anoki.net

I have always been a big social media junkie before it was even called social media. Back then we called it “MySpace”. Now it is a multi-million dollar industry that is comprised of heavyweights like Facebook and Twitter, and I have spent a large portion of my time this last year becoming a fair master at commanding attention on many of these platforms for my projects and goals. How you may ask? By giving.

Late last year I decided to take inspiration from all of my wonderful non-profit, socially conscious, and philanthropic clients and start my own not-for-profit charity project called BuddhaBadges. Using good old web design, interface development, elbow grease, and a slew of social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Mailchimp) I have been able to take this little project and make it a relative success in only a few months! The first donation made was for $40 after 2 months of collecting, and now BuddhaBadges is pulling in over $150 a month for it’s causes.

From this network I’ve strung together across these social platforms, I’ve met some great thinkers and have recently finished a streak of pro-bono designs for a few. These connected bloggers have each approached me with design needs for their blogs—such as The Blogisattva Awards, Precious Metal, Bayou City Buddhist, and the Online Meditation Crew—for which I was happy to lend a hand. Although free, they were great little logo or header re-designs that allowed me to find great connections and instantly garner leads to three paying clients within the same industry and field of interest.

In my research and understanding of both social media specifically but also the Buddhist mind-set in general, giving is the most natural and attractive quality one can generate. By helping and giving you are letting others know that their interests and goals are your interests and goals; that you are there to truly help them achieve… and that is always the kind of designer a client is looking for.

I am very happy to say that I have been published! Last year, my old college professor Sheena Calvert called me to see if I would be interested in helping her write a Graphic Design textbook for first-year design students. Needless to say I was very honored to be asked to be part of such a great project. The book, entitled The New Graphic Design School: A Foundation Course in Principles and Practice, was just published and is actually available on Amazon , and it is being sold universities and colleges worldwide!

Being that the book was split into two sections—Principles and Practice—my specific focus was on putting the Principles, discussed in the first section of the book, to Practice. Creating various new chapters to be added to the existing manuscript, such as Web and Internet technologies, Print Production Issues, and Digital Printing, I also worked very closely on the Commercial Application chapter. This chapter put the principles and practice into play by giving various real-world examples of industry fields and careers. I also was happy to make myself readily available to Sheena and her partner Rebecca to help with the Principles section.

This was a completely new working process for me since I was in charge of the text and imagery instead of being in charge of the designing of the text and imagery. Speaking of imagery I also took this opportunity to put a few pictures of Lou, my dog into the book. Also, the fact that the publishers and my writing partners were in England made the process that much more interesting. All I can truly say is that Skype was a big part of this project.

I don’t really expect anyone but family members and a few thousand college students to buy the book, but I’m very proud to say that I was part of the next generation of designers and graphic design by sharing my experience and know-how to date to those just starting out.

Again, thank you Sheena for including me on such an amazing project!

It’s kind of hard to believe but Cindy and I finally have a website for incompra design. It took us way too long to get some sort of expanded version of our online calling card up and running, but we did it – and we did it as we do everything: collaboratively. We decided early on that we needed to divide the work evenly in order to defray any “time-n-energy” cost we both put into the equation. So I created from scratch a structure for the site based around templates within which Cindy could Photoshop together text and imagery into individual cells–Photoshop being her weapon of choice. Most of the images were shot by Barry Halkin of Halkin Photography… thanks Barry! Ah Teamwork!

We split the site into three major informational sections that related specifically to our team (basically about us individually and as a team and others feedback on us), our work (12 or so screens of incompra goodness), and our process (which details through imagery all of the aspects of different campaigns and marketing initiatives we have done). From that point on a horizontal navigation format is introduced as the user is invited to scroll right and left through a variety of “cells” that Cindy created. Many aspects of the live text throughout the rest of the site reflect the key phrases and concepts used in these cells, for SEO purposes, as well as all available meta-tagging.

I feel very good about the site, as it captures our branding and theory, as well as shows off our work and details a few in-depth projects that we’ve done over the years for non-profits, start-ups, small businesses and capital campaign/fundraising. Now that we have this marketing tool, I feel even more confident in the work that I have done with Cindy and incompra, as well as my work as a freelancer here and with Frankenknuckle. Hooray.

www.incompra.com