Have you ever just wanted to just pack up and catch a plane to some far-flung location? Stand up in the middle of your cubicle farm and announce that you’re going across the ocean to your bleary eyed co-workers? Or even just wanted to unplug and see what the world has to offer for just a few weeks? But how can you? You’re working, you have families, bills, mortgages, pets, RESPONSIBILITIES! Well gather around folks, we’ve got something to tell you…Career Breaks!! It’s not only possible but will most likely be the best thing that has ever happened to you and even to your career.

Career breaks are fairly common across Europe and Australia but have are just begging to be seen in the United States and Canada. What is a career break? It’s basically just what it sounds like, taking a break or sabbatical from your career, in most cases to travel.

Last year several seasoned travelers and career breakers created Meet Plan Go! An online career break site full of articles, tips, and insight about traveling and taking a career break from people who are or have done it. Not only do they have a great site, but last year they created Meet Plan Go! Events across 13 cities with over 1500 attendees all on the same night! Read what the NY Times had to say about it.

This year the event will be held in over 17 cities across the U.S. and Canada. And for the first time there will be an event in New Olreans, hosted by yours truly! Leaving our old life behind to go traveling wasn’t easy, but doing so not only gave us amazing expereinces and memories but have absolutly made us better people all around. It gave us the confidence to come back and start our own company in a new city, something we had wanted to do in our past life but was too uncertain to try. Taking the time to travel opened so many unexpected and amazing doors, and now we want to share this passion and experience with others. We want to nudge those who might be just “daydreaming” into taking the next step!

Does the idea of taking off and exploring the world get your blood pumping and nerves tingling? If so here’s where you can find out more:

Meet Plan Go! Website

Meet Plan Go! Facebook

Meet Plan Go! Twitter

Sign up for the informative and fun Newsletter

See all the cities and hosts for the event!

Early bird tickets to the event will go on sale at a discounted price in May, don’t wait to the last minuet as last year several hundred people were on the waiting list.

I will be hosting with backup from John, but I will be looking for people interested in becoming a panelist, help out as a volunteer, a venue, and sponsors! If you are interested or know of someone who might be a perfect fit let me know via facebook, twitter, or good ‘ol email: thecrew(at)hopandjaunt.com!

Here’s some quotes from people across the country who attended the event last year!
“This was a fantastic event! It made me realize that long-term travel is a completely realistic goal and that I have much amazing company also doing the same.” – Seattle Attendee

“Your event convinced me that my pipe dream of traveling was actually possible… and then gave me tips and tricks on how to accomplish it.” – NYC Attendee

“After this event the excitement for traveling was high for everyone. The panelists were helpful, gave excellent examples of things to do and not do, plus lots of encouragement. Everyone with this dream should go to see how it is possible.” – Chicago Attendee

“I liked the breadth of experience. Some panelists were younger twentysomethings, some were older with families. They made it clear there was no one right way to do it.” – Boston Attendee

“I loved this event! It helped reassure me that I wasn’t crazy about thinking about quitting my job to hit the road, and it connected me with many other like-minded travelers.” – Orlando Attendee

“I loved the presenters. I was so impressed with their generosity to share their experiences. It was such a good evening for me and my partner.” – Toronto Attendee

“A life-inspiring event – covering an amazing amount of relevant material. I would definitely attend another and another until I “go!”" – San Francisco Attendee

Carnival season is in motion here in New Orleans. The houses have exchanged their Christmas decor for the purple, gold, and green of Mardi Gras. Flags are hung and King Cakes are baking. Its like having a second Christmas coming, and we are anxiously awaiting to celebrate and watch the parades from our small office on St. Charles Avenue.

So in honor of our first Mardi Gras while living in the NOLA, today we are offering up a small parade of our own. A parade of some our recent design work done for some truly amazing travel bloggers and writers.

Astahaya: Private Caribbean Charter

www.astahaya.com

Astahaya.com was actually our very first job as ‘The Traveling Designers’. We met the owners (Tom & Christian) while boat sitting in Curacao, and we all became fast friends. They wanted a website to showcase their beautiful yacht for private charters, and well, we were more than happy to help. In fact, the entire website was designed and built from the spacious salon of Astahaya. We recently updated the website with new information. Working on it again brought back a lot of fond memories of our journey through the Caribbean and of all the friends we made. If you would like to see some amazing photos of a truly spectacular yacht, be sure to check out Astahaya.

Traveling Savage

www.traveling-savage.com

Keith of Traveling Savage was another of our early clients. In his “State of the Savage” January addess, Keith explained that he would be taking a greater focus on Scotland at Traveling-Savage.com. So, naturally, we helped to update his header and logo with a bit more of a Scottish look. He has a great blog with some really talented writing. And who doesn’t love Scotland?!

How to Travel the World of $50 Dollars a Day

Ebook layout for Nomadic Matt.

We’ve worked with Matt of Nomadic Matt.com since the very early days of HOP & JAUNT. We’ve done several ebook designs for Matt, and recently we’ve added one more. Matt’s latest work “How to Travel the World on $50 Dollars a Day” offers sound and effective advice on reducing the costs of your travels. In addition, the ebook comes complete with over $700 worth of travel coupons. Not to mention, the pages of great illustration!

The Neon Jungle Princess

www.thejungleprincess.com

Above shows the new header art we did for Abby of The Jungle Princess. Abby is making the transition from a Tropical Costa Rican Village to the Neon Jungles of Las Vegas, and we helped to update her website to suit her new surroundings. She’s a great writer with lots of personal insight on making real change happen in your life.

Travel Bug Juice

www.travelbugjuice.com

When Kelly first came to us looking to re-design Travel Bug Juice we could tell this was going to be a unique and fun project. Working together we created a brand new site that oozes travel bug juice fun! The site has a unique map feature to help you find the stories that interest you and Kelly’s depth of content will keep you hooked for hours.

Go! Girl Guides

www.gogirlguides.com

Not one to be caught sitting on her laurels Kelly was dreaming up Go! Girl Guides even while overhauling her current blog, Travel Bug Juice. Now a reality and rapidly gaining steam and growing Go! Girl Guides is a site and to-come-print guides for women, solo travelers, and volunteers. Keep you eye’s on this site as it’s going to taking off!

The Ultimate Tech Guide for Travelers

eBook layout for FoXnoMad

The Ultimate Tech Guide for Travelers is an ebook layout we did for Anil of FoXnoMad. In his book Anil explains how travelers can become more tech savvy with their digital gear, and he offers tips for coping with the hassles of technology while traveling. We found it to be quite handy.

Custom Header Art
We’ve done quite a few new header designs lately for some really great travel blogs.

Runaway Jane

www.runawayjane.com

A fun, illustrative new look for Runaway Jane.

C’est Christine

www.cestchristine.com

C’est Christine got a colorful, new header depicting some of her most inspiring places.

A View to a Thrill

www.aviewtoathrill.net

I enjoyed drawing the perspective of looking down from a hot air balloon in this illustration for A View to a Thrill.

www.thesocialmediasyndicate.com

A custom header for the Social Media Syndicate’s Mongolian Rally.

If you may be interested in adding a new look to your website or blog, feel free to send us an email at thecrew@hopandjaunt.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Happy Mardi Gras!

Aly & John
HOP & JAUNT

Celebrating Latin America at Ground Level Cover Art

Today we have a guest post from Steven Roll of Travelojos, the Latin America Travel Blog. We recently worked with Steven helping him design and format his new ebook “Celebrating Latin America at Ground Level”, which is available for free download here.

Below, Steven shares a little about his project and how “Hop & Jaunt helped him deliver on his commitment to produce an e-book that highlighted the talents of the Latin America travel blogging community.”

A Wrapping Worthy of the Gift by Steven Roll

” One of the things I’ve come to love about travel blogging since I started Travelojos in December, 2008 is that it motivates me to put actions behind my words. That makes me fortunate because I truly enjoy what I write about: traveling to Latin America, learning Spanish, and enjoying the culture even when I’m at home in the Washington, D.C. area.

Before I started blogging, I never would have pushed myself to do things like enroll in a language immersion program in Guatemala this year.

Another one of my goals for 2010 was to publish a free e-book featuring the work of other Latin America travel bloggers.

The idea behind Latin America at Ground Level was to have expats or regular travelers to Latin America write about the region’s pleasures and endless contradictions. Each would contribute a short personal essay about a special aspect of Latin America and what it means to them.

I contacted all of my favorite bloggers and asked them to participate. There was only one condition: each contributor had to allow his or her readers to download the e-book for free. In other words, participating in the project meant agreeing to share the gift.

In the words of mega-blogger Seth Godin:

When done properly, gifts work like nothing else. A gift gladly accepted changes everything. The imbalance creates motion, motion that pushes us to a new equilibrium, motion that creates connection.

Connecting with my readers and other Latin America enthusiasts was exactly what I was aiming for.

The challenge was doing it in an effective format. As usual, I started out by trying to do it on the cheap. My buddy was going to do the layout work for the e-book using some templates on Word. But the results weren’t worthy of my blogging friends’ contributions. It felt like wrapping an engagement ring in newspaper.

It wasn’t until a friend recommended designers Hop & Jaunt that I found the gift wrap my e-book deserved. What I liked even better than the fair price we agreed upon was the enthusiasm for the project that Hop & Jaunt’s John Clark showed from the very beginning.

He offered several different excellent designs and formats to choose from. John also took care of time consuming technical details such as right sizing all of the photos.

The final result was an e-book that came out even better than I had originally envisioned.

With my goal accomplished, it truly is the season for Thanksgiving and gifts.”

November is upon us. The time of year when our thoughts and minds turn to holiday feasting. A chance to indulge our appetites and fatten our waistlines in preparation for the approaching winter.

And here at HOP & JAUNT we have been busily serving-up tasty new designs for our fellow bloggers. What better time of year to spruce-up your website or blog with some custom design details? Its easier than you think.

Here are some custom headers we’ve recently created for some great bloggers. Feast your eyes upon these:

Living in a Hostel Header Design

Hostel connoisseur, Runaway Jane, contacted us to create this fun custom header for her website Living in a Hostel.com. During years of travel, Jane has stayed in hundreds of backpacker hostels, and has grown to love the experience. On her blog she offers insight and advice into hostel accommodations. She wanted a custom header that was fun, colorful, and depicted the unique lifestyle of hostel living. I especially liked this project because it gave us chance to do a lot of illustrations.

Renting Out Rooms Header Design

Renting Out Rooms.com is written by Mike Choi. On his blog he gives some great advice on earning extra income by renting out extra space in your home. I particularly like this blog because it agrees so much with my own personal philosophies. Mike was unsure of what he wanted for header art. Depicting the act of renting out a room could be a bit of a challenge. We worked with Mike to create an image that is sleek, clean, and fits the theme of the site perfectly. I also love the repeating background image.

Solo Friendly Header Design

Most recently we designed this custom header for Gray of Solo Friendly.com. Solo Friendly discusses the benefits and pleasures of traveling on your own. Its a great resource for those who may be discouraged from traveling without the security of a partner or a group of friends. I love the retro look here. Its so stylish and simultaneously adventurous. Be sure to to check out Gray’s blog post about her experience hiring and working with professional designers. Its a great tribute to how simple the process can be.

If you may be interested in adding a new look to your website or blog, feel free to send us an email at thecrew@hopandjaunt.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Cheers,

Aly & John
HOp & JAUNT

New York! What can I say, it stole our hearts and most of our cash.

Two weeks ago John and I traveled across the country to attend TBEX ’10 (Travel Blogger Exchange’s conference). I’ve seen online that some 800+ posts have been written about all aspects of this conference. But for those who weren’t there or who have no idea what a TBEX is, or just wants to re-hash the good ol’ time had there, let me go over the fun filled weekend highlights!

To get to New York John and I drove 3 hrs north to Birmingham, Alabama. Sure there are smaller regional airlines nearer but we had a plan. We were determined to take the train back! More on that on the following posts. As we stayed at a friend’s house we naturally stayed up too late chatting and catching up over a bottle of wine. Waking up at 4am is never fun, but with only a handful of hours of sleep it gets darn right tough. Little did we know that we were just getting started on this late-night early morning cycle…

Sleeping at the airport

We flew to Chicago and then to Newark Airport. All the while I was trying every position possible to curl up and sleep, but the airline seat engineer seemed to have done everything possible to dissuade such activities. Finally we arrived in Newark, and flying in we were treated to a spectacular vista of the cityscape. From Newark we hopped on the train to Penn Station ( I was a little disappointed as I had confused Penn Station to images from Grand Central Station). From Penn Station we took several wrong metro lines before getting acquainted with the subway system and finally found our selves safely checked into the hostel with a few hours to spare before the pre-party was to start!

Newark Train Station

After a short neighborhood exploration we took a quick nap in our hostel bunk beds. While asleep I sadly managed to kick a hole into my favorite white Panamanian made in Ecuador but bought in Colombia hat while sleeping….the first causality from NY. This was actually our first time sharing a room with strangers in a hostel as well. The hostels we stayed in Colombia offered private rooms. We thought it would not only help shave a few bucks off the trip but thought it would be fun to try it out. Turns out we didn’t have any time to socialize with those in the hostel as TBEX kept us out and about all day and night except for when we crawled straight into bed.

Overall the Jazz Hostel was a friendly, clean, and situated very conveniently to everything. They had a roof top (though only one chair now) and a common room with wi-fi. I would recommend it to any budget oriented traveler, or those who would rather spend their money other than on a bed. That being said I wasn’t a huge fan of the beds…reminded me of a half-deflated air mattress filled with potato/rice sacks. But John didn’t notice this so could just be me.

It’s such a small world, our room-mates were two English guys who had a passion for all types of American sports. When we told them we had just arrived from Alabama they responded by saying “oh yeah? Last time we were here we were at an Auburn game down there!” It’s amazing how small the world can get!

Our Jazz Hostel Room

The TBEX pre-party was to be held in the Omni-Berkshire Hotel. A swanky place a little ways uptown from where we were staying. Luckily I googled the place before getting dressed and opted out of the shorts and t-shirt idea I originally was toying with. In my defense, it was amazingly hot up there!

Who says you need a five star room to look five star!?

The Omni Berkshire Hotel

We got to the hotel and was impressed to see that what we had originally thought would be a rag-tag group of scruffy travelers were in fact, a very clean and swanky looking crowd. There were booths set up with different cocktails from the different resorts a PR firm was handling, an open bar with beer and wine, and most importantly all of our favorite writers, bloggers, and tweeters where milling about! The only awkward thing was that no one knew each others real face, just the little avatar from the blog or twitter. So most of us spent the entire evening trying to casually look at people’s name-tag first, the only problem was that the name-tags were normally on people’s chest!

Cailin O’Neil from TravelYourSelf.com and the Crew!

The Omni Hotel even gave out free hotel stays for those that reviewed their rooms. By the time the last group of us went upstairs, and promptly lounged about their comfy looking bed and couches, I’m supposed to receive an email with the free-room coupon but so far no luck… Oh what a tease, after just a little nap on the beds at the hostel I was ready to upgrade to the deluxe five star suite!

The pre-party was starting to empty out, the next day was the start of the all-day seminars and panels. While most of the mature, responsible people were heading back to their rooms the rest of us headed over to an Irish pub for the pre-party after party. You will begin to see a pattern here…

Finally we were all seated in one place, thought the crowd and music was rather loud we were finally able to sustain a conversation with people. We were able to chat with Cailin, Candice, Abby, Pam, Spencer, Natalie, Eric, Steph, Craig and Linda, Matt, Dave among many others we had met at the Pre-Party. It was buckets of fun, finally getting a chance to talk in depth with people that we had known online for months and years. I think the universal comment that came out of this meeting was that “everyone is pretty much the same personality online as off.”

On the way home we swung by Times Square. It was still packed. Kids, families, youths, adults, in every state of mind where milling around, having dinner, partying, walking…at 2 a.m. We even saw parents taking their kids for a walk in their strollers. Though I’ve heard this area is a nightmare in the daytime so we were glad we stopped by and got it off our list. The sights were amazing and just like in every other film made in N.Y

Times Square

Caitlin, Aly, and Candice Does Times Square

Southern Boys: Spencer and John Representing the South

Fin. Day One