Compost, Recycling, Trash Signage

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I made these signs a couple years ago when I put on the unfortunately named First Annual Holiday Gift Bizarre in San Francisco.  It was unfortunate because we wound up only having the one.  Hindsight is always 20/20.

Please feel free to print them for use at your events.  If you laminate them, they will last forever :).  I reuse mine every event, and keep them in a folder marked “Signage”.  I know just where to find them when I go to pack for Jenfest this Saturday morning.  I’ve learned a lot about design since making these, so my apologies for the rough edges.

on the subject of blogging

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I constructed jenniferheller.com with this grand scheme–to share my life, adventures, get-rich-quick schemes, challenges and triumphs to the world–while leaving room to complain about crappy marketing and challenging myself to come up with a better idea.

Now that jenniferheller.com is live, and I’m on the verge of releasing it to my friends, family and colleagues–I am noticing that I don’t actually know how to blog.  I know how to write, and rewrite, and rewrite again–I know how to think of great blog ideas.  (I am, indeed, quite a great idea machine.)  But I don’t know how to hit PUBLISH, because to me, the entry is never done.

So my commitment is this: to post something whenever I feel inclined, whether or not I think it’s even any good–not save a draft everyday.

My commitment is to give it a JenRating of some amount.  And to give you the opportunity to give it a JenFanRating of something or other.  That way we can work together to keep this interesting–and my challenge will be not taking it personally.

It’s an adventure!

Jenrating: blah

JenFanRating: coming soon!

Lessons on Web Design

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Today we finally went live with the site for Awakening Yourself Life Coaching.

When constructing this site we learned a valuable lesson–to test the design on one’s target market before fully implementing it. We had a design that both Nicole (my Life Coach and client) and I were completely in love with–but we were too close to it. We were therefore unable to see that it was too chaotic to really convey the message–that Nicole’s job as a Life Coach is to help you see practical steps to really help your life–that working with her will make you feel more grounded and centered, while energized and empowered.

We stopped, sacrificed some of the design elements we loved so much, revisited her mission and this is what we came up with: www.awakeningyourselfcoaching.com.

I'm not perfect

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I’m not perfect and that’s okay.

I’ve been obsessing for months about Jenniferheller.com and how it should look, be organized, …

Here it is.  A work in progress. Forever.

Here at jenniferheller.com, I have incorporated my past blog entries once located at daunted.blogspot.com.  I named that blog as such because it is so easy to be daunted in the world…  I find more than anything the need for perfection is what daunts me.

This site is an experiment in putting perfection aside and following my dreams.

What scares me the most (besides earthquakes) is the possibility of never realizing my dreams because I have let perfection keep me in a state of perpetual inaction.

Hella Fresh Theatre

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I am honored to unveil the new Hella Fresh Theatre website. If I don’t say so myself, I think it’s the best website I have done yet. The day I figured out how the mouse overs were going to work was one of my most creatively satisfying days yet in this lifetime!

This website uses javascript to achieve Flash-like effects. Of course, I wound up having to create the menu both in html and Flash because we wound up requiring Flash for the movie. But I stick by my belief that one should avoid Flash unless it’s absolutely necessary, even when it creates duplicate work!

I fought with Blogger for many hours over the blog section of the website. I wanted to fully host it on our domain so that I could fully customize the layout, and the favicon. Unfortunately, when I moved everything off Blogger, it stopped displaying new posts–though they were being uploaded to our server! After many frustrating hours of trying to get help, I finally moved it back over to Blogger and sacrificed many design points. I am disappointed with Google, who, as you know, I normally worship. Though I considered many other blogging tools, for now we are keeping it on Blogger. If anyone has any advice, please provide!

There are still improvements to be made to fully satisfy my detail-obsessed Virgo moon, but I am ecstatic to release the site to the public!

Hella Fresh Theatre is the works of my great friend, John Rosenberg.

The Year in Review

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Dear friends,

It has been such an exciting year! If you remember, one of my new years’ resolutions was to utilize technology more effectively. To that end, I started off the year purchasing my first smartphone, an HTC Kaiser, or AT&T Tilt. Let me tell you, that $400 was wasted, but, looking back on the year, I wasted more money on bank fees. I’m looking forward to buying an unlocked Google phone in the new year.

One technology purchase that I was happy with was the tiny 9″ ASUS laptop. It’s so cute! And wonderful for looking up recipes (from your mom in your gmail) in the kitchen without lugging in your 17″ inch Dell Vostro (5 stars).

Another one of my new years’ resolutions was to utilize the vodka martini. I performed remarkably well.

For the second year, Sue and Phoebe joined my family at Mother’s Day Brunch. The crab tasted fresher than usual. I was pleased. I am glad that Sue and Phoebe have chosen Mother’s Day Brunch with the Hellers for a holiday tradition!

Will and I got back together in March. We have been strong ever since. In May, he and I joined Sue and Phoebe for a weekend camping trip. We floated a cooler of Tecate to a secret location and Phoebe found Will’s sunglesses in the bottom of the creek

I started planning Jenfest in June this year. Planning Jenfest is always a challenge. This year was no exception. When I think of heaven, I know it will be Jenfest 07. I was sad to have to plan a party that could never compete with heaven. Jenfest wound up as a picnic in Dolores Park this year. How wonderful was it to see everyone! This year was the first year that I did not ask Alex to design the invite. She is married to Patrick now, you know, and we hardly see her. I did get to see her at Jenfest, and it was delightful! Despite it not being Jenfest 07, Jenfest 08 was truly wonderful.

The night before Jenfest, I managed to mess up my back again. The week following Jenfest I was bedridden. Finally, I had an MRI in August. The results showed that I had a disc bulging 7cm into my spinal cord! This explains my severe discomfort. I went to see a new chiropractor. He spent some time with a rubber skeleton and explained my condition. Everytime I bend or twist, the disc bulges into my spinal cord. Well, my previous chiropractor had been recommending that I do bends and twists twice a day over the course of the past two years. That was upsetting. I am happy to be getting some relief.

I am satisfied with my professional success this year. I took on the Co-op’s 75th Anniversary Gala and a new supervisory role in January. It was a challenge taking on such a large event with nine months to plan. My Virgo moon kicked right in, though, and the details were (for the most part) nailed. One detail was regretfully neglected; we did not collect the donation envelopes from the table and the servers threw them away! In general, I was unhappy with H’s Lordship’s food and service. Narsai David had graciously donated ample wine, but it was simply not served fast enough!

During my year in charge, I also revamped the Co-ops website (www.bsc.coop). The new website offers much greater information to the students. It is also easier to update. I debuted the website on August 15th. Then, in the early hours of Labor Day weekend, I received a phone call from Jordan. “Are you ready?” he asked. “TELL ME,” I ordered. “The website has been hacked.” It was true! Turkish death metal blared from my computer. However, our work was not lost, and with the help of Dave in Argentina, we had the website back up in a matter of days.

In the early part of the year, I was hired to create a website for a martial arts school in Portland. As part of the trade, I was able to attend a very cool self-defense course. If you are ever in Portland, and are female, you should definitely take this course. It is worth every penny. As part of the curriculum, you physically attack the “padded attacker” which gives you great confidence later. I was even attacking people in my dreams! The website, www.onewithheart.com, turned out well in spite of some design sacrifices. I am looking forward to including it in my portfolio at jenniferheller.com (currently under construction).

In November I decided to host a Holiday Gift Bizarre at the Cottage Table Company on Pearl Harbor Day. I called it a Gift Bizarre in hopes of suggesting that you never know what you might find there. I am pretty sure that people just thought that I didn’t know how to spell bazaar. I invited all the artists I know locally, and advertised for artists on various websites like etsy.com. I was very pleased with the selection of artists. The crowd was certainly lacking, however. I will plan further ahead next year. One problem that I ran into was an issue with the original design of the flier–I hadn’t meant to, but I had included imagery that was offensive! I am still using the offensive version of the flier as one-sided paper, and suspect that I will for the majority of 2009. Check out the inoffensive version of the flier at www.holidaygiftbizarre.com

The Guster has been well this year. As you know, I started feeding him twice a day instead of just once. We think that he has lost some weight as a result. I am thinking that his metabolism is such that he needs multiple small meals in the day, just like me. An unfortunate consequence of feeding him in the morning as well as the evening, is that he very persistently tries to wake me up in the morning. He even goes so far as to pull books out of the night stand to make noise! It is very irritating, but it is nice to wake up to the cold nose of someone you love every morning.

I do hope this letter finds you, my friends, happy and well. I am in the process of constructing a self-video-taping-camera-holding hat. My new years resolution for 2009 is to produce a video a week!

Much love,

Susie J.

I hate Arial Narrow

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I hate Arial too, but I hate Arial Narrow more than anything. I wish the designer of such a terrible font would find his or herself cut into tiny pieces and distributed among tin cans of sardines. (I don’t eat sardines, but even if I did, I wouldn’t mind a bite of this particular fingertip.) Looking at Arial Narrow makes me feel so claustrophobic…such lovely words, though often misplaced amongst each other, all squished together into a tiny tin can. They can’t breathe! Don’t people realize that words need to breathe?

My eyes need space, too. They want nicely filled out letters, just like they’re drawn to nicely filled out people. It’s no good when some one’s too skinny. People and letters have so much in common. Both need room to sprawl out.

Lines do too. And paragraphs. Everything needs its place in the confines of the page. Like a bloke in a public restroom: given more than one choice, one doesn’t pick the urinal right next to the other guy pissing. It’s no good when all the words are at the top of a page, or all squished onto the left. Pictures too. All have their places. And there are right places for them, and wrong ones. Far too often humans neglect this. One should have to go to a trade school to produce a document. Or at least pass a test.

I think that if more people understood this, the correspondance of the world would be much more attractive, and perhaps more people would be likely to do their taxes on time.