Iris Kao Design

I’d love to meet the marketing genius for Kit Kat in Japan!

On NPR’s “The World” today, they talked about Kit Kat having 200 kinds of flavor in Japan, like ginger ale, bake potato, egg custard, green tea… And some are seasonal or region specific (for the tourists, the strangest one might be the Miso flavor), as many other Japanese products are.

Other than the blinding variety of flavors, what made Kit Kat a sure win brand in Japan? Kit Kat’s slogan there is “Kitto Katsu,” which means sure win (きっと勝つ.) They even had a mailing ready packaging for people to send to students who are in need of some luck before exams.

Wow, way to push products. I am in awe of this brilliant idea!

Holistic Financial Counseling is my most complete project up to date. My client, Marielle Higler, and I started with business card, letterhead, and envelope.

For the business cards, we came up with a set of 9 cards, each with different color and different quote in the back. Whenever she hands out her cards, the response from people choosing their favorite and exchanging their quotes is a expected joyful scene we both expected.

Then we took a small detour to get her book ready. Finally, we finished the project by setting up a wordpress web site, a twitter account, and a facebook page.

Marielle, the Money Whisperer, believes in empowering people to live a holistic life by tackling their money issues. Money is not really just money, how you spend money represent how you are as a person. It effects your spirit, your relationship with others, even your health.

She is easy to work with because she listens and she states her points clearly. I am sure the same skills will translate ever better between her and her clients even more effectively.

I am proud to introduce this book to you. Not only because this was my first book cover design, it is a book that intent to inspire actions in people.

Marielle Higler, the author, my client, set out to find herself after her children left home. Like many women in her generations, she was single and ready for retirement. Then she encountered blocks in all areas of life, finance, aging, self-worth and many more. This book was her journey in searching for answers. She shared her own issues and ways to get to the next level.

I have always cherish the experiences of the people who came before me. I truly believe many retired people don’t give themselves enough credit. Maybe they don’t work for a company or taking care of the kids anymore, their skills and knowledge translate to other area just the same. Only many don’t seem to realize the treasures hidden inside themselves.

If you are someone you know is wandering aimlessly through the golden years, please read this book or take a step toward being all that you can be. I ask you to Show Up for your life, the world is waiting for you!

I finally got lazy and got the “Twitter Tools” wordpress plugin.

Everything went well until I activated the Bit.ly tool. Links (long or short) will show up on in the post tweets. As it turned out, I just needed to remove a trailing space after the Bit.ly API key.

Actually, I should say how to create a customized page using a template page php file.

I had created a WP site with both pages and posts. But instead of installing WP at the root and at the blog subdirectory, I just installed it at the root and listed the latest blog posts titles in the sidebars.

But I still needed a way for people to get the a place where they can enter the “blog,” so I created a customized archives.php and list post by category links and monthly links.

From the WordPress Forum, I knew I needed to create a new page with a sensible title and blank content, then select a template. But for the life of me, the archives.php just wouldn’t show up in the template pulldown.

Then I figured out, all I had to do is add these lines to the beginning of the archives.php. (don’t forget to put the php tags on the outside!)

/*
Template Name: Archives
*/


Now go back to your page list, use the Quick Edit for your new page, and you will find Archives in the template pull down. Amazingly simple yet extremely illusive at first.

* At this time, I am working with the WP version 2.8.4. *

In my previous post about the equal height 3-column layout, I found no problem using it in that project.

This time, I noticed that in the WordPress comment lists, the time stamp is made into an “a” tag bookmark and it broke the layout by showing the space that was suppose to be hidden.

At first I only saw the content following the bookmark. After viewing the source, I figured out that it was only showing the bottom of the page which is usually hidden. This area is the trick to the equal column method: large negative margin bottom and large positive padding bottom.

Luckily, the site I am working on right now will work with a fake 3-column background.

As I was pounding a nail into a wall in the Seattle Art Museum, the mixture of inspiration, creativity, guilt, rebellion, liberation, and pure fun filled my crazy little head.

To this piece of art by Yoko Ono (part of the Target Practice: Painting Under Attack 1949–78 exhibit), I donated all the good sayings from fortune cookies. Since they haven’t came true for me as they lived in my wallet, I thought maybe if I shared them with all the visitors, some things are bound to come true for some people.

Other than seeing what other people pull out of their pocket to put on the wall, it was interesting seeing people digging through what they have to contribute to this piece. What interactive fun!

And when you visit, would you get yourself a good fortune? It is my gift to you.

My lovely client, Julia May from ClickEats, asked me what to do about the spam comments on her blog, I told her to activate the Akismet (a default plug-in).

Other than activating it from your WordPress Plugins menu, you will need to get an API key. The API Key is free for a personal blog but if your site earns more than $500/mo, then you will need to subscribe for a commercial API key starting at $5/mo.

It took me a few years of staring at the plugin list before I activated Akismet. Now, I wished I activated it sooner.