Currently viewing the tag: "design"
Have you ever wanted to start an online store to sell whatever unique products you have to offer? As a photographer and designer running a freelance business, I have been looking for a good, and most importantly, convenient way to sell my photos to my clients and my fine art photography to potential buyers. I had come up empty handed countless times, until I stumbled upon an e-Commerce plug-in for this WordPress blog you are reading.
In my earlier attempts at trying to sell prints to my client(s), I would just set-up a regular blog post on WordPress (this was before I had my website) with all of the pictures from the event and then I told the client(s) to just comment on the pictures that they wanted and be sure to note all of the specifications (size, paper type, etc.). As you can imagine, this was increasingly counter-productive, especially since I had to do an in-person transaction to actually get paid. Stupid idea, I admit it. But it only encouraged me to find a better way to do business.
Then when I created my actual website, brandonburris.com, I could have worked a shop into the design, but then that would require me to do a little more in-depth coding that I would rather stay away from. Therefore, I found that the WP e-Commerce plug-in by getshopped.org was my best alternative.
It is important to note, however, that the ratings on the plug-in were not the most loving. I would describe them as moderate, but hey like I said, it was still my best bet aside from the grueling and frustrating task of coding a store into my website. The store provided all of the simple workings that I expected and wanted from an online store. I would just have to deal with any problems that came my way, given the fact that I was on a bit of a time crunch trying to get the store set-up in time for my first wedding clients (a post about my experience with this coming soon).
After downloading the store, I quickly realized that it wasn’t just plug-n-go. I actually had to do some research on how to get the store to work the way I wanted it to. I needed to figure out how to categorize my products, set variations within each product, and figure out how the business end of the shop worked. “Business,” a word I dread to my inner core. I am in no way a “business man” of any sort. But, that’s what this is now isn’t it, a business that I had to get up and running. So there I was, setting up the business end, figuring out how to get the right tax amount, calculating shipping costs, and testing how actual purchases were made so I could actually get paid from my clients.
Sounds like a lot of complicated work, but all in all, for how complicated setting up shop can be, the plug-in actually does make the process a lot more user friendly, providing all the necessary tools that you need to set up a successful shop. Yet, it is still a very basic shop, unless you want to spend money on all of the fancy upgrades, which can become very pricey. Plug-in creators are always trying to make a quick buck as well. I guess they deserve it for making my life a little easier, so I went ahead and upgraded my shop with the Gold Cart package that only set me back $40. It did provide me with some great extras, like being able to organize my products in a grid view, making it more user friendly for my clients. Sure beats the unattractive default list view.
Overall, there are still some things I wish the plug-in would do that it doesn’t without spending an arm and a leg on upgrades and there are a few bugs in the system that I noticed. But, for a basic shop that meets my needs, it works fine for now and I would highly recommend it for anybody that would like a quick set-up for selling their products.
It has been a long while since I have done any consistent blogging. The title above is the reason why. However, I’m not saying this to complain in any way, my point here is just to show that I have been very busy for the past three months working for this company. I haven’t had much time for blogging or my creative photography and graphic design work. But, now that the holiday season is over, it is my hope that I can get back into the groove of producing more blog posts about my work that is my passion, and hopefully on a more consistent basis.
To reiterate, I mentioned that I have been working for this developing company for the past three months now. I was hired on by Tiny Prints with the title “Graphic Production Designer.” Going into the job, they made me well aware that I was signing on for a three month contract position, and when the holiday season was over, I would be let go. Excitingly enough, I just found out yesterday that they are keeping me on a little longer and possibly even keeping me on as part-time employee in the near future. Although, this all depends on how the company continues to grow and develop through the coming months. The fact they the company decided to keep me on was surprising news, and the anticipation leading up to it was ever so painful. Every day I would come into work never knowing if it would be my last day and I would constantly see other people getting let go all around me. You can imagine the sense of relief that came over me when I received the good news that I was going to say on a little longer. Therefore, this gives me more time to prepare for the future, a future that could possibly be with this wonderful company. Since it is such a great job and they treat their employees very well, I can only hope for a future within the company. One thing that I must point out that, I thought was just over-the-top awesome of the company, is that the snack and soda machines were all free to everyone and they fed us a few times a week during the strenuous 12 hour shifts of the holiday season. I can truthfully say that this, along with the great Tiny Prints family, makes this job one of the best I have ever held.
Along with such an awesome team comes a great product as well, and the service that Tiny Prints provides is not like anything I have seen before. As a stationary company, Tiny Prints offers a wide variety of printing services from seasonal greeting cards to birth announcements and party invitations, all of which are customizable to meet the particular needs of every customer. As part of the design team, I personally process customer orders. It is a process where it is my job to check for any mistakes in grammar or spelling and to correct dates and to ensure there is proper design format consistency within each individual order. As far as design goes, it is my duty to edit any pictures as necessary to ensure the quality of the printed product and to adjust art elements within any give art file to meet customer-specific requests. It is a lot of work, but it is all worth it to provide the unique quality service that meets the Tiny Prints standards, a service that I am proud to say I am part of.
If you would like to see more of the products that Tiny Prints has to offer, I encourage you to check out their website:
One of my favorite hobbies and passions, aside from photography and graphic design, would have to be wood design/wood crafting. I would honestly have to say that if I had the means to be in a woodshop everyday designing and crafting, that is what I would be doing. I absolutely love working with wood and can just loose myself in the woodshop for hours on end. But, I was only introduced to wood crafting a couple years ago while attending Arizona State University. Never having been in a wood shop before, I took Woods 1 my junior year as an undergraduate to fulfill my 3D design requirements to graduate. Within days of being in the class, I fell in love with wood design.
Sadly, I was only able to take one more class of woodshop before I graduated from ASU in May of 2011. But, my time spent in the woodshop will be something I will never forget, and I hope one day I can return to. Below, you can see a few designs I made through those years. I am really proud of these designs, and still today, I amaze myself that I created these pieces with no prior experience working with wood. I’ve had these designs for a while and I am happy that I finally got around to photographing them to share with others.
This leads to my next point, HDR photography. Recently, I have been studying HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography since I saw a lot of talk about it on Google+. I saw HDR images on there that just look amazing compared to regular single shot images. Isik Mater, Alex Koloskov, and Trey Ratcliff are photographers I found on Google+ that do an amazing job at creating HDR images. So, after learning as much as I could about the technique I decided to use it to photograph my wood designs because I wanted moredynamic range in the lights, darks, and colors, so that the pieces would pop out more.
To begin, I set my bracketing meter on my Canon 60D to take three bracketed shots of each of the three pieces I was photographing. I set up the pieces in my studio, and kept my lighting and white balance consistent throughout the various shots. When that was complete, it was onto the editing process. I was introduced to an HDR photo editing software called Photomatix, which will take multiple bracketed shots and combine them into one HDR image. By using this software, the process of combining my images was a breeze, and using the many image adjustment sliders in the software, I got my images exactly how I wanted them to look. A few more edits in Photoshop CS5 and I was done!
The whole process was a lot easier than I had expected, and although it may be a little more time consuming, it is totally worth the quality of images that can be produced. However, I do think that maybe a studio setting may not be the best place to use this technique, even though I like the way my images turned out. I say this because I did have some trouble with overexposed highlighted areas in some shots that needed a little more tending to. Therefore, I can’t wait to take this technique out into the field where the magic really happens and see what kind of shots I can create using natural light.
You can also find these images and more on my website: brandonburris.com
brandonburris.com…this is a site that has been a long term goal of mine to create. I can finally say with confidence that I have achieved this goal. I can also say that my web presence has increased exponentially because of this new website that I have created, but, there were a lot of tribulations along the road to success.
The planning, or rather thought of wanting to produce, my website had been brewing for about two years before the design process started. Why so long to finally produce a working version you ask. Well, since I was still in school the past two years and working a part-time job, this kind of situation doesn’t give a college student much time to design these days. Another reason is because I still needed to build up enough work to have an interesting website, and those two years were crucial in building up my work both through school and through work. As an art student at Arizona State University, I had a strong focus in photography, which makes up a good 60% of my new website. As an employee at ASU working as a student graphic designer, I have had great experience in design, which makes up the other 40% of my website including the personal designs I have done for myself or for school. However, after graduating in May of 2011 with a Bachelor’s in Art Studies, I finally found that freedom I had been waiting and searching for. Check out my resume at bradonburris.com/resume.
Enough of the background story, time to get to the real reason for this posting. Although my site is fully up and running, and looks awesome I might add, it was no easy task getting to this point. As an amateur, I had initial trouble starting with my design. I kind of knew what I had in mind but I did not know how to get there. At the time I started to take on this endeavor, I was an amateur with html, CSS, and using Dreamweaver. Therefore, since I am professional at utilizing Photoshop’s many wonders, I thought my design should start with using Photoshop as my tool and canvas. I would just configure the coding of the image slices later. This idea could not have worked more perfectly. I ended up with an awesome design, which went through two major revisions, but in the end became a design that is unique and different from anything I have previously done in either Photoshop or Dreamweaver. Of course, as the amateur coder that I am I had to research various lines of code that I needed to get the effects that I wanted, like the rollover images and the lightbox effect.
The design process was grueling and took about a month to completely finish, and then it was time buy a domain and start hosting.
*A little minor note at this point I think is necessary because as I was an amateur with html and CSS, I was completely lost when it came to domains, hosting, and that entire networking lingo. Oh sure, I have set up a few routers in my day, but that is about all of the networking experience I have had. But, now I can truly say that my skills as a network technician have tripled after all of the research and video tutorials I watched on networking and setting up domains and hosts.
In the beginning, I wanted to try and host my website myself on an old HP laptop that I don’t use anymore. Had I know it was going to be so much trouble I would never had attempted it. After about a week of trial and error and the use of numerous hosting techniques and software, to my dismay I was not able to get my website live on the web. This sad defeat still burns a hole through my soul every time I think about it. In the end, I had to move on and I extensively researched hosting services and ended up going with Bluehost, where I got a great deal on my domain, hosting service, and email service. I had some difficulties with setting up Bluehost to host my website, but they provided wonderful video tutorials and help forums throughout the process that I gratefully took advantage of.
In the end, I can say that this was more than a new experience, it was an adventure. After about a month and a half, from the design stage to the point of live hosting, I can confidently say that I designed my own website, set up hosting and a domain, got my own personalized email (brandon@brandonburris.com), and set up this fancy new personalized WordPress site. It was a learning process, I’m not going to lie. There were many frustrations, but in the end, those minor frustrations paid off and presented me with a great web presence that I have waited years to have. But, that is how we learn, through trying new things and taking on new challenges. I can confidently say that this whole endeavor was one big learning process for me and has made me an even stronger designer and tech savvy person.
Feel free to check out my personal webpage at http://brandonburris.com/ and my Flavors.me homepage at http://photondesign.brandonburris.com.
By the way, Flavors.me is a great place to create a home page that will link to your entire stage presence. I encourage you to check it out.
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