New website for St Louis based Big River Associates
Launched today is a new web site for Big River Associates. They offer a wealth of business expertise from Corporate Strategy to Franchising, Mergers & Acquisitions to Team Building and can leverage their experience in a wide variety of business disciplines.
Based on a custom designed, clean template with a palette of cool blues and grays the home page pops with a vibrant slide show featuring the key expertise of the business. Easy navigation allows the site visitors to transverse effortlessly through the site.
The web site is the latest brand elements developed for Big River, earlier this month I wrote about the creation of their logo and Stationery set.
Website Copyright Infringement : An update.
I recently wrote a post titled ” Has your website content been stolen” after a client discovered another website owner was using her copy. I did a quick check on Indigo Image, using the tools I described in my post, and found that not one but two two web design companies were using chunks of my copy.
I contacted both companies and pointed out my areas of concern asking them to change their copy. After two days I hadn’t heard back from either it seemed they were both taking the “lets bury my head in the sand approach and hope this goes away”. I contacted their hosting companies and made a copyright infringement complaint. Both companies, Bravenet and Bluehost, took my complaint very seriously. My issues were run through their legal departments. The end result, both offending web design companies have had their sites suspended.
©Indigo Image 2009 at the bottom of each page of the web site is there for a reason. Everything from the design and copy is copyrighted material and can’t be used in any form by someone else unless they have authorization to do so.
Have you checked your web site recently? Is your web site copy being used by someone else?
Free Vector Art Brush set for Adobe Illustrator.
During this recent project, I made good use of one of my favorite tools in Adobe Illustrator – custom brushes.
In under ten minutes I have produced this complicated graphic, simply by designing a set of custom brushes and applying them to a circle.
Here are the brushes I generated:-
They are yours for free. Download the zipped file Here
To install
- unzip the file
- Copy the file to your Illustrator > Presets > Brushes folder
- Restart illustrator.
- Illustrator>window>brush libraries>indigo_image_1
The brushes will now appear in your brush palette.
Enjoy!
Has your website content been stolen?
Last week a client contacted me with news that she had discovered a web site that was using her web copy. It was a site offering the same type of service and operating in the same geographic area. Not good news.
I suggested she contact the site owner to point out the obvious copyright issues. After an initial acknowledgment and a promise to fix things the site owner is now refusing to make any changes.
Turning to an attorney is the next step but I have also suggested contacting the hosting company of the offending web site and making a copyright infringement complaint. I took this approach many years ago when copy and images ( even code) from this web site were taken. The hosting company suspended the infringing site very quickly which paved the way for immediate discussions and a solution.
My customer’s experience has spurred me to to a little research on our own web site today and low and behold I have discovered a web design company who have stolen huge chunks of our copy. They have been contacted and ask to amend the site and I have put in a copyright infringement complaint with their hosting provider.
Here is a list of resources that can be useful in these sort of cases.
www.whois.net
Useful for details of the domain name registrar and hosting provider
www.copyscape.com
Search for copies of your page on the web. Has a premium service
www.plagiarismchecker.com
Free service to check for plagiarism, simple enter your URL
www.archive.org
The way back machine. Useful for establishing timelines
www.google.com/dmca.html
Notify Google of the infringement – must be done via snail mail or fax
Banner Designs for St Louis Retail Center
This was a fun project. We were commissioned to design a set of “trendy” banners for a St Louis metro retail center. At 18 by 10 ft each they will be hung and illuminated in vacant stores.
Logo and stationery set for Big River
Here is one of the latest projects we have been working on; Big River Associates.
Here is the logo and stationery set. A web site is in the works.
Eye of a St Louis web designer
Today marks a very special day for the St Louis web designer. My husband and I were sworn in as American citizens.
Here we are with Honorable Frederick R. Buckles, who presided over the ceremony and led us through the Oath of Allegiance.
