the habberjams

I recently realised that the font I use for all my branding, Avant Garde, is actually my favourite font from my old Jasc Paint Shop days, back when I first started printing up calendars, cards and other miscellaneous crap on my old greyscale dot matrix printer (I would later colour them in crappily with crayons). Neat, eh? I had no idea when I designed my envy creative logo, that I was actually going back to the roots of my graphic sensibilities. Kinda neat when this kind of thing subconsciously pops up…

I brought it up because I just redesigned my business cards, as I need a new batch printed up. Wanna see? Check them out, two-sided:

For the past month or so, I’ve been working on a website for World Playground Project. I developed the logo for them and then proceeded with the website. The logo is an expression of the playful side of the charity organisation’s goals: to use drama as a method to act out tough situations the target children face, and provide them with real-life solutions to those situations. It’s a great organisation; check them out and consider donating to their cause.

I redesigned the website for Cha Liu Dim Sum Restaurant, and it’s now up. Screenshot below.

I recently launched a nice little microsite for my dayjob.

And another website I’ve been working on: Tyree Capital Corp..

Yup, I haven’t just been hiding in a hole all this time. I’ve been busily designing not one, not two, but three websites. Only one is ready to show right now though, so I present to you: Mixed Company Theatre:

This is the largest project I’ve worked on so far as I also had to design a bunch of print materials for their use. This is a small sampling of some of the pieces I put together:

While the Starbucks (yes, yes, Starbucks is evil and no one should go there – sorry. I just like the coffee) card/VISA combo is really awesome – I get free money from Starbucks loaded onto the card regularly, on top of the 1% cashback on my VISA purchases and 3% cashback on the money I load onto it (hmmm… I wonder if that’s considered taxable income? we’ll just say it’s not ) – I do have one qualm with it.

It is notoriously difficult to do the following:

1. Order a drink
2. Reload the Starbucks card from the VISA
3. Pay for the drink with the subsequent newly loaded money on the Starbucks card

So, instead of me putting $20 on my Starbucks card from the VISA and then buying my drink from that $20, I’m paying for my drink on top of that $20 – bringing the purchase to a messy $21.55 (or whatever it happens to be – it’s even worse when I’ve just ordered an iced-double-tall-soy-latte!).

The reason this gets my goat? Because that’s $1.55 (at the very least) I’m only getting 1% cashback on – instead of 3% – whenever I reload my card. Doesn’t seem like much, but it adds up over time. (Thank the Yorkshire in me.)

Plus, it really does just feel messy to get a receipt back like that. Starbucks should have
a) tried harder to train their employees on how to reload the Starbucks card/VISA combo and then charge a drink from the newly reloaded funds, and b) actually spent the time to design their POS system to be easier to do this in the first place.

In this day of constant card transactions and higher awareness of user needs, there is absolutely no excuse for this kind of sloppiness.

Starbucks, you get a slap for this!

I recently launched a redesign of the Don Barber Sound website. Focusing on Don’s three main services in the sound production industry, the site also offers archived articles and educational pieces he has written throughout his experiences. Be sure to look him up for all your church and public school sound setup needs.