Interviews Are Real

Last week, I took a little time off of school because I had scheduled a few job interviews. Real, live, adult people, job interviews. I met some really great potential bosses, and learned about really great companies and opportunities that I could grab right after graduation. I haven't had any formal offers yet, but I really have a great feeling for my after graduation plans.

Until then, though, I have this pile of omega work that unfortunately won't complete itself. I have orders to place, websites to design, and profiles to streamline. I can so do this.

Web Presence Makes a Professional

This weekends goal was to establish a web presence for myself outside of Etsy and Blogger. Yep - a real website. I first started building one using the free editing system - Weebly. Halfway through playing around with that, I caught wind of a website called Virb - which has an app specially developed to work with Etsy. So, naturally, I started building a site on Virb.

Now, Weebly is free and is easy to use with a great building feature. But, you have the Weebly ad on the bottom of your page. Virb is $10/month (but free for a year if you sign up with a valid .edu address!) but requires no advertisement on your page. I find the user face is a bit clunky and difficult to learn, but better to use once you get the hang of it.

I followed through and completed a rough draft of both sites. At this point, I'm leaning more towards continuing my Virb site and deactivating my Weebly site. But we will see! For now, they are both very basic. They need some color, that's for sure.


Virb Website


Weebly Website

A is for Alphabet

I've been focusing a lot on the different components of my shop because it aligns with my current marketing research project. In my project, I'll be learning what others in the same market from me are doing similarly or differently that makes them more successful than I. Obviously - this is a for-profit shop, and I think a side-project solely focusing on the business aspect opposed to the artsy aspect will be extremely beneficial.

A few days ago I was experimenting with an art referred to zentangling. It is essentially just a fancy term for doodling, but it sound much more prestigious than "doodling". There are a bunch of different patterns, and of course you are welcome to create your own. This is what I drew up in my sketchbook:



It gained a bunch of likes on Instgram (just a doodle - imagine that!) so the other day I started the painstakingly annoying process of turning it into a vector image. I suppose if it were easy it wouldn't be considered an artform...



I have toyed around with the idea of making an alphabet series. But honestly, I have so many unfinished projects that I want to complete before I present this on MAY FIRST! It is definitely imperative that I sit down and make a list of all the things I want to finish and decide which ones are most important.

Tea Series

I had to draft a rendering of a tea kettle for one of my classes. Being the savvy, resourceful business woman I am, I threw a quote into it and post it up in my Etsy shop. The final result was this:


Tea & Books Typographic Print
I sold one the day after I posted it for sale, so that's a good sign! I'm in the process of making it into a series, with the idea that I could sell them as a group. If I can sell prints in multiples, I could easily boost revenue. Since my overhead cost in this business is fairly low, adding multiple series would be a great idea.

Here's an idea of the next print I'm working on to go into the series:


I'm thinking of adding an option where customers can order multiple prints at a time and get a discount.

Last week, I had a spike in orders (I sold four!) and did a bit of experimenting.

I'm starting to have enough orders that I'm realizing which prints are most popular and where I need to better focus my attention in the future. Additionally, there are prints I have yet to sell copies of. I'm beginning to wonder if I should even bother to renew some of the prints or just retire them altogether.

Last week, I spent some time hand-lettering quotes into my sketchbook and trying to turn them into vectors by taking a picture and converting it in Illustrator. However, I didn't use a smooth enough paper or a smooth enough pen, and the vector that created was very uneven, hard to work with, and useless.

I was just doodling in my sketchbook and created this. I posted it to Instagram and it was mildly popular.


I thought that maybe it could be a great jumping-off point for an alphabet series, if I could convert it to vector or even recreate it myself through my tablet.

Dreams By Design Re-Branding: Banner Design

Being a modern-day art student, I spent the greater part of my Friday night designing. It was miraculous, really. At 5 p.m. I was laying on my couch feigning off a nap, and next thing I knew it was five hours later and I had completed 3 logo designs and 4 banner designs.

My color palette began as:
Coral: #EECDB9
Teal: #DCEFE9
Grey: #CBC3BE

But as I was designing, I dropped they grey and stuck with black because I preferred the way it popped.

       






What's really frustrating about uploading for Etsy is that they only support 72dpi. No matter what format or how I save my images, the banner and logo will always look terrible and pixelated.

Omega Master To-Do List

My ideas for my omega project are all over the place, so I decided I need to put them all here haphazardly and then come back and reorganize them into a proper ordering. I do terribly apologize for the craziness about to follow.

Create New Designs: All the prints I have posted in my shop are black and white and boring all over. I'm making sales, but if I were to make them more eye-catching I think I could sell many more.

Find a Printer: It is difficult to find time to print orders and run them off to the post office. If I were to suddenly begin to get even more orders, it would be much more difficult to keep up with. If I can use an off-site printer to process the orders for me, it would exponentially cut down on my work.

Experiment With Different Papers & Sizing: I've been printing on bright white matte photo paper. I'd really love to experiment with other types of textures and see what works and what doesn't. I'll need to find an off-site printer that offers different paper options.

Dreams by Design Complete Rebranding: the pink & creme and chevron isn't really working for me anymore. DBD needs a clearer logo and a more effective banner and color scheme.

I can do this!

Social Media Clean-Up

As part of my omega and my official transition into the "real world," my social media sites will need a bit of a check up. I did a quick google search of my name and my social media aliases to find where I am. In addition to making sure all the sites are clean and free of inappropriate content, it's important that all my social media profiles contain the same information and work together to cast me in a positive light.

Facebook
Deanna Crone
Dreams by Design
Chloe + Isabel by Deanna

Twitter
@dontpanicdeanna

Instagram
@dontpanicdeanna

Blogger
Don't Panic, Deanna
Everything's Temporary

LinkedIn
Deanna Crone

Pinterest
@dontpanicdeanna

Etsy
Dreams by Design