Emphasize Design – Blog

The Carriage House Inn - Masquerade New Years Eve

We were extremely honored to be approached by The Carriage House in Calgary to complete a web project that would elegantly advertise the New Years Masquerade party they are hosting this year. It also proved to be a really fun and creative project as boundaries for promoting a New Years Party are almost non-existent, which allowed Emphasize Design to venture outside of corporate design structures to draft a design for the website that enabled the colors and exquisiteness of the party itself to do all the “talking”.

Now we all know The Carriage House maintains the perfect atmosphere to host a remarkable New Years Eve party, and with three separate events to choose from, The Carriage House is offering everything possible to create the perfect New Years for you and your friends.

Visit The Carriage House – New Years Masquerade to learn more about the events, explore the menu’s, and reserve your tickets today! Oh and of course we would love to hear your feedback about the website as well – your feedback is always appreciated.

Found an awesome article written by Guy Kawasaki – an inspiring entrepreneur that I follow frequently. The following article was taken from Guy’s book – “Guy Kawasaki of How to Change the World”. I know all you entrepreneurs and small business owners will enjoy this:

Most advice to entrepreneurs focuses on what they should do: build a great product, assemble a great team, provide great service. All are “duhisms.” Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs don’t realize that there are things they should specifically avoid doing too. These are also duhisms, but somehow no one ever talks about them. Here is my list of the twelve most important things that entrepreneurs should not do.

1. Don’t worry, be crappy. Perfectionism, first of all, is an illusion. Nothing is perfect. Even worse, perfection stands in the way of revenue and truly learning what customers think because nothing is in their hands yet. When your product is “good enough” (but not “perfect”), ship it, and see what happens.

2. Don’t give out lofty titles. Just because a roommate was there during the drunken weekend when you came up with the idea for your company, doesn’t mean he should be CTO. Someday, you’ll need to hand out titles like director, vice-president, and chief whatever officer, so keep them in reserve. Until then refer to each other as “co-founders” and describe the area of responsibility: for example, “programming.” If your roommates aren’t cool with this, they’re doing you a favor by showing their colors now.

3. Don’t hire your family. The probability that your spouse or relative is the best person you can get for a job is 0%. The probability that people will hate working at company with spouses and relatives is 100%. The probability that one of you will have to go someday is also 100%. Never hire out of expediency. Always hire the best person you can get. This usually means not hiring your family unless you’re Jack or Suzy Welch. By the way, if you both hire your family and give them a lofty title, you are truly a bozo.

4. Don’t sweat valuation. This is easy for a venture capitalist to say, but your company is either going to die or make you more money than you imagined. Whether you have 10% or 15% and whether your pre-money valuation is $2 million or $3 million isn’t going to really matter. Do the math: 15% of $0 is $0, so stop negotiating, take the money, and build something that’s worth more than $0. Whatever valuation a venture capitalist offers you, increase it by 20% and counter their offer. This is just enough to show that you’re not a pushover, but not too much that it will prolong or blow up the negotiations.

5. Don’t believe venture capitalists. Having said that you shouldn’t sweat valuation, you shouldn’t believe venture capitalists. It’s not that we’re all liars—we just don’t finish our sentences. Rule of thumb: add “as long as things are going well” to everything a venture capitalist tells you. For example, “I am investing in your team” or “I will be there for you.”

6. Don’t create lofty forecasts that you call “conservative.” You know you’re pulling numbers out of the air. We know you are too. You know we know. We know you know. So why would you forecast the fastest ramp in the history of capitalism? (It’s more likely that I will play in the NHL than you will achieve $2 billion in sales in year four.) Just project $25 million in year four, and we’ll all be in agreement about your lie.

7. Don’t believe that the exception is the rule. This is called the Twitter Effect. It goes like this, “We’re focusing on usage and eyeballs like Twitter. We’re not that concerned about revenue right now. Look how valuable everyone thinks Twitter is. We’ll be just like that.” Twitter is the exception. Facebook is the exception. YouTube is the exception. There, I listed all the exceptions. Everyone else needs revenue asap, or you will #fail.

8. Don’t focus on partnerships. “Partnership, noun, a relationship between two parties that does not increase the profitability of either.” If your partnership doesn’t cause you to edit your Excel spreadsheet, it’s meaningless. Focus on customerships, not partnerships if you want to succeed. When you’re a big, dumb, slow-moving company, then fabricate all the partnerships you want.

9. Don’t build out your infrastructure. Sure, your conservative estimate is for a growth curve that makes Twitter’s look like a blip, so you need customer service, technical support, and racks of servers. I’ve never seen a company achieve even its “conservative” projections—I take that back: I’ve seen plenty of companies reach their overhead projections. The odds are that you’ll run out of money before you’ll run out of infrastructure.

10. Don’t assume you’ll ever raise another round. Most projected timelines should contain a event that’s called “This is where the miracle occurs.” A much better assumption is that no miracle occurs, it takes years of grinding it out to succeed, and you’ll never raise another dime, so you must reach profitability with what you already have. Miracles happen in movies, not startups.

11. Don’t compare your intentions to other employees’ results. Most people compare their intentions to the results of others. In this way, you’re never at fault or a failure. For example, you intended to ship on time, but the sales gal didn’t achieve her expected results. The effect of this is poor morale and chasms between people. You need to face the facts: you probably delivered less than you intended. Maybe others did too, but at least you’ll be more humble.

12. Don’t ask people to do something you wouldn’t do. This is the Golden Rule of business. If you wouldn’t fill out ten fields of information and provide a credit card number for a free password, don’t expect your customers too. If you wouldn’t work on weekends stuffing envelopes, don’t expect your employees to. If you wouldn’t invest in your company, don’t expect venture capitalists to.

Found these shots on Smash&Peas Photography Blog and thought they were quite impressive. Smash and Peas (quite and interesting name I must say) provides some excellent tips on how capture crisp high-speed / extreme sports photography. Underneath the photo’s you will find some suggested techniques on how to produce such unique shots:

• Use a fast shutter speed to freeze the action, you may have to use a wider aperture and/or a higher ISO.
• Try using the ‘AI Servo’ focus mode (on Canons).  Your camera will continuously re-focus on a moving object, so you can grab the all important shot.
• When photographing fast moving objects, try setting your lens to manual focus and focus on a particular spot where your subject will pass through, then try and press the shutter release at the right time.
• Set your camera to continuous shot mode and press the shutter release before you need to, so that you get a sequence of shots that you can choose the best from.
• Try and get in close to the action for those ‘in the action’ shots, or use a telephoto lens if its not safe to do so.

Webdesigner Depot is one of my favorite blogs to keep an eye on. They always seem to post really unique designs.

Follow this link and take a look at some really unique photo manipulations:

Webdesignerdepot.com

Found some really cool and unique long exposure shots. Follow the link and enjoy:

www.abduzeedo.com

I may talk about the concept of balance frequently in my blog since it is a practice that both Mike and I make certain to work into both Emphasize Design and Reel Rydes, and will encourage our staff members to pursue – that is, once we have staff members. The concept of balance seems like one of those “common sense” things that isn’t so common anymore to so many people. Obviously creating balance will mean different things for different people; the secret is finding out what it will take for you to feel comfortable and feel at peace with what you do on a daily basis. Consciously dedicating time and energy to “balance” daily can and will lead to a happier and more comfortable life.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to spend 8-12 hours a day working our asses off trying to make enough money to survive. It is my opinion that humanistic greed, desire for power, and sickness of the collective mind has created the unconscious society we live in today. Most people are so concerned with achieving more and accumulating wealth that they forget that “life happens when you are busy making plans for the future”. This addiction to power and riches tricks people into thinking that they will not be happy until they reach their end goal. I disagree, and although I’m not an expert in this area, I do want to share my opinion and hopefully more people will stop, breath, and simply enjoy the present moment. Another quote that comes to mind is “it’s not the destination that matters, but the journey it took to get there”.

Mike and I are fortunate in the design world that we are not limited to certain work hours. Of course there are exceptions to this as we still have to make ourselves as available as possible for our clients, however this does not limit Mike and I from living a balanced life to ensure we are happy, healthy, and motivated. The most rewarding part about having the time and ability to consciously create balance within my life is that the more balanced and at peace I feel, the better my work gets and the more positive things naturally happen around the businesses. Mike and I truly live by the mantra “Work Smarter, Not Harder”, and we encourage everyone to think about this and work on integrating it into your life to create balance in your life.

I have read several books that have discussed the concept of life balance. I have found them extremely motivating and have very much helped me creative the life that I want, rather than work in the shadows of someone else’s path. Books such as “The Saint, The Surfer, and the CEO”, “The Greatness Guide”, and “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” by Robin Sharma are great inspirational reads that will challenge you to ask questions that have the potential to facilitate a balanced and peaceful lifestyle.

I started thinking about balance today when i was taking my dog “Koston” for a walk. It was a beautiful morning, sun was shining, birds chirping, all that poetic stuff lol. But, it was very calming, and I couldn’t help but stop and realize how fortunate I am to have the ability to dedicate the time to things I love doing and still remain passionate and dedicated to Emphasize Design and Reel Rydes. I hope you can all share in the peacefullness of a balanced life.