I am the sole owner of BeLink’d, a graphics and web design studio or site, whichever you wish to call it. As I stated while making the About page, I’m generally the one who runs things around here.

BeLink’d is not an agency. It is a single freelance artist.

I program. I design. I draw. Dre helps out and I usually make Sam into my content slave, but this is generally a one-person show, as are most freelance sites.

Dre and I do work as a team on some projects, but for the most part, I do as much of the heavy-lifting as I can. It has helped me develop and grow at a remarkably fast rate as a designer; one of the things I have always emphasized is continuous growth, and BeLink’d is the outcome of my own continuous growth.

And frankly, through design and programming, I found a passion, something that I could really grab onto and hold. To be completely honest with you, I love what I do and I hope to always do what I love.

I’m a student, I’m a designer, I’m a bird mom, I’m an equestrian, I’m a writer, and I’m quite a lot of other things. But I hope that through my efforts, I will always be able to make this site grow and flourish, and use it to create what contribution I might to the design community as a whole.

What are your passions? Leave a blurp – I find it interesting to hear what other people identify themselves as.

Something designers have to encounter at one point or another are the job boards.  One of the easiest ways, I’ve found, to find jobs is through these job boards – namely, by adding their feeds to Google Reader and responding to ads as they show up.

One of the things I’ve found most frustrating lately are the amounts of job boards that there are, and that many of my clients invite me to make an account on whatever job board they have.  This, to me, feels low – it is not only taking the users of one job board to pull them onto another, but means that I have to pay for yet another service.  And mind you – work has been sparse and far apart.  I know that the economy has impacted my own business of late, and I honestly do not appreciate being spammed with offers to join yet another job board that I’m going to have to pay X amount of dollars for.

So, I’ve compiled a list of the job services I use, and my general impression of them. Read more »

This is a common principle, and it seems to apply to all things.  For example, if you pay good money for a refridgerator, and buy one of the most expensive models you can find, chances are it has more bells and whistles than the cheapest brand, and could possibly even last much longer as well.  This principle was especially brought home to me while I was in high school by a government teacher of mine.

I’ll admit that this teacher is one which I still consider a good friend.  His lessons not only included the civics our class was supposed to learn, but also how to plan for retirement, and he often pointed out the social flaws that all of us have committed and is possibly the reason why I am passing the college classes I picked up.  The stories he told to our class brought us not only a wealth of laughs, but also a wealth of experience.  It was merely a topic he touched upon – that is, that you pay for what you get. Read more »