I used to have a full time job and did some freelancing on the spare time, and now I’m full freelancing, with two international contracts and a great local client in the App Development field.

In this change, I struggled at some managing things that, as an employee I haven’t really cared much, since most of my work were very straight forward. Suddenly I had hundreds of scheduled and non-scheduled tasks, that I had to keep track of. Also, if I fail on any one of them it’s bad for me, since my clients will suffer on itwhich leads to less money, and the whole thing becomes a snowball of hell. It was then that during and App development meeting with my client, we were talking about a new web app that had just launched called Asana. Dustin Moskovitz was involved in this project and by my first contact with the app I noticed it wasn’t a common app.

Asana is a task manager. A complex one, yet a simple one. I used to be a fan of TeuxDeux from Swissmiss, which is a very simple task manager (with an awesome design style), but it lacked a ton of configurations I felt the need now. You can use Asana as simple task manager, just adding your tasks and keeping track of it in a list, and day-by-day you will start to create projects, insert due dates for tasks, tags, etc. After I created you own environment in the asana platform, I started to find more and more utilities for it, from personal tasks in work, to a shared project where I exchange some webdesign tips with friends and co-workers.

Asana was primarily built to be a team task manager, with lots of controls for groups and assignments, but me, as a solo freelancer, I use close to nothing in team management and I’m loving Asana. Here you can see some links to the Asana website, where they explain a lot of it’s functionalities and workflows.
It’s a really great app.

Check out the videos.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

http://asana.com/product

This just caught my eye at Webdesigner Depot. In my opinion, the Jack of all trades will always be a great professional, since he can see things from different perspectives. A designer that can code a little, will design things thinking if the coding if possible. He doesn’t need to be an Ace in 4 different languages of webcode. He just needs to know his way around some HTML/CSS and PHP, for example, and his layouts will be more solid than from a designer that knows nothing about code.The other way is also true. A master coder, with a little knowledge of design and layout will pay attention to the details of the layout, and not make the mistakes usually seen when a designer sends a layout (PSD ) for the coder, and when the site comes back, it is a bit different, with things not precisely aligned, different font sizes and so on.

A lot of things can be improved with a a little knowledge. I’m ultimately driven by knowledge, and that’s first thing a Jack needs to have. Do you consider yourself a Jack?

This website is build on the wordpress platform and uses the amazing Thematic Frame. I designed the layout and and Kate Mag did a great work in coding it.

Visit CasaMari

Brazillian professionals are known for their skills to get a good technology and make it cheaper, without loosing a lot of it’s quality. So the idea is:  Not all of our clients need a fully customized website, with a revolutionary layout and navigation methods. In fact, most of them just need an almost standard website, easy to use/update. Most of my clients, would be more than happy to know that I can offer a cheap option, semi-standard website, for less than half the price they would pay for a custom website.

For this kind of option, we can’t afford to pay coders, so the option is to use some free CMS, like blog tools ( wordpress, for example ) or more complex tools, like SquareSpace.com. They developed a powerfull tool to create websites, based on templates. The great thing about SquareSpace, is that their templates are very customizable, and they have a good amount of templates at your disposal.

For the hardcore user that knows a bit of coding, you can access the CSS to have control over it directly, or you can control the CSS and some (X)HTML funcions through a graohic interface.

Their interface to create websites, is complex, but doesn’t get even close to the complexity of codes. An advanced PC user can create his own website with a bit os knowledge of Photoshop and how sites work.

It is a paid service. A very affordable paid service.

Thank God most of my clients aren’t advanced PC users.

If you know other great tools to create websites please put them in the comments section.

Check out the logo, and a couple of pictures from the meeting.

Unfortunately, I don’t know who shot these pictures, and I don’t know if I’m allowed to use them. If anyone knows who took the pictures, please contact me, so I can give proper credit, or take them out due to copyright restrictions.

It’s a company that focuses on spreading information to the brazilian people in a very deep layer of society. A great issue in mass communication in Brazil is that we have a huge territory, big population and people that live in very remote places. Usually these people are poor, and have little to zero access to technology. A not so small part of our population is still living in the radio era. So, this company business is to spread the important info from their clients ( public and private clients ) to the population. They send most of the info via email and fax, to the more “civilized” parts of the country, but when it comes to the remote areas, they have a huge network of partners in every city of the country, that they can call them by phone, and that partner will spread the info to their community. It’s an amazing idea, and a work for the good. And it was great to be able to craft their new logo. One of the owners told me she wanted to keep a circle of people from the old logo. I wanted to craft a modern logo for them, that carried the idea of an octopus, or something with tentacles, but I also needed the people.

After some research over the internet I found a picture that showed me the form I was looking for. I had to vector it, and tweak it out little to enhance the characteristics that I needed. That’s my final version.

One amazing thing I noticed after showing this logo to some people, right before it’s approval, is that men can decode the logo faster than women. Even eye-trained women, such as my mother ( married to a designer for 25 years ), she took a little time to unveil the beauty of it.

What about you? Have you decoded it at first glance?

Click here to view the embedded video.