This is in reference to my previous post here. Wondering if a designer is ever happy with what he creates? I started out playing with some new ideas and on the way to work I thought about something I wanted to try out more. I did so at home and two days later I had a completely new website up and running. When you visit marceldaems.com you’ll see that it’s now a nice, simple and easy to navigate website

This time however, I promised myself (and my girlfriend) not to touch it anymore and stay away from new designs in the near future. This is the 4th design I upload in around 3 months. My next step will be updating my portfolio though, with a logo I created for a Dutch family owning a little touristic train called “hank-o-motief“.

I hope you like my new website!

Ever since I set this blog up I have been wondering what would be an appropriate name for this blog. I knew it had to do something with me being a freelance designer but still? Give me something to create, design or lay-out and I’ll be happy to do it for you. But when I have to put it in to words, that is where I am getting stuck most of the times.

Just now, when I was taking a shower (yup yup… I know) it came to me. I did wanted to talk about freelance, that much was sure, but I didn’t wanted to lecture people. No matter what profession you do, you always try to put something of yourself in it… right? So I came to the conclusion that I wanted to talk about my own experience, my own thoughts behind my way of working without really telling others how to do things. I just wanted to explain my own flair in a way.

And there it was, the name for this blog

I only recently started to use WordPress (although I have the account for a few months now, and I have posted 2 (I think) posts before (but those are deleted). There for I am only starting to grasp this medium and I am still in a learning curve. I only just found out that I can set up multiple “pages” on WordPress so I might start a separate topic about my life in London, and more specifically my experience of moving from Belgium (my home country) to London UK. I have so many things to say about that, that I am really thinking to write it down also.

One more reason why I started blogging is that (and again) I am starting to learn that it’s another good way to drive traffic to my website. Yup, it’s not just all about expressing myself, it’s also about hoping to give myself a little better living. On the other hand, I think it might prove interesting for a client-to-be to not just see my portfolio but actually read about my thoughts on design. One of the biggest differences between Belgium and the UK I found, is the fact that people here focus much more on the visual to, for example, invite a person for an interview, than they do in Belgium. In Belgium you really have to sell your self as a person (although a portfolio does ad obviously). For this I am pretty honest by saying that my portfolio does not say to much about myself (visual) and that is really stressing since I do have 20+ years experience in graphic prepress for litho and packaging. Imagine my disappointments that I just kept on hearing a “njet” from agencies or companies, simply because they saw (or not saw) the images on my portfolio and did not judge myself from my actual experience and knowledge about everything involving prepress. With this blog, I hope I can convince possible clients, agencies or companies that I do have a strong knowledge about what I am doing. And maybe… I just start my next blog about this topic actually

But that’s for the next one. For now… I greet you all and while 75% of London is now boozing away in the pubs, I am off to bed.

Cheers

While I was doing some changes on my own logo in the past days, I started wondering if any one designer is ever happy with what he/she designs for him/her self?

I started out creating my website for my freelance business a few months ago, and although I designed the entire thing in Illustrator before I developed it, and it looked as I wanted it… I found myself not liking it anymore after a few weeks.

I started remodeling the entire website and soon the remodeling became a giant change. My girlfriend considered me crazy saying I shouldn’t spend all that time and something she just keeps on telling me… “don’t over think!”.

Honestly, that is probably one of my problems, I do over think! But what can you do about it, you do want something as good as possible right? Specially when it’s something you are creating for your self. Plus I feel a logo doesn’t just happen when designing it, it’s something that grows over the weeks.

Anyway, so here I am. I’m up to re-design my header section on the website for a third time, just finished redoing my logo (and yes, it does look better on the eye) and starting to consider to redesign the flow on my website (but not for now).

Is it ever good enough for a designer?

I have just start to use WordPress so I am still playing around with it. For now I want to see how far I can go with customizing WordPress.

Any ideas? Let me know

Marcel Daems