Welcome to Gaia! ::

Wow! Those are great, I can really see you've grown as a designer since working there!

Of the first lot, I like the first one the best - although I think that the the second one would look awesome in blue, and go better with the 'creek' thing. At the moment the red feels a bit dry, and less relaxing.

I love the 2nd lot for Saddlebrook! I want to dye my hair the same colour as that girl! xd I like the first 2, although that white area seems very empty, and the yound and lively red doesn't seem to go with the more traditional looking logo.

In the third lot, the first picture seems a bit... un-lively to me. It definitely gives the feeling of spaciousness, but the empty chair just looks so lonely sad I like the second one though.

Oh and work with something that has a white background, just set the layer its on to 'multiply' in Photoshop. It makes all the white areas transparent. It might make some areas of the logo look less opaque, but once you've found where you want it to go, just paint some white on a layer underneath it to make it look normal again 3nodding If that makes any sense sweatdrop

Thank you guys, for your ideas! And your compliments that they are actually OK pieces of work. I'll take these ideas and work with them today... keep adding stuff if anyone has something to add! smile I appreciate it so much.

Off to work... I hope this day goes better than the past couple.... its been SO stressful.

Thanks again! *hugs*!

Since I have time I'll fill people in on my contribution to your whole graphic design job.

The admanager program Silver mentioned earlier that caused the agents some trouble is also giving her some problems as well. The information the agents enter is stored then output as a PDF for Silver to edit and turn in as the final ad layout. Unfortunately the PDF isn't editable and all the text has to be selected then placed in InDesign. This seemed very unnecessary to me and I figured there had to be an easier way to handle the data. I have been working with XML lately and I thought I'd see if InDesign could work with XML. Sure enough, you can import XML straight into a template. So I've been working on that recently. There have been some complications but I'm putting a lot of free time and effort into it since it would mean income for me, which I haven't had since the summer.

The problems:
The current system uses PHP, which I know nothing about
I'm a full time student and part time employee who lives in another city
InDesign sucks at reading XML
-The XML document is tab and return sensitive
-It can only be read into one large frame, which isn't what I want it for
-Updated data can't append, it overwrites
-I/InDesign doesn't know what the hell it is doing half the time

I haven't had any contact with the current programmer who make the original system so I'm not entirely sure how much I should do. I could make the entire thing out of ASP/VBSCRIPT and have him turn that into PHP. My way would require 3 XML files, one for the raw data, one that only has this current week's ad and is formatted for InDesign's a**l import method, and one that has the template for the weekly ads since that will be overwritten each time. I could do as little as possible and just make the template for InDesign and the XML that is formatted correctly containing all the necessary tags. I would like to do as much work as possible. This is turning out to be a great learning experience and could give me some good connections. It would be good to have Silver's boss say I am a knowledgeable programmer whom he would recommend to anyone and mention that 50 dollars an hour is a bargain for my time biggrin ! Oh yeah!

So I've worked on that whole thing for about 7 hours over the weekend. I don't really count a lot of that because most of this has been a learning experience. I've had to restart several times with both my XML files and the InDesign templates. It has been a nice excuse to stop at the bookstore. I L-O-V-E love going to the Borders with Megan! I can't believe she used to have to drag me in there. I guess I just wasn't interested in manga at that point so there wasn't enough to keep me interested. Any way, I hope to have my project done by Wednesday. I have a lot of homework and a test on that day so we'll see how it goes. I won't be able to make it Meg's work during business hours until Friday so I guess I don't need it done that soon.

Well, that's my short novel. If anyone knows anything about XML/InDesign let me know! I looked through almost a baker's dozen (that's thirteen whee ) of InDesign books and they all told the same story. Hmmm, goodnight all.

Well... wouldn't ya know it... I'm so tired that I can't sleep. It's 12:30. Arg. And I realized that in my super rush to get all my ads done and turned in, I forgot a certain type of formatting with the title and the price... aligning them... yeah. So, I'm going back and forth trying to convince myself that its ok... It would be alright if they were all the same, but some are formatted right.... I don't know if I would be able to change it and get it turned in, I think the ads either have gone to print or are ready to first thing in the morning, so I don't know if there's anything I could do. I was thinking I'd take care of it now, because I can get to our fileserver via FTP, but the server has been finnicky all week and is currently down, so I can't get to it. What a pain. Its like, no matter how hard I try, I can't get everything done that I HAVE to.... or I can't do it right.

I hope this isn't too rambly to comprehend. I just can't believe that I'm awake... I guess I'll read a MegaTokyo or two, and crawl back into bed. I keep hoping in a morbid sort of way that I will wake up and all of a sudden be too sick to go to work tomorrow (or not be able to move, I've been really stiff lately). It would be nice to stay in bed. Even though I do have a 3 day weekend already....

Thanks Andrew for calling me... it helped to talk to you.

Goodnight everyone. neutral

Wow. That whole project is finally done. Really this time. We ran around all week (a 4 day week that felt like 5, and almost was... I worked a lot of overtime again) trying to get all the edits and stuff done, everything just right. And then we changed over on the Ad Manager from the pdf to the XML that Hizzahn wrote, and there were tons of bugs so it took a lot of time to work that out. Thankfully it was his break this week, so he could sit with me at work working on the code! I think we're good on that from now on... should work like a dream.

Coming up is some Parade of Homes ads, which shouldn't be a big deal... and then.... maybe we might have time to work on our agent identity packages! We are the biggest real estate agency in Idaho, and yet agents can't easily create postcards or business cards with their contact information... doesn't make much sense.

Well I'm off to bed. Ahhh sleeping in. Never thought I'd make it through Friday.

I just wish I could get into the Durem Depot to buy my Messenger Bag I've been wanting since they released it! I got one of each cape from the donation letters.... wow, I like those!! Kinda hard to work into an outfit, unfortunately. xd

Phew. Another LONG day. The day before ads are due, they decide they want to implement the new ad layout design! Phew. So I spent 3 hours after work making templates from the proofs that our consultant person Cody gave us. They're very nice designs, I like them a lot. But geezo!

Sam is probably going to be leaving the company soon, he's just not happy with what's going on, and he needs to have a change. Its sad.... but I hope to keep in touch cause he's an awesome guy.

So he's thinking we might hire another person to be in the ad dept, and then let the other designer go. We were going to fire her awhile back, but that didn't happen.... she's just so slow with everything and everyone is realizing that.

If that whole thing happens, I'd be in charge of the inhouse dept (Cody would still be managing our projects, which is a good thing, I can't do that quite yet), so that's kinda scary! I need to outline all the skills I feel I have, and just everything that I do, and can do.

So.... yes. I'm going to go to bed. *zonk*

Changed the way I have things set up on that first page.... Added a lot of info and updated some stuff!! Check it out, if you'd like. biggrin