Pamela Wilson is an award-winning graphic designer and owner of Zurek Design Inc. Zurek Design, Inc. clients include Efficiency Engineers; Katherine Scott’s Voice of Destiny; Malt Advocate magazine; Northampton Community College; Pinebrook Family Services and TCW Technologies. Projects for these clients include magazines, newsletters, brochures, billboards, institutional identity systems, web sites, Twitter backgrounds, blog themes and advertising design. She also owns the Big Brand System, a blog devoted to helping businesses grow with the power of great design and marketing. There Pamela regularly shares design tips and tricks learned over the years. She wants to show you how to make your marketing look great and work well. Pamela speaks and writes English and Spanish fluently, and is a graduate of the Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore.
What are you working on right now?
I am currently developing a course that will launch later this year. It will help small business people learn how to manage their own marketing efforts and create some of their own marketing materials. They’ll learn how to make their brand look big on a small budget.
3 Trends that excite you?
1. In preparation for my course, I discovered the world of open source software. I’m excited that this software is available and is cross-platform compatible. I’ve used it lately, and it’s quite good.
2. Online learning has become acceptable and people see the advantages of it. This is a change from 10 years ago, when online learning seemed a bit sketchy.
3. As a designer, what excites me most this year is that it seems that the ability to serve up good typography on the web will finally become a reality. It has been frustrating to work within the limited confines of a
handful of web-ready typefaces all these years. I’m ready to break free from Helvetica and Georgia!
How do you bring ideas to life?
My best technique for bringing ideas to life is to think about a problem, research it, turn it over in my mind and then move on to something else. It’s usually when I’m doing something else that I come up with a breakthrough solution to the problem.
What is one mistake that you’ve made that our readers can learn from?
There are times that I’ve spent too long working with difficult people who zapped my energy. I’ve learned to recognize people like this, and I know I need to continually look for positive people who respect my contributions.
What is one idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
Find a place to store your ideas, whether it’s a notebook, index cards, or an online resource like Evernote.com.
When you have a place to capture good ideas, you can let them flow and feel secure that they will be in a place you can find them when you’re ready to work on them.
What led you to reinvent your business model?
I have worked as a graphic designer for 23+ years. My children are in high school and in the next couple of years will head off to college. It was time to grow my business in a new direction with the extra time I will have available.
After all these years I’ve acquired some great information about how to market businesses, especially small businesses. I’m enjoying having the opportunity to share this information on my blog, and am looking forward to
teaching the course I am putting together.
What do you do in your spare time?
I’ve been using most of my spare time to work on the Big Brand System and I’m enjoying that so much it doesn’t feel like work.
Outside of that, at this time of year you can find me with a paintbrush in hand, painting scenery for the high school theater performances that happen every spring. It’s a good antidote to all the time I spend in front of a computer screen!
Connect:
Blog:
Facebook page:
Twitter: @pamelaiwilson
Contact me:
Mario Schulzke is the Founder of ideamensch, which he started a decade ago to learn from entrepreneurs and give them a platform for their ideas.