Graphic Design Project ..and time!

We are currently working on a set of product sheets for Building Porducts Corp

This is my first blog post in over a week…it is sometime difficult to find the time to write but is something commit to doing at least once a week.

Intrestingly I had an email today titled
“What is Your Real Job?: A Performance Principle from Eric Herrenkohl, Clarius”
In it, Eric talked about writing not being something he does addition to his real job – it is an important part of his real job. Got me thinking.

You can sign up for his excellent monthly email Performance Principles at http://www.clariusinc.com/

Image Optimization: Improve the load time of your web site or blog

For the average web site or blog most of the load time is a result of the images on the page, the bigger the image files, the longer it takes for the page to completely download.

To improve download time, professional web designers will go though an image optimization process where the images on a site are fine tuned via a balance of file size vs image quality.

The following picture of some nice juicy fall apples illustrate the process. The settings used to save the image were adjusted but it is not until you look at image 4 that a noticable degredation appears. In this case Image 3 would be selected having the best combination of low file size and image quality.

Although we use professional graphics software to optimize there are plently of free ulitilies available to do the hard work for you. My favorite is Net Mechanic ..here you can upload your image and it is presented in varous optimized forms. Pick the image that best suits your need, right click and “save picture as”.


Image 1 : file size=14.1 Kb

Image 2 : file size=8.66 Kb

Image 3 : file size=4.58 Kb

Image4 : file size=3.02Kb

Graphic Designer Satisfaction

As a graphic designer one of the most satisfying moments is when you finally see the designs you have been working on in their finished form.
Yesterday a client from Building Products Corp dropped by with a binder and tabs set I designed for then a while back… his comments were “Everything has been printed and looks amazing “
I dont want to appear boastful but I have to agree!


Give your brand image a polish with a Favicon

A Favicon is a little custom icon that appears next to a website’s URL in the address bar of a web browser. If a site is bookmarked (Internet Explorer (“IE”) 5.0 and above) the icon is also associated with the entry in the favorites menu…this makes a site easy to locate in a long favorites list.

See our favicon – it is based on our logo and imprints our brand image just that little bit further

Creating a favicon is quite a design challenge as you are working with a design canvas of 16 pixels square ..which is very small and does not allow for detail. Once the graphic is created it is saved as an ICO format and uploaded to the server.

A small snippet of HTML is added to your web pages

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />

and you are fully branded with a custom Favicon. If this is something you would like to add to your branding mix contact us here

And now for a little pop quiz

Can you name the organizations behind each of these Favicons? All but one of them are based in St Louis

Copyright Questions Answered

As a web and graphic design company we often get asked questions about copyright issues. Here are some of our common questions.

If we are hiring you to design a logo who will retain the copyright of the design?
The copyright of any design we create, whether it be a logo or complete web site look/feel will always be owned by the client on final payment of the project.

Do I need to do anything to register the copyright of my design?
No registration is required to secure a copyright. It automatically arises upon the creation of the work in a fixed form. However it is possible to register the copyright of a design and doing so will improve your position if there are ever infringement issues.

Do you offer Copyright Registration services?
We do not offer copyright registration services and recommend you contact an attorney specializing in intellectual property law.

What is a Copyright Notice?
A proper copyright notice includes the symbol ©, the year of first publication and the name of the copyright owner. A copyright notice is not required but can also improve the outcome of any infringement issues.

Imagery … and its use on web sites.

A recent visitor to our blog let us know how much he has enjoyed reading our posts. He said he particularly enjoys our “Eye of a St Louis web designer” photographs which have included everything from garden weeds, shells, acorns and our latest entry an ant habitat!
Thank you Mr. B for your kind comments.

It got me thinking about the use of imagergy in web sites. An image can speak a thousand words. Take this photograph for example.

We use it on the portfolio pages of our web site and team it with the phrase “Stand out from the Crowd” to emphasize the metaphorical message it sends.

Web site visitors are …and this is not meant to be rude … inherently lazy. As a web site designer one of my objectives is to get the message of any given page, across as quickly as possible and the use of appropriate imagery is a great way to do this.

St Louis web designer: New brand image for Indigo Image

We are celebrating our 7th year in business with a fresh new logo for Indigo Image, published for the first time today.

We have maintained color and design elements from the original logo but given them a more contemporary treatment.

The launch of the logo has also be combined with a freshen-up of the web site with the introduction of new page graphics.

www.indigoimage.com

What is Lorem Ipsum?

Our approach to creating a web site is a very phased process : Design, Code, Populate and launch.

During the design phase our objective is to collaborate with our client to create a look/feel design, a suitable navigation system and layout content.

For clients, it is easy to become distracted by readable text rather than focus on the overall design so we populate our sites with the latin text Lorem ipsum. Lorem lipsum has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters as is seen in english so is perfect for achieving a look feel of content.

And what does Lorem Ipsum mean?….. nothing at all!

Brand Consistency

Do your web site and brochure have a consistent look/feel and convey the same corporate message, are they offering the same customer experience? Do your business cards still have your old logo even though you had a new one designed 6 months ago?

Having a consistent use of brand elements is imperative to the success of a company.

Here is a quick checklist of common areas where your company branding elements can be applied:-

Business card
Letterhead
Envelopes
Fax Forms
Invoices
Folders
Brochures
Web Site
E- newsletter
Advertisements

Here is a recent branded magazine advertisement we produced for Sarah Grus Weddings which carried through the design of the company web site into a print medium.