This got me in turn thinking about things I’ve done and what do you know I would potentially have one of my sites shut down (or should I say cat’s sites) if SOPA came into being.

It’s a non for profit site and a bit of a labour of love it is of course the page of Squishy The Cat.

He has appeared in a number of movie poster / parodies and if SOPA / PIPA came into power and someone takes offence / feels the parody works are infringing on copyright then hey presto the site could be gone in a second. This would make Squishy very sad and we don’t want that do we? I’ve had a load of people thank me for bringing a smile to their faces and so many nice comments from complete strangers on the internet it’d really sadden me that this could just be wiped of the face of the earth without any due process if the laws are made.

Squishy doesn’t normally make serious posts apart from his political campaigns but that’s another story but he spoke out earlier on the Squishy the Cat Facebook page

A few years back I sent on Michele a silly graphic relating to a dot EU promotion that Blacknight was running. I’d been taking pictures of the cat with my new camera and working as a freelancer from home always means that a slight cabin fever situation kicks in from time to time and hey presto he loved the graphic. Personally I don’t think it’s that great today but it was a start.

I think a week or two later and Michele used another picture on the site (he had been adding stock images to all his posts to make them as I said a bit more visual) and this time I ended up branding up that image a little bit and changing the size to fit in with the blog design. I came up with the slogan as well which I was rather proud of. Again it was for a domain promotion.

Shortly after that I ended up coming up with a standard design we’ve used on most of the blog graphics (not all the time … time factors into things sometimes) and also started sourcing most of the images we use on the blog graphics and not to mention coming up with silly captions and marketing ideas for them.

Well it’s a while on and I’ve ended up making a lot of these graphics taken a few photos .. used pictures of the cat as well The big question sometimes for me is just how much time do you invest in them. For us the answer seems to be a bit sometimes it’s a 5 minute job other times it takes quite a bit more time.

It can be a pretty time consuming process sourcing images. Coming up with an idea. Finding an image within the budget. Trying to make things fun bring a smile to peoples faces and ultimately we hope lead to the Blacknight brand becoming stronger. Personally it’s something I enjoy a lot and we’ve gotten good feedback in the past whether it’s for the blog images the newsletters or adverts we run.

So what do you think is it worth the effort we put in? Do you even notice or care?

The recent Year of the Cloud promotion for example starts as a “I need a blog graphic for a promotion promo code cloudyear”

O … K … ? (generally my usual response to these kinda requests)

Moving on and I have a think about it while doing a few other bits and pieces … and we get to this stage … still a mockup

Obviously I’m thinking Chinese new year here which is I think on the 23rd of January. Bit boring it’d be fine liked where I was going with the Year of the Cloud / Dragon thing … BUT Michele says … can we get a dragon in there somewhere and hey presto I go searching for a bit sourcing imagery … another iteration / idea … scrap that another idea … nope and … finally and we end up with

Add in a silly byline and people seem to love it big question for me is will it convert to sales and make our brand stronger. I’d love to hear some peoples thoughts. Is it worth the effort we go to?

(By the way shameless sales pitch why not get a great discount on cloud hosting over on the Blacknight Blog)

So I’d decided that on the new blog I’d have some tips and tricks for people. The first one for me is a pretty obvious one given the first few comments on the blog (see the header graphic). Also following on from some comments previously on my personal blog and also given who was the first to comment on my “professional” Blog

How do I get a profile pic / avatar in the comments on all these blog things just like you? (see the header graphic)

Well thankfully it’s quite easy. Just head on over to Gravatar.com

It’s FREE!!! and that probably leads you to wonder why / how on earth / what the …. well it’s a service provided by Automattic ( The company behind WordPress, PollDaddy and a whole lot more )

You’re probably wondering why and truth be told I wonder the same at times but then I think it’s something that binds people together and helps people feel more at ease with their services. This means in turn that you’ll continue to use the products and services of the company helping to strengthen their offerings. Which do you prefer a comment without a graphical representation of the user or a nice smiley little picture of someone. You come back and you recognise the person you go to other blogs and you see the same person you start to build trust. So it’s something I’d definitely be recommending you do if you’re new to blogging / commenting / setting up your website. Associate your email address with a graphic and be recognised across the web.

A little bit before Christmas I was asked a pretty simple question. How will I introduce you. As in what’s my job title. I guess it’s a pretty basic question and one I should have had an answer for. I hummed and hawed for a minute mumbling something about being a web designer or developer or doing a bit of marketing as well. I guess a lot of freelancers are in the same boat. You tend to take on multiple roles to some extent when you work for yourself as a web designer.

In the last year I’ve migrated (from Movable Type to WordPress) and templated up the new Blacknight Blog. I’ve worked on the Getting Irish Business Online project with Blacknight / Google / An Post and the County and City Enterprise Boards. I’ve taken photos and even ended up using some for strange little marketing promos. I’ve come up with ideas on how to market various things more recently with the launch of Dot XXX. I’ve developed Dropped.ie the Irish domain dropped .ie tool as well as GetPersonalWith.Me. I’ve worked on the stand design for the .Me Domain Registry. Tutorial videos, blog posts, manning the twitter / facebook accounts, support, vBulletin theming, Logo design, Print design,  numerous micro sites for Blacknight, the Blacknight newsletters, spoken on the radio promoting the company, helped develop the new Blacknight Cloud Store investigating new tools and technologies and a whole lot more that I can’t remember right now. Least I forget it I’ve taken Squishy The Cat‘s Facebook page up to 900 fans and hopefully brought a smile to peoples faces as well in doing so.

Saying I’m a web designer or developer doesn’t seem to be quite right so I asked the powers that be at work what’s my job title. They weren’t sure and said come up with something. I asked friends on twitter and in the end I opted for the title / description of Creative Lead. Guess it sums me up pretty well. Makes it sound like there are more creatives in the company too I guess but ah well I don’t want to just call my self creative.

I do what needs to be done with my own style and sense of humour.

I am Forbairt hear me type

Over the past few years I’ve kept meaning to get my professional website up and running and well client work always seems to take precedence and I only ever end up with a holder page of some sort for Forbairt.ie

That changes this year it’s 2012 and my main new years resolution is going to be GTD ( Get Things Done ) apart from the other obvious resolution 1920×1080.

I generally end up making a list of a few things every year that I want to get done and one or two get done others don’t. I’ve a lot of exciting projects and goals on the cards this year and I’m going to keep track of them here. Not to mention one or two other interesting links. The site is going to be a bit bare till I get more content in but I’ve all the placeholders there for now with a few more to be added so now I just need to write some content for the site. Tweak some graphics and CSS things and get on with the writing of the content.

Happy new year everyone