Monday, January 23, 2012

About to Launch

It's a cool and cloudy day. The rain has been making attempts at taking over the day, but it's been off and on this morning. I just checked on weather.com, and there's a big old gob of rain headed straight for us; should be here in about an hour.

The Pasadena green parrots are hanging out in a nearby tree, hollering and screaming like they always do. Sounds like about 20 or so of them, and they are loud! I think they're bitching about getting wet. Word has it they were released back in the late '50s from the pet department of a local store that closed.

The last week I've been working like a crazy man on getting my new website up. I've been adding bells and whistles that were not present on the previous site and I'm picking up the coding and style sheet markup to render specific fonts on the pages, rather than having to make a jpg of the type to display. And, of course, Internet Explorer is being a pain in the butt, since it renders pages differently from any other browser.

Please, people, dump this browser off your computer. You can download Foxfire or Google Chrome for free, and it's easy to move your IE bookmarks over to the new browser and start using it right away. The other browsers are also much quicker to adopt the latest in HTML5 and CSS3 capabilities (which is where internet technology is going). And since Microsoft doesn't make a version of IE for the Mac (which I work on), I have to do all my design on my machine, then put the website onto a flash stick, move it over to Steve's PC and check it out on IE. (Adobe does have a BrowserLab where you can dry-run the layout, but it doesn't check all the interactivity on the page).

I'm in the final phase, which is editing and rewriting the copy on the site. And, even though I have Flash animation on the main page, I've figured out a way to display a static graphic on devices that don't support Flash (which is most smart phones). This means you can browse the whole site on your iPhone, iTouch, iPad or Android-driven phone. This is getting more important, since a lot of folks, especially busy businesspeople, are relying on their mobile devices to connect on the internet when on the go.

I've picked my printer, two guys who've been around for years, with a great reputation and costing about a third of the big-time printers in town. I guess I have a soft spot in my heart for mom-and-pop dive print shops. Anyway, once the website's finalized, the brochures and business cards go to press. So the end of the month should see me ready to put out my first promo mailer. Then comes the part I hate the most: follow-up calling.

Well, I just got some work in: Pearce Plastics needs me to resize some UPC bar codes for them, so it looks as though I'll be making some money today.

Wooo-whoo.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Beginning the Year With Confusion

There's something about when Christmas and New Year's Day fall on a weekend. I get all discombobulated. And it's especially true when New Year's Day falls on a Sunday, at least here in Pasadena.

The Rose Parade happens every New Year's Day, unless that happens to fall on a Sunday. There are lots of churches dotting the route of the parade and, back in 1893, it was decided that the parade not be held on Sundays. Even though it was a fairly simple affair back then, allowing people to get to and from church while the parade was going on was problematic, and it was a concern that the noise of the procession in the street might frighten the tethered horses outside the churches, disrupting services.

Thus, further discombobulation, as the parade happens the day after New Year's Day this year.

We live only a few blocks north of Colorado Boulevard (though the 210 Freeway tears a gash through town that sort of separates us), and there are two things that can be done during the parade: 1) head down to Colorado on foot and hope to get a glimpse of the floats and bands or 2) stay at home and watch the whole thing on the television.

Now, with High Def TV, it's almost a waste of time to go down to the actual parade. The coverage broadcast on the tube is right at the start of the parade. If we go down to Colorado and Lake to view it, there are thousands of people crowding in; the bands have been marching for a couple miles in ever-warming weather (it got up in the 80s today) and are starting to show signs of fatigue and foot blisters; and the flowers on the floats have started wilting or have begun to fall off altogether. Also, to be honest, I like to watch Bob Eubanks and Stephanie Edwards host the parade, even though they're kind of ditzy.

On a more personal note, I went down to City Hall last week and got my city business permit, so I am now officially a businessman. That feels creepy, somehow. Also last week, my promotional Post-It pads arrived from the printers (I got them at half price by ordering through a place in Texas). I've finished an extended version of the opening animation for the new website design, and have spent several hours this weekend working with the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) contract templates, putting together what will be edited down to my own contract forms.

Later this week comes picking a printer to produce my brochures and business cards, then joining up with the Chamber of Commerce and AIGA. After that comes launching the new website design, building a marketing database and my first promotional mailing. So I should be up and running by the end of the month.

This is all getting too legit. More news as things develop.