• March 26th, 2008

The purpose of this post is to announce a new site launch. One of the latest sites in my portfolio can be found at www.somochoppers.com. This site was designed for a Hollister, MO man that is promoting a recent invention – the kickstand groundbreaker.

The groundbreaker is designed to protect a motorcycle’s battery. On his site, the inventor explains that when a motorcycle is resting on its kickstand, there is a risk of grounding out the connectors and draining the battery. Basically the same effect of setting the battery on the ground. His invention is the cure. By capping the kickstand with an insulator, the connection is broken and the ground is broken. Hence, the name “Ground Breakers”.

The intention of the owner is to expand his site to include other motorcycle parts and even perhaps custom choppers.

• February 19th, 2008

Tonight’s post is in regard to a new site launch. This client had marketing material with a specific color scheme and feel. My goal was to transfer the look and feel from the printed material to a website layout and make the site take up the whole screen. It went pretty well and the image to the left is the new and improved Lakeside Storage design.

• January 3rd, 2008

Do you know a real estate agent with a website? Are they constantly trying to think of ways to use the website to help there site visitors? If so, you might want to let them check out my latest article. You can find it right here on WOWDezign.net under Resources > Articles. You’ll see an article entitled “Real Estate Tool Examples”.

Although I have the information here on this website, the article discussing examples of real estate tools is also on my other blog. I hope you or someone you know can benefit from the article.

• December 7th, 2007

While I have been busy working on websites and graphic design projects, I haven’t taken time to post announcements about new sites or other projects. This project though, I wanted to be sure to post about. Why?

Well, this particular website project was a redesign of an existing site and I wanted to give an example of the impact a redesign can make. The site is BriarwoodBranson.com. You guessed it, it is for Briarwood Condominiums, a new condo development on Lake Taneycomo.

Briarwood Website Before
First lets look at the before. To the right you’ll see a screenshot of the site before the redesign. There is nothing “wrong” with the site but here are some points I thought I would like to bring out.

This design is nice and simple. The logo is centered at the top, the background color is bright blue and the main area has a white background. The images you see just to the right of the text form a slideshow that repeats cycling through various photos chosen to be displayed. At the bottom of the page you’ll notice buttons indicating the different areas of the site. There are three. 1) Photos, 2) Floor Plans, and 3) Contact. The photos page consisted of a simple list of around 8-10 images presented in two columns. The visitor could browse them by scrolling the page and looking through the images. Floor plans page had images of the floor plans with the amenities and features listed in the lower left hand corner of the page. The contact page was some centered text representing the contact information for the property.

That is the summary of what the site featured before the redesign. I am not going to elaborate on what I felt could be improved or the reasons because I want to keep this post relatively brief. I’ll save the details for the case studies section of my site. With that description of the before site, we are now ready to delve into the features of the remodeled, or redesigned site.

Condo Site After the Redesign
Now for the part of the post I particularly enjoy. The features of the redesigned website.
To the right you’ll notice a “screenshot” or a “screengrab” of the new Branson Condominiums website. The background is no longer a bright blue. I chaged it to a beige color. I changed the shade of blue to a deeper color and used it for the content backing.
As you can see, the site now has more content as indicated by the larger navigation menu. I did not write any of the content. Rather, it was provided by the realty firm handling the condos. They know how better to write the content since they specialize in Branson lake homes and vacation condos whereas I do not. This added content also called for restructuring the content.
Anyway, I added a contact form to the contact page so visitors can now send an email right from the contact page without the use of a mail client installed on their computer.
Another adjustment I made to the site took place on the photos page. The gallery is now a simple yet effective way to browse over forty images in a smaller area than before. Again, I won’t go into details on the why or how it was done.

In summary, the client is happy with the redesign of the website and so am I. I enjoy doing redesigns when it benefits the client and the site visitors. If you are looking for someone to spruce up your simple site design, drop me a note and I’ll take a look at the possibilities.

• November 26th, 2007

Are you in need of new logo for your business? Do you have a new business you are trying to brand? If you answered yes to either of those qustions, you may want to check out my logo portfolio.

I have recently had a run on logo submissions. And, while my work does not always get chosen by the firm(s) looking for a logo, the submissions themselves certainly make good examples of my work. So as a result, I built a logo gallery that contains my submitted logos, as well as my accepted logos.

If you think your businesses logo is in need of an upgrade or just needs redone, feel free to contact me.

• October 15th, 2007

Well, as I mentioned recently, I had planned on creating a tutorial section for those of you that want to learn how to do some things yourself. My plan included creating videos to make the learning process easier and quicker. Unfortunately, these plans will have to wait.

The short answer to the why question is that the videos will take up too much server space to implement right now. Perhaps down the road I will be able to revisit this idea. If I do choose to revive the videos it looks to be years away. Yet, I still have plans for tutorials.

Since I can’t justify using a ton of server space for training videos, I will try to create some good old fashioned tutorials with text and images. They use much less space on the server and those of you that are patient and enjoy reading will hopefully still benefit from the conent.

I’m not sure when I’ll get around to writing them, but it is on my to do list.

• September 24th, 2007

It is probably the most basic question a business owner could ask when trying to market a product or service. Why should you be interested in promoting your company on the Internet? What are the practical ways you can use a website to help you customers?

I have an article called Do I Need a Website For My Small Business. It answers those questions and many more.

• August 31st, 2007

Well, this month there has been a lot of activity in the way of back end programming. So basically, there isn’t much visibly to show or to talk about.

On the Ball Sports wanted to add an online shop to their existing website. QBS built the admin section and I worked on the shopping pages.

There are still some loose ends that are being tied up right now, but the shop should be up and running soon.

• July 24th, 2007

I am currently working on some tutorials to help interested persons learn about various aspects of web related programming. I should be finished with the first round in the near future.

I can’t go into great detail in this post, but I will elaborate in a future entry.

• June 30th, 2007

The folks over at Tall Timber Shows asked if I could rework a couple of splash pages. Since the Branson entertainment company has several lumberjack shows, they wanted these redesigned web pages to be action oriented, yet still allow visitors to distinguish between the various differences in the shows offered. The two main areas that I re-worked are discussed below.

Traveling Show Splash Page
This section serves as a place in the website for interested event planners to research information about booking a lumberjack show tuned to a specific event whether it is a county or state fair, corporate party, or some other outdoor attraction. Tall Timber Shows wanted the page to be simple but colorful and send a message with impact for their traveling lumberjack show.

Lumberjack Shows Home Page
The same basic concepts were considered for the redesign of the website home page. Since all of Tall Timber’s shows feature lumberjacks They keep all their site content on one website. The home page serves as a table of contents and hopefully pumps visitors up about this unique Branson dinner show.