It’s been a bit since my last blog, I hope this finds you all doing well!
Recently my life has been pretty crazy and has been changing alot. For a moment I was in limbo wondering where things were heading and what God had in store for me, but he has opened a new path before me and I’m going to follow his lead.
I was offered/accepted a position at Lippert Components as their Junior Web Developer / Webmaster. I begin this journey next week and I have high hopes for the future with them.
I had been previously working on a freelance basis with them to help them knock out some side projects they’ve been working on. Part of the time in-house and part of the time remote from my home office. I worked mainly with their community service initiatives. The process was great and everyone there so far has been extremely kind and I’m excited to begin working as a part of the development team!
That all said, what is next for Virtual Crasis, and my freelance business? Well I’m not 100% sure, but I know with a full time position I am going to be greatly strapped for any time to work on side projects.
I may take on some side projects here and there, but only ones that I’m able to work on at my pace. I plan on working on some non-profit projects as well for my church and some of my close friends which I’m pretty excited about. Learning to balance my job and my personal time has always been a juggling act, but with the new financial security I’ll be gaining, will take a lot of stress from my shoulders.
Will I ever freelance full-time again?
Maybe somewhere down the road, but not anytime in the near future. I believe this position will greatly hone my skills overall and allow me to progress more so than my freelancing experience and my education to this point, and to become an even more lethal designer and developer.
What about the blog and social media?
I plan on continuing the blog and sharing my knowledge of technical skills and life lessons, in fact I hope this new stability allows me to share more than I previously was able. It will be less about promoting my business and more about promoting best practices, educating and providing insights.
So that’s all for now, thanks so much for following and supporting me in my endeavors I will do my best to update everyone with future milestones as well!
I’ve decided to put a lot more of my focus on my content and blogging as obviously that hasn’t been as spectacular as of late. I’m really great at sharing content of other blogs and things I find interesting on my social media pages, however it’s been difficult creating my own content like I had planned.
That being said if I am posting less articles and links from this point on, the reason being is because I am going to try and use the time I would normally read up on blogs and share posts to craft my own blog. I will still be sharing on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays and often times on Saturdays, but I hope to ultimately have more of my own content to share with you.
I did share a link already today if you missed it:
Oh and in case you haven’t already you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Google+ the links are found under the heading “Follow Us!” above or you can find them via the official website Virtual Crasis.
Speaking of the site, I also plan to make changes to that this year. Adding some basic monthly packages for upkeep & maintenance which I’ve already developed and shared with a few clients and by standardizing my prices so that it’s easier to pick just an option and then customizing further per your needs.
The site will also be becoming one with the blog so that there are no longer two different pages, the tumblr blog and the site. It just doesn’t make much sense to have two different pages. The only plus is that they are creating back links for each other, but that doesn’t help you the viewer/reader any. So all that being said, I am now going to get started on some things and I hope to have some new stuff for you in the next couple weeks.
God Bless and have a great Friday & Weekend! -Craig Cooper
This is a continuation of my Design Inspiration posts that I have previously been doing. This is a much more simplified approach. If you like the design/art/illustration/website just follow the link and look at more details. If you don’t you can just… not do that. Keep an eye for these kind of posts once a month, probably closer to the end of the month as I like to collect things and cull out my least favorites. Maybe I’ll make some links to the honorable mentions as well.
So if you’re just starting out doing freelance work and don’t have a system yet, or you have a system and it doesn’t work very well for you, take a look at these 5 tools that will help you be more productive, save time and manage your projects more easily.
Also for the record, I’m not getting sponsored by anyone to share these tools, this is purely to help you be more productive, and also to market myself by providing helpful information to you. =) (Now that’s what I call being transparent!)
I will be covering just the gist of what these tools are, and some of the things I really enjoyed about them, but don’t just take my word for it, do some more digging for yourselves and play around with them to see if they suite you and your needs.
I’ve listed my favorite ones last so stick around if you want to see the best ones. Atleast in my opinion, you may find you have a better use for some, more than others.
This first productivity tool syncs your smart phone messages and app notifications to your desktop. You can even set your device on the charger in another room and if you get a call, text message or an app notification (optional), you will see them pop up in the corner of your desktop screen. That way you’re not playing with your phone, but are updated as needed and can choose to leave it for later, or respond immediately from you computer and get back to work!
Now you may have noticed, if you are a Windows 10 user, that the new OS has phone integration as well, so you can receive text messages to your computer and respond. That’s all fine and well, however if you don’t respond within the dialog box or the Action Center, you can’t get back to your conversations except by looking at your phone. That’s where MightyText continues to be helpful. I leave it run in minimized form until I need it, and it allows you to use the windows notifications box in place of their own.
There are a few pitfalls with it, but if you are so inclined, you can sign up for the premium version and that takes care of those issues. The main issue I’ve had is not having all of my contacts synced so I can’t make quick new messages from my laptop. I have to first look up the contact on my phone or in Outlook to confirm the correct number to the corresponding contact, but as I mentioned before the premium version takes care of that problem because it allows for multiple contact platforms to be synced.
What I will be discussing is the free version of Toggl, not the premium. The free version offers you the basics and will get the job done, but there’s more for those who want to get all they can out of it, including Toggl business that I have not researched myself.
I use Toggl’s desktop app on Windows 10 and the online reporting tools to keep track of my weekly and hourly work completion. I also use the Toggl Android app, to keep track of tasks that I do outside of the office, like reading emails while waiting for my wife in the car or working from somewhere that my laptop isn’t handy. This helps me stay focused and know where I need to improve if I’m slacking off. I only track my working hours, but you can track whatever you choose. In the image below you can see an example of the desktop app.
As you can see you can add tags to your entries by clicking on the entry and opening the side panel. You can also edit your entries and open up the reports page on the website where you can do a lot more, like research how long you spend on a weekly basis reading your emails or doing social media marketing. You can see an example of this in the image below.
Lastly, I would like to add that it will send you a weekly report in your email showing you where and for how long you worked on certain entries throughout the week. It’s a very helpful tool, especially if you’re charging by the hour for work for different clients or with a team of colleagues.
The last few images I will show you are of the mobile app, it’s very helpful on the go, although sometimes it has sync errors unfortunately.
This tool is more aimed at creatives and designers. It is an online tool that one can use to create prototypes and moodboards. It also has some other features that you can play with for yourself, I’m still learning it as I’m writing about it, but the more I use it, the more helpful I find it. If you want to go even further there is a premium service you can look into as well.
One of the things I noticed very early in my exploration is the ability to make interactive prototypes. If you have a free account and are logged in open the prototypes tab and click on the pre-made prototype titled “Web App Prototype”. You will notice that within each “project” there can be multiple project cards. For this project each one of the cards are a different page to the web app. Now if you click and enter the first one on the left you will see what looks like a social media site. Remember this is just a prototype of the final version of a web app, but if you hover over the profile image on the top right hand side, a drop down will appear, additionally if you click any of the menu items there, you will be redirected to the other cards that match it’s description. So you will still have to design elements in Photoshop or another application, but you can see the functionality in the InVision app, before you do a lick of coding. Pretty cool right?
Basically InVision will help get your projects organized in a presentable way to showcase to your clients or your team. On that note, it’s very social, and allows for live previews to those you share to. It allows the ability to collaborate with others through comments, something they call “hotspots”, where specific elements of a design can basically be highlighted and commented on and the option to designate whether a board is “On Hold”, “In Progress” “Needs Review” or if a board layout has been “Approved”, which seems like a very useful feature. There is also the ability to view the history of a board if you so choose, and see all the different versions of a design from start to approval.
Let’s talk a little bit about InVision “Boards”. I use these most frequently of the boards and prototypes options, as I like to use these to get the mood and overall feel of a project together in one area. If you are working as a team this is also a great place to share and save resources for the future, like color schemes, source imagery, typeface selection, written documents and body copy written for your project. There are so many uses for these, but you will find that out as you play with it.
My biggest complaint about the InVision tool is that when you are working with lots of images, like one might when using the moodboards, the load time can be tediously slow. If you use lower res images that should help. Really it’s the Internet’s fault. Sorry Internet, we still love you!
The last helpful thing about InVision, is the InVision Blog. It always has great articles that are relevant to an aspiring designer that are not just helpful or insightful, but also help you to feel that you aren’t alone and that other designers and creatives struggle with the same things you struggle with. Check it out if you have a chance!
Hootsuite is a social media dashboard. Instead of posting the same article multiple times on different sites, you can link them all together and post from one place. The free version will work well for most users, but if you have a ton of social media accounts or clients you work for, it will be more beneficial to upgrade to the business platform as you are limited to a set amount of accounts that you can link. Here’s the plans if you’re interested!
You can also check all of your feeds in one place, see your stats, make reports about your posting success and even schedule when you want to make your posts go out. For instance if you want to share a holiday post, but won’t be in the office on the day you want it to go out, then just make one early and send it out at the perfect time on the special day, that way you can still enjoy it without feeling guilty about not posting something on such a crucial date for people checking their feeds!
I use Evernote everyday, I only wish I had started using it earlier that’s why it’s my favorite and final tool I wanted to share with you! In fact I’m using it to make this post’s content!
I’m using it type out the words to this post in a note within a notebook titled “Virtual Crasis Blog” and I’m collecting images inside of this note as well, that I’ve screen shot from my browser! (See Below)
The best part is that it syncs across all of your devices, so your main workstation, to your phone, to your tablet and to anywhere you can access the Internet if you don’t have your own device, just use the web application.
I use it for multiple things in my daily life. For instances, anytime I need to make a personal note I can tell my Android smartphone using Google Voice to “Note to Self” and it will ask me for the details and then save it to my Evernote. I can even make reminders that will be emailed to me when they are due.
I use Evernote for everything, from taking notes in my bible study, to keeping my daily goals and task list, to editing snippets of code and sharing it with my “work chat” colleagues who share notebooks with me! All that, and I can even remind myself that I need to check out a cool band later and get some more milk from the store! It is the single most valuable tool I use on a daily basis.
I currently am using the Plus package, which will run you $35 a year and it’s totally worth it! You can also use the Free version which is ideal for testing out the features and learning how awesome it is, and then getting you hooked! They may even have a free trial for the other packages if you are a new user.
It works on Mac, it works on Windows, it works on Android and it works on everything, as far as I can tell or have seen.
In addition, Windows 10 store has the app which will make the program work more intuitively with your OS, however there are a few bugs yet, so I am still using the downloaded version from the Evernote site.
I’d also like to say again, I’m not being paid to say any of this, these are all tools I’ve found helpful on my journey of freelancing and being self employed, hope that you can get as much enjoyment out of them as I do!
As always, God bless and thanks for following the Virtual Crasis blog!
This page has unfortunately been quiet for a bit, I apologize for that. I am working on some blog content and a VLOG for the Youtube channel as well. I have recently taken on a second job with Hall Mark cards working part time, so I’m still adjusting to my new schedule and trying to make time for marketing, design and other business & life tasks I need to take care of.
Expect a new post within another week or so, until then you can follow me and my company on my other social media pages, and you can take a look at my website if you haven’t already www.virtualcrasis.com . Thanks so much, excited to get some new stuff on here for everyone!
I’ve decided I’d like to add more detailed information from my perspective this week on each post, for a few reasons, first and foremost being, I’d like to get more involved with you guys and hopefully inspire more interaction or interest. Secondly, more content means better SEO so more users finding my page would be a nice bonus.
I’m also going to do things a bit differently this week by making this an unnumbered list because everyone determines what they think is the best and all of these are great examples and so I want to let you guys decide for yourselves, because you’re going to anyways. Also, remember these are just things I’ve found inspiring or well designed and/or created over the past few weeks, I try to compile one of these every other week when able, although sometimes they go out once a month if I’m short on time during that period. But that being said check out the Week 5 Inspiration Post and share it if you like it! Thanks!
Summary: I came across this website while I was reading an article from Web Designer Depot, about Navigation Trends for 2015. This website is really minimalist, it makes the “long story short” they wanted to get straight to the point, and they do. The two things that really stood out to me was the video, I enjoyed that and it also inspired me to get to work because of how awesome their environment looked. The other thing that stood out to me, and what was talked about in the article I referenced was what they did with their navigation menu that comes up when you click the navicon in the upper right corner. It gives you the site map essentially, a form to get in touch along with contact info, their social media and it also gives you some other options that you can check out for yourselves. It just pops up over the other parts of the page and goes away if you click the favicon, really smart idea and why not do it that way?
Summary: This is actually a video, follow the link for the main video and making of video as well as other gifs from the project. It’s really hard to describe this one so just check it out, love the mix of sound and motion, and really gets your foot tappin’ and your eyes poppin’ as you watch these inanimate objects become animated.
Summary: Was just minding my own business watching some TV on a Sunday afternoon when I came across this McDonald’s commercial, it is truly awesome and inspiring. The first thing that got me interested was the flat design of the characters, and then I started to pay attention to the subject matter. Batman and the Joker, Mario and Bowser, and also a Bears and Packers fan sharing fries among others. This made my day when I saw it, hope it does the same for you.
Summary: Here’s an assortment of movie posters created by Paul Shipper, that abduzeedo shared. They are all pretty awesome, some of which you will recognize right away. You can find his other work and portfolio on his personal site. The one that stood out right away for me was the Batman with Michael Keaton, that and the Godzilla above are probably my two favorites, but they are all great works of art.
Summary: I found this while browsing this daily-inspiration blog post, and I can’t seem to find the original creator but abduzeedo took it from a site called designinspiration.net If you can find the creator leave me some feedback and I’ll try to add it to this post!
Summary: Found this set of 60 Vintage Logos when I was doing a little search for this style for a personal project. Decided to go a different way, but who knows when these awesome designs could come in handy. Maybe even take multiple logos and mesh the ideas to make other unique logos. And not only that, they are just so nice to look at, great design skills!
Summary: This is very good minimalist design. I think the thing that stood out to me right away, which was intended I’m sure by the designer, was the color against the grayscale background, images and text. Not only did they use color to get the users attention, but they used lines to direct eye movement, for instance the image at the top of the page forms a point, that leads the viewer to the navigation, it also helps that the openings in the center are red making this the focal point, and leading the user from left to right with the blue colored opening to the left. Just very well put together and simplistic.
Summary: This movie was motivational to me in a few ways, one was to hear about the art form and the passion these guys have for what they do, as well as the fact that the video game industry is full of designers, developers, tech geeks and other great people that do similar things to what we do. It was also inspiring to me as a freelancer/entrepreneur because of how it all started and the risks these companies took to get it all going. You can find the film on Netflix, and maybe on other video streaming software and sites.
Summary: This is just a collection of the best web design inspiration from last year, take a look there are some great examples, some of which I used in previous inspiration posts!
Summary: Some illustration from Ivan Belikov for another inspiration of mine, which is music and the album is linked above which was found on BandCamp. Not only is this an example of illustration and graphic design but, it’s also product design. If you scroll down through the Behance page you’ll find another image created they was used in a t-shirt. It’s seriously awesome, especially with the giant owl stooped on the mysterious woman’s arm and the vibrant red moon behind it. Just so much awesome from this one. Also, just to push you some more inspiration, if you are a comic fan, you need to read Batman The Court of Owls, you will not be disappointed. If you’re like me and my wife and YOLO (You Obviously Love Owls) then you’ll love that story arc as well, does a lot of cross overs.
Well that’s it for this week, keep your eyes open for another one in a couple weeks, I’ve already seen a few other things I’d like to put in a post but ten is enough for this one. Leave me some feedback if you like these articles and if you have any you’d like to see on these posts as well, I can’t guarantee they will show up here if you do share, but send me links and I’ll take a look!
