About This Blog

I'm a designer whose projects range from interactive media to e-commerce to print. This blog is about my work and my learning. Click here to visit my online design portfolio.

6 June 2008 - 18:58Business Card Sale

Heads up! My favorite printer, Sharpdots.com, is running a sale this month on business cards.

5,000 cards for $47. Not too shabby. Although their regular prices are very reasonable too. They’re my favorite printer to deal with because the printing, service, and speed are consistently awesome.

Click here to get the special pricing. Applies to RapidDots orders only. Offer ends June 30th.

Need business card design help? Contact me!

No Comments » | Tags: cool links

8 May 2008 - 3:53Favicon 101

Favicon 101 What is a favicon?

A favicon, pronounced “fave (short for favorite) icon” is the little icon that shows up next to the URL in the address bar of most browsers. It’s also commonly the icon that shows up next to a web site name if you bookmark it or add it to your favorites.

How to make a favicon

All you need is a square image (JPG or PNG) of what you want to make into your favicon. The size does not matter, but keep in mind a favicon is 16×16 pixels, so if you include words or intricate imagery, it will be reduced and probably no longer distinguishable. When you create the square image, make sure you crop it so that there is as little negative space around the actual image as possible.

The next step - making it into a favicon - can be done a few different ways. There are several free favicon generators on the web, and I have found these are easy to use and give great results. My favorite is located at FavIcon from Pics.

Once you create a favicon you are happy with, you need upload the resulting file - favicon.ico - to your web server in the root directory. This is usually the topmost folder that also contains your main web page files. On some browsers, this is all you need to do. However if you want to make sure all of the browsers will recognize that you have a favicon, you need to add this code anywhere between the <head> and </head> code in every html document on your site.

Do you need a favicon? Comment on this entry and I’ll create some favicon options for you to use for free. Make sure you provide your e-mail so I can be in touch.

No Comments » | Tags: how-to

7 February 2008 - 22:47Logos on Cakes

I was about to post about one of my logos being featured on a cake for the first time ever. But then I realized that’s not entirely true. Two of my logos have been on cakes! Here’s the one I received a photo of today:

Cake with Orthodontist Logo

This is an Orthodontist’s logo. Late last year I worked with Dr. Rediger to come up with a logo and create a stationery set. He is expanding his practice and recognized the benefits of having a solid identity. I do think it is kind of funny that an orthodontist is serving up a sugary cake, but dental practitioners certainly have a sweet tooth too!

Orthodontist Logo & Stationery

And here’s the other cake. It doesn’t feature the logo in full, but elements of it are used:

That one was for a party at Little Fishes Swim School. The owner’s friend created this cake - and coincidentally created my wedding cake too! Small world. The baker/cake decorator’s name is Kathy Thomson - she is brilliant! And since this entry is all about cakes, I’ll share my Día de los Muertos (day of the dead) inspired wedding cake that Kathy created:

My Wedding Cake

The cake toppers on my cake were from MexicanSugarSkull.com.

5 Comments » | Tags: personal, work in action

1 February 2008 - 23:35Martha Stewart vs. Oprah

Martha Stewart and Oprah are both bigtime players in the media market. They each have their respective television programs, magazines, radio programs, and various endorsements. I was surfing sites as part of research for a design I’m creating, and I was interested to see how the womens’ enterprises measure up on the web. Check them out:

MarthaStewart.com

Oprah.com

Say what you will of Martha, but the folks behind her web site have done an amazing job. MarthaStewart.com is absolutely gorgeous. There is a lot going on, yet it is presented in a simple and clean manner. The color palette is vibrant without overpowering the content, and it does a great job of distinguishing the content areas. Martha’s site also features stunning photography which dramatically ups the classy factor!

Oprah.com, on the other hand… is kind of overwhelming! There is so much going on here that I have trouble focusing on any one section. The color palette, while rather blah, does not offend me. However the splashes of taupes and browns seem to be used haphazardly without a clear motive from a usability standpoint. I see a lot of brown gradients and boxes, but they’re all over the place. Rather than accentuating points of interest, they make me feel claustrophobic. I think that discarding these unnecessary design elements and replacing with white space would give this site, and its user, a lot more breathing room.

Another weakness of Oprah.com is the lack of consistency. If you navigate away from the main page via the dropdown menu in the top right, the “mini sites” are inconsistent and there is not always a clear way to get back to where you were before. This site needs an organizational overhaul in my opinion. Let your goals for functionality lead and then the design will follow.

I didn’t mean for this to become an Oprah bashing entry - I have nothing against her. Quite the opposite! Oprah’s got the daytime tv circuit on lockdown and personalitywise, I think she beats Martha. But that’s just my opinion. However on the Web turf, Martha wins this match hands-down.

5 Comments » | Tags: versus

8 January 2008 - 7:41Site Launch: Squids Trivia Night

For the past few years I have been active in a St. Louis team called the Squids. We are a softball team, but we use the team name when we participate in Trivia Nights as well. Last Fall I started a St. Louis Kickball team under the name too.

The group is connected randomly, a bunch of us went to Webster University at some point, but it’s mostly friends of friends. Overall a fun and friendly group.

Our softball team captain, RØB, came up with the idea for us to host our own trivia night as a fundraiser for the team. I had purchased squid-ball.com with the intent of making it a portal of Squids events, rosters, photos, etc. That site is still in the making, but in the meantime I created a mini-site to serve as a resource for information about our trivia night as well as a place you can sign-up online.

Our trivia night is this weekend - Saturday, January 12th, 2008. There are still tables available, so if you’re in the area you should come! These are always a ton of fun, and I’m even writing a category of questions :).

1 Comment » | Tags: personal, site launch, work in action

8 January 2008 - 6:16Site Launch: Benton Park Photography Co.

Happy New Year! Just launched: the new web site for Benton Park Photography Company, owned by Becca Young and Adam Williams, a husband-and-wife photography team. They have been building a successful business for awhile now, and are excited to launch this just in time for Wedding Season 2008.

Benton Park Photography Co. Logo Becca and Adam have such a diverse scope of work - they are just as comfortable shooting in a lavish banquet hall with pressed white linens as they are in colorful and raw urban settings. More than wedding photography, they consider their work ‘visual storytelling’. When you review one of their galleries you see what that means - moments and memories are captured, not awkward poses and fake smiles.

Earlier last year I worked with Adam and Becca to establish the logo for Benton Park Photography Company. The goal was to keep it simple (which I’m always a fan of), yet elegant and versatile. This was the logo that spurred my love affair with the Gotham typeface, which I find so striking and gorgeous.

I was thrilled when they approached me to create their wedding photography web site. They encouraged my to creativity run free. As is often my process, I used the logo as a jumping point for inspiration: generous white space (something I’m also a huge fan of) and clean lines. I also incorporated a romantic softness that caters to its audience without upstaging the showcase of stunning photography.

This site was a learning experience for me. The client already had a photography blog through Google’s Blogger service, but wished to incorporate it seamlessly into the site as well as ditch the *.blogspot.com subdomain. Prior to this project, the extent of my experience with Blogger was leaving comments on friends’ blogs. So the admin side was different, though not a complete surprise because I have worked with other blogging services like Wordpress, Vox, and LiveJournal. Still, they’re all different! The documentation at Blogger is lacking so a lot of this was fumbling in the dark. To compound the confusion, Blogger also has a legacy version of Blogger and a newer more dynamic and xml-version - but they aren’t equal. Ultimately the legacy version seemed to work better for custom html work, so that’s the route we went.

Another hiccup along the way was with the web host, Yahoo!. We experienced the site going up and down a lot upon initial launch, but the downtime wasn’t consistent with anything we were doing (i.e. browsers or ISP) so I had a hard time troubleshooting. The site would be down so I’d ring up their tech support, and by the time someone picked up the site was up again - of course!

I’m about to get pretty technical here, for the sake of anyone who may experience a similar issue - so feel free to check out!

To figure out the issue I pinged the IP when the site was down and ran through whois to discover there was a discrepancy in the hosting address for http://www.bentonparkphotoco.com and http://bentonparkphotoco.com - the difference between those being the “www”. The two are actually two different addresses - www is a subdomain - but most hosts set the www to direct to whatever content is on the server. However rather than specifying this, Yahoo! just has unestablished wildcard subdomains do that.

When I was finagling the Blogger I had set up www for the blog, but then become better educated and decided to cancel that request. But it seems like that request did not go through and return to the wildcard redirect, so the www subdomain was like an orphan with no specific direction, so its behavior was erratic and therefor the downtime inconsistent. Once I figured this out and explained it to a knowledgeable Yahoo! tech named Johnathan, he escalated it to their Tier 3 support who reset the DNS settings. So happy we figured that out!

So the site is up - check it out at http://www.bentonparkphotoco.com and if you or someone you know are looking for a St. Louis wedding photographer, I recommend them!

2 Comments » | Tags: site launch, work in action

11 December 2007 - 1:54Site Launch: Little Fishes Swim School

I’m happy to announce the recent site launch for another new business - Little Fishes Swim School. Based in St. Louis, Missouri, Little Fishes Swim School is the brainchild of Ruth Zarren, a very talented and creative businesswoman. The swim school is geared towards children aged 6 months and up, and focuses on eliminating fear of the water and developing swimming skills.

What’s so cool about Little Fishes is that it’s the ONLY indoor salt-water pool in St. Louis. This means children can take classes year-round and, what I think is especially awesome, have POOL PARTIES in the winter months! As a November baby, this is something I would have absolutely loved to do as a child.

I’ve visited the space a few times now and I love how it is specifically geared towards the comfort and accessibility of children - quite different than the intimidating scary shallow end of a gigantic YMCA pool I remember learning to swim in. So if you are in the St. Louis area and have small children or know anybody who does, you should check it out. The web site will have latest info on Free Evaluation days.

The Web Site was a lot of fun to work on. Before starting on the site I worked with Ruth on the logo for the business. She had commissioned local artist Craig Downs to create the initial concept and needed my help with cleaning it up, integrating the business name, and making it ready for use in print and web. I also created the stationery - business card, letterhead, envelope, as well as Pool Party Invitations and Rack Cards.

I absolutely love working with a business to this extent; it gives me the opportunity to plan for consistency in the look of the materials, which I believe gives a professional impression. Here are some photos:

Little Fishes Swim School Letterhead

Little Fishes Swim School Business Cards

Little Fishes Swim School Party Invitations

No Comments » | Tags: site launch, work in action

2 December 2007 - 22:47Site Launch: Wedding Distinctions

Hot off the press! A new site I’ve been working on, Wedding Distinctions, has officially launched. It’s a wedding store specializing in unique wedding favors, reception trinkets, gifts for the wedding party, etc. They’ve got quite an impressive and still-growing selection. I was responsible for developing the site and implementing within the e-commerce software. I worked closely with rockstar designer Brian Clever to bring it all to fruition.

The company was started by Malinda Hall and Kelli Gould, two very enthusiastic and hardworking women! They are super organized and fully immersed themselves in jumping into e-commerce. Like almost all clients opening an e-commerce store, they realized very quickly that it is a TON of work!

One of the biggest hurdles in this project was settling on an e-commerce provider. There are lots of options out there - some free, some cost.. to make a decision depends what your skill level and desire for technical involvement are. In my experience, most business owners running an online store want to worry about managing orders and inventory, not setting up an ASP back-end and server configurations. In those cases, managed e-commerce solutions are usually the best option.

The difference between an independent e-commerce solution and a managed e-commerce solution: the independent e-commerce solutions come prepackaged with a bundle of files. You upload those files to your own web server, and configure them. There is generally no formal tech support for these beyond maybe a forum or some online guides. You are on your own. The pros of these are that you have full control. If you have the knowledge and time, you can make it work just how you want it to. Of course, you have full control to screw it up too! In my opinion, the best independent e-commerce solutions are OSCommerce and Zen Cart.

Managed E-Commerce Software Solutions Managed solutions are generally a LOT more hands off in regards to technical-knowhow. They’re ready to go out of the door. You can add your product and be selling the same day! Of course, you’re best advised to take some time and consider getting an e-commerce designer to help you plan a user-friendly and visually appealing online store, not to mention getting a product, setting up payment, writing copy, and all those other “ton of work” things I mentioned a moment ago.

Managed solutions cost money. They either charge a monthly fee, or a percentage of your sales, or both. In my opinion, the best managed e-commerce solutions are Volusion, Yahoo! Small Business, and NetworkSolutions E-commerce Web Sites (formerly MonsterCommerce). All of these companies provide hosting for your store, e-mail accounts, and 24/7 phone and e-mail support. Each provides an overall good product, albeit they all contain their own minor setbacks.

I personally have only dealt with the Volusion and Network Solutions / MonsterCommerce products. I’ve yet to design & develop for a Yahoo! Store, but I’d love to so I can get a feel for the full spectrum. However based on what I have dealt with, my vote is for Volusion. What gives it the winning stride? Full FTP access and superior integrated CSS control. They also have video tutorials and well-written up-to-date guides so there’s less fumbling in the dark in the beginning. Volusion is what Malinda and Kelli settled on for Wedding Distinctions, and so far it’s been a success!

When choosing an e-commerce solution, my best advice is to do your research. Note what functionality your competitors have and make sure your e-commerce provider can give you that. And if you’re in the market for Wedding stuff, check out Wedding Distinctions!

2 Comments » | Tags: site launch, work in action

27 November 2007 - 23:05Harvest: Great tool for tracking time

As my freelance workload has increased over the past several months, and I found myself more frequently quoting estimates on new projects, it became clear that I was in need a better way to track my time than waiting until the end and guessing how much time it took me. And since I’ve started tracking my time, I’ve realized I was way under quoting myself.

I spent a few hours reviewing some of the best time tracking tools for what I needed to do, and settled on Harvest.

It’s easy to set up Jobs, set your rate for various tasks, and create predefined tasks lists for easy addition to a new project. I also like that you can plug in your estimate for a project and see how you’re measuring up in actual time spent.

If you know me well at all, you know that customer service is HUGE to me - just as important as the product itself in most cases. Harvest sent me an e-mail a few days into my trial to ask me what I thought. I responded favorably, and they responded to that to say thanks and encouraged me to contact them with any questions or comments. I like to know that someone is available if I need them, and genuinely interested in improving their product. I am happy to support them.

You can get a free fully functional trial for 30 days.

No Comments » | Tags: cool links, personal

24 November 2007 - 5:15Work in Action: Bella and Max

One of the most exciting parts of working on a logo is to see it in action - on a business card, t-shirt, mouse pad, signage, anything! A few years ago I created a logo for a new children’s clothing boutique, Bella and Max, which specializes in unique and gorgeous apparel for kids, and also features a kid-focused salon. Working with the owner, Julie, was such a pleasure and she really let me run free with my creativity. What we came up with is one of the logos that I’ve gotten the most positive feedback on since.

I also got to create the Bella and Max web site which was a joy because we tied in the unique elements from the logo to establish a consistent branding scheme. Awhile back Julie was nice enough to send me photos of the logo painted on signs at her brick-and-mortar location in Bothell, WA.

Bella and Max Storefront