In order to fix the leaky pipe, get the car to start, or, in my case, remedy an ailing website, you have to give someone the keys and stand back. We, the service providers, have to get up close and personal with the inner workings of your house/car/website/life to correct the problem. It’s this unintentional close examination of what’s broken and the surrounding area that can tell a distinct story to the people who want to listen.

This idea of service provider intimacy isn’t new (is anything anymore?) but the point was made very clear to me recently.

Greatness up close

I recently traded cash and time to a friend who creates amazing art with aerosol paint (the piece above). One of the things he asked me to do was to trace a few of his sketches and convert them to vector format.

I’m still honing my pen tool skills in Adobe Illustrator so I was glad to have the practice but, for the most part, this is a tedious job. What I didn’t expect, though, was just how incredible it was to see the lines and shapes that make up his work.

It wasn’t until I got into the groove on the second drawing that I started to look beyond just the vector lines over scanned pencil and see what made each piece so beautiful and natural. Pose2 has this amazing ability to create very organic drawings and paintings in any medium he chooses.

The job went from something I was doing for trade to something I was honored to have a part in. The vector files are going to be turned into jewelry so they had to be “corrected” to make sure they could be cut out of metal. I found it very difficult to correct anything on these pieces because the first pass, the pencil drawings, were so gorgeous.

The care, skill, and mastery that Pose puts into his art is the same kind of love and expertise that some people put into their business. I realized, adding anchor points and stretching curves, that I have this kind of relationship with every individual and business that I work with and it’s easy to see when people care about what they do, who they work with, and who they serve.

What it takes

You see, I know all about greatness because I exude it every second of every day. Well, maybe not every second. What I do have is the knack for recognizing it in others, even when I’m not doing it myself.

Look closely, you can see a level of care and skill in the way great people conduct themselves:

• What they say is kind, honest, and conversational. You can see this in their email, on their website, and in their social interactions online.
• They are anxious to learn more, even if it threatens what they already know.
• They are more scared of staying the same thing than they are of changing, growing, and improving.
• Their output is not always perfect but it shines in a very unique way.
• Knowing them and interacting with them makes you want to improve what you do and who you are (thanks Stephanie!)

The opposite of greatness

If greatness is expressed through the actions I listed above, then what does the opposite look like?

• A pattern of dishonest, negative, or unnatural communication
• Desperation to hold on to entrenched truths at the cost of expansion and growth
• A fear of change and experimentation, even if the current methods are not working
• Output is cold, templated, unoriginal, and safe.
• Their presence hardens your own thoughts on the world, particularly things you already know to be false

How are you great?

I want to know, how are you great? How do you recognize greatness in others? How do you find and retain great people in your life?

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In the summer of 2008 I was given the opportunity to learn from a very talented and enlightened individual, Daniel Hopkins aka Pose2. Pose is a graffiti artist with decades of experience in his craft and since taking his class, he has remained my teacher, became a good friend, got on with Josh Can Help as a client, and soon to become immortalized on my wall.

Pose travels around the world taking on projects, teaching people, and spreading knowledge. He also does amazing things for global communities like beautification projects and teaching kids how to express themselves artistically. This time, however, he’s taking on a very important issue in a way that only he can.

I’ll let him explain this inspiration:

One day as I was driving…I stopped at a traffic light and gazed into the eyes of a homeless man and my feelings related to what I saw. He was impoverished physically, mentally and spiritually; every aspect of him was wretched. I felt his pain, despair. I was attracted to his pain, but wanted to ignore him. I was drawn to his loneliness but wanted him to disappear. I just wanted this moment to end; I wanted his presence to stop reminding me that I was alone just like him! He needed help and I wanted to RESPOND but not with money. This time I felt something deeper, a connection. Yes, his sign, all I could focus on was his sign and suddenly the Artist in me awakened and I said to myself, him and his sign are one. Just like any other business the sign is the representation of the business, RIGHT?  I thought, what would happen if artists created  signs for the homeless? Big, bright colorful, energetic signs with empowering words?

Introducing RESPONSE ABILITY

My overall Goal for this project is to organize an army of Artist, world-wide to create and sell 144,000 signs for the homeless. The distribution and sales of these elaborately painted signs will take place on the walls of international Art Gallery’s. Each show will be a one night only engagement and each painted sign will sell for the maximum price of $50.00. Here’s where it gets interesting. Each person who purchases a piece of art is encouraged to give this gift of art to a homeless person!

This act of engagement is the fuel and intention behind this entire project. It begins with the homeless and their despair, the artists recognizes their condition and responds with these powerful signs. The Art Gallery’s provide the space to sell these signs. Then its up to us, we the people, to purchase these works of art and ultimately offer them as gifts, to the homeless.

Addressing a problem as big as homelessness takes more than just money, it takes love, compassion, and understanding. Pose2 wants artists across the world to express themselves for a greater good. Let’s come together as a community and address this real problem.

Calling Artists of All Types

We want artists to use their talent and passion to make a difference. If you’re ready to do something for a greater good, listen up:

• Each contributing artist will be asked to do up to 3 signs for the exhibit.
• Each sign should be elaborate in color and content.
• The content should be short, to the point and inspirational.
• Think about portability, legibility, and dignity.

Get your signs ready and contact Pose2 to submit your work:  Daniel.pose2fx (at) gmail.com or 619-278-1735. DUE DATE IS JANUARY 14TH.

Ready to Make a Difference?

We need everyone on this one. The vision is global but we must first start local. The first launching of this exhibition will take place on Saturday, Jan 16th, at Voz Alta Art Gallery, 1754 National Ave, San Diego, CA 92113.

Update: a few photos from the event:

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Design is More by ellywilliams on Flickr

I recently posted in a great topic titled “what is expected of a designer,” a question I’ve pondered many times on my own. I wanted to share a few of the responses but, because it’s a closed group and you need a login to view the posts, I don’t want to include information on the poster. Just please note that anything in quotations below are not my original thoughts and were written by someone else (which, if it was you, let me know and I’ll add a link for you or take it down if you’d like).

So, first, the question:

What is expected of a designer? Over the years, my job has evolved from spec’ing type to writing branding guidelines to puzzling through code, with everything else in between. But there’s a ceiling on the perceived value of a graphic designer, or “Design Consultant”. What are your experiences juggling the many aspects of our work?

My response, verbatim, is this:

Designing without any concept of how the whole project comes together (think website or brochure or presentation) or what the limitations are (platform or budgetary or format) puts you at a total disadvantage. I’ve worked with designs from people who understand the web and from people who don’t and the difference, in both time and final product, is clear.

I think a designer should be expected to think about the whole project: the medium, the message, the format, the audience, the technology, and the client. The closer the pieces of the project are to the design, the more they should know. Should a front-end designer be fluent in SQL? It might make for an interesting combination but knowing the syntax isn’t going to make the site design better. Should the designer understand how the site is going to interact with the database? It’s not necessary but it might help them work better with the developer.

In short, a designer needs to see the big picture of what they are doing. Possessing incredible design skills is great but, without seeing how your creativity plugs into everything else, you’ll perpetually be at a disadvantage (and, potentially, be difficult to work with).

What do others have to say?

Employers recently seem to get the sense that the term “Designer” should also encompass the title of “Developer”. It’s amazing and frightening the perception of what a designer is now – especially in web. I’ve read so many posts that wanted a “Rockstar Designer” … who also did ASP.NET , PHP, and other coding skills on top of the standard (X)HTML and CSS.

Employers have to realize that we’re not a dumpster for all the cumulative skills and knowledge of communication. I do admit that the role of the “designer” has to evolve however.

“A dumpster for all the cumulative skills and knowledge of communication;” I’m certain I could not put it any better.

There’s give and take with everything. Hiring someone with both design and programming skills means that you want a jack/jill-of-all-trades. This implies that you’re not looking for a designer at the top of their field and you’re not looking for a programmer that can write applications with their eyes closed. There is nothing wrong with desiring this particular combination but the problem comes when your expecations are not in line with what you’re asking for.

I have to use myself as an example. I’m proficient in the Adobe products and really love playing with layout, typography, and colors. I have an eye for detail and, if I can toot my own horn for a second, I’ve come up with several effective, pleasing designs. I’m always improving and always learning but always humble because I’ve seen the kind of design work that’s out there and I’m very impressed. If a project requires a very polished, unique design, I might end up hiring someone else (not after trying it out, of course). I do that because I know that practice begets mastery and, because my practice is broad, my skill level is not at the same level as professional designers. Same goes for code; I can hand-code an XHTML page or email, use CSS very effectively, and add some PHP to make it dynamic and easy to use. I can build templates for WordPress blogs and make the PHP code do what I want. I can also find my way around the ASP.NET of DotNetNuke enough to make small modifications. I am not, however, capable of building a dynamic MySQL driven site (big “yet” there… in the process of learning). I’m also not able to write a Facebook app, a WordPress widget, or a Pligg module.

What I do, I do well and do often. What I can’t do, I reach out to experts to have it done right (while learning at the same time).

I heard an interesting talk by Milton Glaser a few years ago. His approach was that designers need to stay with what they are good at—the magic that makes people look; that makes people feel a certain way, etc. He seemed to feel that designers were going down the wrong path by positioning themselves as business experts (via emphasizing their marketing skills), as that’s not what makes them special.

This is from the orginal poster and adds to what I was saying above. When you hire a designer, you’re making a statement, you’re saying “what this looks like really, truly matters.” You can hire a designer for almost anything you do… home construction, documents, car modification, advertisements, web sites; the list, of course, goes on ad infinitum. You hire the right designer for the job (i.e. don’t hire me to design your kitchen), you communicate what you want and need, and you leave the project in their capable hands.

It’s all about separating roles and jobs. If you hire someone to both design and develop your website, they better be good at swtiching hats (cough). I’ve done several top-to-bottom web pages and blogs and I love the process. As a classically-trained scientist, a life-long artist (I create a lot more than I share, that’s for sure), a constant writer (see this blog, former blog, long emails, and technical documents), and an occasional programmer, I’m comfortable in both halves of my brain. Where I get into trouble, however, is when I’m not able to separate these skills and take each one on individually. If I’m given a big project with a tight deadline, it can be sure I’ll reach out to other people for help. If, however, I’m given the time I need, I take each step on individually and enjoy switching hats.

If you’re looking for someone who takes great pride in what he does, is constantly improving, and seeks help when he needs it, please get a hold of me. I’d love to get you and your business on the web!

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I’m never COMPLETELY satisfied with the outcome but I’m definitely internalizing the idea of taking my time, moving deliberately, and taking the artwork line by line. It’s very easy, with spray paint, to rush through things and end up with a sloppy, ugly piece. The timing and movement is critical to (a) avoid drips and (b) ensure line consistency. I find spray paint to be a frustrating but eye-opening medium to work with. You HAVE to allow for a certain level of messiness but you’re also aware that you can be very neat if you have the skills and patience.

Personally, I find more “zen” and enjoyment in the drawing. It’s interesting to me to have constraints (like letters) but be free to express them however I wish. I do much better with a pencil and pen than I do with a can of spray paint. To be honest, each time I finish a piece, I’m ready to give up on the aerosol portion of the artwork. Still, I keep coming back and, typically, I’m glad I did.

These pictures were taken by a professional photographer who showed up to snap a few. You can find her work at www.creativeshake.com/karin. She showed Pose and I some of her other work on her iPhone (great way to carry around a portfolio) and we were blown away. She’s got a very broad talent and her composition was just fanstastic. She really knows the angles! Thanks for the copies, Karin.

The rest are off of my phone so pardon the quality (or complete lack thereof).

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High definition here

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This kind of thinking can work for any kind of artist. If you paint pictures, you can design shirts. If you draw cartoons, you can easily translate that to digital images for web sites or blogs. Find the niche, spread the word, and extent your influence. The more people you can reach with your art, the better (from a sales and reputation standpoint). If you do your art on the west coast and have build a following, there will be people on the east coast who have never heard of you and would probably love your work.

Here’s what I’m talking about…

I started with a simple drawing in my sketchbook. First step was pencil, then just plain old Sharpie marker on top. I don’t pretend to be an accomplished artist by any means but you get the idea. At this point, it was time to put some paint down so it was off the the Art Academy of San Diego.

Overall, this is definitely the best piece that I’ve done. It’s also the third time I’ve ever put can to wall and really went at one of my drawings. This art form is very cathartic for me… more on that another time.

The second picture above is almost where I stopped but I decided to add the white shine on the top and sides which really set the piece off. I really wanted a black outline but I bought Rustoleum satin black and that just is not the right paint for an outline so I ended up falling back to my old faithful, “blue note” by Montana Gold.

This could be the stopping point for an artist but, in my mind, there is more to do… much more.

With just ink on paper, there isn’t much that can be done with it but, as you can see here, I scanned the image into my computer (with my handy-dandy Canon MP610 printer/scanner which I highly recommend). Now, in Adobe Photoshop, I start playing with the image to make it look more vibrant and consistent. First, (this is always first for me) I opened the Image > Adjustment > Levels window. For those unfamiliar with Photoshop, this affects how much white and black is in the image; it’s like a contrast adjustment on crack. Just play with the levels until it looks right. Next adjustment was Image > Adjustment > Saturation. I use this to bring out the colors and make it look a bit more like my drawing (scanned images seem to lose a lot of color). Finally, to make the colors (black, light blue, and orange) perfectly consistent, I used the Eyedropper tool (“I“), picked a color the represented the color the best, then picked the Paint Bucket tool (“G“). At the top, I set the tolerance to “60,” found a spot on the color I sampled, then dumped it. Because the contrast is so high between these colors, it worked out perfectly. Then, using the same color, I picked the Brush tool (“B“), chose an appropriate size (“[" to decrease and "]” to increase), and cleaned everything up. I did this for each color.

This image is “finished,” meaning that this drawing has gone about as far as it can. To move forward and make something transferrable, we need to move it into a new program, Adobe Illustrator.

First, in Photoshop, I took all the color out by going to Image > Adjustment > Desaturate. I’m not going to transfer the scribbles in the middle nor am I going to keep the color, just the outline of the letters themselves and the outline of the background.

Now I select the image, copy it, and paste it into Illustrator. The next part is a pain in the butt (especially if you’re a novice like me).

I keep the black and white image from Photoshop and use it to trace. What we’re doing when we trace a pixel image (image from Photoshop) is creating a line path on top of the illustration. Because this awesome programs work with image layers, we’re not changing the original image (though it looks like we are). Image layers are the digital equivalent of clear transparencies. If you can imagine tracing a picture with pens on a transparency and you have an idea of these layers. The fun part about these is that the layers are basically infinite so minor changes can be made and altered a million different ways.

To make this outline, I took the Pen tool (“P“) and added an anchor point on each corner, following the outline of the letters. See how you can follow that line around the entire piece except for the dot on the “i” and the insides of the letters? Every continous line is its own path and will be traced separately and then combined.

I would love to write out a tutorial about how this is done but it’s a bit beyond the scope of this post. If you’re dying to know, here it is in a nutshell:

1. The path around the edge of each letters is 4 point with no fill (simple techniques you can learn on-line).
2. After creating the path with the Pen tool, it was really blocky with straight lines only. Correcting this was the tricky part. Hold down Shift, then press “C” to use the Convert Anchor Point tool. Click on the point that connects on of the lines you want to be curved, hold down the mouse button, and drag away from the point to make handles appear. If this doesn’t seem to work, zoom in and make sure you’re selecting the point. the two lines that connect to this point will likely be screwed up now. Click on the square end of one of the handles and drag it around the point to separate it from the other handle. You’ve now made a “combination anchor point.” Now, type “A” on the keyboard and screw with the handles until the line curves correctly. You’ll have to do this for all the lines you want curved. This is a pain in the butt, not intuitive at first, and takes practice.
3. The insides of the letters (4 paths… see that?) were subtracted from the outside by selecting all 5 paths (hold down Shift while clicking), then choosing Window > Pathfinder, clicking on the “Subtract from shape area,” then clicking Expand (both are in the Pathfinder window on the left).

After all of that, I finally had an outline. Why all of this work? This image can now be resized to any size, large of small, without losing quality. You can also do some awesome things with this but first…

….I added the original colors to show how clean this format is. Picking new colors is as easy as selecting the shape and finding a new color in Illustrator’s swatches. I was really excited to find some amazing combinations of colors, things I would never think go together. You can also use Adobe’s kuler.com site to import fun combinations (I’ll save explaining that until I actually use it but check out the site if you’ve never seen it).

Next, we can play around with new colors, line widths, and, everyone’s favorite these days, gradients (smooth shift from one color to another). Above, you see my shiny Halloween version. Gradients can go from any color to any color but add a nice sense of depth if you choose a color and a slightly darker/lighter version of the same color.

Additional designs can be added very easily in this format. In fact, anything too complicated should probably be left out when tracing with the pen and added later. In this case, I added the scribble-style fill that you can see in the original and converted it to some wacky ice-cream colors (because I have a sweet tooth)

Last but not least, we can have some real fun and extrude this design to make it 3-D. This control can be found under Effect > 3-D > Extrude & Bevel. There is way too much fun to be had with using Illustrator to modify an original piece of artwork.

The vector artwork is great because it’s the best version to use for printing because it’s quality is infinite. You could take the vector file of the image above and make a vinyl wrapper for a skyscraper and the lines would be as sharp as you see them above. In fact, you’ll notice, the images above have very sharp lines to them.

These designs can be used in magazines and books very easily now. Also, since the color information is very simple, these designs are great for screenprinting (though a but more work needs to be done). As I said above, they can be used in vinyl designs for vehicles or blown up and printed as posters.

The bigger implication here is flexibility and expansion. Maybe I’m not a great graffiti artist but maybe my simple illustrations above look like a logo someone wants and I get business drawing one up. Maybe someone out there is a great graffiti artist but translates his/her work digitally and makes it known that he/she can do more than just make a piece of paper or a wall look amazing.

Expand out and learn new things; you’ll never be sorry.

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I digress…

I also need a business card and have not been giving this important piece of a business that relies on word-of-mouth enough attention. I was pondering new designs when I came across an artist who does letterpress artwork. I posted his work on a forum I frequent and got offered an excellent deal on letter pressed business cards. I immediately went to work on the design and came up with this:

I was digging it but the printer said that each extra color was an extra plate and would cost more. The printing was already more than I wanted to spend so I went with all-black:

I was really enjoying the design and loved the “old design for new techology” meme. I liked it so much, I posted it on the forum where I met the printer. It didn’t meet with quite the same approval as it had in my brain. Here’s what was said (verbatim):

My eyes are drawn all over the card and can’t find any focus. The font/italics aren’t very good and seem amateurish.

I like the card, but it makes you look like a lion tamer or animal trainer not a tech guy. Maybe have him using the chair and a whip on a PC? That is if you are going to stick with the original idea… And the accents that are on the corners, I would change it to one continuous border, have it just on the top and bottom make it look a little busy.

it’s just hard on the eyes. One more thing… you do look like a lion tamer. My suggestion is to go with the motion of the wheel and not try to reinvent it.

As for the 1920′s circus theme.. It can be done, however I think you missed the mark. To me, frilly script fonts, and borders don’t say “circus” to me. I’m also not making the connection between circus and technology. I’ll also add that your message “Josh Can Help” also does not fit with a circus style theme.

Ouch! I was convinced that no-one really understood where I was coming from with the design but I knew that these people had piles more experience than I do and there was very little that they were liking about it.

I was taking it personally and that is the worst way to try and learn anything. So I read and re-read everything and came up with a few more toned-down versions. For the record, I still like the first one the best.

These look cleaner and more toned down but, in my opinion, they were starting to lose character. I realized that the “look” I was going for was, more or less, only in my head.

Well, the wolves liked these much better…

If “Josh Can Help” is your company name, it should be the most important element on the card, and your tag line should be secondary. I’m still not feeling the overall style / idea, but I figured I’d point that out.

The simple ones are an improvement. I agree with the above poster, the company name should stand out the most. I’d also make the tamer bigger since there is so much room in the middle.

Try Vertical. Take the logo, or graphic, put in on top of the card with the ornate corners top and bottom. then imprint the rest below the graphic. seriously, try vertical. see how it looks.

Hmmmm…. then, a little more encouragement (the only reason I didn’t scrap this and start over):

I think that most people on this board don’t quite get letterpress printing… I personally like the approach you’re taking, talking high tech with low tech works for me…. and the lion tamer graphic works too. Letterpress with the right stock is a really nice tactile thing… and a classic serif font is a must for it. Sans serif with letterpress would be a waste of the extra money for print. You might as well print them thermographic instead if you go that way. The only change I would suggest is to have the graphic in the top half of the card and all the text below it. The script font was ok, but not great, given the context you’re aiming at for the design, you likely wouldn’t have seen a single word in-line in a script in a sentence, a true italic, yes, but not a script. Now if you were to take the card vertical and do one word per line stacked and larger with tighter leading, some caps as well, then it would work. I hope this helps.

With this new information, an idea to rotate it to vertical, and a few kind words, I came up with this:

I was REALLY liking this, much more than my original design, and it was very “letterpressy.” The forums went wild!

That one looks very good. I like the changed orientation and the subtle ornate borders. I would work on the font for Josh Can Help. Something a bit more exciting and antique.

my thoughts exactly. looking much better!

I was thinking about a different font as well and also wanted the text to be aligned on both sides (justified). It also needed to be in a vector format (Illustrator). I was scared to work in Illustrator (I’ve opened it five times since I bought it) but I found a few tutorials that helped and came up with the final version minus decorative elements:

The dimensions are a bit off and it’s not perfectly centered but the font, leading (space between lines), tracking (space between letters), and text are all finished.

What do you think?

Edit: final design getting printed:

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Now all I have to do is learn it! My arsenal:

• The Illustrator CS2 Bible from Wiley. I bought the CS2 version because I had a *gasp* pirated version and wanted to get good enough to justify buying the full version. I’m not sure that Illustrator will be my weapon of choice from the Adobe suite but I want to be able to at least edit any vector graphics that I get my hands on. It’s all about being versatile.
• Lynda.com training videos. Some of them came with the software and there are a few free ones on-line. Lynda is only $25/month which is a great deal is you sit down and learn one or two products in a month. Self-paced, professionally created, and they cover a broad range of products. Good deal! On-line learning is underrated right now.
• Adobe help files. I don’t know why I was surprised to find instructional PDFs bundled with this software. Part of me thought that once you bought these, you were on your own. These files are hundreds of pages long and, thankfully, link contextually to the software (meaning you can get help from within the software when you need help).
• Screwing about. I’ve heard/read that just playing with the program is a big part of learning it. I’d say that’s half-true. I’m still using Paint.net at work (and, sometimes, at home) and find it to be very simple, very usable, and functional to about 10% of Photoshop. I don’t WANT to use Paint.net but I know it fairly well and, to be honest, the quick stuff is much easier to do there than in Photoshop. All griping aside, I want to use Photoshop exclusively so I’m trying (desperately) not to even open Paint.net.

I’m finding it tough to just do what I want to do in PS. I’m sure that comfortability will come with time. At least it’s remotely intuitive (GIMP stopped me in my tracks the first 3 times I tried to use it).

It’s photo editing abilities are , to say the least, amazing, even if the drawing functionality is a bit.. convoluted.

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These days, with ultra-compact digital cameras coming in around $200 and megapixel counts in the 7′s, 8′s, and 9′s, everyone is taking digital pictures and they’re all HUMONGOUS. Between on-line forums, emails from family members, and massive Powerpoint presentations, I’m drowning in over-sized photos and surrounded by people who, understandably, don’t want to waste their time resizing each and every picture they want to share. At some point, for some reason, these photos have to get smaller and, unfortunately, not everyone knows how to do that. And I’m Josh and I can help (at least the website says so) so I’m going to show you a free program that makes the whole resizing thing easier than you thought possible. If you’re using Photoshop and resizing each image, you’re wasting your time. And if you’re NOT resizing your pictures, you’re wasting everyone else’s.

Why should digital pictures be resized?

The problem with big pictures is their size. Har har har… no really, the size contributes two annoyances:

1. Big pictures are “physically” very large and can’t fit on the screen unless a particular program resizes them. The size can also stretch out web sites and make everything a complete mess
2. Big pictures are virtually large as well and, as such, are comprised of a lot of data. This can fill up email programs, slow down computers, and take forever to download.

With my Canon SD1000 (a small, great, inexpensive ultra-compact digi-cam) set to its highest resolution (meaning the size of the image), it’s taking pictures at 3072 x 2304 pixels. This is 7,077,888 pixels (or dots) of color that has to be stored and transferred. Unless you’re printing these photos on 8×10 paper, a picture of this size will do you no good. You’re also going to need several different emails if you want to send a whole group of them to someone, not to mention the hard drive space it takes to store them (on both machines).

Clearly, it has to be done but how to go about it?

How can digital pictures be resized?

In order to get your pictures in a more manageable size to use, share, and post online, you will need to reduce the amount of data that is contained in the picture file. This can be done by reducing the actual size of the photo while keeping the overall quality. This can be done with an image editing software like Photoshop but there’s no need to break out the big guns for such a minor task.

I just recently starting using the aptly-named software PIXresizer and I couldn’t be happier with how it works. I’ll walk you through some of the basic functions of this free software so you can pass them along to the technology-handicapped people in your life… or just send the link to a friend.

First, download it here (scroll down and look for the “DOWNLOAD [ 3.3 Mb .zip]” link). Open the .ZIP file and run the program Setup to install it on your machine. Make sure to add an icon to your desktop and run the program.

How do I use this PIXresizer program?

PIXresizer is very easy to use so I’ll keep these instructions nice and short. For those who are fluent in image language (sizes in pixels, images types, etc), this list of instructions will probably be useless to you. It’s very easy to poke around and figure out what to do. If you’re not so computer-savvy, I’ll show you how to get the most out of this great little freeware program.

This program runs in two modes: single picture and batch processing. We’ll take these one at a time…

Single photo resizing

When you first open the program, it will default to the “Work on one file” option. This is what you want to use when you just want to re-size one file (see, I told you this thing was easy). Step one is to pick a file to work on by clicking the Load Picture button.

As you might expect, this will open a file explorer window where you can pick the photo you want to alter. Conveniently enough, the window starts in your My Pictures folder. Choose an over-sized photo you want to change and click Open. Your photo will now be loaded in the little window on the right instead of that ridiculous image of the guy in the pink shirt taking your photo in front of the XP background (why).

Step 2 (marked as such in PIXresizer) is to choose a new size for your photo.

PIXresizer gives you a few quick options to make your life easier.

• 25% gets us to 648 x 486 pixels. This is not a “standard” size but it’s great for uploading to the web (Flickr, Facebook,etc). If you are sending over email, photos don’t need to be this small.
• If you’re sending over email, a perfect size is about 800 x 600 (the 33% option gets you close to this). Pictures of this size are not too big, easy to see on any monitor, and retain a good amount of the detail that was in the picture originally.
• If you want to just save some space on your computer and you’re not going to be printing these in a large format, you’re safe with storing them at around 1200×900. This size is small enough not to be unwieldy but still big enough to retain most of the detail of the original.
• The custom size can be used for any of the options I gave above or to make the photo a specific size (if requested by a person, program, or website).

To get an idea of what these sizes actually mean for you check out the examples below:

400 x 300

600 x 450

800 x 600

1200 x 900

Original size

This will give you a good idea of what it will look like on other screens. Keep in mind that some web browsers will resize your photo automatically. To see them in their native size, right-click on the displayed image and select either Save Image As… or Save Picture As… and pick a place on your computer. Now open the picture on your hard drive to get a better idea of what it will look like for others.

The other size option that is given is labeled Maintain Aspect Ratio. Every image has a particular ratio – the length divided by the width (or vice versa). As you make images smaller or larger, you usually want to keep this ratio the same so the image does not distort. Unchecking this box will allow you to put in two separate measurements for length and width, allowing the image to skew.

Resized to 200 pixels while maintaining aspect ratio:

Resized to 200 x 150 pixels without maintaining aspect ratio:

Step 3 in this process has you choose a file type. If you’re not sure what to pick, either keep the default file format by selecting Same as original or choose JPEG (you can’t go wrong with JPEG for basic web and sharing uses).

The last option, Step 4, allows you to save the image as black & white (Output greyscale) and keep the EXIF data (additional non-visual data). These should be unchecked if you’re just resizing the picture.

Click the Save Picture button and you’re complete!

Multiple photo resizing

One of the best things about PIXresizer is its ability to resize several different photos at once. This mitigates the chore of sharing, uploading, and storing photos.

First, switch the view by clicking on the Work with multiple files tab at the top of the window.

This view has a few different options but only two that we’ll cover. The first, aptly named Step 1, deals with where the files are and where they are going.

The organization here is a bit confusing at first but after this brilliant explanation, it will be clear.

The top button, Source, asks what folder on your computer holds the batch of pictures you wish to resize. Checking the Subfolders box above tells PIXresizer to include all the folders that are located within the folder you choose.

Click the Source button and find the appropriate folder. If that folder has all the pictures you want to resize and there are other folders present within that folder, keep the Subfolder box unchecked. If, however, you are resizing a whole directory structure of pictures, check this box and let PIXresizer loose.

Now that you’ve told the program where to find the pictures, now you need to tell it where the new pictures should go. Click the Destination button and a window appears asking you where you would like to save the resized images. Pick a folder or click the New Folder button to, well, add a new folder.

If you are including subfolders from your source location and want to keep the same folders in the new location, click the Copy Directory Structure checkbox.
Now, pick the new size for all the pictures. Don’t worry about the checkboxes here; they’re not of too much use (in fact, I haven’t been able to figure out what their purpose is).

Simply adjust the slider to the size you want the largest dimension (so that portrait and landscape oriented photos adjust the same) from 96 pixels to 1200 pixels. The batch mode is not able to handle anything larger than 1200 pixels but, for most people, this is completely fine.

Lastly, choose the save pictures options (Enlarge if needed will enlarge any images in the directory structure that are smaller than your chosen size) and click Save Pictures.

That’s all you need to make your digital life (and those of others) just a little bit better! Please share this link with anyone you think could use it and, for those “net-challenged” folks, download the PDF, print it, and hand it to them.

Download this guide as a PDF

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Here’s what I’m looking for:

• No huge up-front costs or minimum purchases
• Makes it easily available to on-line merchants like Amazon
• Is a true publication with an ISBN
• Is easy to set-up (though I’ll work with something that handles all of the above well)

The list of links at the bottom of this page (along with Google) helped me come up with a list of potentials. The first step I took to pare down the fairly daunting list was to cut out anything that cost more than $600 (even that was a bit high, to be honest). I’m a bootstrapper and so is my client for the time being. This particular book just needs to be out there and available.

After trimming a bit and searching, I narrowed it down to the following:

• Lulu
• Virtual Bookworm
• iUniverse
• Blurb

A couple of these – Lulu and Blurb – were on my radar but I had yet to do any in-depth research on them. iUniverse was a company I had heard about a while ago and wanted to see what they were all about. I had never heard of Virtual Bookworm before making this list but it was rated very highly by one particular site so I figured it would be worth my time to check it out.

Here’s what I found…

LuLu.com

I heard this name in conversation and decided to check out their site. I’m glad I did because this might just be the option that I’ll use.

Options include:

• Getting an ISBN
• On-line distribution
• On-line storefront
• On-demand (you can buy one or a million

It looks like they have what I need but there are more questions to be answered. Here is more information about what they offer and what you can expect (I found this be combing their FAQs):

• You are limited in the fonts that you can use in your book (unless you can embed them in Acrobat when you create a PDF)
• Lulu will add an ISBN barcode, content ID/URL (from the Lulu site), and a Lulu logo (which can be removed) to your back cover – very nice!
• You can choose a “published by you” option for $100 that lists you as the publisher, gives you an ISBN, distributes bibliographic information, retail price conversion, listing on a wholesale catalog (meaning that you can be distributed on Amazon, etc). Reading a little further into how you make money, “published by you” income is not considered a royalty so no taxes are withheld and it is not reported to the IRS (by Lulu).
• You can also choose a “published by Lulu” option for, again, $100. The difference is the publisher name for the book, ISBN ownership (they own it), and distribution (they feed their data to a “global marketplace,” whatever that means). If you choose the published by Lulu option, the money you make meets the definition of royalties and is subject to tax withholdings.
• They do offer to list ebooks (downloadable copies) and they won’t charge you anything besides their 25% commission.
• How you are paid is quite confusing. You can get it through Paypal (boo) or check and you receive your payment quarterly.
• They let you send thank-you notes to your buyers (aww).

I like Lulu… a lot. Before I make a choice, however, I want to check out a few others.

Virtual Bookworm

I found this site from one of the links below (Other Resources). Their website is not quite as polished as Lulu but that doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if they have the goods. Their basic package for a softcover book is $360 and includes the following:

• ISBN assignment(for the printed version)
• Copyright application kit
• Book page on our website
• Barcode
• 15 free internal graphics/images (must be submitted to specs)
• Data Backup
• Full Distribution
• Drop Shipment
• Book registration through Amazon.com, Books in Print, Borders
• 50% royalties of net receipts (Approximately 30-35% of cover price on books sold through us!)
• Quarterly Sales Report
• Author may purchase first order of his/her book for 50% off list price (subsequent orders 30% off list, but discount increases with larger orders)

What I like about this site is that they offer several additional options (for extra money, of course):

• $65 for an ebook package added to any book
• $100 to keep additional copies in their warehouse on-hand (to avoid delays)
• $80 to add a Library of Congress number to the book
• And much more!

I like all the extra options they offer but I’m confused as to why their service costs so much more than Lulu’s and their royalties are less (50% for Virtual Bookworm compared to 75% for Lulu). The only major difference I see is the addition of graphics, a data backup (you should be doing this yourself)… anything else?

More information from their knowledge base:

• They offer up to $100 back if your files are print-ready.
• According to them, they “use the two largest distributors in the world.”
• They seem honest and straightforward (judging by their knowledge base entries).

I like what I saw on their site and they’re been in the business since 2000 which is quite a while for a POD publisher. With the $100 rebate, their start-up cost is only $260 and I like the options that are available.

iUniverse

These guys have also been around for a while; in fact, this was the first name I’ve ever heard for self publishing. My mom was going to use this service for a genealogy book a little while back and liked what they had to offer at the time.

The first major difference between the other two is the price: $599 for the lowest package. This package includes (among other things):

• Custom cover design
• ISBN assignment
• Five free copies
• Volume discounts for author purchases
• eBook formatting (50% royalty) with DRM
• A marketing kit (with business cards, post cards, and other effluvia)
• Author support

After reading a bit on the site, it seems like iUniverse comes with enough extra stuff to warrant the $300 premium over Virtual Bookworm (though maybe not the $500 premium over Lulu). That is, until I read the page about royalties; “iUniverse pays its authors a royalty of 20 percent on print sales and 50 percent on electronic (eBook) sales.” Yikes, that’s the lowest of the bunch and will make a big difference regardless of how many books you sell.

The start-up price and the low royalties are enough to turn me off of them right away.

Blurb

This company offers a free software program to layout your book called BookSmart. I had a HECK of a time getting this thing downloaded and installed and, once I did, it was not immediately clear how to use it. Regardless, their website is great, their concept is simple, and their Flash page-flipping thingy is very slick.

The problem I have with this company is that it takes a while to actually figure out what’s going on with their service. This isn’t so much a publishing and distributing service as it is a way to make custom books. You design it, make it with their software, upload it to their server, buy at least one copy, and they display it on their site. They charge you a flat rate for printing (per book) and you keep everything on top of that. It’s all pretty straight-forward, ever if it isn’t really what I’m looking for right now.

A few neat features:

• They’ll dump your whole blog into a book! I’d love to do that with joshisjosh.com.
• Cookbooks
• Portfolios

I really like their service but they are a bit expensive. The lowest-cost option is a 20-40 page 7×7 inch square book for $12.95 (not including shipping).

…in summary…

I always find it exciting when barriers to entry come down. Getting picked up by a publishing company is difficult (statistically speaking) and no amount of perspiration will make the critical difference. If your book doesn’t fit with what they want, you don’t get to be published, end of story. That’s a scary challenge for potentially amazing authors who don’t already have a following or a previous publication.

I know my client can have great success writing for people and, at the end of the day, the publishing house that we pick is less important than the time we spend to make the book content engaging and useful. As long as the quality is there and the book is released to all the proper distribution channels then it has the chance to become successful. I believe very strongly in my client and I think he has what it takes to make an impact in his industry.

If you are out there struggling with publishers and agents and getting nowhere, consider a different route. If you truly believe in your own content and you think you have what it takes, it’s time to look at the different channels that the internet affords you. Cough up the $100 and get your book available, first and foremost. Start a blog and show people why you’re an expert. Get some free stuff out there – articles, features, etc – so people can taste what you have to offer. Make yourself as accessible and visible as possible, involve yourself socially in a community (internet, regionally, or locally), and get the conversation started.

In the end, I’m going to leave the decision up to my client. This is his first book and I want him to have some sort of control over the process. I’m definitely going to recommend Lulu and Virtual Bookworm because their price is right and I can’t see a reason to pay any more than what they ask.

Stay tuned for a review of the process when we get going!

Other Resources:

• A print-on-demand warning
• An Incomplete Guide to Print on Demand Publishers (this is a VERY comprehensive list)
• Another Incomplete Guide to POD Publishers (similar to the one above but different choices and less options)
• Update 3/2/2009: Great self-publishing post at Mashable.com

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For anyone following, this is my second iteration and definitely the one most closely related to what I’m actually doing.

The last business card I had made was mostly a product of me being completely enthralled with cartoonist and blogger extraordinaire, Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid fame. I found his cartoons a few years ago and really enjoyed their honesty. Hugh made the great move of making his cartoons available as business cards through a site called StreetCards.com. Through a link on his site, you logged into StreetCards, picked an appropriate (or inappropriate) card, added your information, gave them the 16 digits, and waited for a shipment from the UK. I had nothing to promote besides my blog (a different one than this which didn’t even have ads on it at the time) but I felt like I needed an easy way to network and meet people.

Well, now it’s April 2008 and I need business cards… for a good reason. I wouldn’t say this whole JoshCanHelp thing is blowing up per say but I definitely have found myself in a couple situations where having a small piece of card stock would be handy. Designing a card has been on my to-do list for a few months but I always had it in my mind that I would learn the digital layout software Quark first and then submit a design to a local printer. Not only is the Quark thing on hold for the moment (I’m trying to pick an enormous, expensive software program to use and Quark isn’t winning) but I could definitely benefit from having something, ANYTHING, right now. So I drew up a few designs, settled the one I liked, set my free, simple drawing program to high resolution, and went to work.

The first thing I came up with is this:

If you can’t tell, the black text is the same font as my website (Trebuchet MS) and the red text is Rockwell (a font I would have never chosen until I saw it used properly). I really liked how it turned out so I showed it to a few people. The main complaint was that the important message – tame your technology – was difficult to discern and should be larger. I also heard (and thought myself) that the red text should be larger than the rest.

Since I had made the original design as a plain image, I had to start over with the new design. This was actually a blessing in disguise because, instead of repairing what went wrong, I just rebuilt everything to the correct specs. I used Rockwell font for all the front text but dropped the descriptions down a bit. Instead of cutting letters and words off (intentionally), I continued the words on the next line (to add continuity) to make the most out of the space. For the “josh” in the background, I lightened it quite a bit and added a blur effect to take the concentration off of my name. Finally, I left the separators between the attributes as dashes instead of manually changing them to black dots (individually).

I’ll say this: it is difficult to come up with a design and a message that accurately conveys your sense of creativity and vigor and excitement while also concentrating on being somewhat original. I’ve seen some amazing business cards on-line and it seems insane to even try and compete with half of them. But, in the end, that’s simply not the point. Just like my resume is no comparison to other resumes out there, my business card is not at all a matter of out-doing other people out there. If I don’t make an impression in person, it’s unlikely that my card is going to open some magical door.

Layer-by-layer, inch-by-inch. The message is more effective as a snowball, building momentum and speed and power and influence over time, than as one massive onslaught. A better presence is made by just that: presence.

Your comments are welcome and highly desired. Thank you.

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