The Creative Invoice

Why not take something that's ASSUMED boring and bring it to life?


While researching how to create an invoice, I came across Holdsnowater's invoice on Flickr. The design is so great-- it's an invoice within an invoice, it's well labeled, and nothing gets in the way of the theme-- the whole thing screams Invoice, and yet the whole thing screams Well Designed.

It makes me wonder if creatives should have different invoices for different types of work. Like, for me, one Design Invoice, one Photography Invoice, and one Writing Invoice, each one with accompanying visual styles and elements to compliment the theme... Perhaps have a template, and switch the colors and graphics for each one accordingly, but have all other visual elements remain the same.

For a "quick" (not so quick) template that I had to give to my dad for some logo work, I created this one below. It's not as tight and assembled as Hodsnowater's, for sure, and it's not my clear theme delineation proposal, but I like it. Do you?

Do you have any links for other creative twists to boring financial documents?

There's no standard for how to do financial documentation, as long as it's clear. American Apparel, apparently, has a really well designed receipt. Check it out! It's always nice to come across some stellar design.

Art & Sound

Lately I've been taking a good look at art and sound and, for various reasons, have found myself involved in finding sound effects. This latest foray into the world of sound has been looking up bird calls for an app that M & I are creating. And because it's fun when blogs are interactive, here are a few of my favorite birdsong sounds that I've found:

Blackbird:

http://murraycharters.net/rwbb1.wav


Sparrow:

http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/ornithology/sounds/gocspa.wav


And there's nothing like a good ol' BirdLion:

http://simplythebest.net/sounds/WAV/sound_effects_WAV/sound_effect_WAV_files/lion.wav








Image from Strykmig

Burning Man Dome: The Sink

Burning man is hot, sticky, dusty, and dirty. You slather on sunscreen every day, sweat all day, dance all night, and have to deal with porta-potties. Eventually, you really, really, really just want to wash your hands. At least, I do. So much so that last year I took a squirt bottle and filled it with water and alcohol to spray on my palms and fingers to disinfect them. For the longest time I thought that was genius... until it dried my hands out so much that they were cracked and bleeding, and immobile by request (mine and theirs).

Now, oh now, the solution: the 3-Gallon sink. Look at this baby! Toothbrushes, razors, drinking water, face-washing, hand washing. Hootenanny!

Comfort at Burning Man

How can you have the best Burning Man crib when you're in a dome and not a camper?

It's essential that you're comfortable at Burning Man. For me, it's essential that I'm comfortable. It's hot, it's new, it's really fun, but it's also extremely physically demanding. There is no place where some self-care doesn't go a long, long way. So I'm thinking about doing a blog series about Burning Man comfort. The series will most definitely be updated, with the "Pimp Your Dome" entry being expanded and lavished with good ideas for months, hopefully. And, hopefully, I'll have some follow-through myself.

Last year, we had our clothes in giant tubs, which was a step up from our duffel bags from the year before, but which led to huge piles of dirty clothes mixed with clean, an inability to find anything, and general swampiness within the bins. The year before, our clothes were strewn around the dome (which was shared between three awesome folks), which was unmanageable. This year, I want something a little different.

Do you have any advice for a kick-ass dome?

- Paige