It’s been well over a month since I started my new job as a cook (chef, what have you) at the Panther’s Den in downtown Atlanta. It’s a sports bar owned by Georgia State University but open to anyone and everyone. It’s the first of many projects GSU is trying to get off the ground in an attempt to bring their food services in-house instead of outsourcing to another company. Going on two months since we first opened doors and we’ve been getting nothing but rave reviews!

Panther's Den

It’s a great place to relax and hang out with the friends while watching ESPN, play on the golf simulator, or if you’re hungry, order some tasty food! We have everything from pizzas, to wings, to sandwiches, to salads, to chicken tenders, to fries that actually taste waaay better than Micky Ds! Sadly, that’s our entire menu right there! We just started so we’re expecting to see more added as time progresses.

Nevertheless, that limitation didn’t stop Martin and I from making food off of our own “private” menu. He likes to make bread sticks and stuff-crust pizzas. I’m, of course into pasta so I’ve been making some delicious spaghetti dishes! They’re bound to make it onto the official menu in the near future. Anyway, it’s been lot of fun thus far and a great change of pace. I was quickly becoming burnt out working in the office 5 days a week. Now it’s just 3, which is working out quiet well.

I’d also like to note that about two Sundays ago, I was appointed to Manager for the morning/evening (10-7) shift which shows that I must be doing something right. It’s always great to see your hard work pay off.

The second day of FOWA I stopped counting how many times it would have been useful to have those little cards handy. Not knowing about WordCamp in advance, I wasn’t able to print my business cards in time. At WordCamp, they had a table where you could drop a few cards off and hope someone would pick it up. People like Alex Frison stack a few of his business cards in the bathroom for god’s sake. Although I’m not sure how big of a ROI that was for him, he still had something to hand out nevertheless.

So I’m finally taking some time out to update my logo, design my business card and get about 100 of them printed locally just in time for FOWD-if I go!

First, a little Background:

I keyword bombed the top part with services that I provided and things that sounded good. LOL

I choose this logo because its very versatile. It’s bold and can be use on different backgrounds and colors. It’s also clear enough to be printed on t-shirts, letterheads, flyers etc. After trying to find a more “premium” font for my logo, one that’s not so ubiquitous, it always resulted in me reverting back to rezland, the current font in use.

While brainstorming the logo, I thought about space. Using my complete name, Ptah Dunbar on all my work might not be the best option since it’s so long so I searched for something shorter. Maybe even an icon of sort that one can easily identify as my brand.

So I came up with just using the letters, “Pt” since that’s what the majority of people call me after butchering my first name, Ptah. Just a quick FYI: It’s pronounced, Pe-Taah. Kind of like, Utah, but with a “P” (”e” is silent). Trying to let it grow on me, I didn’t like the “|” splitting the middle. It seemed too complex so I decided to split the two entirely:

This is what I’m working with right now so I’m going to let it grow on me and see if I still like it before I start printing out Pt swag.

In the meantime, I created a simple business card that’s going to reflect the new (re)design hitting your browser any day now. I’m stuck on what to put on the back. Skype info? Twitter? Sales pitch? No idea.

So that’s where I’m at with my brand. I’m still somewhat on the lookout for a better font/logo but in the end, I might just stick with this one since I had it for 3 years already. Hard love.

I typically check out the Computers/Technology section in borders, but they didn’t have anything new since the last time I went there (two days ago). So I decided to try something different and check out the Art Section where the Graphic Design books reside.For the most part, all my books I’ve read mainly consist of programming and code as you can see in the picture below. While I’m still going to further increase my skill set in that area, I think I’ve got a nice grip on programming fundamentals and how to do it. Besides, once you learn one OOP language, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to learn the rest.

I’ve read through all books completely on the bottom have, and skimmed through all the books on the top. There’s more scattered around the room plus more coming from amazon.com.

Diversity

I thought about diversifying my book collection (and skillset) and step over the horizon towards web and graphic design.

That’s just me justifying my purchases at amazon last week . I brought the following books: no aff links

1. Basics of Design
2. Grid Systems in Graphic Design
3. Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design (thanks to matto)
4. Creativity for Graphic Designers
5. Graphic Design Solutions, Third Edition
6. Thinking Creatively
7. The Designer’s Complete Index(returned)

I tried not to get books that are too redundant, I know they’ll all have some sort of intro to graphic design which is fine, but everything else should be discussing different topics within, but we’ll see. I really needed books to teach me how to pull my creative design ideas out and sketch them on paper or digitally. So I’m hoping I’ve got the right set to begin with, and browse more if needed.

Before I left Borders, I also went and bought two web design magazines, Practical Web Design, and Computer Arts.
Instead of always being online searching for inspiration and ideas, I brought these books and magazines to pull me away from the computer, get more creative and learn more about what’s going on in the graphic industry.

I learned that by diversifying your inspirational resources, you’ll start to come up with more creative unique ideas rather than imitating what everybody else is doing, which is a common mistake beginning web designers do.

Now onto the Magazines – What’s in them? Why get them?

I came across Practical Web Design and Computer Arts because they stood out from the crowd with their unique designs. I haven’t read them thoroughly, but I came across something interesting in the Computer Arts mag. On page 36, there’s this article called “The copycat creatives” which talks about plagiarism in design and ways people dealt with it. This article is very similar to an idea I plan on writing about in the near future and it gave me some more insight into it.Once I read through both of these magazines, I’ll make a decision on whether their worth subscribing to.

I’ve got some awesome wood floor around my house, might use that for my redesign? haha, no.

Magazines seemed to be overlooked a lot nowadays and I can understand why. You might say, why pay for a magazine when you can get it online for free? Well, you’re not paying for the information; you’re paying for the convenience of having the information brought to you in portable and organized fashion. This also applies to books and eBooks as well.

Getting My Design Freak On

Down to the point, I know how to design websites, its just, when I come up with new creative ideas for layouts or graphics I have a hard time translating (or communicating) them into digital masterpieces.

So that’s why I got all these books and magazines. I plan on reading through all from them and get a solid foundation on graphic design.
In addition, I’m also going to start reading up on some more design/graphic blogs and read more articles about it. While I’m at it, a good idea would also be to learn more on Photoshop and Illustrator too which should speed up my productivity. Thanks to lynda.com, that’s possible.

In the next article, I’m going to be doing an assessment for this blog and where its going. I don’t like where the design is going so I’m going to talk about a redesign (I love redesigns!). It also seems like every body is redesigning their blogs too so I kind of feel left out.