Kaleidoscope International

simply dynamic creative solutions

What is a “Creative Solution Specialist”?

June 18, 2011 By KI Admin Leave a Comment

We describe ourselves as Creative Solution Specialists because calling ourselves artists or graphic designer and web developer/photographer would be too narrow a description of our services. Besides all the design stuff we do, we are passionate about helping you develop your business, whether it is evaluating system efficiencies (we keep a few tricks in our back pocket) or inspiring you to dream big and helping you brainstorm creative solutions toward that end (tricks we keep in our other back pocket =)

We especially enjoy partnering with start-ups to help you punch it to the next level and come out with a bang. It’s extremely hard to express in a few words how much we love helping small and family businesses, but we’ll try anyway – we. really. REALLY. LOVE. it. See, Christina grew up in an entrepreneurial family, working in the family business in one capacity or another from about 7 on, so you might say it’s ingrained in her. We also had the opportunity to go through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University a few months into our life together, so our marriage, family, and businesses are founded on some kinda “weird” principles and out-of-the-box thinking – things that are very useful in small business. In short, we’ve been greatly blessed, and we hope to have the chance to bless you in some way through one of our creative solutions for your business!

But enough about us! Tell us about you and set up your free consultation!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Small Business is Our Middle Name

April 16, 2011 By KI Admin Leave a Comment

Yes, that means our full name is Kaleidoscope (Small Business) International. Hi, nice to meet you. Our friends just call us Kaleidoscope.

Seriously, though, we aren’t just here to make pretty stuff. We actually really love small business. Let us count the ways…

1.) We bleed business.

Small business has just always been a part of me (Christina). I grew up in the business world, answering the phone in my best professional voice and taking messages for my father’s various businesses from the age of 7 or so. As I grew older, being homeschooled enabled me to be involved in the family business on a daily basis. David’s love of business has been greatly developed in over the years as we’ve slowly grown this from a side job on evenings and weekends and dreamed about various other parallel ventures we hope to add in the future.

2.) We aren’t just looking for a paycheck.

As small business enthusiasts, we actually get excited discussing and brainstorming ideas with you beyond just the design aspects. To some extent we become students of you/your line of work/your business, and we let ourselves get caught up in your vision – we become cheerleaders for team You simply because we love to see you succeed! đŸ™‚

3.) We ask why.

The story of the ham illustrates perfectly the importance of knowing why you do what you do. Small businesses do not grow and become successful on a large scale without knowing these answers because it’s too easy to get bogged down in what are sometimes inefficient and wasteful methods.

3a.) We think outside the box. We really, really do.

Actually, we’ve just found that “the box”, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t have only four sides… Having very strong ties to homeschooling as well as being big advocates of the common sense espoused by Dave Ramsey makes us a little “weird” by many of today’s standards. It’s funny how often the popular way of thinking doesn’t really do you any long term favors. Small businesses that get ahead are often the ones who redesign the box to work for them.

3b.) We are resourceful.

We describe ourselves as Creative Solution Specialists because we love to find solutions for your business that go beyond the realm of graphic design. Small businesses usually can’t afford all the fancy schmancy software and tools big businesses are able to utilize, but there are often inexpensive or free alternatives and we are on a constant lookout to discover those things, many of which we already have bookmarked to pull out and put to use for you!

4.) We are students.

Small businesses with the hunger to succeed are never content to just coast along. We are constantly reading and studying time-proven methods and principles as well as searching out current and emerging trends in design and social media/networking.

5.) We care about our clients.

One of the best things about good small businesses is their customer service. We take care of you and we go the extra mile. A lot of times being “good” is really just that simple.

6.) We are real.

We don’t really have the time of day for putting on airs or slathering on the fake when we get ready for the day. We’re just us, and we think most people like to be just them, so we find that makes relating with clients a lot easier. Authenticity is very important in small business. It’s a huge part of your credibility.

7.) We see what could be.

Like Zig Ziglar says, if you aim at nothing you’ll hit it every time. This is certainly no less true in small business. As is common with small business entrepreneurs, we are constantly inspired with new business ideas. We have learned to develop actionable goals that keep us moving forward.

8.) We work HARD.

Because we love the work we do, “free time” is a mostly foreign concept to us. We do try to maintain a holistic outlook and make time for family, friends, and health, but if we’re not eating, exercising, or sleeping, chances are we’re in the middle of a big project. We like to live and breathe business and mesh it right in with the rest of our life. Small businesses don’t survive with a halfhearted effort.

9.) We have “old-fashioned” values.

We are not just out to get ahead at any cost. We care about the way we get there. True integrity is missing in so much of the business world, but we believe small businesses do themselves no favors by cutting corners.

10.) We don’t believe “good enough” is good enough.

Our goal is to always be improving on what we are already doing or have done. This means that sometimes we make upgrades to client projects on our own behind the scenes. Small businesses that stand out are the ones that go the extra mile.

Ready for us to get to work on your next project? Go ahead and contact us now!

Filed Under: Small Business

Lighthearted Team Building & Single Moms Ministry

April 2, 2011 By KI Admin Leave a Comment

Just a few projects we worked on recently.

This project is actually still in progress. We always enjoy working with Jennifer from Farmers’ All Natural Creamery to come up with fun and interesting solutions for their various employee and producer gifts. These two images were some different direction ideas.

 

Takes you back a bit, no? Unless you’re younger than we are… we ARE starting to get up there a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Changing gears, we created this promotional flier for an outreach our church youth group, CrossWorks, was doing. One of the things we love about doing stuff for our church is that we usually have pretty free reign in the design. Plus, it’s always nice to do stuff with long term meaning!

Filed Under: Recently...

Tools of the Trade

March 19, 2011 By KI Admin Leave a Comment

It’s pretty awesome to be living and working in this time of fast-paced technology. We keep our ear to the ground, to put it archaically, to make sure we are utilizing all the best options to keep our work flow as efficient and cost effective as possible. We test new stuff out all the time, but these are some of the main tools we use on a regular basis [you can click on any of their logos to learn more about them]:

Photoshop

We love the versatility of Photoshop. We use it for editing images, laying out websites, and most posters and print work that is more image based.

 

Illustrator

Illustrator is our program of choice for working with vector and most type-heavy projects.

 

Bridge

Navigating through a bazillion files and folders is a breeze with Bridge. Working with it is just crazy more efficient.

 

Suitcase Fusion

Indispensable font organizer/browser/tester. *love*

 

Evernote

We have a constant stream of lists and notes coming out of our ears. Thank God for Evernote. This keeps our personal, business, and client to do lists and reference notes in wonderfully synced order. We each use the desktop application to add and check off items quickly and easily and can also access it on our Galaxy Tab when we’re out and about. *love*

 

WorkTime

This is a great little program that makes records of everything you do on your computer. We can go back and run reports to see how much time we spent on projects. Sweet.

 

WordPress

WordPress is the very powerful and versatile program that we use as our Content Management System of choice.

 

Dreamweaver

David’s main coding program.

 

Firefox w/Adblock Plus (at least until Chrome gets a bookmark sidebar)

We’d be happy to switch to Chrome if they would fix some of their usability issues *eyeroll*. Firefox can be a bit of a memory hog, but we still use it pretty much 24/7. Adblock Plus is a MUST have.

 

Skype

Aside from wishing Skype would integrate right into our browser for greater efficiency and being rather unimpressed with the call quality, we’re decently happy with it. We actually use it with each other all day long to send each other links, communicate behind our kids backs, etc. We also keep ongoing conversations with some of our like-minded friends. Our business phone and voicemail is linked to our business Skype account, which has worked quite well for us with traveling and whatnot. We give it a rating of “meh” but would still hate to be without it.

 

Google Voice

Best. Texting. Solution. Ever. (so far) It’s also awesome to have control over where the number forwards to and numerous other things.

 

Neatworks

This is a very sweet receipt scanner and organization system. Good-bye bloated files and loose papers floating around. Yes, please.

 

BudgetTracker

We currently use this for our finances and accounting. We loved it in part because the company was ridiculously fast at support and  listening to and adding feature requests. For some reason they have gone rather silent, but we’re still cautiously optimistic on the potential of the highly customizable program.

 

Filed Under: Tools, We Recommend

Wearing Many Hats

March 5, 2011 By KI Admin Leave a Comment

There are a number of labels to describe the type of parent one is, SAH (Stay At Home), WOH (Work Outside the Home), WAH (Work At Home). For a long time we were kind of WOHLSAHAWMWWGH (Work Outside the Home Like Stay At Home And Work More When We Get Home).

For the first four years that we had kids they were “take-along kids” as opposed to us being stay-at-home parents. Being a work-at-home family is a crazy ride. Our kids make us laugh every day, even as we are sometimes pulling our hair out at the stuff they get into.

Juggling all the different hats that come with running a business and being parents is an interesting challenge, but we do this for two reasons – to be together as a family, and because we feel this is one of the things we were created to do.

Our hope is that we can encourage others who feel like they can’t possibly make things work, that indeed, it might take some paradigm shifts, but it can be an awfully invigorating ride!

We share more of our personal journey of being a self-employed, location independent family atTico♥Tina.

Filed Under: Family, Small Business

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