Archive for December, 2009

Hey Everybody,

Well, we’re at the end of another year…. where did it go?!!
We want to wish you all a very Happy Christmas, and an amazing New Year.

EESB will be closed from the end of 22nd December through to 4th January. We’re going to enjoy what is pretty much the only rest we get, and are already excited about the projects that await us in 2010.

Have a good break, everyone!

Here’s one we don’t get very often!

David Braviner from our friends Matrix People Solutions, gave us a call earlier today with an uncommon (for us, anyway!) request.

Could we take a frame from the explanatory animation that we did for them a little while back, and give it a little Christmas sprucing (see what we did there?! Christmas, sprucing?) for them to use in their communications?

Of course we could!

One Santa hat, one pair of novelty antlers and one miniature Christmas tree later and, job done!

Some good thinking by Matrix People Solutions, and a very quick turnaround from Eight Eyed Sea Bass. We aims to please.

At Eight Eyed Sea Bass, we receive a lot of documents from both clients and students, which may be Word documents or even spreadsheets. Aside from various people in this chain haven’t different versions of software on their machines, we all also have different printers that we use. For every printer out there that you can buy, there is a slight change in page setups – even if we’re all using A4 pages.

So, as you’ve no doubt witnessed for yourself, when we receive documents, particularly CVs from people seeking employment, more often than not when we open them up, they appear in some sprawled mess of a layout making it difficult for the eyes to read and the brain to interpret, and it is much harder to find the willpower to read this document!

Columns are all screwed up, text is in the wrong place, the font used by the author is not one installed on our systems so it gets cleverly substituted for something else that makes the eyeballs bleed….

But there is a cure to this pain. You see them every day.

And they are: PDF documents!

PDFs are great – the layout as created on your own machine is retained, and the font you use can be embedded within the file – so you know that the way you made the document is the way the recipient will see it. The funny thing is, PDFs have been around since the second half of the 90’s, but still people don’t know how to make their own.

In the past, we have bought, and still use, various PDF creating tools for our purposes. But, we have found one that you can have for FREE.

So, being helpful as we are, we’ve decided to make it even easier for you to get, and make your very own PDFs (so for the people we’ve done conversions for as a favour – you know who you are!) you can now take care of yourself really simply. Well, PC users anyway.

Download the Zip file from the link below, grab the installer .exe file and run it.

The software will install a Virtual Printer to make PDFs, so whatever application you are in and want to make your cute little files from, simply click the File menu, and then Print. You’ll see the PDF writer as an option under the printer name. It’ll ask you where on your computer you want to save your PDF to, and then you are done!

Here’s the file:
www.eesb.tv/gifts/CuteWriter.zip
Compatible with Windows XP, Vista, and 7, 32 and 64bit.

Enjoy!

Here’s a job that’s a bit different to our usual…

The nice chaps over at Boilerhouse were working with their client, Hook Norton Brewery, creating new labels to be used on the beer pumps in pubs.

As part of the design they needed some 3D text within the layout. So, they gave us a call and discussed what their requirements were. A little later on, we sent back to them a new image for print, replacing what we’d received telling us where the 3D text should be placed.

The image was well received, by both the Boilerhouse guys and the Brewery boys. Glad to help.

Have a drink for us, lads!