recent” (see below):

And what’s the point of having Twitter if you can’t comment/reply on your friend’s whateverhe/sheis doing, right? So yes in TwitterFox, you CAN comment/reply and the thread is available (see below). This is under the “Replies” tab:

I think every Tweeter user should get a TwitterFox because it is clutter-free – I mean, you don’t have to open another tab! Especially if you’re like me who have a lot of tabs opened and can’t close it because fear of losing information, Twitterfox helps you to tweet on a browser that’s already opened. Seriously, it can’t get any better than this.

But what’s the point of having a Twitter account if you don’t have your friends joining in?

Note to friends: I think if all of you guys have Twitter, die lah we all. We’ll be chatting instead of working/studying!

If you have Twitter, feel free to add me on http://twitter.com/dberyl. 🙂

PS – There’s actually a guide to Twitter. Astagah.