Archive for the ‘examples’ Category

The illustration below is a custom flyer for an insurance company in Florida with a custom map of Kissimmee, space for an address label and stamp, yet appropriate for a handout as well as mailing.

The background image of the company building is actually a collage with significant photo edits for a more attractive presentation. Not seen are utility poles and wires, background signs from nearby businesses, the original sky (replaced), and the card back which is identical except in Spanish.

View additional examples of custom post card and flyer artwork for print in the custom post card gallery, and then email or write about affordable custom flyer artwork and printing options for your small business.

As computer technology and internet browsers change, web designers should adjust their thoughts about what is right or wrong in web design. There is no standard web design page width, yet web developers often have a favorite, and I’m no different. The standard I use for new designs is fixed width at 960 pixels, so some designers would complain that “older” 800×600 pc monitors will have a horizontal scroll bar across the bottom. From checking stats, fewer than 5% of my visitors have 800×600, so that (old) objection to horizontal scrolling because of page widths wider than 800 no longer applies.

Some small business web design clients don’t realize that controlling a visitor’s experience completely is impossible. For example, in all browsers you can enlarge text size which is an option for vision impaired people. The standard in IE is “medium” text size which should look fine on all computer monitors. I test each of my web design projects in the latest version of all 5 major browsers to make sure the custom web design displays properly.

The enlarged text option can move objects around, so if you allow text resizing which is the right thing to do, you no longer control the visitor’s experience. Not discussed, and most web designers either do not know or care about this aspect of design, is accessibility. Many designers create sites with fixed font sizes, so visitors have no choice, yet mine allow disabled persons who need larger text to enjoy reading site content.

While my standard web design page width is 960 pixels, even that number has evolved with year to year changes in technology. There is no one correct answer, so being flexible and offering clients a choice based on their preferences will help keep the majority happy. Don’t like a page width standard? Ask, and most web designers will accommodate your needs.

The custom business card gallery on my main site features more than 50 designs done for clients, yet it has not been updated in at least a year. Here are two recent card designs with custom logos for a real estate company and an insurance company. Graphics are shown larger than actual size in low resolution.

Real estate card of Green Investment Group, LLC

Insurance card design for Einstein Insurance and Investment Group

Each features custom logos from sketches provided by the client, and then rendered in a unique way or color scheme in vector graphic art for print to match their corporate image. Clients needing a business card, custom ad, or print advertising yet don’t have logo artwork can email me a scanned image. As part of my small business services I can reproduce just about any logo in vector art for print or online.

I just completed custom graphic artwork of a CD cover, CD insert, and CD label for a newly released album, Back to the Basics, from Shizz Entertainment and featuring 21 songs of indie artists in the Philadelphia area. This comes less than a week after designing a one page website for them and creating posters, flyers, and other printed marketing materials.

Shizz Entertainment, a small business and Philadelphia independent artist recording studio, also does production and promotion for solo artists or groups, and specializes in gospel, r and b, jazz, and poetry whether vocal, instrumental, or both.

Below is the music album cover design and other artwork shown approximate actual size in low resolution.

Next is the cd album insert showing tracks of these independent musical artists and groups in order of their appearance: Shizz, Young Don the Don, Young Leek, Nuckles, Scrooge, Geezz, Lord Dom, Millz Banks, Black Card, Kanard, Mac Money, 12 Gage, Crazy Ink, and O.C.S.

Finally, here’s the look of the finished CD label simulated as printed and placed on a production CD. The look matches the album cover and includes all 21 track titles and the names of each artist or group for every song.

The artwork was custom designed for this promotional music CD, and free downloads of all tracks are scheduled for released on the Shizz Entertainment website later this month.

Readers interested in affordable custom web design or matching graphic artwork for print are welcome to email me from any page for a no obligation review and proposal.

I recently created a logo design that included Chinese characters for a new client in Orlando, Florida, whose core business is services to restaurants, especially Chinese restaurants. The client furnished a handwritten version of the characters for their logo which I then recreated in Xara Xtreme.

Their printed marketing materials will be in English. The top view shown above is the handwritten scanned version they provided, and below that is my finished version that was integrated into their logo for the benefit of clients who read Chinese. The phrase has meaning for the majority of their customers without being dominant, while the look is decorative rather than literal for the other restaurants.

Duplicating an existing design or sketch into a finished logo is just one of the services that I provide for custom small business artwork for print or online. This client confirmed the rendering was perfect and easy to read, so with some imagination and Xara Xtreme vector graphics software, graphic designers can achieve professional results.

Custom website design services have been expanded for clients interested in e-commerce websites, online stores, CMS Content Management Systems, and forums or message boards. Starting price for budgetary purposes for dynamic interactive sites are as follows:

$1000 to $5000  for a custom Forum or Message Board, custom CMS Content Management System, custom E-Commerce Online Store, or a custom Main Site with Online Store website design.

Price includes installation with a custom look and basic setup. The client will be given resources for learning how to load and manage their e-commerce website, content management system, or forum community message board.

These custom website packages allow customers to take over managing their website by adding or deleting content without knowing the details of HTML code. Most begin with a free open source template to save $1000′s in design fees, and each is customized for a unique look including custom graphics.

Small business owners don’t have to spend $5-10,000 or more for an online store, forum, or CMS website when affordable options are available from the Small Business Resource Center.

In addition, a custom integrated blog may be added to the package which allows easy publishing of advice and news. The benefits of adding fresh content often may be realized with any of these custom package dynamic website designs.

A consistent look in all media advertising is important for establishing branding and a familiar corporate identity.

Besides custom website design, my services include custom matching graphic artwork for print. Below is an example of a half page full color magazine ad designed for Roll Screen Solutions of Orlando, Florida. The ad will target high end homeowners next month in a home renovation magazine.

The image is smaller than actual size, and low resolution. In addition, I’ve designed client advertising including phone book and newspaper advertisements in full color, black and white, or 2-color. The design artwork in this example was half the price of the magazine’s art department rate, and matches the website, brochure, and business cards which I also created for Roll Screen Solutions.

A few years ago I created artwork for a highway billboard to match one client’s color scheme. In their case the advertising agency would have done artwork for free. After having me do their website, custom mailers, trifold brochure, newspaper ads, and business cards, the client preferred paying for billboard artwork to keep the consistent corporate identity.

When typing text content in HTML for your small business website, or any site, my advice is using the word “and” instead of the symbol “&” unless that is specifically part of the official name for your company. Certainly many attorney and other partner type company names will use ampersand.

The ampersand is a special reserved code character in HTML and must be coded as “&” to properly display on a page, and to avoid confusion. Otherwise, if you simply use the character “&” it will display on the page, however each occurence is an HTML code error.

The goal in any site should be zero, or near zero code errors. If you hand code your HTML you can eliminate each “&” error by following this advice. Using “and” instead of “&” will make your content more literal for readers and search engines, as well.

Do-it-yourself small business website designers are sometimes graphically challenged, and the pixel trash around logos or text in their GIF website graphics is not uncommon. This short tutorial for website design and online graphics is a lesson in overcoming that problem. There is an easy solution once you understand a technique called “error diffusion” for creating transparent graphics that blend into the background.

We’ve all seen examples of tiny jagged off color squares around the edge of logos or clipped photographs used for websites. First impressions are critical to keeping visitors interested in staying on your website. Taking care to create professional graphics without the pixelated trash may be the only difference between you and a competitor, and fixing the problem is not really difficult.

Here’s a portion of a customer’s logo done with and without error diffusion. Both graphics were created in Xara Xtreme which allows selecting error diffusion during the export to GIF process. The difference in quality is subtle yet obvious.

You will need a vector graphics software program. Some are expensive. Xara Xtreme is my choice for professional designs for print or online, and their program is perfect for novice designers or full time pros. The price starts at less than $100 and you may download a free 30 day trial of Xara Xtreme here. As your skills advance, you can use Xara to create animations and smooth flash graphics, also.

Error diffusion is an option for exporting graphics to GIF format that intentionally picks up a small amount of the background color so that the finished display is crisp and clear. The secret is placing the graphic over a block of color that will not be exported yet it is the same color as the background. This explains why the same logo shown above looks so much crisper when error diffusion is applied.

I recommend investing in a vector graphics program so you can create cleaner graphics to display online. The improved look in your website design could repay the modest software investment with just one decent sale of your products or service.

The team at AT&T; have put up a test site for the iPhone at iPhoneTester.com for the benefit of web developers to sample test their designs to simulate how well they display on the new Apple gizmo. For sites done in XHTML with CSS, which is my standard technique and the recommended method according to Apple, “the look” on the iPhone should be just fine.

The page features a graphic simulation of the iPhone with an open space for displaying content, and then an input box to enter your www domain name. After testing several sites, I’m satisfied the designs I’ve created don’t fall apart. They do, however, require horizontal scrolling which is not the case for laptop or desktop models. The XHTML with CSS sites I have designed are flexible and stretch to fill the screen regardless of screen size without any horizontal scrolling.

The recommended browser on the AT&T; site is Safari which some perceive as a distant 5th behind the other 4 major browsers, so it was a curious exercise and recommended standard. Sites in XHTML with CSS that do not use tables for layout tend to display very well on cell phone screens without scrolling, and I can’t help but be disappointed by any design that has a “displays best on…” disclaimer.

Have fun and try your www domain on the iPhone Display Test Website here.