First, I have to confess I’m a night owl. What does that mean for my schedule? Times may seem a little “off” to a person who starts their day earlier than I do.
10 am
If I wake up before my alarm, I lay there for a few minutes. Usually my cat Clancy (means “red warrior”) is lying tight up behind my knees at this point. I pet him a bit and then nudge him out of the way so I can go through my morning “get ready” routine, i.e., shower and get dressed.
10:30 am
Drink a Rich Chocolate Boost and take my morning prescriptions, vitamins and mineral supplements while I check my email. I flag those that need attention and delete the majority of the rest.
11:00 am
First, I review my schedule to see if there are any appointments and then I review the work for the day and enter the top three priorities in my Plum Paper Planner. Today, my top three are:
- Logo Design for Optio Money
- Style Tiles for Sunrise Child Care Center
- Email template for Financial Trend Forecaster
I begin my first task, Logo Design for Optio Money, by brainstorming a bunch of different ideas. Sometimes I use regular pencil and paper, but lately I’ve begun using my iPad and Apple Pencil and Adobe Fresco. I select a couple of favorites and bring them into Adobe Illustrator to develop further. If I have decided upon a single concept to present to the client, I will send a link for the client to schedule a time to go over the concept.
1:00 pm
Quite often I skip lunch–not a good idea but quite frequently I’m not hungry–and so would now move onto priority #2: Style Tiles for Sunrise Child Care Center. I really enjoy making Style Tiles. You may be wondering what these are. In my process, after creating the wireframe for the home page and it is approved by the client, we move onto the design elements of the web site: navigation header style, hero style, color palette, fonts, button and divider styles. I create between three and five Style Tiles for the client to consider.
NOTE: If I have done the branding prior to beginning the web design portion of the project or if the client has had this done previously by another designer, then there is only one Style Tile based upon this branding.
3:00 pm
Time to move onto the Email Template for Financial Trend Forecaster. First, I review the information provided by the client and compare it to the Creative Brief to make sure I have everything I need. For this client, he included the following information: full name, web site name and URL, Facebook and LinkedIn links and profile image.
5:00 pm
Quitting time. I may work a bit more after supper, usually social media.