As you must have seen, I am not a very good photographer. Though I enjoy rummaging through my kids’ toys to illustrate this blog, for the e- zine we will need images that speak for their selves. Photos of a particular sensibility. And who better than Jose Carlos León, rewarded with the City of Tarragona’s 2006 Communication award, to complete the team? Besides having an eye for the detail, he knows our territory thoroughly. He will contribute with a professional look and bring with him stories and local anecdotes from lost places of the Tarragona regions, always from a very personal point of view. It will be a pleasure to have him among us. Welcome Jose Carlos!

The collaboration with Sílvia starts to give fruits! Now you’ll have some idea of where we are going to…

Monday, September 22: a rainy day. My first appointment of the day arrives late. Too rainy. I change plans. Since I’m already on the road, it doesn’t matter to get a little wetter. I decide to pay a visit to the Chamber of Commerce of Tarragona. I want to brief myself of the new agreement that La Caixa and the Women Association of Entrepreneurs and Employers have signed offering advantageous credit conditions. I decide to make some exercise and take the stairs until the second floor. Bad idea. I arrive late. At the same moment, the elevator goes down with the president of the association. Again I change plans. I go to the Social Security office, even though I doubt that in eve of holiday (in Tarragona we are celebrating the Local Festivity) it will be open. But this time I’m lucky. There are few people. I suppose that many shared my doubt, and above all got frightened by the rain. A very kind woman updates me about the freelance business. And again that sentence: “If you were unemployed, you would be able to capitalize the unemployment fee, or you would receive…”. Before I have time to be angry again, she smiles to me and says a magical word: “Allowance”. I am woman, youngster and minor of 35 years, and therefore the State wants to help me to become an independent worker. Because of that I have the right, during the first 15 months (postponable until 30), to a 30% reduction of the social security quota. I consider this the best news of the day. It’s not a lot, but not every day can be rose colored.

First school day. For most people it means returning to normality. For me it has been an avalanche of mothers with questions, proposals, encouraging words… and many concrete requests to pay attention to. I am class delegated of the parents’ school association, so this is what usually happens when school starts again. I do not complain, since ExploraTgn.cat has appeared thanks to my experience with this association and the blog I created last year as a fast communication tool for the parents of childhood education at school.

Sílvia, who lately is working on the design of ExploraTgn.cat’s image, asked some days ago questions as ‘what do you want people to think of the web at the first look‘, or ‘what do you want to transmit with the graphical image’. It was very clear to me, so I explained it to her. Today, after receiving the avalanche of requests, often in a hurry and in a telegraphic way, because everybody was in a rush to go to work, I have reaffirmed the idea.

Few of us have time to play with. ExploraTgn.cat has to be a tool that resolves your weekend in a few minutes. Most of us work already a lot during the week and are not happy to add a few hours in front of the computer, attempting to choose an interesting weekend family plan of the large range of activities offered. Therefore, we have to offer a pack with everything included, so you it will free you from looking for a restaurant in one place, a compatible route in an other and moreover, check the weather information on a third web (so that you know if you need to take with you jackets or not). It has to be arranged with one look and in a pair of clicks. It has to be useful, simple and offer fast consulting; you must be able to print it easily and put it in your pocket.

We won’t achieve this reloading the e-zine with a pyrotechnic design, full of flash applications and pop-ups, with twisted typographies that only complicate the work, which is to find fast and easily what we search. Do we renounce to the design? On the contrary! We precisely need an excellent design, and this is Silvia’s task. We want a fresh, serious and professional image with a clear reference to the children, but without being childish, fulfilling at the same time all requirements that we have brought up. A real challenge.

We want to contribute to the promotion of Camp de Tarragona and Terres de l’Ebre areas. We will only succeed if more people can read us and participate of this project. So, from now on beside of publishing in Catalan, you will also be able to follow and write us in Spanish and English.

Welcome to this journal about ExploraTgn.cat’s creation!

Sorry, this entry is only available in Català.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Català.