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triggersandsparks.com projects

Portrait of a Lady

I went a little insane last Christmas, and decided that I needed to hand-make everyone rather involved presents. (This may or may not have been in part induced by my deep-seated fear of shopping anytime in December.) For my beloved little sister, I decided that an abstract portrait of sorts was the way to go.

One on One Coaching Revamp

Marcia approached me with a website that she didn’t want to change radically, but that wasn’t quite living up to its potential.

CTA Organizational Charts

The Canadian Transport Agency needed a set of well-designed organizational charts to deliver to their stakeholders. They had a lot of information that needed to be squeezed into quite a small space, and very particular accessibility guidelines.

Kannis Dog Food Bag

Kannis were producing a dog food for the Indian market, and were looking for a packaging design that was both modern and classical. This being quite a new arena for me, I did a good deal of research into dog food packaging and discovered that a lot of effort goes into designing those bags to appeal to pet owners.

Atlantic Sojourn Revamp

The Atlantic Sojourn B&B loved their website, but wanted it to be more search-engine friendly. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is such and involved and ever-changing knowledge that many companies deal with it exclusively. What I could offer to Susan and Sebelle was a retooling of the site structure and code in order to help boost its rankings.

Keeping it simple, stupid.

Chocolatey fuel July 30 

Have I mentioned how much I love my clients? I checked the mailbox yesterday and found a box full of delicious chocolate muffins (thank goodness customs didn’t open the box!), accompanied by this note:

Hi Sarah,

So sorry to hear that you lost a considerable amount of work when water spilled on your computer. While chocolate zucchini muffins (no nuts–in case you’re allergic) won’t bring the material back (wouldn’t that be great), perhaps they can fuel the recreation process. Just want to let you know that we can be patient for an ultimately high-quality product.

Cheers!

ACT

How utterly sweet & lovely is that? I am an incredibly lucky girl to get to work with such fabulous clients.

Lazy Sundays July 27 

Well, it’s been a long, long, long time in the making, but I’ve finally updated my portfolio a teeny little bit (not too much to be overwhelming, of course!) There’s this portrait of my gorgeous little sister:

and a “new” website (that was completed months ago). I really don’t like updating my own website!

But I’m determined that it’s about time to do it, especially given that I’m about to move again, and that means that my address as listed on the website will be even more wrong than it is currently. (Sure, in theory it only takes two minutes to change it, but that’s not how I work…if I’m going to spend two minutes, I’m going to be there three hours trying to fix all the little things.) At any rate, all the little things have really added up, and it’s time for some major-ish rearranging.

Actually, the most dramatic upgrade has already happened, and that was my finally giving in to the whole “blog” phenomenon. It took years, but I finally buckled, and I’m sort of enjoying it. What sold me on Wordpress is how monstrously simple it is—I actually started using it the place of a word processor, and I find it much smarter: it auto-saves constantly (good for those of us prone to data loss), it’s totally un-bloaty, it’s faster than typing out my own html, and it auto-formats my smart quotes. God, I love smart quotes. I actually spent an hour or so today formatting a client’s novel to get rid of all the dumb quotes, hyphens, and “period” ellipses. I don’t know why these tiny details are so important to me–but I suspect that there’s a place where the grammar-fascist in me meets the typophile, and proper typography is born. Or maybe it’s just that I, embarassingly enough, didn’t know about smart quotes and such for so long that I now consider them to be something of a litmus test for “quality” design?

Smart quotes aside, the news/blog section has all been redone, and I like it a lot, and may even get into the habit of using it more frequently. Wordpress is really great and easy to develop themes for (once you figure out what you’re doing), which I’ve been doing of late for Lilith Saintcrow, who writes novels about girls who kick ass and take names (all told, the best kind of lady). I’ve got a couple more weblog-based websites in the works, so I’m learning a lot these days.

On a side note, why is there always an elephant (in the room) on my to-do list? I’m a notorious list-maker, and I’ll sometimes prioritize my lists in order of importance, not that I follow my own order religiously. For example, today I’m at #12, but #3 is still sitting there patiently, un-crossed, with three exclamation marks following it. It’s the most vital thing on my list, but I’m betting it’ll be the one thing that’ll end up being neglected. Is this some kind of subconscious self-mutilation wherein I’ll always sabotage myself for the work that is most important? How do I trick myself into thinking “eat three tubs of chocolate fudge icing” is the Elephant Task, instead? I’ve read a few productivity-type tips that recommend things like offering to wash a friend’s car, or pay them $50, if you don’t complete the Elephant by the end of the day (the theory being that we’re all inherently lazy, and the only way to make us do something is by threatening us with something more unpleasant), but I feel like that’s somehow compounding the pressure of the situation, thereby inflating the psychic block.

Anyone know how to take down an Elephant (or a run-on sentence)?

On loss, and recovery July 25 

I have a terrible tendency to throw what I refer to as “all night work parties”, which usually end up comprising about two and a half days straight of me staring into my laptop, clacking away and forgetting to sleep or come up for air. They’re admittedly not the most glaringly healthy way of getting things done, but I do tend to be the sort of person who works in spurts, and when the fever comes over me, I often like to run with it. (I actually experimented with a “normal” schedule, wherein I slept at least a little bit every single night for a month straight. It was interesting, and I may try it again at some point…but not just now.)

So a few weeks ago, I was crashing at the tail end of a work party, and ended up falling asleep next to my laptop, gigantic glass of water in hand. Yes, you know where this is headed. A few hours later, I woke up spilling said gigantic glass of water all over myself and my poor laptop. (Lovely way to wake up, might I add.) Naturally, I panicked. There was much cursing and wailing (me) and sparking and crackling (the machine) as I tried to figure out what on earth to do. It wouldn’t turn off, and it took my sleep-addled brain a good five minutes to figure out that removing the battery would do the trick. The poor thing was soaked, and ruined. I was in a similar state. That machine was, in effect, the entirety of my business assets, and the tool by which I can earn my living, and it had just crackled out and died on me.

Now, a few weeks later, I’m almost 100% back on my feet. I’m lucky, really. I’d been relatively good about maintaining my backups, so I didn’t lose anything too vital, data-wise. I keep my contact list synced remotely with Plaxo, which saved me a lot of legwork. (I’ve since upgraded and it syncs my calendar. I did have to rebuild my monster font collection (though I think it’s been quite nicely updated and it’s rather nice to start fresh), computer settings, and the like, which took some time. I use IMAP for my email, so all of my mail, both incoming and outgoing, was right there waiting for me, and since my estimates and invoices are sent out via mail, I could access all of those, too. My greatest losses were a few selected recent projects that hadn’t been backed up, my time logs, my calendar of hosting renewals, the $1800 I paid for a new machine, and about a week of my time.

All in all? Not the end of the world, and I’ve bounced back. (And I have a brand-new laptop that doesn’t sound like a jet engine taking off, which is helping my sanity levels.) I always thought that if my computer were to die, I’d be destroyed. It’s nice to realize that the obstacles you fear most are never as insurmountable as they seem–or maybe just that you’re better prepared and more resilient than you originally assumed.

And not to be too trite, but it’s been a great learning experience. For example, I’ve learned that machines and water do not mix, and that I ought to be drinking from a sippy cup when I’m tired. I’ve learned that there are things outside of my design folder that are important and should be backed up, and I’ve learned that I need a more reliable (and preferably automated) way of doing backups.

Any suggestions?

More thoughts on design! June 22 

Because I’m sure that those of you who know me well don’t hear enough of my thoughts on design. This is a questionnaire I filled out in response to a freelance job posting. It was quite an exhaustive process, actually, and I only had a short timeframe in which to complete it, but I gave it my best shot. (I’ve edited out the “technical” portion and the examples & attachments, as that sounded a little too much like a high school test for even me to be interested in it!)

Process

1.Do you start with a rough comp or go straight into a “finished” design?

Usually when working for clients I’ll start with four different initial rough mockups. We then revise back and forth, and with each stage of revision I start pulling the pieces together into a more polished final, along with applying the client’s suggestions.

1a. Do you mock up on paper or in photoshop?

A little bit of both, usually … though I usually don’t show the paper mockups to anyone!

2. How much time do you usually spend creating a home page design?

This tends to vary depending on the client and their budget. Most of my clients are small-budget so I keep things as quick as possible without sacrificing aesthetics too much. Usually, to take a design from mockups through to completed template (before any coding happens!) takes around 10 hours, including all the stages of revision.

3. How much time do you typically spend “polishing” a design?

I have been known to spend tens of hours, but generally, as I do try to keep an eye on the clock and not indulge my perfectionist side too much, it tends to average out at about 5-10 hours, depending of course on the complexity of the design!

4. Would you say you are more “get it done, get it out” focused or “get it perfect” focused?

I think I’m naturally more the latter … if I’m designing something for myself or for a client who doesn’t have time restrictions, I can spend a good deal of time poring over the minute details. But most of my clients want it done now, and don’t have a lot of money to spend indulging me, so I do quite effectively steer myself towards the “get it done” line of focus.

5. How do you manage design quality vs. time available?

I try to make it so that my process facilitates better quality, and obviously, as I get better, I find that I’m able to do better work in less time, and spend less time on work that goes nowhere. I try to really restrict the amount of time I put into rough comps, as a lot of this can be “wasted” time. I’ve got to the point where I can do comps far more quickly, and am then left with more time near to the end of a project to refine and polish. I also try to make myself focus on the things that people will actually notice, rather than the things that only matter to me, and this keeps my perspective in line a bit.

Style

1. How would you describe your artistic style?

I do tend to vary—one of the things I love about design is that you don’t really need to pigeonhole yourself into one aesthetic, as different projects require different styles. However, I find my style usually tends toward being rather clean & simple, with bold lines and colour. I like to offset this with the use of textures and typographic flourishes, so that things aren’t quite so stark.

2. Who would you say has influenced your design style?

That’s another thing that I love about design! Influences come from everywhere … I can be as inspired by a bottle of juice as I can be by a stunning website. I find my style is most influenced by beautiful things that I find around me—good recent examples of this are this gorgeous PaperBlanks day planner I bought, a book called “The Modern Gentleman”, and the shape of the tree outside my window.

3. What do you think should drive the visual style of a website?

The most important thing is that it reflects the message of its content, and is in line with its company’s marketing objectives. That comes first—some sites require a textured, elaborate look, while others demand something simpler or more professional-looking. I always try to ensure I have a good idea of what the design should be “saying” prior to even thinking about a design. Design can communicate so much before anyone reads even so much as a word on the page; it’s vital that your first impression be the right one!

4. What are some examples of sites (not yours) that you like?

butterlondon.com, alistapart.com, chicagomanualofstyle.org, giohalifax.com, walnutgrovespring.com, marketcircle.com, 37signals.com, klf.org, webdesignerwall.com

5. What are some examples of sites that you dislike?

MySpace! about.com … there are so many, it’s really hard to just name a few!
Misc

1. To what extent were you taught/receive formal training on design vs. learning by yourself?

I actually learned web design, and, by extension, the basics of PS, when I was about fourteen, so I’d been doing it relying on a “good eye” for some time before I went to school.  School gave me a decent understanding of the basics and of how to apply them, but I found that I’ve learned much more since being out of school! I read a lot: websites, magazines, books, and I’m always trying to learn new things. I feel constantly like a student.

2. What design websites do you read regularly?

A List Apart, Vitamin, Veer, design.Principles, Be a Design Group (since defunct), Graphic Define, FreelanceSwitch, The Book Design Review.

3. What is your a recent blog post or article on design you enjoyed?

There was a fantastic article in the last issue of Design Edge magazine about book cover design that I really enjoyed, and another one about this redesign of a honey manufacturer’s marketing materials. (I tend to enjoy reading magazines more than I do websites! I spend too much time staring into the screen.) I recently really enjoyed this History of the Ampersand.

4.What are your top three “must read” books on design?

Stop Stealing Sheep, The Elements of Typographic Style, Universal Principles of Design.

5. What are the latest trends in web design?

Gradients, things reflected in invisible mirrors (this usually is done without any logical consideration), that curly/flourishy vector look, extra whitespace to create a long long scrolling page, use of large icons and directing graphics, increased simplicity, grunge elements seem to be back again, but in more of a texture/background sort of a way…

Adventures in Googling Oneself May 30 

Oh, come on, everyone Googles themself at some point, don’t they? I do it mostly to see what (if anything) the internet has to say about me, and if any of it will come back to haunt me. I have, at times, been known to disclose too much online.

A Google search for “sarah semark” yields this hilariously erroneous newspaper article from last year, in which my cat is actually referenced as a business partner, and this similarly hilarious and out-of-date portfolio site, which I should really take down, but I’m far too absorbed in my own personal history to do so.