The Blog of Doug Cloud

The Blog Checklist - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:10:00 +0000

When first starting out in the blogosphere things can get pretty overwhelming fast. I know because I was overwhelmed by it all myself. Choosing where to blog was a no-brainer, because I'd known about Blogger for some time and had read many articles lauding praise on them. Also, it's hands-down the easiest and most user friendly blogging platform out there. If you don't believe me you can check out my other article on Blogger here. You can even Google about it. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Ok, so today I'm talking about setting up your first blog and the trials and tribulations that come with that process. It helps to have a checklist so grab a notebook and pay attention...

Create Your Blog

First off, you might be wondering, 'What is a blog anyway?' Darren Rowse of ProBlogger has a pretty good article on that subject here. Once you've decided to start your own blog you may also be wondering, 'Which blogging platform do I choose?' Again, Darren has you covered with another in-depth article here, which discusses the many differences between popular blogging platforms. In the end it really comes down to personal choice. In my opinion there are really only three decent blog sites to choose from - Blogger, WordPress, and Typepad.

Of course, you should check them all out and decide which one works best for your needs. In the end it really doesn't matter because blogging is blogging no matter where you do it.

Create Your Posts

"The only thing that should be serious about your blog is it's content. Point Blank Period."

- FitJerk

Yes, content is king, especially on a blog. The blogging platform has become the main device by which people communicate their views, opinions, jobs, hobbies, and passions. So what you write about and how you write about it will be vital to your new blog's success.

Now that you have created your blog you'll want to write at least one or two posts to begin with. Don't worry too much over this part just start writing. For your own reference here are Five Things You Should Know Before You Start Blogging. Don't worry about all the other stuff like badges, links, sidebar content, and ads. You can add all the bells and whistles later. For right now just concentrate on what you want to write about. Take your time. Brainstorm. It's your fifteen minutes of fame. Use it wisely.

First time post ideas:

› Introduce yourself and your blog to your potential audience and provide a link in your post to your About page (explained in step 6 below) so people can learn even more about you if they so desire.

› Explain what your new blog is about. If it is about sewing then tell the people why you chose to blog about sewing. Let them hear about your passion for sewing and get them excited about the subject. Make sure you talk 'to' the readers, not 'at' them. When you write imagine you are having a conversation with someone close to you. What would you say to that person about your new blogging adventure? Write it down as you imagine the conversation in your head. The number one reason why all blogs fail is that they don't relate personally to the people who visit them. Remember this every time you write content for your blog; write as if you are actually speaking to them in person.

› If someone or something inspired you to start your new blog then describe this in your post. If possible provide links to the people or places you mention so your readers can go find out more about them. If the people or places you mention are on the Web and have Facebook or Twitter accounts make sure you go and befriend or follow them there. Send them an email when you have finished your post and let them know you mentioned them on your blog. Provide a link in the email to your blog post so they may go read it themselves. Personal interaction, otherwise known as social networking, is going to be your number one method for driving people to your new blog.

› Use relevant and interesting photos in your posts. This is something I need to start focusing on myself, because I always write a post and publish it and then have people write me saying, "Doug, why didn't you use any images?" So this piece of advice is for me, too. A great place to find photos for your posts is Flickr. If you don't have a Flickr account I suggest you create one. As a new blogger you're going to need a place to store your photos, which you can easily link to in your posts or you could even create a Flickr widget to display them on your new blog. If your are new to Flickr the following sites will help ...

› How to get the most out of Flickr

› Tips for Flickr Beginners

› The Official Flickr FAQ

› The Flickr Help Forum

If you use Flickr to search for images for your posts then you're going to want to read A Complete Guide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images. This article will describe how to search for images and how to use them without violating anyone's copyrights.

› Choose your post title wisely. Once your publish your post this will go out into the whole wide world and be picked up by anyone who later subscribes to your blog's feed. Take as much time, care, and consideration in picking your post title as you do writing your post.

Things you should avoid blogging about:

› 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Starting a New Blog

› 5 MORE Mistakes to Avoid

› The 7 Deadly Sins of Blogging

› Things You Should Avoid Blogging About

Create Your Feed

Once you've written a couple posts and published them on your new blog then you'll want to get your very own RSS feed started. Feedburner is the only place to go unless you plan on using something more advanced like AWeber. I would suggest starting out with FB since it is the easiest one for beginners. Here's a great tutorial on setting up your first feed on Blogger. You'll also have to create a Google account while you're at it since they now own Feedburner.

Create Some Friends

Next you'll want people to know about you and your new blog so take some time and Google around for other blogs and bloggers like yourself. Visit their blogs, read their posts, and leave comments - and I don't mean "Cool!", "Nice post!", or something inane like that. Actually take the time to write a comment beyond three words. Speak to the author of the blog, interact with him/her, tell them what you thought of their article(s). The more engaging your comments the more likely they will come and comment on your blog.

Create Your Social Side

You'll want to make a splash in the online social world so sign up at some of the popular media sites like Twitter, Facebook, ProBloggerCom, FriendFeed, and BlogEngage. Yes, I know it's a lot to do at first, but you want to start interacting with other bloggers online so they will come to know about you and your new blog. Mr. Society I'm not, so if I can do this you can, too.

Here are a few places with lists of popular media sites you can choose from:

› Top 100 Social Media Sites
Vladimir Prelovac's list of 100 Social Media Sites as released by SeoMoz

› Top Social Media Sites
This list is sorted by Website, Alexa, or Category. Click on the header titles to check them out.

› List of Social Media and Social Networking Sites
This is a categorized list. Just click on a link or scroll down the page.

› Help With Social Media Sites
A site that explains about social media sites.

› Ten Things You Should Not Share on Social Networks
A list of things you should NOT share on social media sites.

Create Your Content

Once you get all the above done then you'll want to concentrate on your blog. People will come. So when they do you want to make sure they aren't looking around and wondering why they did. Create an About Me page and explain some personal things about yourself and why you started your blog. Here's a great article on creating About Me pages. Here on Blogger you can create pages and bury them in the back of your blog and then link to them from the front page. Refer to my own tutorial Creating About Me Page & Author Box for instructions on how to accomplish this.

Create Your Layout

Now that you have your blog set up with a couple posts and some informative pages it's time to think about the layout. If you chose Blogger then you've come to the right guy for tweaking your blog. Just check out some of these goodies ...

Add Background Images to Post Titles

Customized Feedburner Subscription Box

The Making of TBODC

Display Your Recent Posts via BuzzBoost

Box Up Your BuzzBoost

Hacking Related Posts

You'll find more blog tweaking tutorials over in the right sidebar under "The Best of TBODC". BloggerBuster is another great place to learn various blog tweaks (if you choose Blogger, that is).

Create Some Time

Ok, so now you have quite a list of things to do and so you don't get overwhelmed now is a good time to talk about blog stress. Yes, there is such a thing. In fact, you may be feeling it right now. Take a few deep breaths. In and out. There ... feel better? Remember that it's just a blog. Even if you plan on making money on your blog or showcasing your own particular talents in the hopes of making money, always tell yourself - it's just a blog.

If you have a regular day job don't you go home after you're done and relax, eat, sleep? Well, blogs are no different. It's easier to get caught up in blogging because you can sit on your can for untold hours and totally loose track of time, or months, or even years. So it's important to remember to stop occasionally and take a break. Go have a latte. Go for a walk. Ride your bike. Visit your folks. I'm sure they haven't heard from you since you started blogging and most likely they're wondering if you died alone in your apartment slumped over your computer.

Remember ... it's just a blog. Blogs are not the same as web sites. There's a big difference. A blog is like an online journal or diary. A web site is a where you sell products or offer services or anything business related. Yes, there are portfolio sites and sites about cooking and scrapbooking, but these are still web sites. If you search around Google you'll find many sites that have links to their blogs. The web site is business and the blog is personal, or at least it should be anyway.

Now do not get discouraged if for a while in the beginning you don't seem to get many visitors or any comments to your posts. These things take time. It's like watching a pot of water waiting for it to boil. Don't do this to yourself. This is the main reason why most people who start new blogs quit. Remember the line from the Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams, "If you build it they will come." This applies to blogs, too.

Had enough deep breathing? Feeling better now? Good. Next time we meet I'll be discussing some more first time blogging tips that you can add to your checklist. Make sure you subscribe to TBODC so you can know when the next installment is posted. And if you mention your new blog in the comments below I'll do likewise.

Until then ... happy blogging :)

Why WordPress Made Me Eat Crow

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:53:00 +0000

Ladies and gentlemen, it is now official ... Doug Cloud must eat crow when it comes to all the negative things he's said concerning WordPress. I just started my own WP site for my design business, whose name has changed to Doug Draws. The other day I bought some hosting with HostGator after reading some excellent reviews on the company, then I bought my domain through them and they did a one-click install of WP with Fantastico.

Starting this new site I also had to revisit the logo idea I previously had for D. C. Designs. I wanted to move away from the "cartoon guy" image and let people see that I can do more than just draw cartoons and characters. So I needed something more simple and yet corporate looking. Yes, I know, I said I wasn't the corporate type, but hey if you want to succeed you may have to change your thinking in these areas. Below is the new logo design for Doug Draws ...

I then searched around for a theme and found Swift - an excellent free theme which lends itself very nicely to what I am envisioning for my site. Unfortunately, the theme owner turned out to be quite immature in his responses to my questions. Case in point, if you visit my site now you'll see there's some bizarre code above every post. I haven't been able to resolve this yet per the reason I stated above. So this has led me to start searching for a premium WP theme, since it only stands to reason that paid support will be much better than free support.

Now, the eating crow part ... last night I came upon a couple WordPress plugins that have not only knocked my socks off but also changed my opinion on WP completely. These two plugins are Sidebar Login and Contact Form 7. I knew WP had some awesome plugins and gadgets, but I was unaware just how cool and functional they were.

Contact Form 7 enables you to create forms anywhere on your site with insane ease. This is a huge plus since I wanted forms on my new design site for clients to fill in information pertaining to their projects and so they could contact me.

This morning when I woke up my computer had froze and I had to restart it. When I got back online I could not for the life of me find the WP.org login page. I searched for half an hour and finally a member of the ProBloggerCom forums mentioned a WP plugin called Sidebar Login. Once this plugin is installed it creates a sidebar widget that you can easily click to login to your WP site. Sweet.

So, there you have it. I am humbled by the awesomeness of WP. My opinion about Blogger still remains the same - it's the best blogging platform for beginners. But now that I have experienced WP first hand I must say with all honesty I can now fully understand why it's the best platform for professional sites.

No offense to the hard working folks here at Blogger, but if you want a site that offers more in the way of functionality and options I can see why WP is the way to go. Keep in mind that every blog here on Blogger is free and that the folks who run this place do not charge us for all their labors behind the scenes. I'm sure if they did they would be more inclined to develop such niceties themselves.

7 Reasons Why I Love Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:51:00 +0000

In my testing of WordPress as a possible alternative for TBODC I discovered a few things. First and foremost, I learned that I'm better off staying with Blogger, at least for now anyway. The reasons are pretty simple, but to give WordPress a fair shake I'll explain some of things they have to offer first. In case you didn't already know WordPress comes in two flavors; you-host-it and they-host-it.

Let's look at the difference between the two...

1) WordPress.org is a blogging software program that must be downloaded and installed on a web server – that’s a computer that is set up to serve web pages over the internet. Your personal computer probably isn’t a web server. So, to make the free WordPress.org software work, you have to own a web server or rent some space on one.

2) WordPress.com provides blog hosting free of charge. The free blog hosting does not come with the ability to upload plugins or themes. Because any change in the software affects every blog on the system, some of the things you can do on your own hosted WordPress.org blog are disabled here.

Here are the feature comparisons...

WordPress.org Benefits
Ability to upload themes
Ability to upload plugins
Great community
Complete control to change code if you’re technically minded

WordPress.org Cons
You need a good web host, which generally costs $7-12 a month
Requires more technical knowledge to set up and run
You’re responsible for stopping spam
You have to handle backups
You must upgrade the software manually when a new version comes out
If you get a huge spike in traffic (like Digg or Slashdot) you site will probably go down

WordPress.com Benefits
It’s free and much easier
Everything is taken care of: setup, upgrades, backups, security, etc
Your blog is on dozens of servers, so it’s highly unlikely it will go down due to traffic
Your posts are backed up hourly
You get extra traffic from blogs of the day and tags
You can find like-minded bloggers using tag and friend surfer
Your login is secure (SSL) so no one can get into your account if you use wifi

WordPress.com Cons
Limited customization of themes (though we’re adding more every day)
You can’t hack the code behind your blog

- taken from the WordPress FAQs page

In all honesty WordPress does offer more in the way of optimization and gadgets. However, keep in mind that the majority of these you'll have to pay for. On the other hand, with a little effort and ingenuity, most of the things you can do on WP can be done on Blogger - for free.

So now, looking at what WP offers above, let's take a look at the seven reasons why I love Blogger...

Blogger Benefits

1. Only one version of Blogger - and it's free

2. You don't have to download any software or go out and buy a server or hosting

3. Just sign up, choose a name for your blog, pick a template, and go

4. The ability to easily modify themes and page codes

5. Blogger has a large FAQ, Guides, and Help Group base

6. Large selection of free add-ons, widgets, and themes

7. Buy and host your own domain - $10 a year for the domain and Blogger will host it for free

Need I go on?

So after all the cards are on the table Blogger is still the better deal. In the end it really boils down to personal choice and what you really want to accomplish with your new blog or web site. Personally I prefer Blogger not just because it's free and my domain is hosted through them, but because the whole process of working on my blog is simpler and feels more user friendly.

Oh, what's that you say? I didn't list any Blogger Cons? Hmm...

Blogger Cons: You don't have to pay for anything :)

Everyday Illustrator: Tips, Tricks, and Treats

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 01:52:00 +0000

If you use Illustrator regularly then you know the program can be a bit annoying at times, just like it's cousin, Photoshop. In this article I'm going to share some of the useful tips, tricks, and treats I've discovered in my time using AI (Version CS). Hopefully these will help you as well and make using the program more of a joy than a pain.

To help me describe some of the following I will be enlisting the help of my trusty robot friend here.

If you like to grill (as I do) then you need to invite this guy to your next BBQ.

Ok, so on with the show ...

Tips & Tricks

Locate That Object
Have you ever clicked on an object/path/fill/stroke and wondered 'Where is it?' If your Illustrator documents tend to get lengthy (as mine often do) then it can be quite annoying having to scroll through the layer palette looking for the object you just clicked on. Next time you do this simply click the little arrow in the upper right corner of the Layers Palette and choose 'Locate Object'. This will take you right to the layer that you clicked on. Neat-O.

Copy Group
Have you ever wanted to copy an entire group of objects to a whole new layer? I often do this to experiment with changes I want to make without effecting the original group. To do this simply make a new layer right above the group you want to copy, then select the group and (while holding down the Alt key) click and hold on the small red square to the right of the grouped layer and drag it up onto your new layer. Viola! New group. Nifty, eh?

Align Objects
Sometimes I want to align an object to another object without having all the other objects join in. To align a single object with another select them all, then click one more time on the one object you want to remain stationary. This will apply the alignment in relation to the fixed object.

Rotate the Baseboard
Sometimes I like to have a guide to use other than horizontal or vertical. For those times I set the grids and other defaults to different angles. In the General Preferences (Edit > Preferences) set the Constrain box to the required angle you want (in this case I typed in '50') and the grid will adapt, as will such occurrences as drawing rectangles (as you can see in the image below). Unfortunately, guides will stay the same as usual.

Align to Artboard
I have Illustrator CS and I was always envious of my friends who had the newer versions of the program, because they had access to one feature I did not: align to artboard. Then one day I was fooling around and discovered I do have this feature. It's just hidden away.

When you have an object that want to align to the artboard simply click the little arrow in the upper right hand corner of the Align Pallete and select Align to Artboard from the fly-out menu. Now you'll always have this option available to you and you won't have to be jealous of your friends anymore.

Shrink Your File Size
If you're submitting your vector artwork to someplace like iStock you want to make sure your AI files are not too large. In order to make this more efficient you need to save them without all the palette items that you haven't used (brushes, symbols, etc.). To get rid of all these unused items, Illustrator comes with an Action that is automatically installed into the Actions palette called Delete Unused Palette Items. This was nice of Adobe, I think.

Use Smart Guides
One of the biggest annoyances (at least for me) is trying to grab hold of those dang corner handles. If Illustrator was a game remote I'd broken it long ago throwing it across the room in aggravation. Well, it's easy to remedy this little quirk by simply turning on Smart Guides (View > Smart Guides). Smart Guides are exactly that - smart. They'll tell you when your pointer is over an anchor or a handle and also illuminate the outlines of other paths if you hover over them. This can be incredibly useful because if you're trying to align a path to another path Smart Guides will tell you by showing the word "intersect".

Change Corner Radius
When creating rounded rectangles you can change the corner radius on the fly by simply using the up and down arrows on your keyboard.

Create Multiple Objects
To create multiple objects as you draw hold down the tilde (~) key. The image below was created simply by drawing with the Rectangle while keeping the tilde key depressed. I still had the grid tilted at 50 degrees when I did this. Drawing out shapes like this would be cool for making those neat abstract header backgrounds. This will work for the rounded rectangle, ellipse, polygon, and star shapes, too.

Treats

Plug-ins
Here's a nifty new plug-in I found for Illustrator. It's called 'Select Menu' by Rick Johnson of Graffix Software. Download it, unzip it, then drag it into your Plug-ins folder and you're good to go. To use it simply go to Select > Object and you’ve now got a whole new set of options. The ones I use the most are Open Paths and Stray Points. Don't forget to check out some of the other cool Illustrator plug-ins while you're on Rick's site - such as Concatenate, Nudge Palette, Cutting Tools, and Square-Up.

I found out about this awesome plug-in while reading Explaining Illustrator 8.0 EPS Files by Jennifer Borton. This is an excellent article about Adobe Illustrator 8.0 EPS files so if you submit your artwork to places like iStock I would highly recommend giving it a read.

Thanks, Jen :)

Saving As Illustrator 8.0 Compatible
Speaking of EPS files ... just recently I submitted some artwork to iStock and one of their requirements is that you save your artwork as a vector EPS file (Adobe Illustrator 8-compatible). I'd never done this before so I had to look up how to do it on Google. The majority of information I found all basically said the same thing.

1. Open the file in Illustrator and choose File > Save a Copy.

2. Specify a name and location for the copy, choose Illustrator (.AI) from the Save As Type menu (Windows) or choose Adobe Illustrator Document from the Format menu (Mac OS), and then click Save.

3. Choose Illustrator 8.0 from the Compatibility pop-up menu, select Preserve Appearance, and then click OK.

4. Click OK when Illustrator returns the alert, "You are saving this document in Illustrator 8.0 format. Saving this document in an older format may disable some editing features when the document is read back in."

The only problem with this is that I didn't have any of those options when I went to File > Save a Copy. Instead all I had was this little dialogue box with some Font and PDF options. No format menu. No drop-down menu. No way to save my file as Adobe Illustrator 8-compatible. And then I found this excellent help group called AllExperts where you can ask experts your questions on a whole slew of topics. I found the Illustrator experts and asked about this and the reply was ...

If I recall, CS was strange that way. I believe all of those legacy options were tucked under the File > Export menu. So you have to Export instead of Save. Look for them there. With CS2, that function moved back to the save menu.

-Amy Pace, AllExperts

Thanks, Amy :)

Extra Treats
When I got my Creative Suite I didn't worry about anything other than installing Photoshop and Illustrator. I didn't need Version Cue and I was never a fan of InDesign. Unfortunately, I was unaware that there is a huge amount of 'cool extras' that came installed with Illustrator. It can be accessed through a button on the Welcome screen called (naturally) Cool Extras. If you've disabled the welcome screen you can just go to Help > Welcome Screen to bring it up.

Clicking this button will bring up a huge PDF file containing a treasure trove of items. They're grouped into sections - including sample pages, fonts, templates, brushes, borders, gradients, patterns, Web elements, symbols, and swatches. Before going to the Internet looking for vector objects, first check the bounty in your Illustrator folder.

Well, folks, that's it for this episode of Everyday Illustrator. If the response to this article is good enough I'm thinking of making it a regular bi-weekly event so make sure you take a moment and leave a comment. To keep abreast of this and future articles be sure to subscribe to TBODC.

Have fun!

Dear Readers: What Do You Want?

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:34:00 +0000

Today I'm going to reach out to everyone who visits TBODC, because I need your help. In order for me to continue writing content that is both interesting and helpful I need to ask you - my readers - to do something for me. Take a moment to tell me in the comments section why you've come to TBODC and what it is you expect (or expected) to find here.

Do you come here for ...

1. Tutorials

2. Design Related Articles

3. Free Downloads

4. Design Related News

5. My Artwork

6. My Design Services

7. Blog Hacks

8. All (or some) of the Above

9. Something Else Not Listed

I thank you for taking the time to respond as your input will help me in keeping TBODC interesting and relevant to my subscribers (such as you). If you are not yet subscribed to TBODC I encourage you to do so here.

Thank you.

Resurrecting Planet 9 Design

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:17:00 +0000

My latest creation. Well, not really a new creation. I've had this design sitting on a CD for probably ten years or so. It was going to be the template for my first web site, but it got scrapped in favor of something else. Truth be told I just didn't know how to code it to make it work on a web page. I resurrected it again for a contest that's being held at Website Babble Forums.

I was going to name my first business web site Planet 9 Design, hence the idea for this. I just thought it was a cool name for a web site. I even created special planet symbols to use in the link "globes" and made a crop circle image with one of them (which is the background image I used in the green sliding door panel in the left sidebar). I had a blast creating this whole design, but in the end I never used it and it got stuck on a CD where it's been lounging away until this contest came along.

I am not a coder by any stretch of the imagination so in order to make a web page out of this I had to download the free trial version of CoffeeCup to code it. You can check out my fully functioning web entry here. I don't think I made the requirements for the contest, but I had a blast creating it and it was great to dust off one of my old beloved designs and give it life on the web.

So what about you? Have any old designs lounging around somewhere? Dust them off and breath some fresh life into them.

Freebie Friday: Web Templates

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:36:00 +0000

I have some old web template designs that have just been laying around since I first started working on the Web. Seems a shame to just let them go to waste. So ... for today's Freebie Friday I offer you not one, not two, but three of my web design templates. These are PSD files created with Photoshop CS, but they should work in any version.

A couple of the files include my favorite bitmap font Silkscreen, created by Jason Kottke. You may feel at ease about using it because it's a free for use font. However, Jason advises ... "You may use it or distribute it as a freeware font on your site, but just don't claim you made it. You may not modify and then redistribute this type family. You may, however, modify it for your own personal use. You also may not charge any money for this font."

You may visit Jason's site here to read more about Silkscreen.

These are designs I did for clients that never paid or who never contacted me again about the designs so feel free to use them as is or play around with them, experiment, or perhaps they will spark some ideas for your own web sites. If you do end up using any of these or creating a design of your own based on these templates please let me know. I'd love to check it out.

Enjoy!

D. C. Designs Logo: Finals

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:21:00 +0000

After all the great feedback I received I've narrowed my logo design choices down to these two ...

For right now I've decided to go with the top one. I just can't seem to do the proper corporate logo - it's like wearing a suit and tie; it's just not me.

I thank all of you who took the time to comment on the last post with your ideas, suggestions, and feedback. I sure do appreciate it.

Help Me Decide: Which New Logo Design?

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 09:10:00 +0000

I've come up with two logo designs so far for my new site D. C. Designs. I wanted to show them to you and get your feedback. I love both of them, but I can't decide which one to use.

Spent the day doodling with paper and pencil until I finally came up with the concept above. I then scanned it into the computer and drew it all out in Illustrator. Since my business web site is just for my commercial design services I wanted to convey with the logo what it is I do, which is mostly logo-identity and character design. Some people said I should stick to something more corporate looking, but then that's not me. I also wanted the logo to convey some of my own personality and I think this does it quite well. Note: I added a couple more versions of the above logo so we can compare them as I go along.

This time I wanted to go for something more simple than the previous logo so I doodled around with my initials and came up with this. I really like how this one turned out because the wavy line of the "d" looks like a nose and this gave me the idea to turn the two letters into eyes. This logo is also a good representation of what I do as the overall effect is that of a face/character. Note: Thanks to your wonderful comments I have posted different versions of the "dc" logo above so we can compare them as I go along.

So what do you think? I like them both, but I can only use one. Give me a shout in the comments and let me know what you think. All critiques and suggestions are welcome.

Work in Progress: DCDesigns

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:05:00 +0000

Well, folks, I'm getting serious about the business end of my design services. It's been bothering me that I really haven't defined what it is I do and this has led me to clutter up TBODC with some service related info, which I am in the process of fixing.

I'm working right now to truly focus more on myself and my business goals as a graphic artist and learning to separate "work from play". Most of my life my priorities concerning my talents have been living in a cabin out in the woods and now it's time to move into the big city and see if I can make a serious living with them. Yes, that's right, oh golly-shucks-geewhizz-me is going for the big time (Lord willing, of course).

I found this cool blog template - Dreamwork Redux (Converted by JackBook) - via Amanda Fazani's site Blogger Buster. As is typical with these things there's no one to help with tweaking the template so I'm having to figure things out on my own.

It's a work in progress so keep that in mind if you go to check it out. I've managed to fix a few issues and get some things working, but for some reason the comments don't work. It's not a biggie since this is merely a test platform for my new professional endeavor. I may end up moving to WordPress when I'm ready to launch the real deal. We'll see how it goes.

I apologize if you have visited TBODC and were a bit overwhelmed by the clutter. If you have ever encountered any issues here please let me know. Rest assured I'm working on cleaning it up. One new thing I have added is a "top of page" gadget which will allow people to simply click the small grey arrow (located in the bottom right corner of your screen) and go right back to the top of any page. This cool hack comes to us from Amanda, of course.

And speaking of Amanda ... thanks to her wonderful site Blogger Buster I was able to get the comments form on DCDesigns working. Also, another of Amanda's fixes enabled me to include avatars beside your comments - w00t! Way to go, girl!

I would love to hear what you think of my new site and if you have any suggestions about TBODC - the layout, links, content, etc. - please let me know in the comments.

Thank you :)

Five Points for Personal Success

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:23:00 +0000

I'm going to be honest and up front with you - being a freelance artist is no picnic. I'm sure the same could be said for a great many chosen career paths, but in my thirty-seven years as a commercial illustrator I have found that there are really only a few traits that determine if one will truly be successful or not. Below I will talk about these five points and why I believe every creative individual should live by them.

The five points are ....

Having a Talent
Loving What You Do
Being Good at What You Do
Being Encouraged
Never Giving Up

1. Having a Talent

The first one is important, but it's not mandatory. As the author Erica Jong says, "Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads."

Talent alone is not enough, you also have to be fearless, bold, daring, and willing to take chances. You can have a desire to do something and that desire is what spurs you onward to succeed, but you must also have the courage to follow that talent into the dark places - those spooky mist covered fields where the unknown is lurking behind every gnarled tree and shadowy bush. As she says "everyone has a talent", but what separates the successful from the unsuccessful is the willingness to follow that talent wherever it leads.

2. Love What You Do

Having an ability and a desire to become successful is nothing if you don't also love what it is you do. If you don't then it becomes as trivial and mundane as flipping burgers in some greasy spoon.

You see, doing what you love may seem like a cliche, but I believe it's an old paradigm that all creative people should live by. Because we live in a day and age where everything is manufactured by machines and the old ways of making things by hand with love and pride have gone the way of the dinosaurs. So it's important to not only love what you do, but also to love it for what it is - something personal and unique that belongs to just you.

Also, your world doesn't need to be consumed with the constant desire to make a living out of this, either. If it's meant to be then it will be. In the meantime take time for yourself. This reminds me of something I heard in the movie Cars...

Sally: Forty years ago, that interstate down there didn't exist.
Lightning McQueen: Really?
Sally: Yeah. Back then, cars came across the country a whole different way.
Lightning McQueen: How do you mean?
Sally: Well, the road didn't cut through the land like that interstate. It moved with the land, it rose, it fell, it curved. Cars didn't drive on it to make great time. They drove on it to have a great time.

So, you see, it's important that your whole world isn't consumed by the constant drive to succeed to the point that you end up missing the other little joys of your life. Relax. Have a latte. Take a drive in the country. The desire to be successful at something you love should not be paramount to your happiness. Sure, it's great to be a rock star where everyone demands your autograph, but ask yourself - "Is that person truly happy? Do they love what they are doing? Are they content with their life?"

Yes, I love what I do. And yes, I would like to be successful at it. But in the end it's not the focus of my whole existence. Perhaps you’ll make a living with your talent. Or, perhaps, like me, you’ll simply draw things. Either way you have to balance what you love with what you live.

3. Do the Best You Can

It took me a long time (and many attempts) before I finally nailed my own portfolio. My biggest problem was trying to impress people. When I finally realized that my online presence should be a reflection of "me" I began to build around that, implementing a layout that showed my own personality and character. I believe in any creative endeavor you should strive to be yourself and allow your own unique personality to show through in whatever you do. The Web is already proliferated with enough bland and boring personalities as it is. Do you want to be one of them? No, of course you don't. Then always try to do the best work you can in your chosen field and let the originality of 'you' show through.

Whatever it is you have a desire or talent to do you must also strive to keep it fresh and alive. Push yourself to excel in new areas (remember those dark fields) and be willing to take on new challenges.

In her article Success: Are You Getting In Your Own Way? Amber Riviere expounded on this point further ...

"Last night, I was reading Wayne Dyer’s book - Excuses Begone! - and came across a statement that really resonated with me. "We don’t always want to undertake the necessary steps to create the life we desire." Many times, there are limits as to how far we’ll go to achieve success in our lives and businesses. Maybe we don’t want to move, or give up a certain type of lifestyle. Maybe we don’t want to have to bootstrap our new business idea and drop some of the luxuries we enjoy on a daily basis, like cable television or expensive cell phone plans, or maybe we don’t want to have to do things we’re uncomfortable doing, like promoting our businesses and putting ourselves out there."

- Amber Riviere

Remember, Rome wasn't built in a day, but it did get built.

4. Encouragement

Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.

- Henry Van Dyke

Keeping yourself focused on what it is you desire to do and always striving to excel will strengthen both your talent and your resolve to succeed with it. Discouragement comes in many flavors, but you must believe in yourself. You must plod on even if that nagging little voice is telling you "you are no good, you'll never make it." Because the woods are filled with many birds and not all of them sing the best, but it is the diversity of many different talents that fills the world with song.

When I first started drawing things I was only three years old. My mom noticed this right off that her son may have something unique and she squealed with delight to all her friends, "Look! My son is an artist!"

Well, she is still squealing about it today, God bless her. My mom is my biggest fan and my biggest encouragement. If you want to be successful as an artist (or whatever your chosen creative field is) then I pray you have someone like this in your life. If it wasn't for my "biggest fan" prodding me on I would have hung up my design cape long ago.

5. Never Give Up

I am not in control of my talent, which I know sounds odd, but quite often it’s like Richard Bach said (in his preface to Illusions), "But once in a while there’s a great dynamite-burst of flying glass and brick and splinters through the front wall and somebody stalks over the rubble, seizes me by the throat and gently says, I will not let you go until you set me, in words, on paper."

The talent draws on you so give the talent something to draw with. No matter if you are doing it for someone or just doing it for yourself always keep this one thing in mind - it's not about the money. Do not make the mistake of equating your talent with how much you'll make off of it, because that will only trivialize what you do. Yes, it is desirable to earn an income from your abilities and provide for yourself while doing what you love, but this should not be your main objective.

My mom always likes to say to me, "You are a millionaire waiting to happen." Well, that would certainly be cool, but the odds of that happening are about the same as if I played the Lottery. Again, it isn't about the money; it's about the talent and your love and desire to be a part of it. Sure, being a millionaire rock star would be cool - for maybe five point two seconds. Fame and fortune are entirely different animals. You don't need either to effectively do what it is you do. The five points I have discussed here are more about you personally than what you want to do monetarily. Because, in all honesty, success is only measured by those who truly believe in themselves.

So what about you? Have any personal points you would like to share? What have you found that works best for keeping you "at the drawing board"? Let me know in the comments section.

The Art of Tutorials

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:20:00 +0000

When I first started this blog I did not plan on writing tutorials. I hate tutorials. They are a pain. In fact, after writing my first one I gained a whole new level of respect for those who do write tutorials on a regular basis. Unfortunately, I discovered that people love tutorials, which kind of sucks, because that meant I would have to write more than one, lol. Oh well, I love you guys, so what's another tutorial, eh?

In writing these tuts I learned a great deal and I thought I would share this knowledge with you. Perhaps you already write your own tutorials and already know quite a bit about the process, but for those of you who don't or may be intimidated about writing them (as I was) I hope the following will be of some help.

Ok, so to begin ....

1. Preparation

Before you begin the daunting task of tutorial writing it would be a good idea to study ones already written by other people. PSDTuts would be a good place to start, although they're kind of rigid in their design regime - you don't have to be that anal about writing your own tutorials. I mean, it's not like you're submitting a Monet to the Louvre.

To write a good tutorial you will need to have three things at your disposal - a graphics program, a screen capture utility, and a text editor. It's also a good idea if you have a blog to make another one just for testing your article out. I have a test blog here on Blogger just for this purpose. With my test blog I can see how the content flows with the images I use and also determine what size and placement works best.

For making my images I use Photoshop, but you can use any graphics program you want. Gimp is a very popular one and it's also free. For screen captures I use FastStone Capture. I have found this utility to be a lot more flexible and user friendly than other capture programs. My text editor of choice is NoteTab. I use the pro version myself, but you can get the Light version for free.

2. Your Idea

The most important thing to start with is your tutorial idea - what are you going to write about? This depends on many factors, but since we are talking about my tutorials we'll stick with graphic design. If you are writing a tutorial for a different subject - say CSS or blog design - you will need to pick a subject that interests your audience in that field. The first thing I do is think about what it is I already know and then try to pick something from my experience that I believe will interest visitors to my blog.

For instance, I wrote a four part tutorial on how I tweaked my blog template for TBODC. I thought this would be good one because most of my visitors had their own blogs and would likely benefit from what I had learned. However, I didn't get many comments on these tutorials so it was kind of hard to judge whether they were well received or not. The tutorial I did before these was about how I customized my RSS subscribe box, which did very well.

Now what was the difference between these tutorials? None that I could see and yet (judging by the comments) one did immensely better than the other. I could ascertain from this that the four part tutorial was way too long and people lost interest, whereas the subscribe box tutorial was a hit simply because it was on one page. It could also be that one was more relevant to my readers than the other.

It's not always certain if one tutorial will do well or better than another, but you can narrow this factor down by focusing on what your site is about and writing tutorials that are relevant to that subject.

3. Writing the Tutorial

Once you have an idea what your tutorial is going to be about then you have to write it all down. I write my tutorials in NoteTab and then I also copy and paste what I've written into my test blog as I go along. I then publish it so I can see how it reads and if I need to make any changes. You don't have to do this yourself, but for me I find it helps to see it on the actual blog page.

As you write your tutorial keep yourself focused on the subject. I find sometimes I get a little wordy and so I'm often cutting and pasting chunks to make sentences tighter and to remove excess words. As a good example of this I like to quote something from one of my favorite short stories by Stephen King called "Trucks" - King is writing about a tense scene off waiting in at truck stop, describing the people, "He was a salesman and he kept his display bag close to him, like a pet dog that had gone to sleep."

Aside from being an artist I have also been a writer for mumbley-mumble years and learning to keep things short and to the point is something you will have to learn if you want to keep people interested in what you are saying.

Right now halfway through this I am wondering about how much I've already said. Is it too much? Have I gotten too wordy? Is it interesting? Is it helpful? You will probably wonder the same thing yourself if, that is, you care about what it is you are writing. And you should.

4. Building the Tutorial

Now comes the fun part. At least it is for me. The building of your tutorial. I have a process I like to follow and I'm going to share it with you here. As you make tuts yourself you'll likely develop your own method.

One of the biggest things I learned in the beginning was that in order for my tuts to be fully understood by everyone I needed to use images. I was advised of this in a very amicable manner by a couple lovely ladies - Audee Mirza of Graphic Identity and Lauren Krause of Creative Curio.

Thanks, ladies :)

It is important (as Audee and Lauren pointed out to me) to use images to convey what it is you are describing for the reader. I reiterate this because it may seem like an obvious point to some, but it wasn't for me. I was like Guillermo Del Toro - it's all in his head! he knows what he's talking about, but we don't! A tutorial is all about carefully explaining something in steps that the reader can understand and hopefully follow on their own to produce the end result.

When I begin to build my tutorials I always start by taking a full screen capture of my blog and pasting that into Photoshop as a new document. I have several of these each named "blog tuts". I do this for several reasons. One is that as I write my tutorial and decide what images I need to best convey what I'm saying I can take a quick screen grab and paste it into my "blog tuts" document. Secondly, because I want the images to fit within the confines of my content area on my blog I often need to crop them.

I have become a big fan of uniquely cropped images which I have seen in various tutorials around the Web. I always wanted to create my own and so I created several different sized masks which I've saved in the Channels palette for this purpose. I determined the size for these masks based on the width of my blog's content area. Then as I paste in each of the screen captured images I'm going to use I just choose one of my pre-sized Channel selections (depending on how much or how little of the image I want to show) and mask them off.

Sometimes the images don't need any cropping. For example, when I was writing Stroke That Puppy! I reached a paragraph where I was describing the best way to paste a path from Illustrator into Photoshop. It would have been easy to simply write, "In the file menu of Illustrator go to Edit > Preferences > File Handling & Clipboard and in the Clipboard on Quit section check both AICB and Preserve Paths."

I realized I didn't need to show the whole Preferences dialogue box, just the area I was referring to in my tutorial, so I merely cropped that with a rectangular selection. Of course, this was before I found FastStone Capture.

Depending on what kind of screen capture utility you are using you can often grab just a part of the image you want to use and you're good to go. With FastStone you have several options - Capture Active Window, Capture Window/Object, Capture Rectangle Region (shown below), Capture Freehand Region, and Capture Full Screen (to name just a few).

Don't be afraid to experiment in your tutorials. Get creative not only in your writing but with your images, too. You don't have to settle for bland squares sitting on a page - you can stylize them if you want and add your own unique flair. Also, you should always remember to add links to things you mention in your tutorials that your visitors may need or want more information on. This will show that you care and are interested in providing as much insight as possible for your readers.

5. Proofreading

Before you hit "publish" make sure you've checked your tutorial for any spelling errors. There's nothing worse than reading a tutorial with grammatical spelling errors. It's like someone running their fingernails down a chalkboard. This is where using a text editor comes in handy - the majority of them have a spellchecker feature of some kind and it only takes a second to use it and make sure your written tutorial doesn't come across like an educated-deprived child wrote it.

And that's about it. So to highlight ...

1. Make sure you are prepared with the necessary tools at your disposal.

2. Make sure you have a good idea for your tutorial and that it is relevant to what your site is about.

3. Write your tutorial with a constant focus on wording, sentence structure, and interest.

4. Build your tutorial carefully and give it some depth with interesting images and informative links.

5. Proofread your tutorial by checking for spelling mistakes.

So have you written any tutorials of your own? What are your methods for tutorial writing? Share them with us in the comments section.

New at The TBODC Store - Feedburn This!

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:06:00 +0000

Tired of Feedburner always messing with your RSS subscribers? Then have I got something for you. New at The TBODC Store is our very own FatBird showing Feedburner what he really thinks!

Come visit the store, pick out your own Feedburn This! shirt, and show everyone how you really feel about Google's clunky RSS service.

You know you want one :)

Come Visit The TBODC Store!

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:14:00 +0000

I took the advice of Craig Snedeker and opened my own Zazzle store to sell my designs. It's in the beginning stages right now as I'm still coming up with ideas for different products.

So come visit my store, look around, become a fan, buy something. If you have any suggestions on which of my designs you'd like to see and what products you'd like to see them featured on please let me know.

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you there!

Freebie Friday: PSD File - Modem Icon

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:31:00 +0000

Ever wanted to create your own Windows desktop icons? I know I always do. So for today's freebie I'm offering the download of the cable modem icon I made in Photoshop for my own desktop. If you want to know how to use this design as a desktop icon you'll have to save the image as a Windows icon (.ICO) file. You can refer to my article Favicon This! for instructions and a link to Toby Thain's ICO (Windows Icon) file format plug-in for Photoshop.

For steps on how to change your Windows icons refer to this page here.

To keep up-to-date with future Freebie Fridays subscribe to TBODC!

Birds of a Feather: The Early Bird

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:46:00 +0000

Just finished my second Christian inspirational card, The Early Bird. The font I used this time is Leftovers by FontDiner. Your comments and critiques are appreciated.

Front

Inside

Back

Birds of a Feather: The Lord Lifts You Up

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:16:00 +0000

Ok, folks, here it is ... my first inspirational Christian card, The Lord Lifts You Up. The font I used for the card is GoodDog. Your comments and critiques are appreciated.

Front

Inside

Back

Get Interactive with the Wibiya Toolbar!

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:08:00 +0000

I'm testing a new widget on TBODC. You'll see at the bottom of your screen a small brown toolbar - this is the new Wibiya Toolbar.

Wibiya enables blogs to integrate the most exciting services, applications and widgets of their choice into their blog through customized web-based toolbars. Our platform offers a one-stop solution for integrating, managing and tracking third-party applications.

Currently we offer a fixed set of tools such as creating a blog community via facebook connect, enabling twitter alerts on your blog and enabling post navigation but there is a lot to wait for as we will be adding more and more application through time.

- Wibiya Team

The Wibiya Toolbar is pretty slick. When you visit the Wibiya web site you'll see the big green "Get it now!" button. Just click that and you'll need to create an account (don't worry, it's free). After that's done you can create your Toolbar for whichever blog or web site you have using their simple control interface.

You can choose from a wide variety of color schemes so finding one to match your site shouldn't be too hard. After your done you can visit your Dashboard and play around with the settings in there. You can change the notification message that pops up when people first visit your site, check your Tools Statistics, keeps track of your Posts, Navigator clicks, Page views, Subscribers, Number of tweets read, and more.

In this article I'm going to share with you some of the features I like best about the Wibiya Toolbar. First, this is what the Toolbar looks like when you first visit my blog (it's at the bottom of your browser screen just above the status bar) ...

You can hide or show the Toolbar by clicking on the double black arrow located on the far right...

Once it's hidden all you will see is a small tab that says Tools, like so ...

Some of the cool features of the Wibiya Toolbar are the interactive options it provides to your visitors. Like one click subscribe to your RSS feed ...

Clicking this button will give you a pop-up screen which shows your Feedburner subscription page. This is really cool because then the visitor isn't shuttled to another web page - they can just subscribe right there in the pop-up window.

Another nifty feature is the Recent Posts button. One click and this brings up another pop-up featuring your most recent posts...

The only issue here is when I click Recent Posts it includes some of my older posts in the list (as you can see in the image above). This isn't a big concern, but considering my latest issue with Feeburner it's definitely something that I'd like to see addressed.

Another cool feature is the ability to search your entire blog from the Toolbar search box ...

Like with the RSS button this gives you a pop-up window which shows all the posts on your blog that contain the search word you specified ...

This is a really neat feature, because again the visitor doesn't have to wade through your blog trying to find interesting articles and information - they can do it right from the Wibiya Toolbar!

You an also do a random search of your blog by clicking the Random button ...

This is another nice feature, because it will load a random page from within your blog right in the same window. Sweet!

Another feature of the Toolbar is that you can translate your pages into any of the following languages: Spanish, French, Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Greek, Dutch, Arabic, Hebrew, Indonesian, Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Bengali. If you would like to translate the Wibiya bar into a language that is not mentioned above you can visit the Wibiya Languages Wiki.

I tried this on my blog by picking Spanish from the pop-up menu and it works really well. Some areas of the page don't translate, but it does do a good job on the main content of your posts.

All in all I am incredibly impressed with the Wibiya Toolbar so far. Aside from the older Recent Posts the only other issue I've encountered is that with the toolbar widget installed page loads sometimes hang indefinitely. I have to stop the browser and reload again. It doesn't happen a lot, but enough to be an annoyance.

However, Dror Ceder, CEO and Co-founder of Wibiya, assured me this was just the beginning for the Toolbar widget. So I'm sure these issues will be resolved as they develop the application further.

What you are seeing now from the Wibiya service is just the tip of the iceberg, we are only presenting about 10% of the service at the moment so there is a lot more to wait for. Let me know if there is anything we can help you with.

- Best regards, Dror Ceder

Well, one thing is for sure they definitely have customer service down pat. Thanks, Dror! My hats off to you, sir, and to all the people over at Wibiya. They have created an amazing interactive tool for bloggers and webmasters alike. The Wibiya Toolbar (or Wibar for short) works on all the popular blogging platforms and more.

I hope you have enjoyed this post and I encourage anyone with a blog or web site to to head on over to Wibiya and check the Toolbar out for yourself. Oh, and if you would, please let me know what you think of the Wibar here on TBODC.

Thanks for reading :)

Subscribe to Feedburner - Get Old Blog Posts!

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:10:00 +0000

Just the other day Feedburner sent out a mailing to all my subscribers with three of my older blog posts in it. I was a little upset by this, to say the least. I'm sure it wasn't well received by any of you (my subscribers), either. For this I apologize.

The first thing I did was search Google to see if this was happening with anyone else, and sure enough it was. I counted about four pages worth of similar complaints and then I went to the infamous FeedBurner Help Group. I posted my dissatisfaction in the General topic area, but then getting an answer from this place is like calling Charter support. And just like with Charter or Comcast you're basically stuck with Feedburner as an RSS option because there really isn't anyone else to go with.

If you don't believe me that Feedburner sucks then do a Google search for "Feedburner sucks" and see for yourself. Unfortunately, whether it sucks or not I'm stuck with it until something better comes along. Again, my apologies to all of my subscribers for this screw up.

Oh, and if you're interested, you can keep track of how long my request to the Feedurner Help Group goes unanswered here. And just so you know it's been thirteen days now and still no response. Amazing. They even make Charter look good.

For more reading on how much Feedburner sucks:
Michael Arrington writes on TechCrunch about how Feedburner Needs To Get It Together.
Allen Stern contemplates So What’s Up With FeedBurner Now? on CenterNetworks. Mr. Stern also expounds on even more Feedburner nonsense in his article archives here.
Eric Eldon writes that FB problems are "so bad" that Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera feels FeedBurner is too broken for its biggest fan.
In deciding which is which for his site's newsletter Chris Garrett considers Aweber Versus FeedBurner For Bloggers.

You would think after spending $100 mills to aquire FB Google would be doing something with it, but I guess Google can do no evil. They even say so right in their code of conduct...

"Don't be evil." Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But "Don't be evil" is much more than that. Yes, it's about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can.

The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put "Don't be evil" into practice. It's built around the recognition that everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct. Our commitment to the highest standards helps us hire great people, who then build great products, which in turn attract loyal users.

So please do read the Code, and follow it, always bearing in mind that each of us has a personal responsibility to incorporate, and to encourage other Googlers to incorporate, the principles of the Code into our work.

- Google Code of Conduct

Ri-iiiight. So what about all the people having issues with Feedburner? I guess their own rules don't apply to them, eh? So are you having any issues with Feedburner? I say we all band together and boycott Google. Got a Twitter account? Start making some posts about this issue on the Twitterverse. I even made a hashtag for it - #feedburnersucks. Use this hashtag in your Tweets. You can even come join me on What the Hashtag!? and post your tweets there. This way we can keep track of what each of us are saying and monitor our progress across the Twitterverse :)

Some posts you can ReTweet:
Having issues with Feedburner? Band together with me and let's make some noise. Use the #feedburnersucks hashtag in your Tweets :)
@TechCrunch Feedburner Needs To Get It Together http://bit.ly/xfvM - Google bought FB for $100 mills, then forgot about it. #feedburnersucks
@centernetworks So What’s Up With FeedBurner Now? http://cli.gs/1gBL27 - FB's list of disgruntled users grows #feedburnersucks
@VentureBeat FeedBurner is too broken for its biggest fan http://cli.gs/thqaQS - Issues with FB continue to go unresolved #feedburnersucks

Let's start making some noise, eh?

Freebie Friday: Illustrator Halftone Pattern

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:26:00 +0000

I've decided to start something new here on TBODC. I'm calling it Freebie Friday. Every Friday I'm going to offer something to you - my visitors - for free. To kick this off I'm offering the Illustrator halftone pattern I created to use for the tag line 'Need a Ride?' in my Blue Dog poster.

The inspiration for this came from a neat vector comic effect created by penfold on iStock. I liked the way his halftone pattern made the letters jump off the page. I've always been a sucker for big, bold lettering techniques and so I wanted to create this effect for my poster design.

I don't have the luxury of buying a new version of Adobe CS every time it comes out so I had to figure out a way to create a halftone pattern with my CS version. For those who have the newer versions you can generate halftone patterns a lot easier using the halftone swatches in the swatch palette, using LiveTrace, or by purchasing an Illustrator plug-in called Phantasm CS. You can learn more about the halftone swatches and the plug-in on Ryan Putnam's Illustrator site Vectips.

I wrote some instructions in my Illustrator file to help aid you in how to use the halftone pattern. The pattern itself is made out of a series of small circles so it's totally editable and you can re-size it for any project. I hope you enjoy this freebie and I look forward to your comments.

To keep up-to-date with future Freebie Fridays subscribe to TBODC!

Creating About Me Page & Author Box

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 19:24:00 +0000

Thanks to a comment from Blanca Stella I began to think more seriously about including information about me and my design services into this blog. With the redesign of the site into the three column template I started roaming around the web taking cues from such blogging greats as David Airey, Jacob Cass, and Darren Rowse. These blogging heavyweights had already done what Stella had suggested to me: How can I reach you if I want some graphic design work? Put a "My Services" link. You'll get more business. :)

So I took Stella's advice and created some things for this purpose. First I took the 'About Me' section and added more info - such as links to an actual About Me page (which is located on this blog), my portfolio site, my resume, email links (one for personal contact and one for my folio contact form), and a snazzy graphic to my Twitter page. I also included a graphical link to the interview I did with Jacob Cass so people could learn even more about me and how I work (Thanks, Jacob!).

Now for the About Me page I simply created a regular post and buried it in the back of my blog by changing the date (to be older than my last post) in the Post Options settings of the text editor.

This way I can link to that page from the front page (or anywhere else I want) and it will go to a page that's still on TBODC.

Next I created a sidebar box with a link to an article by Jacob Cass titled Why Logo Design Does Not Cost $5.00. I did this more for educational purposes than anything else. I always get emails from people wanting design work from me either for free or next to nothing. This is quite an insult, since I am a professional designer. Personally I think a lot of people just don't understand what a graphic designer does, because what we produce isn't a tangible object you can hold in your hands (like say groceries or a new HDTV) and so it's easy to assume that it doesn't have much value or that it's easy to do. My hope is that people will go read Jacob's article and come away with a better understanding of the designing process and the people who make such designs.

Another addition I made was the Author Box. I had seen these around and the one that inspired me is on Ronald Bien's site Naldz Graphics. I tinkered with the code for this adding my own pic and a blurb about me including a link to my contact form for anyone who wants to inquire of my design services. This box will appear at the bottom of every post so it's an awesome addition to your blog if you provide services of any kind to people.

Now getting the author box to work in my template was a bit of a chore, but I managed along with the help of Ed Eliot. Ed was kind enough to help me with some spacing issues I was having (Thanks, Ed!). Below I will describe how I did this, but please keep in mind that my blog is a Thisaway template so if you have something different for yours then the information below may or may not work for you.

If you want to know more about the code structure of Blogger templates then I recommend reading this awesome tutorial here offered by Our Blogger Templates. It's very easy to understand and follow, especially for those who have no knowledge in HTML programming.

The first thing I had to do was determine the width of the box. As I described in my Making of TBODC tutorials I determined the width by looking at the size of my content area (#main-wrapper in the template code), which for this new three column layout is 480 pixels. Keeping in mind the padding and margins for the content area I decided to make the box 410 pixels wide. This would be as wide as the content of the posts themselves. If you want a visual reference to go by you can take a screenshot of your page and paste that into Photoshop and then (with the Info palette open) use the rectangular marquee tool to get the size of your content area. For taking screenshots I recommend an awesome little screen capture utility called FastStone Capture. It's more useful than IrfanView and it's also free.

Once I had the box built and coded I went to Customize > Edit HTML, and then turned on the "Expand widgets" check box. I wanted my Author Box to be right above the post footer elements, so I located the <div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'> and the <span class='post-author vcard'> lines and pasted my box code in between them.

I then saved my template and viewed the blog to see what it looked like. I had to fiddle around with some margin and padding sizes until I got the box just the way I wanted it. If you would like to see the code for my box here it is...

<div style='width: 410px; border: 1px solid #E2B96A; background: #FFE4B2; padding: 8px; margin: 0 0 10px 0; font-size: 85%;'>

<a href='http://www.dcblog.net/2008/05/about-me.html'><img alt='Learn About Doug' height='60' src='http://mydomain.com/image.gif' style='margin: 0px 8px 3px 2px; float: left; border: 2px solid D3D3D3;' title=' Learn About Doug' width='60'/></a>

<div style='text-align: left;'>Author: <a alt='Portfolio of Doug Cloud' href='http://dougcloud.net' title='Portfolio of Doug Cloud'>Doug Cloud</a><br/>Doug is a professional graphic designer from Michigan. He created TBODC to help people learn about design with quality articles and tutorials. If you would like to hire Doug for graphic design work you may contact him <a alt='Contact Doug' href='http://dougcloud.net/contact.php' title='Contact Doug'>here</a>.</div>

</div>

Now if you decide to use my code above (and you can if you want) then you can easily change the colors of the background and the border in the top <div> section to suit your site's color scheme.

If it wasn't for Stella I never would have thought about any of this, but now I understand (Thanks, Stella!). If you are a professional in any field and you have a web site or a blog you should provide enough information about yourself and your craft so that visitors can learn about you and what kind of work you are capable of doing. For who knows, some of those visitors may be potential clients.

I hope this has inspired you to add more about yourself on your own blogs and web sites. Many thanks to the people mentioned above for their time and talents in this area. If you would like to add an About Me page on your blog I recommend reading this article by Darren Rowse, where he explains in detail about some of the different advantages to having such a page on your site.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to your comments.

Have fun!

The Spec Rooster

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 02:56:00 +0000

Can't Delete That File? Unlock It!

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:34:00 +0000

Have you ever went to shut down a program or delete a file on your computer and been annoyed by the following pop up: Cannot Delete [file name]. It is being used by another person or program. Close any programs that might be using the file and try again.

Oh yeah, I'm sure you have.

Well, this always annoyed me, too. That is, until I found a nifty little utility called Unlocker. This small app (once installed) will appear in the fly out menu when you right click anything on your computer and give you the opportunity to "unlock" it so that you can either delete the item or shut down the "locked" program.

Pretty awesome, eh?

Unlocker helps delete locked files with error messages like:
Cannot delete file: Access is denied.
There has been a sharing violation.
The source or destination file may be in use.
The file is in use by another program or user.
Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

Unlocker comes with an Assistant which (if you choose) stays in your system tray and automatically launches Unlocker if you are trying to delete/rename/move a file that is locked. So for those who use the Assistant there's no need to right click files or folders to choose Unlocker. The only downside to the Assistant is that you can only enable or disable it during the install.

And what's even more spectacular is that Unlocker is freeware. Gotta love the people who invent these nifty utilities and give them away. You can however donate to the efforts on the Unlocker web site if you wish.

I have used this utility so many times - to unlock my external hardrive so I can turn it off, for example - that it has became a regular staple on my PC. If you decide to download and try out Unlocker let me know what you think of it in the comments.

A Slight Change

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:42:00 +0000

As you might already know (if you come here often, that is) my blog has undergone a slight change - it is now a three column blog. I managed to find a three column Thisaway template at Blogcrowds and after a day of tweaking I finally got it to work. I've made some other small changes as well (sidebar boxes, post header image, etc.). I also had to slim down the elements in my sidebars, including my subscribe box design.

The reason for the change is I was starting to run out of space to put things and I didn't want stuff disappearing down one long right sidebar. I am currently working on adjusting some of the images used in my posts, especially some of the tutorials, since these images are wider than the new content area. So if you happen to run into an image that's cut off somewhere just know that I'm working on fixing it.

Let me know what you think of the new template.

The Chemistry of Color

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Cloud) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:59:00 +0000

One of the things I learned when I first started designing things on the Web was how to utilize color. Like typography, color is an often overlooked aspect of graphic designing. I never thought much about it until I had a client one time who wanted a particular color for their banner design and then some complimentary colors to use on the rest of their web site. At the time I wasn't familiar with the term and so of course I had to do some research. As is usual in these cases Google can be your best friend.

Complementary colors are those colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel. Red and green, yellow and violet, blue and orange, are the three simple pairs of complementary colors. These colors always go well with each other, hence the term complimentary.

One sees the use of complementary color schemes in every aspect of our lives. During Christmas, red and green become inseparable, proving the simplicity and ease of complementary color schemes. The use of gold on a rich blue background was a favorite of renaissance painters. Early evening or seasonal paintings utilizing the yellow and violet color scheme was common among impressionist painters like Monet and Serrat.

- excerpt from Basic Principles of Color artSparx.com

The best way to describe what complimentary colors are would be to use my own blog here as an example. When I first started building TBODC I decided on two primary colors - light cream (for the content area) and light beige (for the sidebar). I used these colors as a starting off point and then picked other colors that would 'compliment' them. The overall effect is a web page design that has an even color scheme and is pleasing to the eye.

This is the goal of any designer, whether you are a home decorator or a graphic designer like myself - to start off with one or two primary colors for your project then pick colors that compliment them.

Another way to look at this would be to imagine you are making your own homemade latte. I love mocha lattes (which would be a soft brown color) and therefore to make one I would add mocha. You would not, for instance, add purple to this recipe if you are trying to produce something brown. Do you see what I'm getting at? It's all about the chemistry; what ingredients (or colors) you use to produce the desired flavor.

If you own Photoshop then you already have a much better tool at your disposal for picking colors - the Color Picker. There are several methods for choosing complimentary colors in Photoshop using this indispensable tool. To begin with there is the HSB slider shown here ...

Pick one color by clicking on the foreground box on the left and then move the HSB slider up and down on the right to find corresponding complimentary colors you could use.

Another method is say you want to make your own palette from a color wheel image you found on the Web. To do this copy and paste the image of the color wheel into Photoshop (or you can copy and use the one I have here), then select your Eyedropper Tool and - while holding down the Shift key - click on areas of colors you would like to use from the image, like so ...

Make sure your Info palette is visible (Window > Info, or F8), and then as you click on each color in the wheel the RGB values for that color will be displayed in the Info palette. You can do this with any image you find that has colors in it you would like to use. The Info palette will actually expand as you click on your colors, but it will only display up to four color selections at a time. You can then click on the small Eyedropper icon on the Info palette and choose different color formats to display.

If you right click on one of the little circles created by the Eyedropper Tool a flyout menu appears and you can choose to copy that color as HTML. For instance, in the screenshot below, I have right clicked on the light orange color and chose "Copy Color as HTML", which puts the HTML value of that color on the clipboard. This is a great method for use in your page code as you choose colors to put on your web pages. To get rid of the little circles you picked just hold down Shift+Alt (your cursor will turn into a little pair of scissors) and simply click on each one.

In choosing colors for your own web pages or designs there are several helpful places on the Web to aid in your efforts. One of them I like in particular is COLOURlovers which has tons of tasty color schemes you can choose from. If you find one that you like just click on it and you'll be taken to a page where you can create a palette from that color.

Just click the "Create a palette for this color" button and you'll be taken to another page where you can choose complimentary colors to add to the palette. This is a great and convenient way to create your own color groups to use in your designs. You can also just search COLOURlovers for palettes already created by other people. They are all free to use.

Another nice online app is offered by ColorSchemeDesigner. It's a Java color picker where you can simply click on the wheel to choose what colors you want and the window on the right displays your complimentary colors.

As for picking colors right off a web page there are a couple little apps I like to use. One is called ColorPix by ColorSchemer and the other is ColorPic by ICONICO. Both of these nifty utilities are handy and convenient because they're small, unobtrusive, and can nab color off a page with just a mouse click. They are also free to use.

Hopefully this has changed your perception on using colors to build your designs and web pages and also given you some useful information on how to utilize different tools in your search to find complimentary colors. I know it has changed mine.

I thank you for reading, and if you have any questions or suggestions please leave them for me in the comments section.

Have fun!