Brand Gap

The Brand Gap

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This powerpoint presentation, produced by Neutron LLC in partnership with New Riders Publishing and the American Institute of Graphic Arts, is an powerful overview of branding. Take a look at SlideShare.

Mac vs PC

I love these Mac commercials and I definitely understand them first hand. In some ways, these commercials show the dynamics between me (a graphic designer) and my husband (a civil engineer).

This is my personal overview of Macs vs PCs.

Here is a little history about me: I started out on a Mac in college (I could go back further but for the purpose of this comparison I will stick with the last 10 years of my life).

While studying graphic design in college, I used a Mac. I worked predominantly with Quark, Photoshop & Illustrator and Macs were the way to go.

At my first job I was introduced to the PC. I actually worked simutaneously on the 2 platforms for about 2 years. This experience taught me a lot about trouble shooting PCs and to love the ease of use of the Mac. During this period I began using a lot of different types of software programs (Quark, InDesign, PageMaker, Photoshop, Illustrator, Corel, Publisher and more). Mostly I would end up frustrated with the PC. I was constantly dealing with the blue screen of death (BSD) and my computer freezing. But to make my job work, I had to adapt so I learned to fix the problems and move on.

For the last 3 years I worked almost exclusively on PCs. This was not by choice but I managed. Most of the time I struggled with trying to convince my IT department (or anyone who was listening) that my problem was not necessarily the PC but the fact that my hard drive space was NOT BIG ENOUGH to run the programs I was working with. Also for about a year I worked out of Pagemaker (ugh) and once we upgraded to InDesign I was much happier.

In January I began freelancing out of my home office. I have a PC for my desktop computer and a Mac for a laptop. Here are a couple of thing I have learned along the way: Macs are definitely "friendlier" but if you know how to deal with the PC problems, they aren't too bad. To be honest, my home PC rarely freezes and I never get the BSD. However I have had to reformat my PC a couple of times due to viruses and that has never happened with any Mac I have worked on.

This may sound strange coming from a graphic designer, but for me it is more about the software than the platform. I work almost exclusively with Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office and these companies have made working between both platforms pretty effortless. I am very comfortable floating back and forth between my PC and Mac.

Maybe I am just and oddball, but it works for me. My biggest struggle would be hot keys, but even then I make it work.

drunken chicken

i was grocery shopping today and needed to buy a bottle of beer to make drunken chicken and i got carded at the checkout. i am not sure if i should be annoyed or flattered that they felt the need to card me... or maybe they were doing their job and carding everyone...

confused fingers

i used to only use macs (you know, back in the college days when i had access to a computer lab when i couldn't afford my own computer). and then my first couple of jobs i was blessed with macs as my main computer.

but over time i had to adapt to pcs. this is not b/c i wanted to, but more out of necessity. to have the corporate type jobs that i have had, i have been relegated to pcs. i have adapted and longed for my mac days, but i have managed to work fine on a pc.

however i recently got a mac powerbook and i am back in the land of macs - which is awesome. the problem is this: i still use a pc (almost as much as my mac). actually that is not even the problem - the problem is that i use hot keys for practically everything. so when you switch back and forth between a mac and pc you end up doing all sorts of fun things to your computer b/c for a mac you hit the apple key for everything (which is the alt key on a pc) and on a pc you use the control key for everything (which is practically useless on a mac).

so by the time my fingers adapt to using the correct buttons on whatever platform i am working from, i then switch over to another platform and my fingers wreak havoc once again...

i see this to be a continuing problem in my immediate future. my fingers need to get smarter to automatically know the difference between my mac & pc.

Disappointed with FedEx

Generally I am pretty happy with shipping things via FedEx. I even have a local FedEx-Kinkos that I really love and use regularly. Unfortunately I just had a pretty bad experience with FedEx and I need to vent about it.

I was supposed to receive a package overnight from Nashville. It was supposed to get here today by 2 p.m. Well the delivery guy read the address wrong and delivered the package across the street. Somehow we figured out the mistake, but by the time we asked the neighbor, he had taken it to my beloved FedEx-Kinkos that is less than 5 minutes away.

So I just called that FedEx-Kinkos to see if they had it and when it would be delivered or if I could run out and pick it up. They were totally clueless and said to call the 1-800 number.

I called that number and talked to a Roberto and he said that since it had been delivered and accepted by the recipient that they could not re-deliver it and I would have to go pick it up. Well where the heck is the package? Somehow it is now in Pineville, NC which is a good 30 minute drive for me.

Do I have any guarantee that it will be there tomorrow? Well NO you just have to show up with a photo ID and tracking number. Why can't they redeliver since THEY screwed up? Because policy is that they only deliver once.

Do you have any idea how FedEx delivers? They drop it at your door, they don't even knock. You are not even given the chance to tell them it is wrong in the first place! So now I may or may not get a package that I really needed by TODAY!!!

Nomads

This weekend I felt like a nomad. On four consecutive nights we slept in four different beds. It was good to go home and to see family and so many friends but it is nice to be back in my own bed.

Thinking Outside of the Box

As a whole, graphic designers are problem solvers and critical thinkers - I am one of them. I am currently reading the book Thinkertoys by Micahel Michalko. It is a book about applying creative thinking to business. The goal of this book it to help you think outside of the box. There are many what I would call brain-teasers in this book. Here are some examples: 

Can you take away 3 matches to leave 4?

Or this one: How many cubes to you see?

And finally, what do you notice about this sentence?

Thinkertoys is all about helping you to shift your way of thinking. If you work in a design field, you hopefully already see the world in a different way than those around you. Shifting your thinking is something that everyone can achieve if they take the time to look at everything around them from a different perspective.
ANSWERS: If you are creative thinker you would see that to get 4, remove the top, bottom and right and you get the roman numeral for 4 (IX). For the cubes you see either 6 cubes or 7 cubes depending on whether you see the black squares as the top or bottom of the cube. And finally the triangle with the text I love Paris in the springtime has the word THE printed twice.