Digital Ninja® 7/1/20 Digital Ninja® 7/1/20

New Business Cards

Had to make some new business cards. When I went looking for my old logo files, I found that the images didn’t age well…

I had a meeting recently with a client and they asked me for my business card. It was kind of embarrassing because I had about 2000 cards in a box a friend made for me years ago (Thanks Andre!). I don’t carry them around because I had changed my email address. It was a dumb move. I should have just changed my email back and saved all of the damn cards. So when he asked me, I felt lame. Who has a business and doesn’t have a card? NOBODY! You can’t do business without a business card! Well…you can, but it just seems dumb when someone asks you for a card and you don’t have one.

The old “Super” Logo

I went looking up printing places and you can get a good amount of regular cards for about $40. I had some ideas though. I went digging in my harddrives for my old logos and business card designs. They did not age well! I ended up having to download the fonts that I used all those years ago. Then I had to basically re-design the logo from scratch in Illustrator. Once I got comfortable, I proceeded to re-design my logo. It came out really nice and just seems cleaner overall. The red looks a little deeper and full and the lines are more crisp.

THE NEW “SUPER” LOGO!!! Same as the old one, but kinda’ different.

So now I’m just waiting on the new business cards. I ended up printing two different cards. One will be just a simple business card on 16pt. Stock and Matte on both sides. The second card will be a surprise. I’ll share it on here when they come in. The new cards are going to be really cool and I hope to do more in the future. I’m hooked on graphics, so maybe more print work for me in the near future. I really dig the new logo. My favorite little piece to the whole thing is the square around the Registered Trademark “r”. The change from circle to square is subtle, but significant because I always tell people, “We’re rated R.” Digital Ninja LLC is a legit registered trademark. Let me know what you think of the new and updated look in the comments. Thanks.

- Digital Ninja®

UPDATE 08/21/20

Got the cards back. They look great. I made two different ones.

Got my new cards printed recently. Made two versions. One is a normal card. Then there's the super secret, clear cards.

Digital Ninja® 6/29/20 Digital Ninja® 6/29/20

Working Remotely

I am used to working remotely. I've been doing it since 2000/2001. Around that time, I had just moved to California. My place of employment was a Tile place in Florida and I was the brochure, Pricebook, and website guy. My claim to fame was my scanning and color correction ability. I used to put the tiles directly on the scanner and color correct using the tiles themselves. It helped the company immensely because the image color was a lot closer to the actual tile color. I would painstakingly work in Photoshop to get the image color correct. My Boss appreciated me so much, that when I told him I was moving to California to go to USC, he kept me on and said I could work remotely. It was awesome and nearly drove me insane. This was way before the high-speed Internet that we have now.

I am used to working remotely. Moving my entire computer around in a crate isn’t something new to me. I've been doing it since 2000/2001. Around that time, I had just moved to California. My place of employment was a Tile place in Florida and I was the brochure, Pricebook, and website guy. My claim to fame was my scanning and color correction ability. I used to put the tiles directly on the scanner and color correct using the tiles themselves. It helped the company immensely because the image color was a lot closer to the actual tile color. I would painstakingly work in Photoshop to get the image color correct. My Boss appreciated me so much, that when I told him I was moving to California to go to USC, he kept me on and said I could work remotely. It was awesome and nearly drove me insane. This was way before the high-speed Internet that we have now.

My meetings were conducted via Netmeeting on a 320p Webcam! It was so slow and clumsy. Setting up a meetng took damn near 10 minutes. One of the hardest things to get used to was the time difference of 3 hours. I had to be up and running at 5 am for an hour of prep work between 8am-9am. What made me excited to get up everyday was the fact that I could earn a paycheck in Florida while in California. I was actively trying to get better at remote working. The process of it all pushed me into mastering it. I wanted to get my workflow down pat. Ultimately, what did me in back then was upload and download times. There was no way around moving the amount of data I needed to move. I was working with large photo files, trying to capture all of the details contained in the tiles themselves.

My office on-location. I even took my monitors with me!

These days I’m working off of a FIOS connection and have amazing capability to transmit any of my projects whether they be large format photographs or even 4k Video. With Zoom getting so popular, it has reinvigorated my meeting game. So much so, I’ve skipped over using my computers built-in webcam. I’m using lights with diffusion, a usb mic, and my mirrorless camera to make the image and sound come across impeccably on the other end. It’s been a trip. A legit trip. Does that make me sound internet ancient? I remember dial-up! If you don’t know what that is, look it up. It’s mind boggling to think how far we’ve come in being able to transmit large amounts of data. Additionally, if you have an internet/satellite USB dongle, the extraordinary capabilities of being able to work remotely almost anywhere in the world. I’m glad I had those early experiences early in my career because they gave me the confidence and expertise in being able to coordinate projects. We literally can overcome the obstacles of Space & Time.

- Digital Ninja®