Jason Black Logo and Graphic Design in Coral Springs Florida

I just noticed that I haven’t updated my logo design portfolio for a LOOOONG time!

I had a client ask me, about a year ago to add his logo to my portfolio and I told him that I absolutely would. I remember updating the page locally but I just looked at it and, nothing. I guess I never updated it (or saved it before uploading). So now I need to update it again, but this time for real!

I have a bunch of new logos that need to be displayed in my portfolio. It’s been pretty stagnant for a while but I’m going to try and update it more often in the future.

My blog too… Going to try and post at least once a week from now on!

Oh… You don’t need to register to leave a comment in my blog anymore. I still have to approve the comment (to avoid spam) but a lot of people emailed me with blog comments instead of registering so I decided to remove that. So bring on the comments!! 🙂

Well, after 10+ years, I’ve finally given in and submitted a few designs to a logo design book. For some reason, I’ve never submitted anything. Maybe I’ve been scared that I wasn’t “good enough”, I don’t know. But I guess I’ll find out now. I’ve always wanted to be published but I guess I just always waited around to have the authors banging on my door.

I sent an email to one author a couple years ago just to thank him for his books and he returned my email ASKING me to submit some designs for his upcoming book. For some reason I never sent them to him.

Ok, I had an author banging on my door and still didn’t do anything about it. Hmmm. No excuses now. I’ve submitted 4 entries to the upcoming book “Mini Book of Great Logos”. Now it is out in the open for all to see. I’m REALLY hoping I make it now, LOL.

I’ve been spending A LOT of time on Facebook lately. I’ve reconnected with family and friends that I haven’t seen in close to 20 years. I’m really loving it! I also started spending a little time with Twitter.  For some reason I just can’t get into Twitter. To me, it is lacking something. Like eating a sandwich made from 2 slices of bread an nothing in between.

For those people out there that have never spent time with me, I have been a smoker since I was 16 (though I did quit once for a year in 2006). That is until March 1st, 2009!!! I made up my mind in February that I had enough, set the date for March 1st and had my last cigarette on February 28th before I went to bed. Ok, I cheated on the 1st and had about 6 drags (puffs, whatever, LOL) throughout the day but that was it.

So that’s pretty much everything I’ve been up to lately. Hopefully I can find some time to start updating this a little more often.

I’ve been playing poker with my friends for about 2 years on Friday nights. It’s been a great, fun way to to have everyone get together a couple times a month.

Since starting to play at home, I’ve really gotten into collecting poker chips, both singles and sets. I think it’s the design that got to me. It’s also the design that made me design my own custom poker chip set for my home games. They are ceramic chips instead of the traditional clay chips which a lot of casinos are moving toward  instead of clay chips, I guess because of price. If they are good enough for casinos, who am I to argue, LOL? As a bonus, I was able to design on the entire chip, including the edges, instead of only the the inlay (face).

It was really a fun experience to put design on something that is only 1.5″ around.

Since designing them, I haven’t had the chance to use them but I am really looking forward to it.

I’ve been speding a lot of time on facebook lately. I’m finding a lot of old friends as well as a lot of people from school that I never really spoke to, but find myself really enjoying hearing what they have to say now. It really is strange though… I moved away from Richboro, PA when I was 19 so I still see everyone as they were almost 20 years ago. As strange as it is, I’m having a TON of fun!!

I just wish I could find a couple of other good friends that I lost contact with, one being Tracy Schrecengost Cotton. Who knows, maybe she’ll find this post and email me. 🙂

After sending the person I spoke about in my last blog an email to remove my design and copy, I’ve decided to “out” him/her. In my original email sent directly from “his” (I’ll use “his” so I don’t have to type as much, LOL) website and asked that he remove everything “borrowed” without permission within 24 hours. After 24 hours nothing was done. Ok, sometimes I don’t get an email, things happen, so I did a little digging and found out some more stuff, as well as his email address.
It turns out that not only did he “borrow” my design and copy from my index page, but he “borrowed” his Philosophy page from David Roundsley. I sent David and email letting him know what has happened and guess what? Not only is David a REALLY nice guy who does some really nice work, but he is also a musician like me. Though he wasn’t very happy with being “borrowed” from, we’ve actually had a good series of conversations through email. If nothing else comes from this, at least I was able to “meet” David.
Anyway, back to the story…
So this person from identitydesign.in never got back to me so I looked up the whois for his site and came up with this (a pdf file) which contains his email address so I sent him a direct email. That was a week ago and still nothing has changed.

Just wanted to let everyone know what type of “designer” (with no portfolio mind you) this person is.

You know, it’s amazing that some people cannot do anything for themselves. Try searching some of the copy from my site:

Your logo says everything about your business. Nothing beats a great, professionally designed logo to establish a brand

or even:

Without a great logo, you have no identity, no identity, no brand. Identity is everything in the world of business

After you do that, you’ll find more people not only “borrowing” my copy, but one person “borrowing” my entire site design AND copy!

For now I will leave the site links out of this. I sent out a cease and disist to the one person that “borrowed” everything so I will leave it to you to find the people. Once found, I’m sure you will know just how creative these “designers” truely are.

Amazing!

I’ve been playing poker at my house every Friday night for about 2 years now. For some reason, soon after starting I got on this kick of wanting real poker chips. No, not the chips you find in all the stores that say, “Real Casino Poker Chips” on the box, but REAL casino poker chips.

A few months into playing, I got my first set of REAL chips, Nevada Jack’s Skulls ceramic chips. Now these are GREAT chips but I still wanted REAL CLAY chips. I found that I wasn’t the only one eather. There are forums with tons of people that collect chips like crazy. Well, after reading posts there, I wanted more.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is, two weeks ago I fell into an amazing find. Aquasino tounament chips. They are from a casino boat on South Beach, Miami, FL and for some reason these chips were never used. They are REAL casino grade clay chips made by Blue Chip Company. I’m guessing that there were about 9000 of them made and I bought about 4500 of them. That’s right, 4500 poker chips!!! No, not for myself. I turned around and sold them off, though I did keep a set for myself. After buying them, I realized that some of the chips were warped (not a good thing) but they were still casino grade chips from a casino. Anyway, I ended up selling them to a really nice guy for my cost and he was able to bake them (yes, bake them) and flatten them. So now he has perfect chips to use for his charity poker games he holds twice a year.

Why am I wrtting all of this? Well, not much more to say.

I did adopt a dog a couple weeks ago but that is a post by itself. Maybe next week.

For so long I’ve always been scared to lose my files. When I first started out, I would burn a new CD with all of my files every month and backup to a jump drive every day. Then I moved to an external hard drive once a week and a jump drive every day. That was such a pain but I did it to make sure I always had my clients files in case they ever needed them.

Then one day I thought, what if my house catches fire. Ok, at that point the least of my worries will be my files (though if I can grab my hard drive AFTER my family, I will) in a time like that. But, it is very important to me that I always have those files.

I started looking for an online back up service so that I knew my files were safe. I was fully prepared to pay whatever it cost but it ended up that it was free. I found a site called Mozy which has a free service and a pay service. Since my files aren’t that big (under a gig for the thousands of files I have) and the only difference is storage size, I went with the free service. After that I recommended a few people that signed up and ended up with 3gb now. Not bad!

Anyway, give it a try if you are looking for an online back up service. Oh, if you want me to get some more free space, use the referral code K53DVD.

I just wanted to give a quick plug to one of my favorite clients Isola Isabella. After we designed a great logo, we then went on to other identity pieces and magazine ads. She has been working so hard and doing everything she can to make a new business work in a slow economy that I thought she deserved a little plug.

If you are in the market for GREAT upscale beach cover ups, please check her out at www.isolaisabella.com.

I have a family member that needed a postcard designed and printed so he did what he always does and went to a local printer to have it all done.

You must be thinking, “why didn’t he come to you?” and “why are you writing about this?”. Well… Since my specialty is logo design I pretty much only market my self as a logo designer instead of a graphic designer. Even my family thinks I’m “just a logo designer”, LOL. We ended up having a talk and showed him some of my printed pieces that I had laying around from other clients and he said, “you have to do it!!”. So, for anyone that thinks that I am “just a logo designer”, nope, I do it all. 😉

Why am I writing about it? I just wanted to make it clear, especially to any local companies in Coral Springs that yes, I can do any project needed.

Why did I add Coral Springs into this? Can you say SEO?? 😉