UnrealisticExpectations 3.0

Tomorrow, I head to Miami for the Information Architecture Summit at the Hyatt.

It’s the first “professional” type of event like this that I’ve been to–and I’m more than a little excited.

It’s a bizarre feeling to know I’m about to go and meet some of the brightest minds in my industry, make some deeper connections and gain some new friends. Sure, there will most likely be some umbrella drinks to make everything happen easier, but mostly it’s 4 days of getting my learn on and finding new ways to become better in my career.

I’m excited.

I like what I do that much, indeed.

I’ll be armed with all kinds of pencils, business cards and resumes to help further those connections, as well as entering in a few pieces of work to the “Wall of Deliverables” that will be there.

If you happen to be in Miami, drop a line!

I’m creating another blog–more of a “professional” blog, if you will.

That is, for those of you who’ve known this place for years, I’m actually going to have a place where I can write about topics that are related to what I do as a professional.

Maybe that’ll help keep this, my previous home for smart-assery, a little more that and a little easier for me to blog at–in that style, at least.

We’ll see.

That said, I’m trying to get a little assistance with making sure the design that I have in mind will work and that I can just sort of push WordPress into my template, but I know it’s never as easy as I want it to be.

So, if you’ve got some experience, leave a comment, send an IM to Roughy or push a message to me on TehSoapbox and let’s discuss. Mostly, I feel as if I really just need some guidance on where to start and I need to be able to ask a few “Can I do this?” type of questions.

Naturally, everything is pretty much completed and I’m ready to roll, but until I can wrap all this up, well, I’m in a holding pattern. Fortunately, there’s plenty to write about over there…

Thanks for all the feedback–I ended up going with the logo shown and pushed the blue color to something a little more… “Elmer’s”, I think.

I’ve been diligently working on trying to put together a design for the website–it’s a struggle as design isn’t my strongest point, but I’ve got the basics of positioning, etc. set-up so the rest should start to fall into place.

But, alas, what’s a company without a website? What’s a company with collateral?

Well, anyone who’s done anything with design knows that if you make such things as business cards and you cheap out… people will know, and you’ll just look, well, cheap.

Especially the business cards.

But, I’m a bit of a miser about this sort of thing, so I decided to explore some online options. In the end, I wasn’t comfortable with VistaPrint for business cards–I don’t like things tooooooo glossy gloss, so even though they were an inexpensive option, I keep remembering some people passing out their free cards at networking events and how… tacky it felt–even though it was going to be 100% my own design and not the freebie stuff.

So, I kept looking. I found a bunch of different places for a bunch of differnent things. From 4by6.com to OvernightPrints.com and the aforementioned VistaPrint, I’ve found reasonably-priced resources for just about everything I could ever need.

My business cards arrived today from OvernightPrints–I uploaded my order on Thursday night, it printed Friday, shipped Monday and arrived today for the low low price of around $66 for 500 business cards with a 14 pt stock with a satin finish and rounded corners. Good quality stock, good printing and that’s the important thing.

I’m awaiting envelopes from VistaPrint before I get too carried away; I’m currently exploring the world of new gigs as my contract is up at the end of May and I grow weary of being a contractor, however, if a solid, fun contract keeps me in that world a bit longer, then it may be high time to go and seek out some additional collateral (post-its, pens) to leave behind.

Vote for me!

Thanks again for the input. Now if I could just be better at visual design, I could be happy. Happier. Or something.

I do a lot of different things out here on the web, but one of them is generally as an extension of “what I do” in real life. So, knowing that I’m not as much of a designer as I used to be (hahahahaha!!!), but knowing I can handle project management, estimations, production and some development, I keep around a Design site or two that I have.

Mostly, though, I work in User Experience.

So, given that I’ve turned on registration in order to comment so that I don’t get 3000 spams in a day that I have to approve / disapprove, the ol’ commenting has sorta stopped–not that it hadn’t all but up-and-died anyway… Anyway. Update on this: Comments shut back off for non-registered users; too much spam for me overnight. No worries, I’d never sell off all 8 of your names, anyway.

I’ll turn it back on to see what people like for the name of a new thing I’m doing: UserGlue

That’s where it’s at currently, but there’s a whole page of them here.