It has become me and Michelle’s tradition to go to Chicken Salad Chick for lunch at least once a week. On my first day working for Michelle I told her that I loved chicken salad, and that any time it is a menu option, that is what I will order. In return she divulged that she was the exact some way. So now we have reached the high honor that the workers at the Chicken Salad Chick near her house know who we are, since one of the workers walked by our table today and remarked, “you guys were also here last week!” Personally I don’t see that as a bad thing, I view it as a sign of respect. The workers at both Dunkin’ Donuts in Rock Hill know who I am, and it makes me smile when they ask how my day or work has been going.
Today also marks me and Freddie the Beagle’s two week friendship. Every other Thursday people come to clean Michelle’s house, and Freddie is more scared of the vacuums than he is of me. So, when the vacuums had to come in the office, he ran over to me for protection. Now he still barks at first when I come in the door, but he’ll come over to my chair and let me rub his ears – I am very excited about this development as you can tell.
Tip of the day: Michelle really dislikes when people don’t know which way paisley patterns go- they’re supposed to be vertical, not horizontal.
Today I’ve been working on a client document for MJ Creative. So what that entailed was using illustrator to design several pages that would list what services Michelle does, the process leading up to creation, and what I spent the most time on due to research, the difference between WordPress and Square space.
For those that would like to know, WordPress is a more complex site, and it has to be hosted by another domain. Square space is a lot more simplistic, with a “what you see is what you get” style, and it hosts its own site. So WordPress sites can be more expensive because you can get any type of look you want and if you are tech-savvy you can easily alter code in any combination to get a variety of website results. Square space comes with 25 main layouts and is very straightforward and less detail oriented. Depending on your skill level or time commitment you may want to choose one over the other. And if you have no skill sets, then hiring someone to make a WordPress site sounds just fine.
While I was working on the document, I was having a fight with Illustrator. Last week I updated my laptop and ever since my computer has been much slower. When I get a chance I want to bring it to the Apple store, but I doubt there is much they can do other than say “you have a lot of stuff on your computer that’s slowing it down”. Yes I know I have over 10,000 photos and all of the Adobe programs, but I would like to know why the update I got makes it worse. But back to Illustrator, I had to create three documents with two art boards each (the document is 6 pages) because there was too much data to have one document with 6 art boards. So that took awhile for me to realize, but once I did it was smooth sailing.
Often times I think of using Canva for graphics. It is a really useful website, and I think people who do not have loads of design experience would benefit from using it, or people who want to make something very quick. I prefer to use Photoshop and Illustrator because you can manipulate the designs more. The one issue I have with Canva is that when you put a shape down, it will only shrink or enlarge the shape proportionally. In other words, you can only make an equilateral triangle instead of acute or isosceles, and this can be very frustrating to work with when you have a design in mind and no possible way to execute it.
Always learn more than one way to do something. If you only know one way, and for some reason the software or the program or the materials aren’t available, you’re out of luck. Knowing more than one way to get an effect helps you think on your feet when a problem arises, because you have an alternative route to take.