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(Beginning of Rant)
Life is so hectic as usual, now that I’m in my junior year of college. At first, I didn’t really feel the whole “junior year is the worst year” thing because I’m not really in management or those usual courses so I thought it didn’t apply to us, but yeah — I haven’t really had a weekend or a night wherein I just bummed around for the past 3 weeks… or more… I no longer recall for my nights have turned to day, and the days have turned into endless nights of staying up late to work on my project which seems to take forever to finish.
I’m ranting, but there really isn’t much hatred in my words because I like my course. Really, I do, although it is a love-hate relationship thing. On one hand, its fun doing these things at first, although after working on a project for a long time, you tend to get bored with it. On the other hand, it gets really frustrating when you can make it look the way you want it to because of your lack of skill. I’m really confused with my course right now because I don’t think I’m doing too well, and I’m not really as skilled as my classmates although I’m trying to work as hard as I can, albeit I’m not doing my best. I also get really frustrated when I like a design I’ve made, and I’m satisfied with it, but everyone else thinks it suxs. I can’t seem to move forward from this point unless I start from scratch with a totally new idea.
(End of Rant)
(Start of actual reason why I made this post but still with a bit of ranting. Sorry bout that.)
So I’ve been working on redesigning a brand for my Visual Communication class. I picked my philosophy teacher’s home-based business, wherein she bakes and sells cupcakes, because her logo is horrible. (Sorry, Ma’am >.<, her cupcakes a really good though! Or so I’ve heard because I haven’t had the chance to order from her yet.) We’ve been assigned to redesign the logo, make a letterhead, business card, and place all of the above in a folder.
Now, I like making my life miserable and thinking of fun yet hard to do designs that involve things outside of my reach but within the bounds of reality. Like for example, when I redesigned my current business card for this same class, I wanted to have the letters of the text die-cut. Printers don’t die-cut for a single card, so I had to manually do it. Fee cut out one card, and I did the other, but I passed his since the cut was cleaner. It took a really long time since I chose a thick paper, and because the letters were small and were all curved. Damn my lack of foresight.
So once again, I have decided to make my life miserable by choosing a weird folder. I was looking for a folder die-line on the net and I found one and fell in love with it. It met my needs very well, but the problem is it was more complicated than a normal folder, and it had a lot of pockets. Long story short, I’ll need to print on a 27×26 inch sheet of paper, or something close to those dimensions. Now, I think it should be possible since the site where I downloaded the die-line was a printing press site, but I’m not so sure if they have it here in Manila, specifically, the printing press I go to which is Freeform Katipunan. (I should be given some kind of loyal customer discount along with the rest of my classmates since we seem to be going there every other week or something.)
(Here comes the actual topic)
Now, being the web-obsessed person that I am, I went to check online if they have a site wherein I can check what services they offer — I end up with nothing. Actually, I knew they didn’t have a website, but I was hoping nonetheless that I would find some information somewhere that would help me.
After this little bit of shallow inconvenience on my part, I realized how annoyed I was at businesses that do not have websites, or the information I’m looking for online. Maybe it’s just me being totally dependent on the world wide web for even the tiniest problem, but I really believe that all businesses should post all important information about themselves online for transparency and convenience. It’s not so hard really, and I don’t want to believe that I am the only person who thinks like this. I know the Philippines, is no U.S.A. but I think we’re advanced enough for the things I’m looking for. There are a lot of free website makers out there and even if the site is ugly, what’s more important is the information. (Although I’ll mind if the website is ugly :p)
Taking freeform for example, they’re supposed to be this good digital printing press which also offer graphic service, so I figured they would be just as technologically advanced as everyone else if not more, but they don’t have a website. Most Filipinos would create a multiply site, but freeform has nothing but some descriptions and a landline that no one was picking up when I called. I mean, I think that Freeform is more advanced than my teacher whom I’m making designs for, but even my teacher has a multiply site and a “i.ph” site! (Whatever thats for…) And it’s not only freeform I’m annoyed with but also other printing presses. I was looking for printing presses closer to home because it’s more convenient and I did find one along Wilson street which is very close to my home. However, I do not recall a printing press there because the shops along this road keep changing constantly and a lot of shops are not as prominent as others. They too did not have a website, but I was more forgiving since I figured I could just go there and ask them because it was near. I looked for an address, and I even found a google map locator for it, but I didn’t find what I was looking for which I don’t think was a lot to ask… All I was looking for was a picture of their store. I don’t think it’s that hard to take a picture of your store, and in a busy, and crowded place like Wilson street where there are a lot of buildings whose names we do not know, it would be more practical to post an image along with that locator instead of just telling us it’s located at whathisorhername building.
I don’t really know if I was asking too much, but I don’t think I was. Even with restaurants, it’s not so much of a hassle to post your menu AND prices online right? I mean… I think there was a site for restaurants in the philippines to post their menu on…so what’s so hard about doing it right? I mean, I’ll bet that most Filipinos who have easy access to internet go online at least once a week, and I bet that these people I’ve mentioned go online at least once a week.
So now, I’m stuck with a semi-big problem because I’ll be going to freeform to have some of my stuff printed, but I’ll have to stay a bit longer than necessary as usual because I will probably need to do some last minute editing again because I’m not sure if they’ll be able to print my folder. If this is the case, I’ll probably ask them to print stickers which I will just stick to cartolina which will be what my folder will made of bec it’s the only semi-hard piece of paper I can think of which is large enough to find my folder (which even then I had to shrink).