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abigailnussbaum · 4 years

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Infinity Train, S1-3

Infinity Train is a Cartoon Network animated series (now transferred to HBO Max) that premiered last year. Three seasons, each made up of ten 10-minute episodes, have aired, so you can watch the whole thing in an afternoon. The premise is quite familiar - the titular train picks up passengers (mostly, though not always, children) who are at some kind of crossroads in their lives. As they traverse cars filled with challenges, puzzles, dangers, and sometimes just nifty environments to explore, the passengers work through whatever issue brought them on to the train. Their progress towards wellness is reflected in a number that appears on their hand, and when the number drops to zero a vortex appears and returns them to their home. The train also contains native inhabitants, usually referred to as “denizens”, who sometimes help the passengers, sometimes hinder them, and are often just going about their own lives.

Like I said, the sort of premise familiar from many children’s stories, in which a character who is struggling with some important challenge or milestone is whisked off to a fantasy setting that just happens to have been tailored to help them work through their problems. The execution is pretty fantastic, with both the writing and animation striking a compelling mixture of humor and emotional depth. The train itself is a wonderful creation, vast and often surreal or even phantasmagorical, and the denizens are quirky and winning in their own right, not just as reflections of the passengers’ needs. The show also features an absolutely stacked voice cast, with guest appearances from Kate Mulgrew, Bradley Whitford, Ernie Hudson, Lena Headey, and many others.

But what I find fascinating about Infinity Train is how, almost from the first episode, it sets to work examining the core assumptions of its story template, chiefly the idea that the train is helping people, and that its kind of help is effective and positive. As someone who grew up on stories like Infinity Train and didn’t question their premise until I got older, it’s fun to watch a show that leans right into those inherent problems.

The first season of Infinity Train tells its story pretty straight. Our protagonist is Tulip, a tween who is struggling with her parents’ recent divorce. When a scheduling snafu between them leaves Tulip unable to get to a youth coding camp she’d been dreaming of, she impulsively runs away from home, and ends up being picked up by the train. There, she’s quickly joined by a royal corgi called Atticus, and a scatterbrained robot called One-One, who try to help her in her journey towards the train’s engine. Along the way, the trio are menaced by a sinister, semi-robotic figure who is destroying the environments in the train’s cars, and who seems to be fixated on One-One.

Even in this fairly basic spin on the story, a few reservations crop up: first, Tulip doesn’t actually have a real problem. Yes, her parents’ divorce has put a strain on her, but she still seems fairly well-adjusted - she has friends and interests and, apart from the ill-advised decision to run away, doesn’t seem to be acting out in dangerous ways. The things she learns over the course of her journey through the train - to face up to the hurt that her family’s breakdown has caused her, to admit that her parents’ marriage wasn’t perfect, to realize that their divorce wasn’t her fault, to ask for help when she needs it - are probably things she would have figured out as she gained some distance from the trauma of the divorce (or, for that matter, that any halfway-decent child psychologist would have helped her realize). It’s hard to justify a cosmic interference in her life, much less one that puts her in mortal danger, as the journey up the Infinity Train often does

And sure, this is a children’s adventure story, so it’s far more compelling to watch the child protagonist struggle with real danger (that is always avoided at the last possible minute) than attend a therapy session. Even if, as adult viewers, we might see the whole thing as unjustifiably risky. But the thing is, Tulip herself very quickly expresses resentment towards the train. When she realizes that the number on her hand drops when she does something healthy and good, Tulip’s reaction is anger, and for a while she refuses to cooperate with the system, covering her hand and refusing to consider how her actions are affecting her number. Even within the children’s adventure template, the child protagonist says what most of us would feel in her situation - that being kidnapped and made to jump through hoops for the sake of some seemingly arbitrary, numerical value of “wellness” is high-handed and manipulative, and encourages hostility and suspicion, rather than participation in the train’s system.

Ultimately, Tulip goes back to playing along with the train’s scheme and benefits from it. She gets her number down to zero fairly quickly, and gets to go back home. But along the way she also solves the mystery of the train’s mysterious villain, who turns out to be another passenger, Amelia, who was picked up by the train after the death of her husband. Instead of letting the train walk her through her grief and learn to accept it, Amelia tried to take over the train and use its reality-bending capabilities to recreate her lost husband. Along the way she’s committed so many acts of abuse and mayhem that her number has extended all the way to her neck. So even once Tulip talks her down and convinces her to stop hurting people, they both acknowledge that she’s never going to get off the train (oh, and by the way, the journey on the train happens in real time, so Amelia is now an old woman).

Now, it should be obvious that Amelia’s problem was significantly more complex and fraught than Tulip’s, and rather than helping her, the train gave her a venue to indulge her grief to anti-social, even psychotic extremes. So at the end of the first season, we’ve encountered two passengers. One who benefitted from the train’s system (after some initial hostility) but who also probably didn’t need its help that badly. And one who did need serious help, but instead got an opportuntity to screw her life up even more than it already was, and probably irrevocably. Not a great track record, in other words.

The second season mixes things up a bit by making its protagonist a train denizen, and giving us a behind the scenes look at the train’s community when the passengers aren’t there. MT (or: Mirror Tulip) is a character first encountered in the first season, whom Tulip helped to escape from the mirror world. She’s being pursued by mirror cops who want to destroy her, and in the process of evading them, she comes across a passenger, Jesse, and decides to help him get his number down so that she can piggyback on his exit and evade her pursuers. Jesse initially seems like he doesn’t belong on the train - he’s almost preternaturally friendly and happy-go-lucky. But it’s eventually revealed that his willingness to go along and get along is fairly indiscriminate, and leaves him prey to stronger personalities, as when he tolerates and even enables the violent bullying of his younger brother.

It’s a thornier problem than Tulip’s, not least for making it harder to sympathize with Jesse. But it’s also one that exposes the train system’s flaws, as Jesse is so passive that he doesn’t even try to move through cars and get his number down until MT lights a fire under him. And that, in turn, triggers MT’s own identity crisis, as she begins to wonder whether she has a right to exist as her own person, or whether her entire purpose is to reflect Tulip or help passengers.

That tension comes to a head when Jesse and MT encounter the Apex, a group of child passengers, led by teenagers Grace and Simon. The Apex have come up with a theory of the train’s nature that runs completely counter to its actual purpose - they believe the train is their reward, and that the system trying to bring their number down and send them back is cheating them. They strive to get their number as high as possible by committing acts of violence against the train’s denizens, whom they dub “nulls” - not real people, incapable of feeling pain.

Because S2 has been told from MT’s perspective, we know that the Apex are wrong about her and the other denizens (and in general, it’s not a good sign when someone says “this being, which exhibits all the signs of personhood and feeling, is actually not real, and is only shamming a form of suffering while feeling nothing”). But at the same time, it has to be acknowledged that this is an entirely plausible conclusion to draw from the evidence at hand. The train exists for the passeners. It has created environments and beings whose sole purpose is to interact with and affect the passengers. Why should those beings be real? Which is yet another failure point of the train’s system, because as both Tulip and Jesse’s stories show, developing connections with denizens is what spurs passengers to travel up the train and get better. The Apex have therefore interpreted the train’s system in a way that can only accomplish the exact opposite of what it was designed to do.

The show returns to Grace and Simon in its third season, in which we learn more about their history and their understanding of the train. We learn, for example, that Simon’s hostility towards denizens was sparked when the one who befriended him (The Cat, a character who appears in each of the show’s seasons) left him when they found themselves in a dangerous situation. And we learn that the Apex worship Amelia (whom they view as the train’s true conductor) and believe that the current system is a corruption of the one she intended, in which the passengers get to enjoy the train for as long as they like. In yet another demonstration of how open the train’s system is to misinterpretation, the Apex warn their new members that if they let their number get down to zero, they will “disappear”. Which is the same reaction Tulip had when she first witnessed another passenger departing, and, again, a thoroughly logical conclusion to reach given the evidence.

The season’s story involves Grace and Simon being separated from the rest of the Apex, and, in their attempts to get back to them, picking up a young passenger, Hazel, whom they try to initiate into their understanding of the train. The two teens’ interactions with Hazel shed light on the crucial difference between them. While Grace genuinely cares about the kids she’s gathered and sees herself as their protector, Simon only teaches Hazel about the train because he wants converts to his worldview, and validation for his anger at the Cat and other denizens. Once separated from the Apex and their regular schedule of destruction, Grace’s care for Hazel causes her number to go down, all the more so when she discovers that Hazel is really a denizen, and lies to Simon about it to protect her. Simon, meanwhile, only sinks further into his anger and resentment, and when he discovers Grace’s lie he sees it as a betrayal of everything they stand for. The conflict between them ultimately leads to a confrontation in which Simon is killed, while Grace reveals to the Apex that their conclusions about the train and its denizens were wrong, and that they need to come up with a new system.

So, to sum up, the Infinity Train:

Kidnaps people whom it perceives as being in need of help and holds them, sometimes for years or decades, until they achieve a predetermined threshold of wellness.

Advances this goal through a system of rewards and punishments that is so transparently manipulative, it alienates basically everyone who engages with it except the guy whose problem was being pathologically passive.

Relies for the success of this system on a community of denizens who haven’t signed on to it and who are often unsuited to the task of shepherding others towards growth.

Is so open to misinterpretation that a large chunk of the train’s passengers take the exact opposite message from it that they were meant to, which leads them to behavior that could put them permanently beyond being able to leave the train.

Sometimes kills people.

I’m pretty sure most of this is stuff I’m meant to be taking away from the show, but I also wonder how far Infinity Train is willing, or able, to take this idea. The open ending of S3, in which Grace, though headed in the right direction number-wise, is still nowhere near being able to leave the train, and also more focused on remaking the Apex into something more constructive, suggests that future seasons will get further into the question of whether the train can be reformed or made more productive. Or, conversely, the show could abandon its original premise and just become a story about the train, and the community of passengers and denizens that develops on it. I wonder, though, how much you can push against the inherent limitations of this premise - when you’ve got a story where getting better and more well-adjusted causes you to be forcibly ejected from the story, where does that leave you as far as plot progression and character development are concerned? There’s an inherent conflict to a world that is designed for a specific character (or group of characters). Infinity Train is fascinating for how it leans into that conflict, and I’m very curious to see how it handles its core contradiction going forward.

#infinity train

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funnelhacksecrets · 5 years

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Kartra Review

New Post has been published on https://funnelhacksecrets.net/kartra-review/

Kartra Review

If you’re looking to sell a product or service online then there are a lot of moving parts.

You’ll need to have a solid hosting solution, an effective sales funnel, a way to capture leads, a smooth checkout process and maybe even a trustworthy CRM.

While there are many companies out there who offer these services individually, Kartra is a platform that provides all this and more under one roof.

Dubbed as the ultimate all-in-one business software suite, Kartra is making waves and getting entrepreneurs talking.

But what exactly does it do and is it the right platform to help you launch your next product or service online?

For the longest time, I had been looking for a platform that could integrate everything I needed in a single place. I wanted a product that could provide sales funnels, an email marketing solution, a members area, a customer relationship feature, a smooth checkout process and the ability to host my digital products.

In my search, I came across Kartra.

Here I’ll tell you all about the platform so you can decide for yourself if it’s what you need to launch your next product or service.

What is Kartra?

As mentioned earlier, Kartra is an all-in-one internet marketing platform that was founded by Genesis Digital in 2018.

Kartra is an effective software for entrepreneurs and small-medium sized business owners looking for an all-inclusive marketing platform.

As a solopreneur or enterprise company, Kartra will give you access to hosting, email marketing, rich membership portals, webinars, and split-testing for your marketing campaigns all under one roof.

Additionally, you will have access to your video hosting, cart checkouts, live chat, and ready-made sales funnels.

All these functionalities have been designed to work together seamlessly, which is a big plus compared to having to pay for several different services and then trying to integrate them.

In essence, Kartra will help you automate your sales and lead generation process using ready-made funnels that have been backed up by marketing legends like Frank Kern.

What are Kartra’s Features?

The following features will help you run your online business with ease:

Onboarding Process

I hate it when I purchase a new service only to log in and have no idea where to go next or what to do. I was delighted to see that the experience with Kartra is the opposite. Once you sign-up, Kartra will seamlessly walk you through the introduction to their platform.

You will first receive 4 emails, which are part of the onboarding process. The initial email will contain your login details and a link to your login page, which is also their learning center. When you log in to your account, you will have access to a welcome video, which will enlighten you on the key features of Kartra. Additionally, the video will give you details on the key steps you need to take next to get set up.

However, you do not have to watch or follow the video, but it will be a big help to you if you have the time.

Kartra Page Builder

Just like other page builders, you will have access to WYSIWYG, which is a front end editor that stands for “what you see is what you get”.

If you decide to use Kartra, you will have access to ready-made templates including a home page, blog feed, classic squeeze pages, and sales pages.

The templates are similar to popular squeeze and landing page templates that are being used in the market today. Their templates offer a lot of choices. However, you can also customize any of the templates to suit your needs or create your own ones from scratch.

Additionally, editing text, images, and overall styling are quite easy with Kartra. Adding block elements is also possible by using the block template section.

You will also be able to add videos to your pages seamlessly from your video library.

This is a great feature and, in my opinion, a huge benefit of using Kartra over other platforms.

In essence, you will not have to use an external video hosting solution such as Vimeo, YouTube or Wistia because you will be able to host your videos from within your Kartra account.

If your business model relies on using a lot of video content, for example, providing a members area with training videos then this feature is gonna save you quite a bit of money that you would have had to otherwise spend with an external video hosting platform.

I once used Vimeo to host all my videos, but I can tell you, it soon gets expensive the more videos you upload!

I digress…

Kartra Products and Shopping Carts

Kartra allows you to set up products for sale very easily.

It doesn’t matter if you’re providing digital products like paid online courses, or physical products that you need to deliver to your customers’ destination. Kartra can handle it all. When adding products, you will have access to two options, which are:

Main Product As with any sales funnel software, the main product will be the first offer in your sales funnel

Upsell or Downsell This offer will only be available to customers who will have ordered or purchased another product from you

The interface is straightforward and easy to grasp. Therefore, adding your products and shopping cart will be an easy task.

Nonetheless, Kartra will guide you on how to complete various steps including:

Product pricing

Adding payment options such as PayPal or Credit Card

Trial Structures

Cart Rules

Checkout Page

Affiliate program

Additionally, if you have online courses, you will be able to integrate them into the Kartra membership module.

Affiliate Portal

if you’re wanting to recruit affiliates to promote your products for you then you can also do this with Kartra. The platform includes your own affiliate management area where you can set up your affiliate accounts, decide on their commission structure, create affiliate links and so forth.

For example, you can decide if your affiliate members will earn a percentage or fixed rate of the sale. You will also be able to monitor your affiliate data including the number of people they have referred and their payout history.

Additionally, you will have access to product sales analytics for both your affiliates and your affiliates’ referrals. The information will comprise the number of visits, sales, cancellations, refunds, customer value, as well as revenue.

Email Marketing

Under the “My Communications” tab, you will have access to the email marketing tool, which will allow you to generate leads for your business.

Additionally, you will have access to broadcasts, tagging, automation, sequences, among other tools.

As with any email marketing software, you will be also able to add leads manually if you wish. Nonetheless, if you are migrating from another email service provider, you can smoothly import leads from your CSV list.

– Email Form Builder

Apart from being able to create forms, you will have access to different form builder options including single/double opt-in, tagging, sequences, automation, welcome messages, as well as a success page URL.

– Tagging Contacts

Examples of how to apply your tags will also be available. All you have to do is to give your tag a name. Consequently, that tag will become available during the automation process. Additionally, you can assign the tag to forms.

– Broadcasts

You will be able to use Kartra’s broadcast tool to notify your email subscribers about a new video, webinar, blog post, or to give an announcement. SMS is another great tool you can utilize when using Kartra’s broadcast option.

– Automation

You will have access to an automation workflow builder, which is also referred to as a sequence builder. This builder works like that of any other email marketing platform such as ActiveCampaign, for instance.

Marketing Campaigns

Kartra has a in-built marketing automation function. Therefore, what you have to do is figure out the automation triggers and actions on the Kartra’s platform, which will allow you to create tailor-made or behavioral-based marketing campaigns.

If you decide to build your campaigns from scratch, you will need to add all the information you have created about the campaign. On the other hand, if you decide to use Kartra’s “done for you” templates, the software will do all the hard work for you.

You should use the ready-made templates until you become familiar and comfortable with the platform. With that in mind, Kartra gives you access to 5 different campaigns, which you can select or utilize based on your marketing goals.

Just like with ClickFunnels share funnel facility, you can also purchase custom landing pages and sales funnels from other community members.

Memberships

Kartra has a membership option, which you can use to keep track of your members. You will see the list of memberships on your “My Memberships” tab. This section has various options including editing, moderation, login, as well as the member’s option.

You will be able to filter your members using various parameters. Kartra allows you to add free members to your member’s list, or offer free membership by creating a visitors form.

Video Marketing

Video marketing gives you access to organic reach. You can use videos to promote different products. You can upload the videos using Kartra’s video uploading system. Additionally, you can add a call to action at the beginning, middle or end of your videos.

Kartra’s video system can recall when someone stops viewing the video halfway. Therefore, you can incorporate a follow-up marketing strategy to encourage them to finish the video or find out what they need.

Help Desk

The CRM function of Kartra is also pretty slick. You can fully customize and brand your help desk to look more professional to your customers.

You can funnel tickets to specific departments, utilize canned responses and even have multi-agent collaboration working on tickets if needs be.

With Kartra Help Desk you will not need to rely on an external service like ZenDesk of FreshDesk.

Kartra Pros and Cons

Pros

Everything you need is in one place, which saves you time and money

The on-boarding process is seamless

The design of the interface is high quality and consistent

Includes an affiliate module

Built-in email marketing and automation

Accessibility to membership and course portal

Video hosting capability

Ready-made marketing campaigns

Accessibility to dedicated live chat or help desk

Easy to use for those who are not tech-savvy

30-day money-back guarantee

Cons

Some templates are not customizable

The drag and drop editor has a lot of steps

The interface has occasional glitches

It might take time for you to learn how to build funnels in the beginning

Kartra Pricing

You can take advantage of their 14 day trial for $1 so that you can test the software.

The plans are broken down into 4 pricing categories:

Starter plan ($99/month and $79/month when billed annually): 2,500 contacts, 15,000 emails per month, 100 pages, 20 products, and 100 automations

Silver plan ($199/month and $149/month when billed annually):12,500 contacts, 125,000 emails per month, and unlimited pages, products and automations

Gold Plan ($299/month and $249/month when billed annually): 25,000 contacts, 250,000 emails per month, unlimited pages, products, and automations

Platinum plan ($499/month and $379/month when billed annually): 50,000 contacts, 500,000 emails per month, and unlimited pages, products and automations

Still want to know More?

Here is another Kartra testimonial from a guy who also uses it in his business.

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Parting Shot!

If you’re looking for an all-in-one business solution then I highly recommend using Kartra.

Even though they are the new kid on the block, their functionality is advanced and offers an excellent experience.

Kartra has quickly become a big competitor of ClickFunnels, Builderall, InfusionSoft, and many other software programs. This is because they give you access to everything you need to grow your online business all in one place, and they do a good job of it too!

Apart from Kartra’s powerful features, you will have access to a system that will enable you to serve your target audience better at a much lower monthly subscription fee.

With everything under one roof, you will be able to minimize the costs associated with running several accounts on different platforms.

Additionally, you will be able to track, analyze and refine your business strategies based on landing page conversions, video views, sign-ups, and funnel sales.

Adopting Kartra as your all in one internet marketing software program will certainly boost your ROI without having to depend on multiple third parties.

Why not give it a try for $1 today?

#email marketing #Kartra #Kartra pricing #membership site #page builder #review #shopping cart

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asrarmukadamworld-blog · 5 years

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How to Hire the Right Freelance Web Designer

It’s often considered much easier to hire a design agency over a freelance web designer. They manage the project internally so you don’t have to worry about banal details, and have a deep knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of each member of their team.

So you want to go with a freelancer, but how do you make the hire? Where do you look? What do you look for? How do you approach them?

What Style of Web Designer Are You Looking For?

At the start of your search, decide what you want — beyond just the function of the site. Is it grungy or heavily textured design that’s called for? Modern or minimalist?

Web designers come in various shapes and sizes. Many specialize in one technology or another, and further, some specialize in specific visual styles or servicing a particular demographic. I know of a few designers who do nothing but political sites all day, every day — and they nail the style that they are known for.

While expertise in a style can be useful, and an agency or freelancer that targets your specific area might sound great, there are some who simply re-hash the same few designs over and over again. There’s a big difference between knowing a particular style of design well and innovating within that style, and trying to make a living as a one-trick pony with under-developed skills.

“Beware the designer that has a portfolio filled with variations on one style. If you look at their portfolio and they have nothing but clones of one design, or a basic look that’s adjusted for the type of Website they’re designing, they’re probably a one-trick pony and do not have good enough skills to work on your project,” says Benchmark Email COO Denise Keller.

Ola Kudu, who is the Creative Director at Global Advertising Strategies, says that the most important ability a good web designer will possess is the ability to create a usable interface — though admittedly this is easier for a hiring manager in the creative field themselves to determine than for other businesspeople.

“In a Freelance Website Designer I look for the ability to develop and design an organized and intuitive interface. The best usability design is transparent in that the user does not need to learn how to interact with the content. It should be creative yet familiar enough to be used comfortably by anyone.

I also look for the ability to construct a clean grid and clear information hierarchy.”

A freelance web designer who can jump amongst technologies and styles at whim is a beautiful thing. They’re also somewhat rare, very experienced, and even more expensive — most of the time.

Unfortunately, they’re also tough to find. But you can increase your chances of a successful project right now by looking for someone who has done great work that matches what you’re looking for.

Virtually all designers you consider should be proficient in HTML and CSS, including the most recent developments in those areas, but you may need someone with specialized skills. Check that the designers on your shortlist meet those additional requirements as there’s no expectation of standardized skill here.

Projects that will depend on front-end JavaScript (such as I Query), Flash, and Silverlight may be beyond the reach of some designers. If your development team uses a templating system such as Haml or ERB, or will be expected to deliver the design as a working Word Press theme, you need to check those credentials.

Do You Want a Designer or a Developer?

There’s an assumption that is unfortunately prevalent among those who don’t work with technology on a regular basis, and that’s that there is no difference between a web designer and a web developer.

That assumption is pretty close to comparing interior designers and civil engineers.

There are freelancers out there, who profess to be good at both, and there are some who actually are, but they’re rare. Most people who claim that they are both an incredible designer and a ninja Ruby hacker are lying through their teeth or don’t know how bad their abilities really are.

The rule of thumb is that if you need someone to make some sort of functionality work, you probably want a developer. If you need someone to make things look good and to make a developer’s interface usable by real human beings, you want a designer.

If you do come across someone who says they can do both just as well as a designer and developer team, make sure you have some solid backing for that assertion from respectable people in the web world who are former clients of the individual.

And as I hinted earlier, there can be crossover. It’s quite easy to find a good designer who is also proficient at Word Press theme development (not exactly a rocket science). Just check credentials and don’t assume that a web designer can develop anything for you.

What to Look For in a Designer

We’ve discussed the technical skills you need to look for in a designer, and the difference between designers and developers. But there are more human aspects you need to look for.

Looking for these traits can be problematic, since they’re not things you’ll find listed in someone’s pitch on their site or profile — and if they did list them, you have no way of knowing how accurate that self-assessment is. Everyone thinks they’re funny. Few people are. We’re all guilty of cracking a joke to break an awkward silence only to discover the joke was so bad it made the silence worse, right?

This is where word of mouth is great, because presumably your source is more loyal to you than the designer they used and will tell the truth. Frankly, having a designer who meets your requirements referred from a trustworthy source is the best way to come across a great match. It’s not always possible if you haven’t got many industry connections.

You can generally expect a designer with plenty of commercial clients in their portfolio (as opposed to student work or personal projects) to be reasonably responsive and have respect for deadlines. Without a recommendation, the best way to test this is to retain the designer for a small project first and move on to larger projects once you’re comfortable with the way they work.

Sander Daniels recommends tailoring a payment plan that promotes commitment to the project. Usually, this involves a decent deposit before the work begins, with the remainder on receipt of the finished product.

“Commitment to the project is equally important as quality of work. We can’t have a freelancer start the project, complete it halfway, and then abandon. This usually requires that we work out a payment schedule that encourages both parties to follow through on their commitment,” says Daniels.

As far as I’m concerned, these are the most important qualities of a freelancer in any field: respect for the deadline and good turn-around times, ease of contact and general responsiveness.

Designers and developers alike have a reputation for employing a know-it-all attitude and often taking a blatantly condescending tone with client requests.

The most popular designers and developers get their reputation from a willingness to try and accommodate client ideas in a way that works with the design or functionality of the project — and know how to tactfully and respectfully talk a client down off the edge when the ideas get really bad. But chances are you’ll meet quite a few of the less pleasant variety during your search.

I know one person who likes to throw out a few particularly stupid questions to test the attitude of designers. It’s worth temporarily appearing stupid at the start of the relationship over continuing on with someone who is, in short, an ass.

A good freelancer has good communication skills and — unless you’ve prepared your explanation of what you want poorly — should be able to pick up on what you’re after and extrapolate on it, filling in the blanks that non-designers don’t think to fill with knowledge from their past experience.

“Once you explain to them the overarching idea of what you are looking for – have them fill the gap. Did they understand your goal? How can they contribute to it in the best way possible?

“A great, creative person will streamline your scope further, and make the end result better than you expected. See if this comes across in how they explain their understanding of your scope.”

Look for a sense of humour and a level of respect for the client that shows that working with your chosen freelancer isn’t going to wind up mirroring an antagonistic parent-teenager relationship.

Where to Look for Web Designers

Your first stop should be to speak with people you know who had their websites professionally designed with results you quite like. Get in touch with a bunch of people and ask for their recommendations. Exhaust that list before you proceed — as I said earlier, referrals are much lower risk.

One great place to look for web designers is through a web design gallery. These websites showcase the best work from a variety of designers — work that’s coming out of both big design agencies and particularly talented freelancers. You might find that many really talented designers aren’t charging particularly expensive rates, so don’t take their previous work as an indicator of price.

Most of these sites are aimed at other designers as a source of inspiration, which actually makes them great for clients as well: you’re look at the work that a designer’s peers have deemed inspirational.

Certain digital goods marketplaces that trade in web and graphic design files allow you to contact users who have signal that they’re available for work on their profiles — Theme Forest, for example.

There are a number of profile services for freelance designers. WP Candy has one specifically for Word Press professionals, and Freelance Switch has a directory that allows you to drill down by profession — here’s a search for web designers.

If you don’t have any luck trying to handpick a web designer, you can turn to job boards, where you can post an advertisement and have candidates come to you.

These are just a few of your options — there are a huge range of job boards on the web. If you’ve got the budget for a decent freelancer, I’d avoid job ‘bidding’ sites like eLance and Guru. Even though they tend to be cheaper, the candidates who will express interest on these sites tend not to be as good as those who have built up their businesses sustainably independently of bidding sites.

Making the Approach & Negotiating a Price

One of the great things about working with freelancers is that they’re easily approachable. Send them a message through the contact form on their website, or via the details given to you by a referrer, and you’ll generally hear back from them not long after they receive your message. Most freelancers are perpetually looking to stock up their client roster.

If you’ve worked with agencies in the past, it’ll likely be a breath of fresh air over the usual long delay from contact to response, and response to signed contract.

On the subject of contracts, it’s not going to help anyone if you screw a designer. It’s bad for your reputation, which is bad for your business. Designers are a pretty tight-knit community despite that there are what seems like millions of them (of varying quality) across the web, and the smear on your name will spread really fast. Both parties should sign a mutually reasonable contract.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put on your best negotiating socks and carry a picture of Jack Donaghy in your wallet when it’s time to make a deal, though. If your designer hasn’t taken the time to verse themselves in the art and tactics of this particular skill, it’s not your fault that they’re not treating their endeavour as a respectable business… and it’ll work out better for you.

If you’ve never negotiated yourself, you should get a book. Do a course. Anything to improve that skill, really, as you’ll get eaten alive in business without it. In the meantime, here are a few of the basic rules.

Never open with a price. You lose your edge if you open with a suggested price. The other party takes that as a baseline; if you’re the payer and you reveal a price, that means the price will only go up. If you are the payee, it will be driven down.

Avoid being the first to name a price. There’s a little dance common to negotiation that involves each party trying to get the other to suggest a number first. Some may call that dance a waste of time, but hold out as long as you can.

Set the baseline in your favour. If you are forced to make the first move, you are in the position of setting the baseline. Unless your opponent is stupid, that number will move somewhat in their direction during the course of the negotiation, so don’t be coy about naming a numer well below what you’re willing to pay. Find the threshold that makes you feel a little embarrassed just for asking… and then go just a little beyond that.

Counter-offer until you find a sweet spot. Don’t be quick to agree to your opponent’s counter-offers; push back down towards your originally stated goal and watch the patterns in your opponent’s subsequent offers. With any luck you’ll be able to figure out the break-even number they’re basing their responses off of and target it.

Oh, and one more: Shut up. Seriously, in almost every negotiation where there’s one clear winner, it’s because one party revealed a card they didn’t have to in order to break an awkward silence. It doesn’t matter how uncomfortable you feel, don’t negotiate with yourself ever — just stop talking and wait. [Source] https://thenextweb.com/dd/2011/05/28/how-to-hire-the-right-freelance-web-designer/

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yesterdaysdreams · 6 years

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How to Sew on a Curve

Sewing a round pillow isn’t very tricky if you’re consistent with the spacing between your stitches and the edge of your circular fabric. I like to take it slow and pay special attention to my curved lines, but when all is said and done, adding piping to your curved pillow is going to take its style up a notch no matter what. Piping gives everything a more finished look, and this particular project is a fun way to give a nod to the ’60s while keeping things fresh with a current fabric. So today I’m going to show you a few tips and tricks for sewing on a curve as well as making and adding your own piping to a throw pillow.

Supplies: -1/2 yard of upholstery weight cotton fabric for pillow front and back -1 yard of cotton fabric to make your own piping -paracord or cording long enough to fit about 4″ longer than the perimeter of your pillow -Poly-fil stuffing -straight pins -scissors -12″ plate to use as template -pencil or chalk

Note: If you don’t want to make your own piping, skip the 1 yard of fabric and paracord and purchase pre-made piping at your local fabric store. You will be limited to the colors available, but you won’t have to worry about those few extra steps.

Note: I’ve cut a smaller piece of fabric to show you how to fold your piping fabric so that you can see the whole piece in context.

Step One: Fold your 1 yard of fabric so that the top right corner folds down in the direction of the bottom left corner. You will likely have a few inches left over at the bottom.

Step Two: Fold the top left corner down to meet the bottom right corner fold (not the bottom of the fabric) as shown.

Step Three: Place your folded fabric so that the two folded edges on the right side of your triangle are vertical on your self healing mat. Measure in about 1.5″ from the folded edge and use your rotary cutter to cut all the way down.

Step Four: This will give you one strip that measures about 3″ wide. If it’s long enough for your project, you’re done! If not, cut another strip on that same side of your triangle but this time cut 3″ from the last cut since it’s not folded anymore. It will be a shorter length but you will stitch it to the last strip.

Step Five: Trim off your odd edges for a right angle at each end.

Step Six: Place your two strips together at a right angle (right sides facing each other if that applies) and pin. I’ve marked the line with chalk where you’ll sew them together.

Step Seven: Stitch in the direction of the line as shown and trim off about 1/4″ seam allowance above that seam.

Step Eight: Lay your joined strips with the seam facing up and iron it flat as shown.

Step Nine: Wrap your strip of fabric around your paracord and pin the first 8″ inches or so around the cord.

Step Ten: Stitch down your strip about halfway between the edge and where your cord is resting. You just want to get this wrapped around your cord, but you don’t want this seam to show when you’re stitching it to your pillow. So don’t get too close to the cord underneath.

Step Eleven: Using your plate or another circular item as a template, trace two circles onto your upholstery weight fabric and cut out. These will be the front and back of your pillow.

Pin the first 6″ of your piping to the right side of one of the cuts of fabric for your pillow so that the folded edge and cord are facing inside and the stitch line is near the edge of the pillow fabric as shown.

Step Twelve: Start stitching your piping to your pillow with your foot either resting on top of the cord or as close to it as you can manage. You can use a special piping foot for this kind of project, but they cost between $25-$40. So unless you’re using it often, I would just use your standard foot and stitch slowly. As long as you are consistent with the spacing between the stitching and the edge of your pillow fabric, you’ll have a nice circular shape.

Step Thirteen: Once you get about 4″ away from the place you started stitching, stop. Turn your machine off just to be safe and trim your excess cord so that it meets up exactly where the other end is for an almost seamless line. Your piping fabric will still need to be about 2″ longer than your cord, though. Tuck the end inside to create a neat fold. If you need to unstitch the original stitching on the outside from step ten, then go ahead.

Step Fourteen: Fold the beginning inside the ending so that the ending folds around it like a taco shell. It should overlap the beginning to hide the opening. If you need to take out a few stitches from where you started, go ahead.

Step Fifteen: Once the beginning is tucked into the ending, pin down and finish stitching. You’ll have a neatly folded faux hem where the start and finish overlap.

Step Sixteen: As we learned in a previous post, curved edges need some stretching room. Cut little v-shapes into your piping edge so that you are cutting almost to the seam you just stitched. You can cut through the original stitching that helped create the piping around the cord because that’s not what is holding things together. Cut every 1″ or so all the way around. If you cut through any of the fabric from the pillow, that’s fine. Just keep an eye on that seam you just stitched.

Step Seventeen: Place your other circular pillow cut on top of your first piece with the right sides facing each other. Line up your perimeter and pin in place.

Step Eighteen: Carefully stitch around the perimeter of your pillow fabric about 1/4″ from the edge. Be sure to feel for your piping cord through the pillow fabric as you go. You want to stay on the right side of the piping and as close to the cord as you can. Stitch slowly and check your work if you need to.

Step Nineteen: Be sure to leave about a 4″ opening. Cut v-shapes into the edge of your pillow fabric to mimic the ones in your piping. They’ll be much smaller since there is less fabric between the seam and the edge.

Turn the pillow right side out, press out your perimeter for a nice round line, and stuff it with Poly-fil.

Step Twenty: Blind stitch your opening and enjoy your new pillow!

If you want to take things a step further, you can add a tuft to the center of your pillow with a button (fabric-covered or not) and some embroidery thread. Make a pair for your couch or just add one as a special touch to your bed. You could easily enlarge it for a finished looking floor pillow or a fancy pet bed! – Rachel

Credits // Author: Rachel Denbow. Photography: Janae Hardy and Rachel Denbow.

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: Trapped by Tropes: Spoon, The New Pornographers, Alt-J, Charly Bliss

Forget authenticity, anti-commercialism and the like — above all, indie-rock as a genre fascinates for how performers quiver beneath the anxiety of influence, nervously seesawing between referents. One new sound can stay in the culture forever if acolytes repeat it, pay tribute to it, revive it when it falls out of fashion, or reverse it while acknowledging the original’s primacy. In 2017 it often takes effort to distinguish between novel forms and received ones, alternative forms and normative ones. The four bands reviewed below walk these tightropes with varying degrees of grace.

Spoon: Hot Thoughts (Matador)

I’d say this clinches it, but they clinched it a decade ago: Britt Daniel and company only know how to make one album, which they’ve done about a half dozen times over a now storied career. It’s a pretty good one, though, and it keeps getting more fanciful within established strictures. That four to five men should for years take such professional delight in tweaking such an oddly staid model of lightweight guitar-rock, rather like a cat batting around a ball of yarn, is an amusement in itself.

If ever a band were trapped by formula, Spoon is it, but that misses the point somehow. Formula is their subject, their muse. That jerky, tensile style of guitar/piano jitter rattles around in their bones, as inextricable from the band dynamic as Daniel’s raw bleat. Musical strategies that with other bands might indicate attempts to break the mold have long since become integrated into said formula; Spoon’s mild spareness accommodates any range of sly sound effects and compositional experiments. Recent Spoon albums have abounded with more good and bad sonic ideas than most bands manage to pack in, and this installment is no different — the long synth intro with gradual guitar fade-in on “WhisperI’lllistentohearit,” the shakers/rainstick on “Pink Up,” the keyboard belches augmenting or replacing the guitar parts — and yet none violates the boundaries of the compressed, muscular template they invented around the turn of the millennium. The title track’s confluence of ominous electronic ostinato, heavy guitar crunch, and plinky cowbellesque percussion produces quite the slinky stunner, while “Shotgun” lopes purposefully along, its interlocking rhythm guitar parts barking at each other. Much of the rest remains beige, clunky, and male, which isn’t a bad thing — imagine those adjectives in their friendliest incarnations.

The brand of quirk-rock available here isn’t quiet, but it is slight; the album might not fit into casual contexts. Spoon’s jarring, stop-and-go motion demands the listener pause and contemplate the album as a self-conscious aesthetic object. The preponderance of these objects in indie-rock is at once its most pressing limitation and its great gift to the world.

The New Pornographers: Whiteout Conditions (Concord)

Self-consciousness usually compounds formal dilemmas rather than solves them, but every album don’t work out that way. Sometimes it’s fun to watch musicians puzzle their way out of a tight box, as with the New Pornographers, the infamous, long-running, ever-shifting aggregate of Canadian singer-songwriters who here defeat indie-rock’s self-referential impotence with, er, a beguiling concept album about self-referential impotence. It rocks, too!

Dominated by mainstay A.C. Newman and essential covocalists Neko Case and Katherine Calder, this is their best project in a decade or more because ordinary rules regarding the linear motion of time don’t apply: like many bands acutely conscious of their predecessors, they frolic in the wreckage that litters posthistorical space. Furthermore, they’ve written a bunch of songs about being an indie band struggling to survive in some dystopian confluence of straitened material circumstance and the aforementioned abstract posthistorical space .”I only play for money honey,” begins the first song, and by the end their “blues from the last world/news from the future” has been “consigned to the dustbins.” They dodge their chronic scatteredness, adopting a consistent sound that, puzzlingly, recalls Broken Bells, testing the preciousness of their guitar-based songwriting against integrated electronics that function as jabs in the ribs. Their smooth mesh of acoustic and electric guitars readily admits alternately whizzy, spattery, and serene synthesizer parts, caught up in crafted, high-flying soar. Propelled through the air from beginning to end, the album deploys its riffage with such streamlined efficiency it takes several listens to notice the spiraling melody adorned with synth staccato in “Whiteout Conditions,” the raw guitar blasts dotting the steady bassline in “Darling Shade,” the way the chorus in “Colosseums” swells up anthemically only to clamp down on itself hard, all achieving grace and ease that belies the frustrations expressed in song.

The depth of their defeatism reveals the limits of their musical world; the collapse of their own particular tradition doesn’t mean the collapse of all music. It’s hard to fault said defeatism as a critic who has made criticisms of indie-rock similar to those the band repeats and turns on itself. No collapse of tradition prevents genre obsessives from assembling records into elegant, hummable, distinct pop shapes. Come for the hooks and stay for a scary, inchoate sense of political urgency.

Alt-J: Relaxer (Infectious/Atlantic)

Caring about indie consensus in 2017 means pondering bands who mistake eccentricity for notability and consider divergence from received form reasonable evidence for talent. After two passable albums on which they defined their own amateurish, electronic, mechanized, folkish sound, the English experimental rockers here tweak that sound several steps over the edge in accordance with the above two misconceptions, and the whimsy is just too much to bear.

There’s no denying their originality — no other band assembles slithering acoustic guitar strings and antiseptic keyboard hum into such hushed, mesmerizing, immaculately interlocking clockwork ticky-tock. They demonstrate excellently how admirable attempts to create new sonic templates often produce labored ones. Theoretically, the organic and electronic elements would click into a striking musical contraption, a hissing, chirping metal machine cobbled together from moving parts, spinning reassuringly around the coffee table; indeed, “Matilda” and “Fitzpleasure” from their first album exemplify this ideal. There’s a calming quality to it, as the charm of the mechanical elements overlaps with the relaxed, brushed folk guitar. To accentuate the prettiness on the current album, they slow down the tempos, sing more breathily, foreground the painstakingly strummed or plucked acoustic riffs, and generally dilute each element until they attenuate the wires running through the machine, and the whole thing unravels into a pile of gears,poles,snapped strings, and smaller contraptions themselves unraveling. The record that emerges from the mess, at once wispy, whispery, and robotic, struggles to associate attenuated sound with attenuated emotion. The one upbeat exception sticks out awkwardly: “Hit Me Like That Snare,” as crazed a sex-rocker as you’re likely to hear this year. Its tinny guitar chug comes as a relief.

Given music this tightly sprung, make sure not to hit the quick release. Provided the parts haven’t rusted over, I await the day they reassemble their gadgetry.

Charly Bliss: Guppy (Barsuk)

The question’s been asked a billion times: given a billion practically identical young punkish bands, why the hell does this one sound so special? There’s often no answer; hear enough such bands and ask the question often enough, and a healthy respect for the gods of arbitrariness emerges. That Charly Bliss’s brand of power punk should delight so makes no sense, and delights for that too.

Despite their sunny cheer, the pop-punk tag sits uneasily on them. The tempos are too frantic, the rumbling guitar roar too distorted, the mix too dirty. This is more like Grimes singing for Roomrunner — scrawny messy energetic whomp meets Eva Hendricks, whose squeaky, sugary scream abrades at this moment in history like no electric guitar will. Positing a dialectic between girly vocalist and tough band would be too facile, reliant on a spuriously gendered equivalence between guitar noise and macho defiance. It’s the musical juxtaposition that thrills, as Hendricks and the electric riffage press similar buttons in the mind’s ear. As for the guitars, she and Spencer Fox rip out harsh, fuzzy, clanky power chords as if throwing a smokescreen in front of the frenetic pounding beat hot on their tails. Sweet melodies shake out the dirt from their hair before turning back on themselves in perfect feelgood resolution (“Black Hole”); others get halfway there and rub their dissonance in your face (“Westermarck”). Stylistically and technologically, the album could easily have come out in the ‘90s, but I like them better in our modern age — you can hear how much they adore a form passed down and refined through history. That’s their secret.

I hope they don’t maintain such ebullient crunch forever — it would wear thin — but for at least the length of an album, it galvanizes. Here’s another riddle: do the songs themselves express joy, or were they just so happy to have written these songs that the joy springs from the performance?

The post Trapped by Tropes: Spoon, The New Pornographers, Alt-J, Charly Bliss appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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