Collateral Damage
A Graphic Design Blog
ADA-Compliant Websites Are Eligible for a Tax Credit!
Ensuring that your website is accessible pays off in more ways than one!
I recently read a Forbes article about an available tax credit for small businesses who make their sites ADA-compliant. In a nutshell:
According to the IRS, a small business qualifies if it had gross receipts of $1 million or less or fewer than 30 full-time employees in the preceding tax year.
You can receive up to 50% of eligible expenses, including costs associated with website ADA compliance, in the form of an IRS tax credit. The only caveat is that the expenses must be between $250 and $10,000 for the taxable year.
Claiming the tax credit is simple using IRS Form 8826 (Disabled Access Credit). Your accountant or tax specialist can confirm you qualify and that you have eligible expenses.
Complying with the ADA guidelines for your business website is an excellent way to earn a tax credit of up to $5,000 and follow good business practices.
Sometimes I Use Canva
People sometimes ask me what I think about Canva, the online design tool for non-designers. They probably expect me to poo-poo its elementary design tools and suggest that it takes work away from real designers. However, I’ve found Canva to be a great resource in a pinch!
Not Quite a Logo Redesign
I recently designed a ‘quickie’ website for our new neighborhood barber shop. Berkshire Barbers had a shop sign, but didn’t really have a logo. Designing a logo wasn’t part of the project scope (nor was it in their budget), but the website needed some branding love. Enter Canva! I was able to modify one of their ready-made barber-ish logo designs to create a professional mark for this website in about 20 minutes. To me, this was totally worth the brief effort, as it resulted in a better website design.
Of course, if you visit the site, you’ll see that we ended up using the style of the vinyl sign…for now.
Berkshire Barbers’ storefront sign.
Quickie logo created using Canva.
That Logo Really Tied the Site Together
A dear friend of mine is a masterful songwriter and performer (and my guitar teacher!). Although she understands that her current website could use a makeover, I’m still trying to get her to buy into my redesign — especially since scheduling live performances is still a precarious endeavor. She had no logo, and there was no plan to design one. Once again, Canva was a great resource. I assembled a simple logo that provided a visual springboard for the site design. (If you know Linda, please tell her how much you love this redesign.)
Spouse As Client
My husband is a high school teacher and wanted some (non-cat-related) inspirational signs for his classroom. He provided the text for several posters. While I love a good poster design challenge, I didn’t have much time to create these. Canva helped make it happen.
While these were created from existing Canva templates, the platform definitely has limitations. Creating exactly what I envisioned involved professional design finesse and additional software. More on that in my next blog post!
EforAll for Me!
In January, I tentatively applied for the Berkshire County EforAll Business Accelerator program, hoping to build and grow my business with guidance. As we slowly pass peak pandemic insanity (and the kids are remaining in school!), it finally feels safe to focus on the future.
While I continue to take on exciting new graphic design clients, my focus in this program is a specific service offering — creating accessible digital documents.
During the past year, I learned to prepare my InDesign documents in such a way that, when exported to a PDF, they can be properly and easily read by people using assistive devices. When you design with accessibility in mind, everyone wins. Of course, I have much more to share on the topic — stay tuned!
I’m thrilled that EforAll accepted me into the program! From the EforAll Berkshire County website…
The EforAll Accelerator Program is a free, one-year program offered twice a year in each of our communities. This program offers a unique combination of immersive business training, mentorship and access to an extended professional network. Anyone with a dream to start or grow a business or nonprofit are encouraged to apply.
Our tri-weekly meetings began this week, including one with three local mentors who are volunteering their time to help ME! It was a wonderful first meeting, and I am honored that they chose to work with me.
Much, much more to come on this project and my adventures as an Accessible Digital Document specialist!
On Design Work…
I just rediscovered a quote that I had jotted down some years ago. (How exciting to find it in a box in my laundry room!) It sums up so beautifully the goal — even if not the achievement! — of my design work:
If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that the type of thinking that makes design work well is the same type that makes an illustration work well. They share a common goal: to produce clear and memorable content while employing ample doses of simplicity, wit, and intelligence. Today’s most successful illustrators and designers create central themes and maintain respect for the mind of the reader.
— Craig Frazier, illustrator/designer
Monoprint Madness
I was inspired by some friends who recently posted photos of the monoprints they created using Gelli plates. I couldn’t wrap my brain around how this slab of gelatin worked, so I watched some videos and enrolled in a short course online.
Ho-ly. I got hooked.
The whole process is experimental and forgiving. Most of my favorite prints are the results of accidents. (Can I still take credit?) It’s become a meditative art form for me.
Here are a few of my accidental completely intentional prints!
Web Cookies
My mom was a wonderful baker. Everyone loved my mom's tassies, and rightfully so. I know that she didn't make up the recipe, but no one's tassies compared to hers, and she freely shared the recipe. I make a these wonderful little pecan-pie-like cookies around Christmas. Sometimes I share them.
MY MOM'S TASSIES
For the crust:
3-oz package of cream cheese (room temp)
1/2 cup of butter (room temp)
1 cup flour
For the filling:
1 egg
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1 TBS butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt
2/3 cup broken pecans
Blend the butter and cream cheese, and stir in the flour. Chill slightly (about 1 hour), then shape into 2-dozen, 1-inch balls. Place the balls into the cups of a mini muffin pan. Press the dough onto the bottom and sides of the cups and divide the pecans among the cups.
Beat together the egg, sugar, the TBS of butter, vanilla, and salt until smooth. Add this filling mixture to the cups. (I have most recently been placing this mixture in a large plastic bag, then cutting the corner to make a spout for neater pouring.)
Bake at 325 for 25 minutes or until the filling is set. Cool slightly and remove them from the pans (they are easier to remove while still warm).
My God, they are good!
Hierarchy
Running has helped me maintain sanity during this coronavirus lockdown.
Wow. I can’t believe that (1) I just wrote that, and (2) it’s true! I’ve never in my life been a runner. Or even a fast-moving person. (This is when my mom would tell you that I was even born weeks late.)
For some reason, last fall I decided to brush the digital dust off the Couch-to-5K app that had occupied space on my phone for years, buy new sneakers, and drag myself to the nearest track. After a couple months of intermittent walking and running per the app lady’s voice instructions, I was hooked. I ran my first 5K in November, and a few since then. Most have been virtual, and many have been cancelled due to the coronavirus.
You’d think cabin fever would lead to more frequent runs, but I’m struggling to find motivation to do anything at this point — Week Five of quarantine. Recent Berkshire weather isn’t helping. While I gleefully ran on Christmas morning in the falling snow, I cannot muster the same joy in late April.
The sun showed up yesterday, and so I forced myself to run. And it was good — until I pulled out my phone and attempted to grab my glasses to view my workout stats. My glasses weren’t there. At some point during my two-mile run, they bounced out of the little Spandex pocket that held them loosely (apparently) to my thigh. Calmly, I retraced my path — a straight shot during normal times, but a people-dodging, sidewalk/grass/road squiggly adventure lately.
As I fruitlessly searched my route, I envisioned ridiculously taping “Missing Glasses” flyers to telephone poles and street lights along Williams Street, and began the design process in my head.
I supposed it best to specify that eyeglasses were missing, versus a set of crystalware. If I included a loving description, would their return be more likely? Should I treat this like a ransom situation? Perhaps I needed to show a picture of me wearing my beloved frames — humiliating but humanizing.
I recently binged the entire run of Broad City. In one of the later episodes, a laundromat accidentally sends Abbi’s favorite sweatshirt home with another customer. Desperate for its return, she created “Missing Sweatshirt” flyers. Sort of…
Thanks to some poor design choices, Abbi becomes the focus of a Missing Person story and has to phone the news station to set the story straight:
Abbi: I-I'm just letting you know that this has been a huge mistake. I was never missing. I'm I-I'm fine. I'm good.
Newsperson: Damn it. Okay, we need another missing-girl story pronto. … But, uh, the flyers?
Abbi: It was for a sweatshirt, so —
Newsperson: What? That doesn't make any sense.
Abbi: Okay, i-it's a layout issue. So, I made the flyer for a missing sweatshirt from art school, and then now I see that it seems as though I was the missing one.
Newsperson: Huh, a layout issue. So I'm guessing you didn't finish art school.
Abbi: Okay, my concentration was in illustration, not graphic design. — [DIAL TONE] — Okay. Great.
Information hierarchy is so very important. It’s my first consideration when designing a piece of any size — how can I structure this content so that the most important information is immediately obvious with little to no user effort? Few projects excite me more than a redesign than introduces clear information hierarchy. (I can’t look at a confusing restaurant menu without fantasizing about its potential!) I’ll share some before/after examples — along with my Missing Glasses flyer, if I create it — in a later post.
Sharing
Holy moly, I have FINALLY done it. I created a webpage for me, and I’m sharing it with the world.
It’s pretty cool to see fifteen years of my design work gathered here. There’s so much more I would like to share, too! There is also some work that I no longer have access to. Lesson learned — always save a final PDF for yourself!
Along with my much-anticipated band camp and races, a lot of my design projects have been delayed or cancelled because of the coronavirus situation. At the very least, this crazy downtime* has given me time to work on this web project!
* This time has not remotely resembled downtime.