JC Callender
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I have nothing profound to say, except this seems an excellent idea for a thread! :cheers:If you're an entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur, from a babysitter to a big business owner, please feel free to post questions, comments, and advice here.
I have nothing profound to say, except this seems an excellent idea for a thread! :cheers:
Ok, I have Excel and have designed a template for receipts and have ongoing problems with it. Anyone have an efficient and professional method for producing quality job receipts?
Also, anyone know of any great art design programs for Windows that are easy to use? I assumed that Office would cover these things, but barely. I'd love to design artwork for my marketing but can't do it with Office and my basic computer art program.
By art, are we talking graphic design, editing a photo, or "painting" something entirely from scratch, via photoshop style progams?
Office doesn't really have that sort of stuff, you need to look into adobe software, or, go with the many free applications. GIMP would be my suggestion.
Ok, I have Excel and have designed a template for receipts and have ongoing problems with it. Anyone have an efficient and professional method for producing quality job receipts?
Also, anyone know of any great art design programs for Windows that are easy to use? I assumed that Office would cover these things, but barely. I'd love to design artwork for my marketing but can't do it with Office and my basic computer art program.
"Ongoing problems" doesn't mean much without details. What are you running into? Excel should be fine for producing an invoice and you can easily add a company logo or something.
If you want to get more creative with the art Gimp is a free program that will handle quite a bit of image design.
I created an invoice template in Excel. Whenever I wanted to create a new invoice though, I had to "create a copy" and move it to a new folder. Ever time I do that, it changes all of the colors of the template for some reason, so I have to go through a couple minutes of editing to make it the way I like it again, which makes it very inefficient. I'm interested to know how other people create their invoices.
If you want to use excel don't treat your "template" like a template. Just open the worksheet, fill out what you need and then "save as" in another folder. That will give you a copy of what you have your customer and won't change the original.
It sounds like you might be better off using Adobe and just creating a fillable form.
I do simply want a fillable form and will check out Adobe.
My photo enhancing software is pretty good. I'm looking to create marketing materials and it would be nice if I could create a better logo as well. The thing is, I don't want to spend years trying to learn a complicated program. When I get big enough, I'll have someone else do this stuff. I'm still a small enough business right now to where it helps for me to do these things. Here's an example though of what I have a problem with: I want to print out some sort of card or certificate with words and art for customers that gives them $30 in free work for referrals. Office comes with templates for this sort of thing, but they all suck in my opinion. I want to be able to spend an hour or two to put together a good looking certificate that looks original. I'm going to check out GIMP (lovely name btw) but if you have any other suggestions, please let me know.
So what you want is basic graphic design. Adobe illustrator is the gold standard, but it's expensive.
Any suggestions on something cheaper?
Gimp. It's not got all the bells and whistles, but if you have an eye for design, it'll work for you.
Gimp. It's not got all the bells and whistles, but if you have an eye for design, it'll work for you.
Gimp is awesome, the only downside I have found is that it is nowhere near as user friendly as photoshop. For someone trained in such software it is only a minor issue, for someone who has never used either, photoshop is like using a chainsaw to cut a tree, and gimp an axe.
That sucks, I was looking for something easier. Any suggestions?
Most graphics artist type work (logos, signs, fliers, etc.) are created with something more like Inkscape (Vector Art) rather than Gimp (pixels, photos). Both are free and pretty powerful, but all such tools take a lot to get good with them. Inkscape lets you draw the shapes, outlines, tweak edges (corners rounded, etc.) gradients, and they scale to any output size, etc.
Yeah, I feel your pain. When I first started out, I did everything myself, and learned quickly that in general it was surprisingly painful and frustrating. And likely whatever you do will still look amateurish. Bottom line is you could probably instead spend that time shopping around for some Odesk or something for someone who does that sort of thing cheap and likely on a fixed-bid basis if you can. Show them a mockup of what you want with as much instructive detail as practical (graphics can suck, but show everything you want, where roughly, etc.). Then get quote for it, like 3 samples to choose from, then they polish it. And be amazed at what you get back.
This has the advantage of ensuring you never get stuck doing it again, likely will start out more professional, and gets you adding contacts/delegating...two things you need to do for business. You should be finding ways to direct money to your profit. Not doing graphics art work. You don't need to create logos or signs or invoices, etc. beyond boiler plate stuff IMO, from my experience, and when you DO need those things, outsource it. Everyone does those sorts of home-grown things early on, and probably everyone I know that has, feels silly looking back.
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