Happenings at Meyer

I wanted to take a little time to talk about the work I do for Meyer Corporation. My official title is "Website Coordinator". A lot of my job involves maintaining and updating our websites, monitoring analytics creating reports, and other things that most of you might find boring.

Fortunately, I like what I do and a lot of my job involves designing things for our websites or other miscellaneous jobs. I've done a lot of work on anolon.com. Namely, the flash animation on the home page and the little boxes you find around the site (which we call touts).

I did the headers for the following pages:
Delicious Future
About Delicious Future
Slow Food USA
Farm to Table

I also do the the same type of work for circulon.com. I can't take credit for the flash on this one though. Obviously I can't list everything I do, the list would never end. The main thing on these sites though is the touts and other promotions. The rest is setting up products or other miscelanious things. My boss Dan does a ton of work on these sites too.

Another site I work on is potsandpans.com. I change the design on the main page a couple of times a month. Currently there is a Christmas theme displayed. Not my best work ever but hey, I was pressed for time.

I did some random things on kitchenaidcookware.com. I created most of the home page that exists now. I had to work within the confines of the existing design so there wasn't a lot of freedom there. Basically I modernized it. Trust me when I say that it looks a lot better now! I'm particularly happy with the buttons I created on the right hand side.

Currently I'm working on FarberwareCookware.com. I did some work on the existing site, but the whole site is undergoing a complete redesign. I'm finishing up some of the final touches (I didn't design the site). The new site will be launching next month.

Anyways, it's late and I'm tired so I'll stop here. I'm sure people are just dying to here about my job =P I'll write more about the working life of Joe Buchmann again another time =)

3rd Place Entry on W1K

Just wanted to share my recent 3rd place entry on worth1000.com. I really feel that it deserved at least second, but I'll take it.

Portraits

In this section I'm going to start posting my Photoshopped portrait layouts. My goal is to come up with several print worthy layouts to frame and hang on the wall. Of course the version I post here will be much smaller than the original file.

I started tonight with a layout for Avery

Who's the Tank!

I'm a huge fan of "Who's On First" and of course.....World of Warcraft..... and this is just too freakin' funny!


Who's The Tank - Watch more free videos

W1K Winner!

Freakin' Awesome! I just won my second contest on worth1000.com!! I'm totally stoked! Here is a compressed version of the winning entry:



And here is a link to the contest itself http://www.worth1000.com/contest.asp?contest_id=22136

Worth 1000

I wanted to write a post about a new obsession of mine. It's an awesome site called worth1000.com (http://www.worth1000.com). Basically they give you a theme and you create a piece of photoshop work around it. It's really fun.

They keep track of all your stats for everyone to see. First through third places get either medals or trophys (all virtual) and first is awarded 100 credits. The medals are for beginners and trophys for advanced entries. You use the credits to enter more contests.

So far I've gotten 1st once and 2nd once in the beginner's categories. The highest I've gotten in the advanced category is 6th (twice). They also have paid contests running most of the time. These are usually companies that are paying around $100-$300 for their top pick in logo design. I have yet to enter one of these. I think I might try one pretty soon though.

My gallery of images is available to view at http://www.worth1000.com/search.asp?search=artist:jbuchmann55

Where is Joe Buchmann?

I know....it's been a REALLY long time since my last post. When I started this blog I had intended to post at least once a week. Then life came along and said "um, not right now." lol. Actually it's more of a combination of new jobs, moving, family, .......and.... World of Warcraft. What can I say. I'm an addict. Well, not as much as I use to be though.

Since the last post referring to icon design and a job possibly doing that, I've actually obtained two completely unrelated jobs. The icon thing fell through. Probably for the best though. I started working for Motorola as a Senior Web Designer in July (which was the 5 week contract I posted about on June 20th). It turned in to an indefinite contract since they were very pleased with my work. That was a great job. I got to design all sorts of different web sites and had a lot fun doing it. The only drawback was that it remained a contract position, which meant no benefits, no guaranteed raises, no vacation, no.....well, you get the point.

So I continued to look for a permanent position. In September I interviewed for a position with a company called Meyer Corporation. (Read about it here http://www.meyer.com/). This turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. After 3 interviews I was offered the position as a website coordinator. Naturally, I accepted.

This position came with a great benefits package, 401K, immediate vacation time, and not to mention a very nice starting salary. Right from the start the people in the company welcomed me with opened arms and are quickly becoming a second family. This is a place that really cares about it's employees. The employees in turn really care about each other. At least they do in my department anyway.

I work in the Marketing department and I don't think I would have ever chosen otherwise. The marketing staff are by far the coolest and most fun people there. Not that there aren't others....they're just the best group all together.

So here I am today, enjoying my job, getting my life back together financially, and just doing better in general. In October my family and I moved to Benicia and we love it here. It's a great little town that reminds us of home (Spokane, WA), without the snow.

I guess that's where Joe Buchmann is now...in a nutshell. 'til next time.