graphic design, print, websites, logos, ads, publications, wordpress
Local search is especially important for small businesses and locally owned business that rely on a lot of walk-in customers. For example: restaurants, hair salons, co-op groceries, home decor, chiropractors and gift shops just to name a few.
This is a great chart showing the connections between various local search resources.
Source: http://getlisted.org/resources/local_search_ecosystem.pdf
Advertising is based on one thing, happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is okay. You are okay.
— Don Draper, Mad Men
I know he’s just a fictional character and it’s not really the full story on what advertising is but something about it stuck with me. There is some truth that advertising is about happiness; but not just about happiness, it’s about emotion.
Link to video to get the emphasis:
https://youtu.be/E0L8f1IY1Vk?t=49s
And I know, I know, I’m a little behind on getting into the tv show Mad Men but finally started watching it on Netflix last night.
Client: Claire & Tom via HotFut
This was an unusual situation where Chris Jeffries of HotFut contracted with Fascination Design on this project when he realized he was in over his head without much time left to get the website live.
This site was built and launched within 48 hours of having the project details. We had a draft ready in 24 hours and the minor changes and testing was completed in just under 2 days.
I can’t guarantee this short a time frame with every project type but it isn’t impossible for select sites. It helped that the clients were extremely organized and responsive.
The primary goal of the site was to be simple, elegant, non-cheesy, informative (6 pages and a PDF) and done asap. The site was to be developed using html, css and php.
Look and feel of the site: The site was to be simple, elegant and compliment the “Save the Date” card (but did not need to match exactly.)
Rough list of requests:
What the clients said:
I
n my opinion, elegant is one of the hardest things to accomplish in a website – there’s a fine line between elegant and infantile. Not to mention it’s so easy to cheese up a webpage with too many frills and too much information. I think we walked those lines very well.
In my mind, two things made this possible:
- Claire’s vision and communication – she knew what she wanted and gave great feedback that helped us get the rough design right
- Hilary’s skills – Hilary did a great job of taking in everything and turned our rough design into reality, in very short order.
I’m thrilled with the finished product and I’m glad you are, as well!
– Chris Jeffries, Owner HotFut
I
love the site and think it is just perfect. I like the added details that tie with the save the date invite such as the heart on the letter and our names at the upper left. Thank you for your help and design!
– Claire
Interact with the archived website:
http://fascinationdesigndemo.com/claireandtomswedding/
There are certain things that can be done to increase your chances at showing up for certain search words and phrases. HOWEVER, no matter what is done to increase those chances, we do not have control over the search engines.
If you absolutely MUST show up for a certain search phrase, I would recommend PPC (Pay per click) using Google AdWords, Bing ads and Yahoo Advertising.
However if people are not even searching for xyz (description of your product/service and any related terms) then you still need to find other ways to increase demand. Send samples to bloggers, advertise in traditional media, go to trade shows (the list goes on.)
This is oversimplified but hopefully will help you grasp larger seo and marketing concepts that require this base knowledge. SEO is not a quick fix. Neither is building a website.
Related: SEO / SEM / PPC
Seeing this error message in VMware can be more than annoying:
Particularly after you’ve installed, reinstalled, removed and reinstalled VMWare Tools and done… well almost everything else you’re told to do to fix it.
So then you come across this tip: See if your vmx file includes the following line of code and if it’s missing, add it.
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000e"
Say wha? Yeah I was lost on this suggestion when I came across it in the forums particularly after searching my computer for .vmx and coming up with nothing.
Ok – here’s the step by step of how to do that:
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000e"
IF you have that line of code in your file then your problem is somewhere else. However if you don’t find this line of code in the file, you need to add it. Yes, just copy and paste it exactly as I have it above and add it to the file in Text Edit. Then Save > close and you should be able open your virtual machine in VMware and connect to the internet now.
It looks like it’s a fair number of people upgrading to Windows 8 in VMware from another older version of Windows (7, Vista, XP) may encounter this problem.
Branding is not the same thing as a visual identity. Branding isn’t what you tell people you are, it’s what people think you are. Brand is your business’ personality. You can’t control it completely but you can guide it to a certain extent but to do so, you have to first have a clear idea of who you want your business to be.
If your business were a person what kind of personality would they have?
Ex: Geeky? In crowd? Athletic? Professional? Sense of humor?
If your business were a magazine (or a couple of magazines) what would it be?
Ex: Wired meets Martha Stewart Living? Inc meets Garden & Gun?
If your business were a famous person who would they be?
Ex: Mick Jagger? Donald Trump? Lady Gaga? Michelle Obama?
These are just some quick questions I sometimes ask people about their business. The simpler version is “how would you describe your business? What kind of adjectives would you use?” Knowing this can be very helpful for creating a design to match.
However no amount of saying one thing will change how people perceive you if you are clearly another. IF you can barely turn on your computer and you think doing a self promotion on facebook once a month counts as social media, you clearly are NOT a tech savvy, social media wielding entrepreneur.
If you want more ideas or details,
the following is a good slideshow on the subject of brands:
The Brand Gap from coolstuff
What you spend your money and your time on is what you find important. If you’re not then you aren’t making conscious decisions on spending money and time.
Put another way, if you are not spending time and/ or money on something then it might not actually be important to you OR you might need to re-prioritize.
I don’t submit bids for RFPs without a meeting or option to have a conversation.
I find that it’s very important for both parties to be able to ask questions, get answers and know that they can work together off paper as well as on paper. A website or getting something designed is a collaboration and I have yet to have seen an RFP that was thorough enough for me to give an accurate and full estimate from without additional follow-up.
If you are sending out RFPs simply looking for the lowest price, you have come to the wrong place. Our pricing is fair to both parties, both the customer and the designer(s), which often means it’s not the rock bottom lowest. When in doubt, I bid high because I’m not going to nickel and dime people after the fact which is the other reason that having a conversation and having questions answered is so important to an accurate estimate.
One other thing that typically comes up when I see either “RFP” or “RFQ” as the starting point is full-time employee head count. I will go ahead and get this out of the way: I work with other reliable designers on an as-needed basis and do not currently have employees. I have more than once been told after submitting a project sheet and estimate that “one of our contract requirements was 5 employees minimum, sorry we missed telling you that.” Please save us all some time and be forthright if this is one of your requirements.
I hope this doesn’t come across as rude but having been in business since 2000, I’d rather call it like I see it instead of waste people’s time.
At a bare minimum Fascination Design must be able to ask questions and get answers in order for us to consider spending time an RFQ/RFP. Bottom line: IF there’s no conversation we’re probably not a good fit anyway.
Small businesses might not need to know this level of typographic terminology, but designers do. We might not have 100% of it memorized which is why this is an excellent reference. 🙂
Source: http://www.fontshop.com/glossary/
