Musings of Eric Sharp

Though I haven’t had any large releases over the last month or two, I still have some smaller projects launching that are worthy of mentioning.

DJ KJ, one of Orlando’s most popular and well known DJ’s, contacted me in regards to designing and applying a Flash player on mp3clubtunes.com. The project was a little unprecedented because I wouldn’t be working within our ColdFusion system – I would be configuring it on the client’s server who ran PHP. So, I brought my Flash contractor (Albert) into the development phase to get it rollin’ because he has been known to tinker with PHP in the past.

The design phase was complete stimulation from start to end. He loved a certain Winamp (audio player) skin, and I based my theme off of that particular style. It’s fun to design without boundaries. I can sit in Photoshop, and just play with visuals and effects and not have to worry about navigation, UI flow, content, and everything else a larger project presents. I wanted the player to be very 3D, with lots of shadows and depth with a splash of energy. Everything went smooth, KJ approved the design fairly quickly and he’s currently adjusting all of his produts in his backoffice tools to accommodate for it.

The site that this player will run in is a bit elementary, and there has been some initial discussions in redesigning it early next year. Once the sponsors (Red Bull mainly) show some interest, they’ll want to slap on a professional look and probably brainstorm new ideas to expand the site to make it more user friendly and engaging for its customers.

Headed downtown Orlando Saturday night to Tabu night club. KJ spins there every sat. night, and graciously put our names on the VIP list. We casually hung out upstairs for a while, and later in the night headed to his booth to say hello and chat for a while. Oh, and I lost my credit card that night – should be receiving a replacement by Friday. Bartender said he gave it back to me, but I’m pretty darn certain that he lost it himself. From now on, I carry the card’s 800 number in my cell phone to prevent a future chaotic incident from replaying itself.

Big day for A2M – finalized, designed, & printed!

For the last few months I’ve been spending small amounts of time here and there to design a template, write the copy, and go through rounds of edits before I ventured off to Kinkos.

This documentation (Services, About Us, Clients, Hosting, and personal Profile) will be used for any new business I pursue – in which gives me the professionlism that I’ll need to keep growing. I was very enthusiastic today because I took my final designs to Kinkos and ran about 200 copies on their color lasers. The final product turned out great, I’m very pleased with the quality of the prints.

Next up, getting A2M’s 3.0 site completely developed and launched before summer ends!

Received my A2M taxes from my CPA last Tuesday, been double checking all the numbers before I input my Schedule K-1 info into my personal return. It looks like I’ll only owe a couple hundred of dollars, which alleviated a lot of worry because I thought I’d owe a bunch more.

Been making great design progress on RecordingDemo.com – a website for a local music producer. We’re a little behind schedule because of content, his merchant account setup, and some other misc. things he needs to feed me. But, the design is really coming together and I think I’ve nailed it.

Got a decent amount of A2M leads, just need to keep pushing forward because leads are just leads until contracts are signed. Waiting to hear back from Star Transportation (Orlando Taxi/Limo service) on a proposal sent out over a week ago. The relationship is becoming a little frustrating because I haven’t heard a THING from the guy I spoke with, not even an e-mail stating that they’ve received the proposal. Sigh.

Is gradually going through diligent construction.

You can see it being born on paper as it transfers into the digital world on my monitor.

Got A LOT of work to do, trying to balance it with client work to get it up and running asap. Currently I’ve posted a “coming soon” on the site, with links to my featured work. I’ve been completely unhappy with A2M’s site for quite sometime, so a small transitional teaser feels just as acceptable as the previous version that was created over a year and a half ago.