Selling & Marketing

This post relates to my Bookbinding Basics class on Skillshare, though also about good marketing practices, period!

I’ve had a number of students contact asking for advice on selling books, pricing, and where to sell. I’ve been making books for several years and selling on the side as a hobby and to make a little bit of money. Selling books may sound difficult, but if you do it right and create demand you will be surprised how many you can sell!

On a typical sales day (at an Art & Craft show) I can start the day with 50 books for sale and leave with only 5 left over and several hundred dollars in my pocket. You too can do this, and have fun at the same time.

Continue reading Selling & Marketing

*Bonus* Trimming and Professionalism

This post covers an extra step related to my Bookbinding class on Skillshare. If you are not a part of my class and want to know more, check this out: Bookbinding Basics: Making a Perfect Bound Book.

Check out the picture below to see what my books usually look like after I make them. You see the endsheets hang over the end of the textblock and my spine tape hangs off the edges as well. I’m going to show you a bonus step that I didn’t cover in the class but like to employ.

Continue reading *Bonus* Trimming and Professionalism

An IE8 Media Query Fallback Solution

With Responsive Web Design building a site Mobile First is an excellent way to build site infrastructure, serving the least amount of code to devices that often have less bandwidth and building up from there.

A problem is that IE8 and below do not support media-queries, thus when users visit a Mobile First site using IE8 they are served only a mobile site on a desktop browser. Whomp whomp! Personally I’m all for dropping support of IE8 and not worrying about it (which is usually what I do) but sometimes you must support IE8 whether you want to or not. Microsoft will no longer support IE8 as of April 2014, and while that’s great to hear it does not mean IE8 users will be upgrading.

Continue reading An IE8 Media Query Fallback Solution

50 Shades of Gray (the color)

Have you wanted your web designs to have more life and pizzazz? There are a few simple steps to follow that will help take a design to the next level. Today, let’s focus on using color.

The Perception

As a beginning designer tackling a new project can often seem daunting and overwhelming. There are lots of aspects of design to learn and grow – typography, layout and grid systems, color theory, balance, rhythm, marketing – the list could go on forever. But one of the most powerful, and subtle, is color.

Continue reading 50 Shades of Gray (the color)

You May Be Using @font-face Incorrectly

When I discovered that I had been using the @font-face rule incorrectly (for quite a long time actually) I was floored. How could this have happened? I was working off of numerous tutorials and suggestions online and they were all saying the same thing. Just goes to show that the internet is not always right.

Anyway, there are two basic methods for using the @font-face rule, they both work but the first (that I was using and most people on the internet are also using) is like showing up to a volleyball game with a cast on your leg and the sun in your eye.

Continue reading You May Be Using @font-face Incorrectly

Made by Hand

Making things by hand is a passion of mine. Generally I spend the majority of my day at a computer – at work and at home – so sometimes I need to get away and do something tangible. Bookbinding is a skill picked up in college and something enjoyable to me.

Bookbinding is fascinating because books are everyday objects that you never think about. Books are so common and we are so used to them it’s amazing to think, hey, this used to be pieces of paper and thread, and before that a tree, and now a tangible object. Before I was taught the art of making books I never even considered it something I could personally do, or even enjoy. I mean, who makes books anyway, can’t you just buy a book or notebook at the store? Yes, you can, but by making my own books from scratch created a bond with the item that normally would not have happened.

Continue reading Made by Hand

Hello World or How My Career Started with a TI83 Calculator

The Hello World text is synonymous, for developers, with the start of a new project, and often a new technology. The simple phrase has a long history as a starting block for software development and testing.

A Personal Journey

My first experience with coding and development was in the fourth grade. Every month my school would hand out a short packet from Scholastic with books and other items for sale (a brilliant way for Scholastic and the school to make some money off kids, right!). In one catalogue I discovered a computer “game” which would teach kids the programming language BASIC while building video games.

Continue reading Hello World or How My Career Started with a TI83 Calculator