New e-Book Cover Design For Invest For Living And One Rejected e-BookCover Design

Recently, my client for the Invest For Living e-Book Cover Design requested a new design for the e-Book cover but this time he sent over a picture and he wanted me to use it into the design. The e-Book is a guide to retirement planning and the picture that he sent over shows a male and a female senior adult embraced by a couple of kids, boy and girl.

(Invest For Living e-Book Cover)

Well, I've already designed three e-Book Covers for Invest For Living and this request was for a fourth one making it a little bit harder because I was already out of ideas. To make it less hard, I kept the design of the fourth e-Book cover clean and simple which was what the client wants.

By the way, the title of the e-Book was also changed from The Ultimate Retirement Planning Guide to The Ultimate 5-step Retirement Planning Guide. As you can see the change was very minimal. I guess, adding "5-step" in the title made the e-Book more specific to what it was really about.

Rejected e-Book Cover Design

This week, someone contacted me about designing an e-Book cover, a banner for a webpage and a side banner for a Facebook page. He requested three items and he wanted to see samples to choose from. Well, creating samples for someone to choose from is like working for free because if the samples were all rejected then you just spent time working for nothing.

For this request, I decided to create only one sample and I did it for the e-Book cover. To help in the design, I was given the title of the e-Book and what it was for. Well, I'm used to designing something from just a title but having more information is always welcome because it will make the task easier.

Unfortunately, the design that I submitted was rejected because it was not the look they were after. If I had submitted many samples and all were rejected then that would had been very terrible for me. Working on only one design or sample was a good idea because it didn't let me waste a lot of time working for free.

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Dug Up Some Old Pencil Sketches

When I was younger, I spent most of my free time drawing or sketching. My notebooks, back then, all had drawings and sketches of superheroes (both Marvel and DC), anime characters, professional wrestlers, cartoon characters, shoes, robots, animals, people and a whole lot of other things.

I even remember doodling at the very early age of four or five. My parents would scold me for drawing all over our house. At that age, my favorite canvass or drawing board were the walls of our home. In fact, I can still picture them filled with stick drawn figures of people, houses, cars, mountains, flowers and others.

Unfortunately, I never did become good at it. Yes, I could draw freehand and I could do sketches but I never really felt good at it. I tried to learn how to become better at it but without proper guidance, and maybe motivation, I eventually got tired and stopped doing it. The last time I sat down and drew something was many, many years ago.

Today, while I was going through my things. I came upon an old folder that contains some of my old drawings. Seeing them for the first time in many years brought back a lot of memories. I spent a few minutes just looking at them one by one. Unfortunately, some of them were already damaged by water, dust and age.

After enjoying a moment with them, I placed them all back in the folder and stored the folder safely back where I found it. Even though they are already old and damaged, I will never throw them away because I consider them my treasure. They may look ugly to you but to me they are all beautiful.

Anyway, before storing, I picked two and took a picture of them so that I can post them here for everyone to see.

 
(My Wife on the Left and My Eldest Son on the Right)

As you can see, both of them are already damaged but, at least, they don't have any water damage on them.

The first one on the left is a pencil sketch of my wife and next to it is a pencil sketch of my eldest son. If my memory is correct, he was only three or four years old when I sketched this. I really wish I could have done better at it but, I guess, that is the extent or limit of what I can do with a pencil.

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Wasted 150 Free Internet Hours On My SmartBro Sim

So, I got this new ZTE Android Tablet from Smart and it comes with a Free SmartBro Sim loaded with 150 Hours of Free Internet use. If I am not mistaken, it uses 3G to connect to the internet. Unfortunately, the location of my home has very weak 3G signals. I tried accessing the internet using the tablet but I couldn't get any connection at all.

(My ZTE Android Tablet From Smart)

I checked the tablet's internet settings and it seems to be working because I can see the signal bars fluctuating up and down. My Free SmartBro Sim was also working because it could receive both calls and text messages. The only thing that was not working was the internet connection.

Now, I still have my Free SmartBro Sim inserted in the tablet. I didn't bother removing it because I can still use it to receive both calls and text messages but I can't make calls or send text messages from it because it no longer has any load. I could probably load some money in it but I am already loading another mobile phone. Loading two mobile devices is not practical and can be expensive.

Help me get better equipment and faster internet connection by checking out the links below:

• Cricket ZTE Fanfare Cricket ZTE Fanfare
• Mobile Talk & Data SIM By TheSIMpower.Com
• Abusing The Internet Of Things (Paperback)

By the way, speaking of loading and sims. I don't think we have a sim like O2 Simplicity here in the Philippines. Correct me if I am wrong but I think cellphone providers here offer separate sims for pre-paid and post-paid subscribers. If we have a sim like O2 Simplicity then switching from pre-paid to post-paid would be as simple as pressing a button.

Anyway, as far as my 150 Free Internet Hours is concern, it eventually expired after a few days and I was not able to use it at all. If  only my home had better 3G reception then I could have probably enjoyed those 150 Hours of Free Internet connection. I was really looking forward to downloading some Android Games back then.

I still use my ZTE Android Tablet everyday and I'm happy to say that I can now access the internet without any problems at all. No, I am not connecting using my Free SmartBro Sim. I am connecting to the internet through Wi-Fi. I bought a Wi-Fi router and connected it to my regular internet connection. So now, all Wi-Fi ready devices at home can connect to the internet quickly and easily.

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