This week on Twitter, my friend Jean-Claude Tremblay took the initiative of spending almost a full day posting tweets about Illustrator tips, tricks and techniques under the hash tag #AITTT. There is a treasure trove of useful tips and techniques in there and, if you use Illustrator at all, you owe it to yourself to go through them and learn from his experience. That will save you time in your work and you will discover features you probably didn't know existed in Illustrator.

I've been using Illustrator since 1996 myself and there were many tricks he shared I didn't know about. In a way, this is not surprising for an application with over 2 decades of development and history behind it, so take a few minutes and read through his #AITTT tweets. You'll be glad you did .

In a field filled with self proclaimed gurus, Jean-Claude is a true expert with years of real world experience doing on-site training and support for creative people through his company, Profociografik. He is also an Adobe Certified Expert in Illustrator, Indesign and Photoshop as well as an Adobe Community Professional. But mostly, he's a great guy I'm lucky to call my friend.

Thanks for your generosity Jean-Claude!

As is becoming a tradition for me, I’m writing a post to reflect on the last year as we’re jumping into the new. I will write another post later to talk about new tools and new technologies I discovered or started using in 2009. In this one, I reflect on the past year, the things that went well, the things I learned and what I intend to do different in 2010. If you run a small business or are a freelancer yourself, you may learn a thing or two from my experience.

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Over a year ago, I posted an article describing my Font Management Woes and my search for the perfect font management application on the Windows platform. For many years, that market has been dominated on the Mac side mostly by Extensis Suitcase Fusion and for good reason. Suitcase is a fantastic font management application with both server and client side components and an interface and features set that is just right.

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I missed the actual anniversary date which was August 8 (2008/08/08) but it's now been one full year since I quit my job to go freelance full time. The road has not always been easy but I wouldn't go back. I'm the happiest I've been in my whole life and I have a real sense of accomplishment like I haven't felt since I played music in bands. I even feel better about what I do now as I help real people and organizations solve real problems.

I've recently put my company blog online and published my first article with 2 more in the works. That blog will be more business oriented than this one with the audience being existing or potential clients or anyone looking to have a Web site made or improving an existing online brand. The French version can be found here while the English version is here. I'm also tweeting for my company from here.

Things are going well for me and I'm looking to the future with optimism. I'll be working on building my client base, my profitability as well as my skill set. I feel like I have so much to learn still but the fun really is in the journey and I've never felt more alive...

Thank you to everyone who has helped and encouraged me along the way. I truly have the best friends and I am grateful for each and every one of you.