So in an attempt to hunt down some clients I’ve been stepping outside my own box and searching all over, taking smaller projects like logos and banner ads more frequently. One of the projects I’ve recently completed for La Villas Ballroom Dance was very educational as I haven’t had more opportunity (nor reason) to toy around with Illustrator and hand drawn art. While the client didn’t end up choosing the hand drawn art (they wanted to update their old logo in my new style) I was particularly proud of how the concept turned out. Check it out below and see what you think.

La Villas Ballroom Dance Concept Logo

I think working on this design though was a great opportunity to show how sites like craigslist, yahoo local (one of my favorites) and Kudzu can be used to your advantage when clients aren’t kicking down your door 24/7.

Digital Grime Screen Shot

So at some point I decided that I would reserect an old project I started long before I got into this whole “web design” kicked off with my partner and I. I’ve always had this passion for music, hip hop especially. Through that I started what I had always called the first hip hop text battle site. Honestly there was probably others out there but I never was able to find them so I created my own. It was called Digital Grime.

It was a project of love that I had to eventually abandon when I shut down all my equipment to move from Japan to where I live now in San Diego. It wasn’t until a trip to North Carolina that I actually began the long, painful process of rebuilding it. Im glad that the hardest parts are now in the past but there’s still plenty to do.

The basic concept at this point is that Digital Grime is a social netowking site that allows its members to learn and share new music and allows underground artists, dancers and event/club promoters a place where they can share their talents and ideas. Not a big task right?

Anyhow you can check the project out here.

The New Ty7 Web Services Site

We’d been working on client projects for quite some time and I think it just naturally dawned on me that I hadn’t touched the Ty7 Site at all. It wasn’t that the site was bad by any means but I think (and this is just my personal oppinion) that in order to grab the attention of prospective clients they have to be able to see you treat your site like you would theirs.

With the main focus of the site plotted out. I began work on a project that I assumed would only take a few days and instead consumed my creative side for a few weeks. After a few concepts found their way to the trash bin, I am proud to say that the new Ty7 site looks amazing and features our greatest resource… our clients. Take a look at it for yourself here and tell us what you think?

The site now features images of our client projects in the upper right corner and quotes in the lower center area. Both of these features rotate to show new content each time the page is refreshed. We’ve also added a login are for our staff and members that will be developed more in the near future to include special tools and software.

We’ve also updated the Portfolio so that our prospective clients can really take in some of our recent projects. I’m really proud of the progress the site has taken and hope it translates to a site people will enjoy visiting.

Finally, looks like you might not get an update from me for a few days. I have been nominated for an African American Heritage Award and am going to be traveling to Fayetteville State University tomorrow receive the award and enjoy a luncheon with some prominent members of the community and government. I and the family are really excited so I’m hoping to bring back plenty of pictures for the page when I return.

Until then enjoy your weekend and keep posting.

So when it came time to manage our expenses we needed a program that would let us manage/send invoices, keep track of inventory and costs as well as clients and their bills. Fortunatly, with a little time searching on www.download.com I came across Volutive.

Volutive came in two distinct flavors a Professional edition with all the bells and whistles and a freeware version. Looking back on my first run-on paragraph, I’m sure you can guess which one I downloaded. Now, I can only speak for the free version of this software but from what I was able to do with it, I was incredibly impressed. It was easy to set up and use, albeit a little on the bland side (what do you expect for free) and was full of enough features that I have been hard pressed to this day to find anything that can compete.

You are given several areas to customize to your needs. Theres the corporate button to add your company data; followed by buttons for clients, inventory, sales people and vendors. There are also tabs so that you can manage quotes, reciepts, and purchase orders easy and can even create your own template to customize their look.

As for appearance its not the prettiest toy around. Some functions including the template maker for forms could have been handled much better and often caused me some frustration when I wanted to add my own fields. Also the fact that I didn’t see (even in the Pro version) an option to print 1088 forms was a bit of a letdown.

At the end of the day, Volutive is great for its price and even after a week of looking in stores like Fry’s and Best Buy I have yet to find a single piece of software that offers enough features to replace it on my hard drive. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to manage their clients, inventory and spending.

If you are considering starting your own business or involved in one now but just need a little mentorship, you may want to check out the fin people over at SCORE. Their website (www.score.org) is an excellent place to ask business advice, learn how to how to write a business plan, and offers many free tools that every budding entrepreneur should have in their toolbox.

If you are looking for information about an industry there are professionals out there to help. I would love to hear from others working on their own businesses and what tools they are using to accomplish their goals.

-A new, simpler site layout. A quick easy to use navigation so you can find what you need fast.
-A new marketing section for clients to purchase advertising space an multiple Ty7 partner sites to generate visitors.
-This blog (`nuf said)

I am sure more items will be added as the new layout gets closer to release. I know that many of you were just getting use to the current format and for that I appologize. I`ll take the punches for that one (for now), but once the new version is out you will hopefully understand and appreciate our need to move forward.

As always we`re thinking of you, our potential clients first. So if there`s something you`d like to suggest, let us know. We`re listening.

Its a tough decision and often comes with a lot and ups and downs, so by sharing some of our experiences, as well as those of some of my friends and colleagues; I hope to give some of you who may be reading this a little extra encouragement to make that leap but also some knowledge to prevent you from doing so blindly.

I hope all that come to visit this page will enjoy reading it as much as we will writing it.