I had the weirdest dream last night.

Freelance writers James and Harry from Men with Pens had managed to escape from their psych ward cells, stumbling their way through the dark basement until they came to what appeared to be some kind of writer’s museum.

“Write For The Web: The Guide For Beginning Writers,” the sign read, “by JCM Enterprises.”

“JCM Enterprises?” James asked, as if it were strangely familiar. “I sense something, a presence I’ve not felt since…” He never finished that thought.

Harry didn’t like the stiff look of things. Even in the gift shop, he was afraid to touch anything because it looked too nice. “Who are these pretentious pricks?” he wondered. “I’ll bet they put caviar on their Corn Flakes, and make people call them ‘Esquire.’”

Still, Harry knew they had stumbled onto a gold mine. “You know James, we wasted a lot of time early in our writing careers. All this information really could have helped us shortcut our learning curve. There’s so much hype out there about how great freelance writing is, but it’s hard to know who’s really shooting straight with you.”

As if he had been waiting for a cheesy cue, James drew his gun and began a series of dramatic poses, flitting around the room and desperately looking for an excuse to squeeze the trigger.

“Put that thing away before you hurt someone!”

“Are you new here, Harry? This is what we do.”

“Yeah, but you don’t even know what you’re aiming at.”

True, James had to admit that he couldn’t really find anything worth shooting. He was really impressed with how diverse the museum’s collection was, covering many different kinds of web writing as well as many aspects of the business that new writers might not have even though of.

James began rattling off weak excuses to shoot. “I’m just not sure how useful this would be to experienced writers.”

“Yeah, but it says right here: ‘The Guide For Beginning Writers.’”

“Hmph. Well, it could really use an overhaul so it looks like it’s wearing a leather jacket and smoking, y’know?”

“True, that would definitely help. While the information is sound, it doesn’t exactly come across with much style. You’d never see us doing something like this. Not in a million years. But I think they can be forgiven. Besides, it looks like they’re under new ownership.”

“OK, well then what about all these resource links? They look good, but I haven’t actually gone and checked them out, have you?”

“Well, no, but you can’t blame the museum for us being short on time. These guys really know what they’re doing, and I’m sure they’ll only point us in the right direction.”

James was getting anxious. “But I’ve never come back from a job with a full clip yet, and I’m not going to start now!”

“Tell you what, James. Take my gun. You can do the shooting for both of us next time.”

###

In case a translation is needed, this is a review of Write For The Web: The Guide For Beginning Writers, a $19.99 ebook by Men with Pens. The review is done in the style of their brutal “drive-by shooting” blog reviews.

Their ebook has a lot of useful information for people looking into freelance writing, but it’s written in the corporate style they had back when they went by the name of JCM Enterprises. I hope they grace us with an updated version one of these days. In the meantime, this is solid information from people who learned everything the hard way, so you don’t have to.

You may have heard of Men with Pens and their highly acclaimed freelance writing. But do you know what else they do?

When I started this blog, I used the default theme, also known as Kubrick. I made some customizations, and I was happy with everything except the banner. By default, Kubrick displays your blog name and tagline in white text on a blue background. You can easily change the background color, and in fact you can have it fade from one color into another. I had mine fade from a light red to a dark red.

(Click the image for a bigger version. I made it 2 megs smaller by converting the bitmap to a jpeg, though it’s a bit distorted.)

My banner was fine for starting out, but it wasn’t very flashy. I knew that at some point I’d want something that would look more professional and catch people’s attention. Furthermore, I was annoyed that my banner was about 50% taller than it should have been. WordPress really should shorten their Kubrick header image. I would have done it myself, except that I couldn’t easily modify the PHP code that handled the fading effect.

I decided to spring for a professional banner when I saw Catherine Lawson’s new theme. While she had her entire theme redone, it was the shiny metal in her banner that really caught my eye. I had to have something that cool.

Catherine had hired Men with Pens to design her new theme. I didn’t realize they did professional web design. In fact, they offer all these services:

• Articles and Blog Posts
• Ebooks and eGuides
• Website and Blog Content
• Newsworthy Press Releases
• Sales Letters and Copy
• Product Descriptions
• French-English Translation
• Consultation and Critique
• Web Design and Graphics

Their website described some of their web design packages, but it also said to contact them if you have a project you don’t see listed. So I asked if they could design a banner for me, just a banner without any extra bells and whistles. Despite the fact that my Automatic Blog Post Rehasher had nearly killed James and Harry via heart attack and choking on coffee, respectively, they cheerfully agreed.

I wanted to be able to drop the new banner in without changing the theme, so I said I’d need them to keep the width at 760 pixels, but they could reduce the height. They also had to preserve the gray and white borders I had in my original banner, which were actually part of the image.

I said that the banner should contain my name and my tagline, and should be some kind of red. I wanted to give them room to be creative instead of telling them exactly what the image should look like. I figured it was best to get a rockin’ banner with relatively few constraints, and then if necessary make some minor presentation changes to make it fit.

They responded with a flat rate price quote, and also gave me the option of paying by the hour. They also asked several questions about the focus of my blog and the image I wanted to convey, so they could find the right look and feel.

They came back with the astonishingly gorgeous banner you see here:

They let me pick from two different banner sizes, and I went with the larger one, which was actually the same height as my original banner. Even though I had first suggested that the height should be reduced, it was a perfect fit when they made the text bigger.

But I wasn’t quite done yet. It’s hard to see in the image above, but the bright red links clashed slightly with the dark red banner. And while the dark red banner went well with the black background, the combination was a bit too dark overall.

After playing with some different colors, I ended up keeping the links the same, and just changed the background. I used a color that bridged the gap between the bright red links and the dark red banner. It also creates a warmer tone while still complementing my rockin’ new banner.

If you don’t have much in the way of CSS skills, you would probably be better off having your entire theme designed by one team, instead of doing it peacemeal like I did. But I’m thrilled with what I ended up with!

Although I only used a limited subset of what the Men with Pens offer, my experience with them leads me to believe that they’d do an awesome job with any kind of web design work. And if you’ve read their blog, you don’t need me to convince you that they’ve got mad skillz in the writing department. I’m adding them to the Resources page so that others might learn about these men with more than just pens.