I just received my new WD 500 gig My Book this morning. I immediately started setting it up so I could begin the long process of transferring my data. I don’t remember if I mentioned this before, but my current HD takes forever to transfer data! It once took me a whole day, from 9am-5pm to transfer 12 gigs. 12. My beautiful TB HD I have at home uses her super fast fire wire connection to transfer 12 gigs in a matter of minutes. Even my 500 gig HD, which has a USB 2 connection, transfers really fast. On a side note, when I bought my 500 gig HD over a year ago, I wanted to get the firewire version. However the sales person at Best Buy convinced me to get a HD with an eSata connection. He also assured me that I could acquire the card for my mac when they had them in stock. It wasn’t until a month later that I found that eSata cards were not made for macs. The archiving session I had a week ago was painful only because it took me forever to back up my files via external HD. I am really hoping that this HD will rise to the challenge and be able to transfer my data at the speed of light. Yes, the speed of light. Perhaps I should name her the Millennium Falcon? Naah, too cliche. On another note, completely unrelated to my HD, I am closing out a number of projects due to my upcoming travel. (I will not be in Thursday or Monday.) I just uploaded a newsletter for print production, translated three web designs into html expandable pages for the client to see and approve, and finished various website updating/alteration projects. Today’s tasks are to start and complete concept sketches of a town setting, get further in the DDA Sketchbook, take some product photography, make a few graphics/roll overs for websites and complete some other site updates. I need to finish these before I leave today.

I’ve been having all sorts of fun times with this sketchbook. Yesterday I began dissecting the sample flip book file in flash. I’m not used to Flash, and I’m even less familiar with the new flip book! The old flip book, which you can view in our Print Brochures portfolio, was pretty easy to work with. All you needed to do was place the desired images into a folder and make sure that the flash files were linked properly. This one is a little more complicated, and for good reason. You can have transparent or tear away pages! It also seems to run pretty fast. I remember finding a flash flip book that had transparent pages for a past print brochure Judy designed. It looked nice but it took a while to load and seemed to have a small lag. Hopefully this flip book, once uploaded, will still be fast. After talking to our lead designer, Carrie, I had a better grasp on what we are going to be doing with this project. Basically there will be one large DDA Sketchbook that you can view from a main page. The sketchbook will have spreads containing the client approved design as well as a few designs that the were shown to the client, but not chosen. As for now it seems that all DDA projects will be contained within this one sketchbook. It could change in the future though. Now you might be asking, “What if I only want to look at a particular project?” If you are interested in a particular project, we will have a link from the project in the DDA portfolio to the corresponding page in the sketchbook. If you’ve seen our portfolio recently, you’ve noticed the ‘Related Projects’ links. The DDA Sketchbook links will be similarly attached to the portfolio.

Our professional advertising agency is often contracted by major marketing companies to do the creative work involved with a variety of projects from website design and development to video production and print design. Although we offer marketing services in conjunction with our advertising capabilities, we are more often than not employed for production purposes and delve into marketing when appropriate and applicable.

As a novice in the field, I used to think that DDA could take on all marketing and public relations work in addition to advertising. We’re fully capable and the combined experience of those who comprise our team is quite extensive. Alternatively, I once thought it was strange that so many marketing companies outsourced creative production. Today, I’ve come to realize the need for both areas of business, and for that matter, the need for them to be separate, specific entities that work together to accomplish a similar goal.

DDA’s production process is seamless, making it easy for clients or marketing agencies to be our main point of contact for direction and feedback. Whether clients come to us directly or through one of the many marketing companies we work with, the end result is the same… a great overall experience and a strong product for an unbeatable campaign. Everything considered, I could definitely see DDA expanding to include full-fledged PR and marketing divisions, but only time will tell.

At DDA, we are proud to offer fully integrated advertising campaigns. With the wide array of services we provide, from video production to graphic design and copywriting to programming, we can provide any company with complete digital advertising services. We can build any marketing campaign from the ground up, design company logos, build custom and unique websites, and promote products with brochures, or we can work with established businesses looking to extend their marketing efforts with print designs or trade show ads.

But most importantly, everything at DDA is customized to fit your company’s exact needs. Our websites, for instance, are not created from templates and are custom built. And with the knowledge of our programming department and video production team, your website can be molded to exact specifications, integrating high-end video, search functions, and anything else you need. The sky is the limit when you choose DDA!

DDA’s Sketchbook is on the way. We are currently making the template for all the sketchbooks. I need to talk to Rob about making a flip book with an image background so it will seem as though the viewer is flipping through a full book. I think that I may have an idea on how to accomplish that, but since flash isn’t my forte, I’ll have to rely on Rob if my idea doesn’t work. Next on the list is to round up all the samples of different projects we want to show. There are so many to choose from I don’t know how we are going to decide what gets put in first. I also hear that the sketchbook will start in the logo section and then expand. I guess we’re going to have to find all those brochure, website and trade designs that were turned down!

I read recently that a UN Relief Agency (UNWRA) was adjusting its forecast of the number of starving people worldwide dramatically upwards. From memory, I believe the number forecast just a few years ago was less than 600 million, a huge number and about 10% of the world’s population, to a number closer to 1.5 billion. This projection was to occur by the year 2015, again from memory.

The reason was because of the push in some countries, especially in South America and the U.S., to produce Ethanol. That’s correct, in our endeavor to lessen our dependence on foreign oil, we are producing less rice and other crops for food and using the land for growing corn and sugar cane to be turned into fuel. The second impact of this is that land is being cleared from pristine areas, like the rain forest, at a record pace to have more land to grow Ethanol related crops.

The biggest irony is that, especially in the case of corn, it takes almost as much energy to grow the corn, harvest and transport it, and refine it into Ethanol as is gained by the resulting fuel itself. About 90% as much.

So, the upshot is that we are starving people, destroying the ecosystem and producing little or no energy gain all in the interest of reducing our dependence on Petroleum. This is the law of unintended consequence.

Now you might ask, how does this law apply to DDA’s immediate world and our drive to produce high quality and affordable state-of-the-art custom marketing and advertising for clients in the corporate, medical, financial, manufacturing and educational arenas?

On a grand scale, and with a birds-eye-view, I can safely say that everything an individual does in life, and at work, begins with an intention. At DDA, we try hard to avoid unintended consequences by always encouraging and maintaining the best of intentions. Wanting to produce the best website design, video production, photography, animation, print design, catalog, custom programming application, illustration or copy writing, at the lowest cost, in the most efficient and client-friendly manner may not totally eliminate the law of unintended consequences, but it sets a course that is more clear, more fair, and more likely to get both DDA and the client organization to the place we all want to be.

Today is a rainy Spring day that makes you feel kind of blah. So, I am trying to think of something happy. One thing that always makes me smile is our mascot Indie. His blog yesterday made me laugh! He is always so happy and well mannered. He is  always a bright spot in any work day. DDA will again be working with some fun party type products for print design. This time it will be for your pets, and that will make it all that much more fun! Our Graphic Designers will make the most out of our product photography to create a fun and colorful new print ad design that will make some people want to borrow a pet just so they can enjoy the fun! Maybe we can have Indie model right here in our own photography studio! Pretty soon, he’ll be charging for autographs…..

When I tell people that I work 10 hour days, their eyes tend to get a little larger in disbelief. Of course I add that I work 4 days a week and that puts them more at ease, but they still usually have something to say about my 10 hour days. As an artist, I find nothing terribly wrong with 10 hour days because art, in general, is very demanding of time. (The 1.5-2 hours of commute is another story however.) I had 6 hour long classes in college and sometimes that wasn’t enough to really get into the assignments.

DDA’s design team usually creates 2-3 website comps that we show to the client. These 2-3 designs can take anywhere from 3-6 hours to lay out, depending on how involved the site is. And that time is not including the finished version of the site design, the time it takes to slice the custom tailored template specifically for web build out purposes, putting together an html version of the design with working roll overs and the final build out of the pages. And all of this isn’t including the writer’s content/optimization writing or proofing time, the video department’s time to create flash or video based work for the site (if any) and the programmer’s time to do all the coding for the site.

We at Dynamic Digital Advertising can have any number of websites, at various stages, being made at once. If you estimate each site at 25-30 hours, multiply that by (let’s just say) 4 sites you have 100-120 hours of just website work. (Not including the sell sheet, logo, brochure, newsletter and postcard designs we designers need to lay out within the same time frame.) And usually all of our clients want everything ‘yesterday’. So 10 hour days don’t sound bad at all. They tend to go pretty quickly and miraculously everything seems to always get done.

Using the computer as a common medium for printed design, website design, and video has resulted in each specialty influencing each other. Whatever our specialty, each of us has become somewhat of a multimediast.

For example, printed design sometimes looks more like website design through the organization of its content. Article outlines are often designed like website buttons.

Websites use callouts like in printed media, except they become buttons. Flipbooks (virtual books that can be flipped through, complete with page turning mpeg sounds) have become popular on websites.

Video is frequently used on websites in the form of a spokesperson.

Illustration construction and deconstruction (like Harold and the Purple Crayon) has become popular in video.

What does this mean? I like to think of it like multiculturism. Different media worlds getting to know each other, curious, and finding appreciation for what is unique and getting excited about what is similar. Ultimately, it’s a bigger playground!

Mondays at DDA have always been the day when bagels are purchased for those who work here. Pre-me there were no asiago bagels; plain and everything were the choices for the prior year I worked at DDA. It just so happened one week that Debbie took an order for different kinds of bagels. I remembered eating an asiago bagel once and liking it, so I requested one. Now we get 6 asiago bagels each Monday and have to fight each other off for the opportunity to obtain these cheesy bagels of goodness. As a result, we now refer to Mondays as Asiago Day. Heh, well I lied. We really don’t refer to it as Asiago Day…just me.

It may sound silly to you, but there comes great satisfaction with a good meal to start the day. Perhaps a bagel isn’t the first choice of breakfast, but every time I sit back at my desk after eating the bagel of cheese, I am ready to work. There comes no grumble from my stomach as I design my Sell Sheets. No pang of great hunger as I prepare Print Newsletters for client preview. Not the slightest sound from her (my stomach) as I design a new Website template. Nope, nada. At least not until lunchtime…which is now.