Taradara » Miscellaneous

The Importance of Planning

admin — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 13:07:31 +0000

Planning is one more way of winning. To understand this it is enough to try at least once. If I have a complex goal, I break it into small manageable tasks.That helps to bear in mind important details and the goal looks easier to achieve.

There are several significant psychological aspects in planning. The first one is that people are able to keep in mind only 5-7 temporary things they have to do. In case you have more then 7, there is a big chance to forget something (it often happens when you pack up your things in a hurry or go to the market without a list of products you have to buy). The second one is when your goal is broken into small tasks, everytime you finish one of them, you perceive it as a result. It makes you feel that you are on a right way. There won’t appear any desire to give up, as it often happens when we don’t see any result at all, even if we know that the goal is achievable.

So, planning should be used when we have:

– Too many things to do and don’t want to forget anything;
– A complex goal and want to see results while achieving it;

With planning you are able:

– To set priorities;
– To have a better structure of your plans;
– To save time;
– To manage to do more;
– To not to miss any important things;

Tools for planning:

1. Paper Stick Notes

Have fun drawing, writing and sticking them wherever you want.

2. Stickies (Mac only)

It is a Mac OS system application, which I find very good for short notes. You can create as many notes as you want, drag them wherever you want on the screen, change fonts, colors and size.

3. Things (Mac only)

An application with a simple and friendly interface. It allows you to create separate entries or big projects, to set up tags and deadlines for every of your entries.

4. iCal (Mac only)

iCal makes it easy to keep track of your busy schedule. You can create as many separate calendars as you need — one for home, another for school, a third for work, and so on. You can see all your calendars in a single window or choose to see only the calendars you want.
(description by www.apple.com)

P.S. Windows users are welcome to share some facts about the software they use for planning.

Letting Up Despite Great Faults – Mixtape Receipt

Logo For Sale!

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:40:54 +0000

This logo is suitable to be used by any artist or copywriter. For more information, please, contact me.

Readme.txt

admin — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:57:32 +0000

Came to a conclusion that it is neccessary for every of your projects to have a Read Me file. The thing is that your client probably doesn’t know many technical things about graphic design (file formats, color modes and so on). It won’t take you too much time to write a Read Me file, but it will help your client to work with the project you’ve done for him in the future. Especially, after a long time, since the project was done, he will easily find the answers on his questions in the Read Me file and won’t bother you or someone else. Also, it can help you, if you forgot some important project details. Read Me file is an easy way to take care of your clients. I am sure, they will appreciate it.

Pogo – Alohomora

Happy Holidays!

admin — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 19:43:33 +0000

I wish you all to have a lot of fun during these holidays! I hope the upcoming year will bring you inspiration, success, happiness and more clients!

Jean Knight – Mr. Big Stuff

A Day In Odessa

admin — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:09:08 +0000

As for me travelling is the best way to have a rest, that’s why I don’t miss any chance going somewhere. This time me and my friend Dima (who is also my manager) decided to go to Odessa in The Ukraine. We were planning to discuss some bussiness ideas during our road to Odessa and to take a great number of pictures in this city, but eventually we decided just to enjoy this day. That’s why I didn’t bring a lot of pictures from there.

Around 7 AM. Listening to music. It took us for about 5 hours in the bus to get to Odessa.

As we arrived, we went to Kompot Cafe, which is one of the best in Odessa and had our breakfast there.

Then we started our walk around the city.

Odessa’s Port.

Later we met my friend Oleg Zai, who showed us some cool places to visit in Odessa. The pictures below are taken by him.

My friend Dima.

Me staying at the seashore of The Black Sea.

Tycho – Coastal Brake

Paused.

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:56:48 +0000

It is a time now when I decided to take a short break in posting here. It’s all because of the tests and exams I am having and going to have soon at the university I study. I’m trying to concentrate on studying, cause it’s really important for me. It will take for about 2-3 weeks in general. After that time I’m gonna start posting again. Soon you will find here a photo-report from Odessa, The Ukraine (I am travelling there this Saturday), a post about anatomy of type and hopefully I will begin writing about branding.

Cheers!

Ratatat – Breakaway

Order / Disorder

admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:39:00 +0000

Order is one of the most important things in everyone’s life. Artists often like to speak about their artistic disorder, justifying themselves in this way, but I don’t believe them. I guess it’s all about laziness. My workplace is always cleaned up and this for sure helps me in my work. But about it we’ll speak later, in another post. Today we will stop at the order on people’s computers. Last 3 days I spent on cleaning up my Mac and I decided to write a little bit about it. As you can see, I’m not perfect and I can have disorders too.

Folders.

It’s up to you what structure of foldering you use, but I hope there’s no mess in it. A good structure helps you to keep all your files in a way that you will never waste your time on searching them, when you badly need ones. These are some examples of how I do it (pretty simple, yeah).

Desktop.

For me desktop is a place where I keep and save all the current files I work with. It doesn’t take too much time to find them when I want to upload them or send to someone. It’s realy easy and comfortable. But what I started doing is that every evening, before going to bed, I introduce order in the files on my desktop. Files that I don’t need are deleted, others are put in folders they belong to. In this way, my desktop is ready to be used for the next day.
The problem is that many people forget to keep desktop in order for some reasons and in some days they have a mess there. In a week or two it can become so huge, that it will take too much time to introduce order in it. You can spend 5 minutes on it every evening and save many hours in the future.

Bookmarks.

Everyday I bookmark for about 2-3 pages. It is about 700-1000 bookmarks in a year and you can imagine what I see when I open my bookmark panel in Firefox. From time to time I use them to read a good article I found to be interesting or to visit some portfolios for inspiration. But again, it took me time to find something in that mess, because there was no structure. I decided to introduce order in it too and only now I realize what an important tool bookmarks is. Now I know where are the links I need, what I should visit everyday, what to read when I have some spare time and etc. To organize bookmarks in Firefox go to Bookmarks – Organize/Manage Bookmarks – Bookmarks Menu.
Now my bookmark menu looks like that:

If you have invented some useful things about keeping order on your computer, don’t forget to share it with us! It may help people and I think it is great, isn’t it?

Michna – Believe In It

Introduction

admin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:36:18 +0000

Hello, everyone!

My name is Egor Gorev (fantique). At the moment I’m a 20 years old graphic designer, illustrator and photographer. I often learn something about graphic design and work on different projects, so I decided to create this blog to show people the learning and working processes from the inside.

Which subjects I am going to write about:

– graphic design (in general)
– branding (includes logotypes, corporate identity, brandbooks, etc.)
– typefaces (includes typeface classification & creation)
– calligraphy
– typography
– illustration
– color use
– self effectivness
– psychology, advertising, marketing and PR (just interesting facts, which will help you in your work)
– photography (not sure about it at the moment)

I am planning to have a lot of theory and practice material for you and I would be totally glad if you share your results. I believe that exchanging ideas and results is the best way to learn and achieve a good level in any profession. Feel free to share your thoughts with me, cause I am planning to make this blog as better as I can. Contact me at info@taradara.com.

Also, I am always interested in any projects connected with branding or illustration.
Don’t forget to check my portfolio.

Cheers!