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I was lucky  to have this book find its way to my hands. The Savvy Designer’s Guide to Success is a jewel for any young designer on the looks to get his or her business off the ground. For an experienced designer it can bring a fresh set of ideas and pointers. The book goes deep into guiding any designer to succeed by covering details from the ground up, keeping it cool when a job depends on it, how to price your time and giving back to the community.

These days, with thousands of blogs and references out there, this has to be one of the best I have come across that gathers all kind of tips and information for the reader, not only on the technical and practical side of things but also on the human side. Savvy Designer’s Guide to Success talks about keeping good communication between the designer and the world: clients, providers and other fellow designers.

The author, Jeff Fisher, covers in this book one of the biggest things I have learned from him. Not to be afraid of “Tooting your own horn”. This is covered in one of the many wonderful chapters with in the book. He points you in the right direction, giving the feel of a very organic relationship between the designer and the author. He merely gives you guidance about the available paths and the path you choose is up to you. All around, it’s a book that needs to be in any designer’s library.

To learn more about the Savvy Designer’s Guide to Success, you can visit Jeff Fisher’s blog.  You can purchase the book through third party resellers at Amazon.com (since the original book is out of print) or a searchable PDF released late January 2009 through MyDesignShop.com. Either way, I highly recommend you get your hands on a copy. This book is one of the tools for today’s designer. I want to thank Jeff for this amazing book that has been a wonderful guide and enlightening read!

Under: Backslash, Design, Freelancing, Resources on 21 Dec 2009 1 Comment »

Here’s the 2009 set of the concert photography pictures for elClubo, to continue from this other post \elClubo Concert Photography. There are two gigs that I covered this last year, one of them the CD launch concert for Bendita Desgracia. Here’s the complete set for 2009.

• elClubo live at La Sala, Antigua Guatemala, I had so much fun at this gig! The venue was small and cozy and everyboday hd a great time. The lightning was tough to work around with, but I managed to get a cool black and white set.
• Bendita Desgracia CD launch concert. It has been the biggest crowd I’ve seen for them! The gig was amazing, the vibe perfect… and the music superb!

Enjoy!

Under: Music, Photography on 19 Dec 2009 No Comments »

No new post today my readers! Work has caught up with me! Will try to post a good mac tip next week…

In the meantime, check out my Delicious bookmarks to see what I’ve been reading, Last.fm to see the tunes I’ve been listening on this last days of hard work and feel free to browse around my pics on Flickr!

Under: Backslash, Freelancing on 17 Sep 2009 No Comments »

I’m flying to Mexico City later this month for the Creative Suite Live Conference. Come join me for two days of fun and exciting workshops, with sessions by Rufus Deuchler, Greg Rewis, Jorge Barrigón, Mariana Cabral, Aldo de la Fuente and Ramón Villarreal Ramírez. The Conference is going to be held at Centro Banamex.

This is a MoGo Media event, more information on the speakers, schedule, sponsors and tickets go here.

Under: Events, Freelancing on 15 Sep 2009 No Comments »

Today I came around an interesting site: Free FreeHand. That brought back up memories…

The first contact I had with digital design was seeing my cousin do her magic with a Mac and FreeHand 7, trying to reproduce what she sketched with her markers. A few years later, I found that I was very much drawn towards design and decide to get myself a pretty iMac Special Edition (one of those gray bubbles that just had a CD reader, I remember using a pretty big IoMega CD burner), got Photoshop and FreeHand so I could start working out my design skills before attempting to actually do some work around it. Fast forward 4-5 years and CS comes out, I get a chance to upgrade and start self teaching Illustrator and InDesign. In 2006, Adobe announces the halt of FreeHand development, and most designers are forced to use Illustrator.

Learning to do all I did in Freehand in two apps: Illustrator and InDesign was hard. After a while, I start getting a grip of how things should really work. I used Freehand for everything: logo design, document layouts- I even knew designers that did their quote proposals and kept track of their invoicing within FreeHand. Now I was forced to split my work flow into two applications and it felt like walking blindfolded into unknown territory. After a few months, I get this huge project about making a series of restaurant designs and I see that as a huge opportunity to get my groove going into the Creative Suite.

I’m one of those self taught designers, and being as curious with software and adventurous enough to try this software in a country where FreeHand and sometimes CorelDraw ruled the vector design work, I embraced the opportunity. By that time, I was in CS2. First bump in the road: The printer didn’t have Illustrator at all, not to mention InDesign. I did some research and started convincing that we either could work out with EPS files for the pages and he could put them together in whatever application he fancied or we could work with PDFs. His answer: TIFF files please. For a 20 page 8.5″ x 13″ menu… I was scared. How many Cd’s would that be? He wanted all the TIFFS (and the EPS files as a safe cushion) in Cd’s… the printer didn’t have a DVD reader. Second bump. I had to send this huge amount of Cd’s but the menu got printed, looked great. Job done. Not only here in Guatemala but in El Salvador too. CS3 comes out, then CS4. Until now I can go with complete confidence to a printer here and I know they will have the InDy+Illy knowledge and accept the files in PDF for printing. Still, you can hear a designer walk into a print shop asking about FreeHand.

The Free FreeHand site wants to rescue FreeHand from the doom it’s already in. Having used FreeHand throughout it’s latter versions, I have to say that it was a solid competitor to Illustrator CS2, and now in CS4 there are many of FreeHand’s features put into Illustrator. The site has date of September 2009, and looking at the date, 10 days into September and they already have 1421 subscribers to their newsletter and are encouraging their supporters to spread the word. I know that if FreeHand resurrects from the dead, I wouldn’t migrate back. I already worked out the old designs I had in FreeHand and upgraded them to Illustrator, when it wasn’t as forward and easy as it is now. But the most important reason for me not to move back to FreeHand it would be it’s lack of Creative Suite integration.

It’s going to be interesting where this goes. If they get Adobe to either release the code or release the FreeHand rights to development to a new company, it would be a surprise.

Under: Backslash, Design, Macs on 10 Sep 2009 No Comments »