There’s an easy formula for becoming a slacker: Do nothing. Go get more coffee. Repeat. However, what is the key to staying a true slacker at heart, but keep your job, and be raved about like a corporate messiah? “It’s all about appearances”, said Dilbert creator Scott Adams, who listed low-cost ways to achieve high impact genius-dom at work.

1. Complain that you’re totally swamped at every opportunity. Use phrases like “am neck deep in turbulence” and “jumping from one fire to another” to make your job sound all shades of sexiness and dangerousness.
2. Carry a piece of paper wherever you go. Also give yourself the necessary urgent facial expression and body language, imagine it’s something incredibly important, like a stay of execution from the governor.
3. Never clean your cubicle. After all, how else are you suppose to show the real sweat and grit of your efforts at work?
4. Emailing looks like work. Emailing is work, so email friends and family often.
5. If you feel like talking instead of working, talk to your boss. That counts as work no matter what you’re chatting about. The ideal topic of conversation is how poorly all of your coworkers are performing.
6. If you wear glasses, leave an old pair on the desk as though you will be right back. Then go home.
7. Leave voice mails for coworkers at 1:00 am, even if you’re getting up just to take a whiz. If you really want to inspire awe, leave a message for your boss with your thoughts on the company’s outdated filing system at 11:30 pm on New Year’s Eve.
8. Be sure to get involved in unquantifiable projects. You want to be doing a lot of consulting and advising and attending. Avoid anything with a hard and fast deadline. Try to answer questions with another question. And use vague yet foreboding words like somewhere, somehow, might possibly, indefinitely etc.

Now you have learned the art of slacking at work, do go out and try it at work and keep us posted about the results!

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It’s Monday, my peeps, you are in no mood to work, and neither am I. So why don’t I make it fun for you and me, and post something very entertaining. The following videos are advertising that really gets what happens during work. They are hilarious, so take a look!

Be Careful With Your Fingers

They may be stronger than you think. I would really like to give my wonderful SU buddy Jenna, for discovering this video, that set me on this path to find the funniest ads that really understand how things work in the office.

This is why we have cell phones

Cell phones are great for productivity!

You Can’t Have My Cake

Um, you can’t have my cake, and eat it too. Beware, the sweets stealing coworker, I might just spring a Terry Tate on you.

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Everything and everyone is going digital. There is no denying it. The speed, the outreach potential, and the relative low cost of the digital medium is absolutely unparalleled compared to print. However, there are certain aspects of print presentation that just can not be replicated with digital, not just yet anyways. Let me count the ways. A well-designed print presentation is physically pleasurable. The print piece may contain beautiful textures and smells that allows for sensual engagement with the presentation. A well-designed print presentation allows for easy portability, navigation, marking, and book marking. Those ease-of-use qualities when translated to the digital realm still don’t have the fluidity of movement afforded by its print counterpart. Now that I have listed a few advantages of print over digital, here are a few tips I have gathered over the years to make successful print presentations.

Two Golden Rules to Live By

1. When you are designing for print, make sure you are designing for print. This is the single biggest mistake I have seen people make time after time again that really ruins the quality of their print presentation. How many times have I seen people make presentations that attempts to fulfill projector needs as well as print needs, and in the end make monstrous amalgamates that have either too many bullet points when projected, or screaming texts when printed? Realize that when you are designing for print, you are designing for a document to be read approximately within 18 inches away from your eyes. Thus the scale has to be appropriate for close reading.

2. As is true for everything else in life, simplicity is the key to success, especially when applied to making captivating presentations. It’s often the subtle details that lend itself to cohesiveness, that ultimately wins people over with its unified vision.

Essential Guidelines to Follow

Font: Choosing a font family can drastically influence the look and feel of your entire piece. Realize that when choosing type, listen to the inner content, and the subject matter of the content will help you in choosing a speaking voice. I like to use dafont.com to get wonderful free fonts.

Layout: Choose a grid, and stick to a grid. Realize that the grid is what gives your document structure, both visually as well as content wise. A grid is what allows readers to quickly understand the relevance and the importance of information. However at the same time, know how to, and when to break the grid, in order to incite excitement, build drama, and create rhythm throughout the print piece. Here is the link to Adobe InDesign, the industry standard print publication application, you could download it and try it out free for 30 day.

Binding: The binding is what gives the printed piece functionality. It’s what allows the book to become an interactive object. Can you imagine the embarrassment and the annoyance of flipping through a presentation that won’t hold together, or won’t stay put? Nothing turns your reader away from a presentation faster than the inability to operate the mechanism. I personally love wire bindings, because they are very inexpensive, durable, non-intrusive, allow pages to turn smoothly, and very fast to produce. I recommend using Shoplet.com’s binding product helper tool, we recently launched this special product helper tool to make finding the right binding materials a breeze.

Cover: A book, sometimes is just as good as its cover. People do indeed, judge a book by its cover. Thus my advice for making a great print presentation would be to make such a spectacular cover, people will stay impressed throughout the rest. A great cover needs protection most of all. Imagine how disappointing it would be to have your cover ruined by unsightly stains? I recommend using Shoplet.com’s laminating product helper tool, we recently launched this special product helper tool to make finding the right laminating materials a breeze.

Image: A good image is worth 1,000 words, and a few good ones are hard to come by. Understand that sometimes consistent imageries, both in terms of look & feel as well as content-wise, are hard to obtain. Use images sparingly, and strategically. Too many images of diverseness is easy to be an over-kill, and can ruin the coherence of the print piece. Corbis is the king of stock photography, however not everyone of us have money to burn. Thus, I recommend stock.xchng for free photos, and istockphoto for relatively inexpensive photos.

Paper: The weight, texture, sheen, and slight gradation is what gives the presentation class, or crass. It may not seem much, but appropriately chosen paper can really add personality to the presentation. I recommend going to your local papery to get a sense of all the available options. I prefer Kate’s Paparie in New York. Though they are on the pricey side, they truly carry diverse selections of quality stationeries and the service is great.

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~ angela

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In case you haven’t been bombarded enough by the unveiling of the iPhone 3G, you may just have to hear about it one more time, because, we, the creative minds behind the Office Supply Blog, are of that religion. We understand that the majority of you guys are still under the monopolistic hold of Microsoft Windows, however that is about to change.

Let me reinterpret some of the more important features of iPhone 3G to all you latent Apple fans:

1. Support for Microsoft Exchange: Fortune 500 companies everywhere will drop the Blackberry as the main mobile device so fast, you won’t know where it disappeared to.
2. Better, faster: 3G technology allows iPhone fast access to internet and email, will make it easier for office workers everywhere to mix work and play.
3. $199 price tag: it was $599 merely a year ago, 2/3 price drop means the new iPhone will be ubiquitous.
4. Enterprise applications: Apple recently opened the iPhone to outside development programs, as in there will be so many fun business applications to help your daily office tasks simpler, easier, and funner.

Here is what we predict will happen in post iPhone 3G world:

1. Microsoft looses 80% of market share because corporations worldwide eventually switch to Macintosh operating system because of the iPhone 3G. Will become such a rare commodity that they become hip again, establish their own cult following, and still manages to make boatload of money auctioning “antique” Windows operating systems on Ebay.
2. Research in Motion and Palm merge, produce a baby that’s so ugly they both have to file for bankruptcy.
3. Steve Jobs is declared National Treasure, and is the only human being granted the right to clone himself due to his importance to “National Security Issues”.

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The votes are in. Thank you guys for voting. For a complete description of the dads we identified, please see the post on Which Dad is he? It looks like overwhelming amount of people have dads from the past, followed by ties between the tree-hugging dad and the trophy dad. The dad who never was came in a close third, and the mom among dads came in last. Now that you guys all have identified your dads according to his work habitats, it’s now time to get that gift that will make his day. For the following dads, we recommend:

Dad From the Past

Conclusion: he missed the lesson on the information economy, and the burden and speed of the 21st century is really catching up with him, anything to help him minimize, digitize and organize would be a great gift.

New laptop: with the recent advance in technology, computers are practically approaching negative pricing. Laptops are great because they are powerful, portable, and they don’t take up much space. Your dad sure could use more computing power and more space in his office. This particular laptop is the award winning Lenovo Thinkpad, which is currently priced at only $516 at our store.

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