Thursday, July 8, 2010

Making plans for the future

We bought two new presses recently and today they get hooked up with electricity. Even though I'm the art director, I still get excited about new equipment because it makes me think of the additional possibilities the presses will provide us.

One of the presses is another Windmill which is our primary press for the bulk of the jobs we run, so I kind of know what we will be doing with that one. But the other press is a Heidelberg Cylinder KSBA which is larger than our current KS model. I was so excited about being able to run a larger sheet that I could barely sleep the other night as I was having a successful brainstorming session with myself. Well, that sounds kind of sad, but in another six months when we roll out some new products, you might not think that sounded so lame!

So today I'm hoping to refine my ideas to create a more concrete plan. I'm one of those crazy lists people so it always starts with endless lists. I have a master list and then a list for each idea/product/service. I keep sorting through them, adding and deleting as necessary. Once I've thoroughly made my lists, I enter them in Word (or InDesign if I'm feeling a bit more ambitious and design-y). In addition to the lists I also have doodles and sketches on the back side. I hang onto all of this stuff because I continually refer to it while I'm designing.

As for inspiration - well that's a tough one. I like to keep an eye on what is going on in the world of stationery, but I'm also super cautious about making sure our ideas and designs are original. And that is a constant challenge. Some days I feel like everything has been done and there's nothing left to do. But most of the time I get all giddy about the possibilities.

Valerie

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