I realized that I haven't really posted any of my new stuff in my portfolio. I may put up a few of my cards, just to give you an idea of what CP is working on. It's a lot of stuff that is like this card I did before I left zeta.

Surprisingly, we are caught up with orders which is good, but we are also low on new ones, which is bad. I never thought I'd want more projects. This is the type of slow time to do the necessary stuff like build up our infrastructure, update the catalog, clean up files, create new designs, etc. For instance, bossman has me working on a major company brochure to be used in the next phase of our selling strategy. It's looking pretty good right now, though I'm running into the same problem of people wanting the design finished and THEN writing the copy. Ack. It just means that I made very little room for it. :) It should be done Monday or lastest Tuesday. It's really the first project I've done that I was able to stick to my usually 3 draft metric rule of thumb. It was so much less stressful because I didn't have someone trying to guess how much time I should spend on it, I was able to meet deadlines because I set them, I was able to get great feedback for my coworkers at appropriate times. Now it will all work out well if no one tinkers with the design over the weekend, which has been known to happen in the past. <--Personal Pet Peeve. :P

More of my card designs will begin to dominate the catalog over the next few months. It's been a long time coming, but I think it is worth it. My quarterly bonus based on sales wasn't as big as I was hoping it would be, but it will only get larger as people start seeing our stuff. I think people will also order more regularly because we have been working really hard to streamline our printing process, making it easier to turn jobs around at an insanely fast rate. Before this was done by people putting in weekend hours, but now we are doing it without those hours being part of "the plan." We've also set up a better approval/proofing/vetting process for cards, so we now can guarrenttee our info is up-to-date. I'm also getting a much better handle on the printer's quirkiness.

So I guess what I'm saying is things are going well, and we are finally getting a breather. *phew*

We might even be ready to break into the next market, which will mean converting and creating designs for a whole new audience. I might start turning my brain to that too.