Okay, I admit it… I have neglected my fonts. I’d like to blame it on the fact that I am a web designer, and web friendly fonts and extremely limited but that is a poor excuse. Good web designers would slap my hand for even thinking of such a blasphemous thing. This may be a knee jerk, ‘duh’ comment, but I pledged to myself I was going to write my blogs as I think them, so here I am.

From here on out I will dedicate a small portion of my day to really study and get to know my fonts. Even if it is something as simple as typing in a custom phrase in Font Book, rotating through each font, and writing down my favorites and their possible uses. I need to break out of my Helvetica and Univers cycle.

Something that I hear often about packaging is the idea of “catching the eye”: making the packaging stand out more than the rest. This is important because there can be a variety of different products and let’s face it, people are just plain drawn to pretty things. Well, I’ve just bought the pretty product, what now?

What makes me excited about the product that I have just purchased are the little Easter eggs waiting for me once I start to explore the packaging. One example that I have always loved is the Herbal Essences shampoo and conditioner. The back of the bottle has well laid out, well crafted copy that makes you feel good about the product. The quirkiness of the copy is the fact that it’s not the same bland thing you read on every bottle, the verbiage on the bottle is crafted towards the specialty of that particular product. For example, the volumizing line’s directions will say “massage me in. close your eyes, enjoy, then rinse. voila! you’ve got my full attention.”, or the line for added moisture reads “lather up, soak your head. rinse and repeat. let your hair drink it up.” Herbal Essences is so proud of the copy on their bottles, you can even read them on their web site.

I think my favorite part about this particular line of products is on the back of each is a trivia question. The clever part about this is the answer to the question is not given to you directly, but is on the back of the adjoining product. For example, the answer to the conditioner’s question is on the shampoo bottle and vice-versa. Though they aren’t particularly hard trivia questions, it is still a smart way of making the consumer think about buying the second product from your line. Furthermore, the shape of the bottles fit together creating a visual cue that these products belong together. Bravo, Herbal Essences.

We love our iPhones here at Imulus, but a maddening problem has been the interference the iPhone causes with our desk phones. We use wireless phones so that we can move around the office and not be tied to our desks, but when a few of us got iPhones we started to have problems with interference. George even tried wrapping his iPhone in aluminum foil.

Last week it occurred to me that I was not having the same problems as everyone else. The difference was that I was using a DECT 6.0 phone from VTECH. Several phone manufacturers make DECT 6.0 phones so your not stuck with just VTECH. GE makes a few, although the first one we tried had the worst rings I have ever heard, and the sound quality was crap. We ended up with a Uniden that was much better and has eliminated the iPhone noise. So if your having the same issues as us, I would recommend a VTECH or Uniden.

Here at Imulus we all use glass top studio desks. There are a few main reasons for this: sex appeal, weight, and office personality. However, there are also a few hidden benefits.

From time to time when brainstorming and talking out ideas we’ll simply pull out a whiteboard marker and start drawing right on the desk. Rather than getting distracted moving into the conference room and drawing on the whiteboard (which usually involves erasing it first) we’ll just get our ideas out right away. Plus then you get the added benefit of being right next to the computer and you don’t have to retrace your ideas onto a notebook.

Sure, this could be done using a sketchbook or a portable whiteboard, but we find it a nice add-on to the standard “desk setup” of today’s office.

We did it back in 2002, but here is how we’d do it again in 2008 on a shoe-string, bootstrap or sandal-thong budget.

Let’s assume you are starting a company because you’ve either been laid-off, had it with the boss or decided to pursue your dreams. My guess if you are like most Americans then you likely won’t be able to give more then $1,000 to the cause. Let’s be real, you are likely not going to receive a bank loan anytime soon.

1st.
Pick a company name and register your business with your State’s Secretary of State. I’d recommend using LegalZoom to setup an LLC, especially if you have business partners. The LLC let’s you get up and running quickly with minimal costs. As your business matures, then decide if another corporate suffix is better for you. You’ll be able to afford fancy lawyers at that point.

Cost $149

2nd.
Find a domain name. Good luck with this one! It’s the main reason why you see so many companies with funky, misspelled names these days. If you aren’t the most creative person use a services like NameBoy to toss around word variations. Once you find one which works, register it on GoDaddy.

Sure I’ve ranted about GoDaddy in the past but their service is still pretty darn good.

Cost $20

3rd.
Buy a Synology NAS with two 1TB internal drives. If there is only one thing I would suggest you spend money on, it’s this. The Synology NAS will give you RAIDed network file storage which can be shared with other co-workers as your company grows. It’s especially nice because the Synology NAS allows for FTP services for those co-workers which are connecting to you remotely. I’m figuring you haven’t closed on that fancy first office just yet.

Bonus: Synology can run FTP, SSH, DDNS and Apache so you can use it to run your web site while you start figuring out your business plan.

Cost $550

4th.
Using GoDaddy as your DNS server, point your email hosting to Google Apps and run your domain name using GMail. You’ll get a free email service which kick the crap out of spammers.

Google Apps also contains Google Docs and Spreadsheets but there is just something nice about having files on your a Synology NAS as opposed to in Google. Once Google develops a way for me to download a backup of the data then I might reconsider this.

Cost $0

5th.
Download and install OpenOffice. I don’t care if you are running Mac, PC or Linux. The OpenOffice team deserves a lot of respect for building a kick-ass free alternative to Microsoft Office and this desktop download won’t disappoint. It will allow you to create spreadsheets, word docs, presentations, drawings and simple databases. You might even consider keeping it as you grow.

Cost $0

6th.
Setup chat, AIM, Skype and any other of the plethora of instant messaging tools. This will help you resist the need to purchase land-lines from the blood-sucking telcos.

Cost $0

7th.
Setup YouMail. This service will give your cell phone some class. I’m guessing it’s going to play double duty between your home life and your new business identity. YouMail takes your cell phone voicemails and emails them to you as MP3s. It also let’s you personalize the voicemail greetings so you can filter the call for a more professional greeting depending on which client or prospect is calling in. Goodbye generic voicemail messages!

Cost $0

8th.
Purchase a real accounting package like Quickbooks. Yes, I know there are tools like BlinkSale and others which you can generate invoices with, but Quickbooks is time-tested and at the end of the year your accountant will thank you.

Cost $180

9th.
Lastly, use BaseCamp to setup a collaborative environment between your internal team and your customers. BaseCamp is free to manage your first project on, after that you’ll have to pay a minimal fee to add more projects and features.

Cost $0 (at first)

There, that’s it! This is how we’d do it again in 2008. The combination of these tools and services will give your new start-up the legs it needs to move forward as well as a polished image which will hide the fact that you are poaching wireless internet and working in a nearby coffee shop.

Good luck and don’t let this shitty economy get you down!