Jul
8
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Filed Under All Entries, Recipes | Leave a Comment
Ingredients
1 bag Semi-sweet or Bittersweet Chocolate Chips (I like Ghirardelli)
2 1/4 cups unsifted flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
3/4 cup sugar (I usually use slightly less)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar (I usually use slightly less)
2 eggs
2 teaspoon(s) vanilla
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional, but I like walnuts!)
Directions
Preheat oven to 375ºF. Stir flour with baking soda and salt; set aside. In large mixer bowl, cream butter with sugar and brown sugar. Note that the mixture will not appear as creamy as you might be used to, because of the decreased amount of butter used. Blend eggs and vanilla with creamed mixture. Gradually blend dry mixture into creamed mixture. Stir in nuts and chocolate chips. Drop 1 tablespoon of dough per cookie onto ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake at 375ºF for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Alternatively, gently press a cookie with your finger; if it springs back up when you remove it, they are fine to take out. The less you cook them, the chewier they will be once cooled. Removing them to a cooling rack ensures optimal cooling for the best cookies!
Why this recipe?
The only thing that really makes this recipe stand out is its use of only one stick of butter. Because of this, they have some different physical properties. They don’t spread as much when baked, so you can place the drops of cookie dough closer together on the cookie sheets. Using less butter and less sugar helps the flavor of the chocolate chips and the nuts stand out, which is how I like my cookies. Let me know if you give this recipe a try! It has replaced all other chocolate chip cookie recipes for me.
Jul
7
Fantastic Bonanza – Indie T-Shirt Company
Filed Under All Entries, Design and Aesthetics, Projects | 3 Comments
Overview
I founded Fantastic Bonanza in the summer of 2006 with Greg Poulos and John Chouinard, both of whom I had known since high school and earlier. Having grown somewhat tired with the popularity and predictability of Threadless, we wanted to create some t-shirts that we’d like ourselves. Without much in the way of specific goals, we jumped right in and registered the business. Soon we had a website, designed by Greg, and five single-color t-shirt designs that we hand screenprinted in my basement. Fantastic Bonanza updated its website in 2007, and released a total of 12 designs before I left it in the summer of 2008. I even got interviewed by Fox 25 while at ROFLCon!
Business Responsibilities
I was responsible for nearly all of the business aspects of Fantastic Bonanza. As the primary contact for suppliers (like professional printers and wholesale garments), I made the necessary business purchases and dealt with suppliers whenever issues arose, and arise they did. I also filed the necessary tax forms for Fantastic Bonanza, which was registered as a general partnership (Form 1065 – U.S. Return of Partnership Income & Form ST-1 – Illinois Sales and Use Tax Return). When orders were placed, I recorded them and shipped them via USPS.
Website
I had little direct involvement with the coding of the website, though I did make minor updates and changes via FTP. With the second iteration of our site, however, I made large contributions to its format in an attempt to make it an effective e-commerce website. The key aspects that I believe contribute to making the site legible and effective as a t-shirt e-commerce website that I recall at this time are:
- large, emphasized display of products on the front page
- prominent display of prices on the front page
- redundant access to the sizing chart
- multiple product pictures, including models and detail images
- email newsletter (which was underutilized)
- prominent ‘contact’ navigation button
T-Shirt Design
Although John Chouinard was our primary artist, I nevertheless created five of our designs and was involved in both vectorizing others and working on colorways. The programs I used to create the designs were Inkscape (vector) and Photoshop 7 (raster). Design ideas were frequently a result of group brainstorms.
Vector Designs
Mustachio
AVE Mizar
Fancy Mustachio
Raster Designs
Mustard – NO!
The People’s Condiment
The Blog
For most of my time with Fantastic Bonanza, I was the primary writer for our indie t-shirt blog, which we called Fantastic Blognanza (Greg’s pun, I believe). Of our 426 posts over the course of 20 months, I published 243 (57%). Although we mostly covered other online indie t-shirt companies, especially new releases and sales, news of Fantastic Bonanza’s relatively rare updates and sales featured on the Blognanza as well. My favorite and possibly most popular post was about getting your t-shirts written about by blogs (read a repost of the article here).
The End
In the summer of 2008, I decided I’d had enough of Fantastic Bonanza. I have learned innumerable skills through my experience running the company, directly related to t-shirts and otherwise. I’m glad I was able to be a part of it for two years! The future of Fantastic Bonanza now rests in the hands of John and Greg, who may make it an adjunct of their new webcomic (John draws and Greg writes), Chronillogical.
Feel free to ask me any questions about anything! There is of course a ton more about Fantastic Bonanza, and business and t-shirts in general, that I could have included, but chose not to.