Big news on the Digital S4O Front

The Yahoo Group, Digi-S4O has moved onto a private forum, and public blog. This is indeed great news and some hard work from the admins, Rachael, Gayle and Row. Well done, ladies! As I await my full membership approval and movement on there, I’m really excited.

Now for a change of acronymns also. The ladies above have changed the term. No longer Digi Scrap for Hire, they’ve changed it to DigiD40 - Digital Designing for Others. The Scrap has gone.

I feel really good about this (losing my scrap) because as I am busy building my own little business, I have begun to realise how little it is about scrapbooking itself. I have people interested in Christmas Cards for instance.  And a concept for something else which isn’t really scrapbooking persay also. Although always an evangelist for the actual scrapbooking pages, the term “designing” is something which is more easily understood by some of my potential clients, and also more easily used in promotions on my website.

I’m not sure how it might be taken out there within the Digital Designer industry however. For those contemplating the new market of S4Os, the term doesn’t alter too much. This is possibly because currently it’s becoming a little marketable, in saying designers are S4O- friendly. Some are, towards scrapbook layouts, and craft work, but not for websites or blog banner creations. All a little confusing still, as this new target market grows, and each designer makes their own decisions on usages for their products, and the markets therefore for them.

The new forum has a two-tier level for beginners and others. Thankfully, as the group I’ve been involved with changes its dynamics lately, some designers have been joining up. The new forums will allow those designers the ability to promote their S4O-OK products exactly to the right target market also. Great news for me, as I search around the web to find this stuff.

What I would like to see out there, however (I’m full of wants and needs lately) is GrabBags for us too. You have personal usage ones, and commercial usage ones, but I really don’t want to go down the commercial usage surprise thing - a bunch of textures and overlays isn’t needed by myself. Nor are shapes, ribbons for re-colouring etc. I want backgrounds and elements already prepared, which I can use for my designing for others. As a new market consumer in this D4O industry, I have no problems paying a tiny bit extra for D4O products or grab-bags, much as commercial ones are priced extra above the personal market - but please be aware that I will not be making that much money off of these designs myself - we do not mass-sell these, they’re all individual to clients, and creating those designs is a custom business. However, it would be nice to see grab-bags targetting my business needs also. Noticably, Tracy Ann Designs, who is S4O-friendly lately brought out two grabbags which some people suggest are very good value - but the grabbags aren’t for S4O. So I’m not buying them (okay, admittedly - I’m not buying anything much anyway, but one can dream about winning some money somewhere, and plan for it, right?) You understand the theory at least?

Right, rant / plead (you choose) over. Let me tell you a slightly funny story regarding S4O or Digi-S4O or even now  Digi-D4O.

My husband, who is not at all good around the toolshed or house, saw this acronymn written down somewhere, and started talking to me about my new business. It was very good of him to be interested, in fact he’s been very very supportive of this little business venture of mine. However, it took me a good few minutes to realise we were talking the same thing - for a while there he appeared to be talking about oiling something. He thought the O in the S4O was a zero, and was calling it  “S-forty”. 

When you think about it, there is an all-in-one lubricant over here called WD40 (Double-you-Dee-forty) used to stop all those squeaky noises doors and things make. Digi-D40 might hopefully be my own creative oil also. Kind of fits.