Acrobat tips and tricks, Harrogate weather and ballet

Good morning, and welcome to a grey, cold and damp February Monday morning here in Harrogate. It's the perfect weather to stay in an work on some wonderful graphic design concepts - which is just as well, as I have a few to do, ranging from an exhibition banner, to flyers, direct mailers, pitch document covers and ads. Later in the week I also have a meeting with a Harrogate based company that, well, let's just say I'm really looking forward to. Really, really looking forward to. More about that later though.

It's half term week too, so got my lovely daughter at home all week, and my lovely wife for Monday and Tuesday too. Alice (that's my daughter) is appearing at the Harrogate Royal Hall later today in a Lynton Academy ballet production of Peter Rabbit and Friends. She will be taking the role of a frog, and is very, very excited, which is great to see, so although there is much to do today, really Monday belongs to her.

Anyway, I thought I'd expand the blog a bit to include a few design tips and tricks that may be of use. Today, a little Adobe Acrobat tip: If you receive an Acrobat file and find that it needs to be amended, but only have the reader version of Acrobat installed, it can also be done in Adobe Illustrator. It's amazing how much you can do actually, from changing text, to changing colours, to moving elements around - you can even open and edit multi-page pdfs (although only a page at a time). Okay, it can be a little labour intensive if there are lots of things to change (although really there shouldn't be, as a pdf file ought to be a final piece of artwork in its own right). There was one occasion though, when I was in possession of a 12 page presentation in Acrobat (but no source files) and had to input extensive amends to each and every page for a client to present later that day. What would have been an hour or so's work in InDesign took four hours plus in Illustrator, but it came together well and the client was none the wiser that I was, to use a technical term 'winging it'. Here endeth the lesson for today...

Right, enough talk about work, now a brief look at music... been revisiting a few old classics lately including The Wonderstuff's 'Hup', Mudhoney's 'SuperFuzzBigMuff' (great title, great album) and The Pogues' 'If I Should Fall From Grace With God'. If anyone has any recommendations for what I should be checking out (or if you simply what to slag off what I listen to), please feel free to leave a comment.

Have a great week - over and out.


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Busy times for Howabout (graphic design in Harrogate)

Good morning all.

Last week was a busy one for Howabout Creative Solutions as we continue with our quest to be one of the very best graphic design agencies in Harrogate. As well as accumulating a reasonable body of work to get through, a great meeting was had at Acceleris Communications Agency in central Harrogate (I know, saying 'central Harrogate' paints a picture of a sprawling metropolis, which Harrogate certainly isn't thankfully, but this place really is pretty central), and work continued on the presentation I am to deliver at the B4B meeting at Baildon on Thursday (to promote to fellow members what graphic design services Howabout Creative Solutions can offer to them and others).

I'll post back here on how the presentation went later in the week, but in the meantime its heads down and back to work (while enjoying the sounds of Leftfield).

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For more details on B4B check out www.lindabforb.co.uk

Website updates, work and testimonials (and Grunge)

Well the new Howabout Creative Solutions website seems to be generating favourable reviews. Its now a case of working on the SEO side of things and and making sure its presence is known to anyone looking for top quality design solutions from our Harrogate setup. We already look favourites to win some new business from a Yorkshire company (being deliberately vague here) and have had some more work from YorkTest Laboratories who have supplied a really nice testimonial for our website here... YorkTest testimonial

We have also lent our time and skills to Richard Taylor School in Bilton where I have been helping out with their school newsletter, which is written and designed by some of the pupils. Its great fun and very rewarding, and we are delighted to offer our support.

Finally, I have done a couple of days work with Words and Pictures in Otley, where they needed some design support at short notice. It was an enjoyable experience, and one which I'd love to repeat.

(Oh music recently has been supplied by largely Grunge and Grunge related offering, due to a fab CD on the front of Mojo magazine - Mudhoney, Vaselines, Melvins, Big Black etc etc. Great stuff that takes me back to my yoof, so it does!)

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New Howabout website is up and running!!!

Woo-hoo, the new website for Howabout Creative Solutions in Harrogate is now live! Been feeling my way around Dreamweaver and CSS with the help of my lovely wife and the result is now there for all to see. (It's taught me a few new skills as well, this web building lark, so I'll continue to progress those in the days and weeks to come). It's great to have my Twitter feed linked to the site too, as well as this here blog, obviously. Hopefully it'll help to promote the good name of Howabout a bit more, and give a better reflection of the graphic design solutions we can offer the good folk of Harrogate, North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and beyond...

Obviously a project like this can't be completed without suitable tunes to work to, and lately these have been provided by I Am Kloot, Toumani Diabaté, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and a bit of Jimmy Cliff.

As well as the new website launch, we have continued to provide great design solutions for the likes of YorkTest Laboratories, Clive Sutton, Beaucare Medical and others. Oh, and we won a pitch in Surrey last month to produce an annual report for OCS, which was a lovely start to the year. Howabout Creative Solutions definitely has a nationwide reach now!

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Hello 2011, goodbye 2010

Okay, so I'm a little late to say 'Happy New Year' as we're already eleven days in, but Happy New Year anyway! I've got big plans for this year - firstly, the Howabout website is getting an overhaul to better reflect my graphic design work and to reflect the fact that I am Harrogate based (but with a regional and national reach, obviously). The visuals are more or less complete, and I'm pleased with the way they look, so now its just a case of building the site and getting it live - hopefully that will be complete sooner rather than later.

So far this year, I've completed a nice 4pp newsletter for Beaucare Medical in Harrogate, and am midway through a couple of bits of marketing material for YorkTest in York. Tomorrow I have a big pitch somewhere 'darn sarf' (being deliberately vague here) and it seems that I may have an additional client using my services come late Jan/Feb (being deliberately vague again). All-in-all, not a bad start to the year.

Oh, bought a new (well second hand) car late December as the last one was about to give up on me, so been working on a couple of compilation CDs for in-car listening. What do you reckon to one that includes Ash, Beach Boys, Skids, Julian Casablancas, Chili Peppers, Super Furries, Led Zep, Beatles and Charlatans (amongst others)?

It's been a while...

It's been over a month since I last blogged, so I figured its about time I told you what Howabout Creative Solutions have been up to in and around Harrogate. I've been lending my graphic design skills once again to YorkTest Laboratories (lovely client), Clive Sutton, deliciouslyorkshire, Solace and Beaucare Medical. I've also had time to do a little bit of fun stuff for my own benefit, so its with that in mind that I've attached this little poster I did featuring my beautiful daughter.

I can't believe how cold its been of late, but it has meant that sledging has been a fairly regular part of each day for the last couple of weeks. Its been the favoured mode of transport for the school run actually. Talking of school, I've also been helping out there (Richard Taylor that is) with their newsletter and school newspaper (which is written by the kids, and put together by them, with just a helping hand from me and one or two other parents) - its been good fun.

As ever, music plays a key role in my working day, and here's whats been playing recently... The Strokes (Room on Fire), Lamb, Jane's Addiction (early stuff), Alabama 3 and a bit of the mighty Led Zeppelin

Been a fairly busy couple of weeks, hence no blog updates for a while. Been working on various bits and pieces for deliciouslyorkshire, York Test Laboratories and Clive Sutton. As a little sample, here is a Photoshop'd 'before and after' shot used for an invite for one of my clients. Hope you like it...

Sounds lately have included Sly and the Family Stone (currently playing actually), Lloyd Cole, Penguin Café Orchestra and The Cure.

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