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If you are expecting to find postings about the most fashionable color schemes or latest design trends, sorry to disappoint you. We are beyond clueless about those kinds of things. What we do hope to provide you with are insights into the workflow process we have learned from our design firm clients that might benefit your firm, useful articles about technology, and just for color, the occasional travel post.
If you are expecting to find postings about the most fashionable color schemes or latest design trends, sorry to disappoint you. We are beyond clueless about those kinds of things. What we do hope to provide you with are insights into the workflow process we have learned from our design firm clients that might benefit your firm, useful articles about technology, and just for color, the occasional travel post.
Executive Dashboard
We are pleased to announce the release of a new Executive Dashboard optional module for DesignSmart clients who also use QuickBooks. It provides owners, board members, upper management, and other interested parties, easy access to vital corporate financials [...]
New Image Collage
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an image collage is worth.... well let's just say an image collage is a great way to see all the images in your project in a way that conveys [...]
Show Me The Money!
Years ago there was a popular movie called Jerry McGuire that unleashed a popular expression: "Show Me The Money!" The expression might not be as popular as it once was, but if your staff are paid commissions, then [...]
Custom Dashboards
If you aren't deep into the design industry it would be easy to think that all design firms do basically the same things: create a proposal, issue a specification, maybe send out some purchase orders and wrap it [...]
New Optional Module! Introducing ‘Overture’ for Creating Client Presentations!
We are excited to announce the release of our new optional module called Overture. With this module you can create client presentations on 17" x 11" paper (though you can print it on small paper if you wish). [...]
Experiencing England in Stile (no that is not a typo)
Last year my wife and I took advantage of some airfare specials to go to England to hike their National Trails. Because the trails cross private lands, you usually won't walk more than a few hundred yards before [...]
Like the outdoors? How about some good news?
In 2016 I posted an article about Sperry Chalet in Glacier National Park (you can read that article below). The following year a wildfire caused extensive damage to the cabins and the facility closed. At the time there [...]
Part 3 – How to be more productive working from home – Mesh Networks
Have you heard of the term "mesh network" before? Granted any term that includes "network" sounds geeky and should be avoided at all costs. But with many of us confined to our homes, it might be worth your [...]
Part 2 – How to be more productive working from home – SSD Drives
Does your home computer seem sluggish? Does it take a long time to boot up? If so, rather than purchasing a new computer you might want to consider these two less expensive alternatives. #1 - Determine what kind [...]
Part 1 – How to be more productive working from home – External Equipment
One of our first blog posts from 2010 suggested that if you are going to use a laptop as your main computing device, then you should consider getting an external monitor, mouse and keyboard to make it easy [...]
Here is a fun topic: Vendor Deposits!
Admittedly vendor deposits are not as interesting a topic as the trendiest paint colors or the hot new lighting offerings, but in their own way they are important. And they can be a pain to manage. We are [...]
New On-Site Hosting Option
We host over 95% of our client's DesignSmart data on commercial-grade cloud servers because most clients don't want to deal with the expense and hassle of dealing with their own on-site server. We use the same cloud hosting [...]