Design Smart

Awaken DTS Website

Calvin — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 01:02:44 +0000

Awaken Discipleship Training School (DTS) is a YWAM school for training up disciples of Jesus. Calvin designed this while staffing the DTS in 2010. The goal was to communicate to the students school vision, important events, latest news, and photos. Features of the blog include itunes podcast integration, auto Facebook photo album import, and Google calendar integration.

Visit the site live »

Rosewood Communities Logo Redesign

Calvin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 22:45:20 +0000

Rosewood Communities needed to update their dated logo. One of the goals of the new logo was that it could be as ageless as possible.We decided that many of the elements like color and swoosh needed to stay because they had brand power in the Greenville SC area. The result is a updated logo that is modern and classic.

Follow the Reids Blog

Calvin — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 03:18:36 +0000

This site is for missionaries Jeff and Bethany Reid. They run the Community Transformations DTS in YWAM kona. Jeff and Bethany are constantly on the move so the blog section actually is a feed in from their Tumblr blog and takes advantage of Tumblr’s wide range of mobile updating options. Twitter integration is also included in this blog. They wanted to have lots of video content so the video gallery with lightboxes are a nice solution.

Visit the site live »

Hansons at YWAM Blog

Calvin — Sat, 29 May 2010 20:05:19 +0000

This is my wife and my personal site for blog, travel, photography and missions. I wanted to create a more organized website that focused on the blog and my photography. I customized a theme that took advantage of a great gallery plug in and easy site structure.

Visit the site live »

Windows Quickbooks on a Mac Guide

Calvin — Thu, 20 May 2010 23:20:46 +0000

Ok so here’s the senario, you want a mac or just bought one and you found out that Quickbooks for mac is, well…lacking. This was my senario so I took it upon myself to find the best accounting option for Mac. Being a small business owner I wanted to keep the cost down. Here’s the cheapest way (FREE!) to use Quickbooks for Microsoft Windows on your Mac:

First, I hope you have a copy of your Quickbooks Company Backup File!

You will need this when you get everything up and running.

Second, head over to VirtualBox and download the “vitualization product”. This allows you to partition (designate) a part of your hardrive to install Windows on your Mac (almost an oxymoron!). You will need your old Windows OS (XP, Vista, 8 ) CD to install. Take it out of the trash (I know its hard) and once you have VirtualBox started, hit the NEW button and follow the instructions. Windows will run full screen or in a Window on your mac OS. You can switch between Operating Systems by hitting the designated button (usually the COMMAND button).

Once Windows is up and running just stick in your Quickbooks CD and install it. Open Quickbooks and open your company file!

Thats it!

Anderson House of Prayer Logo Design

Calvin — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:29:28 +0000

Anderson House of Prayer is in the beginning stages of development (Check it out). I wanted to create a design that communicated burning desire for the Lord and prayer/intercession. I found a unique font that is easily readable but also distinct. I used a combination of burnt looking textures to create this Hi-Res design.

Kristin’s Tumblog

Calvin — Fri, 14 May 2010 03:14:09 +0000

Kristin is currently a missionary staffing a discipleship training school for Youth with a Mission (YWAM). She needed a blog to keep her financial and prayer partners up-to-date. I created and modified a tumblelog (blog through Tumblr). She now has the option to upload photos, videos, and text through her phone as well as through the online backend from anywhere in the world. For even more exposure to her posts, I used Tumblr’s technology to link her Facebook account. Anytime she posts to her blog, it shows up in her Facebook newsfeed for all her friends to see.

See Kristin’s blog »

12 Ways to get higher in Google – reblog from Graphic Design Greenville

Calvin — Thu, 13 May 2010 22:08:16 +0000

BEFORE YOU READ THEM, HERE ARE SOME KEY TERMS YOU SHOULD KNOW

Targeted/Strategic keywords-The keywords you want your customer search to find your company. An example is “web design greenville sc” or “restaurants greer sc”

Content-What’s on your page-everything from images to text.

Sitemap-Includes all the pages you want indexed in search engines. Usually written in XML language.

Index-In this context it means all the pages that the search engine searches.

Tag-Html (or other coding language) element that surrounds specific content. Tags tell the browser, a header is a header and an image is an image. Ex.

Logo Design Greenville SC

Would tell the browser this is the most important header.

This is an image from my previous post on Search engine optimization. It gives you an idea of the Google Search layout:

The Google Layout Explained

1. Put Keywords in your domain name

Example: www.graphicdesigngreenville.com

2. Clip the .html off page names and use keywords in page names.

Example: www.pgraphics.biz/website-design

3. Put main site navigation as close to the top of the page as possible and don’t use images for your navigation!

It’s kind of common sense to make navigation one of the first things you see and most websites have this right because it makes design sense, but there are the exceptions-don’t be one. Images shouldn’t be in navigation because google can’t read them.

4. Image ALT tags and URL TITLE tags

These are very important not only for adding keywords to but for user accessibility. If the viewer is visually impaired, these tags are read to them though a screen reader program.

5. Don’t create a completely FLASH-based site. Google can’t read it (yet).

An easy way to tell if the site is flash is by right clicking on the page. Flash is great for image slide shows and videos, interactive displays, but not for the complete site.

6. Get into the free local searches in Yahoo and Google

The local search usually is shown before the organic search. See image below.
GOOGLE LOCAL – www.google.com/local/add
YAHOO! LOCAL – listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php

7. Write content relevant to the keywords you want people to search for.

Google is trying to give the searcher the most relevant content to their search query. By having pages of content about the most searched keywords you want people to find you with will bring you higher and higher in google.

8. Use stragetic keywords in the TITLE tag of your page.

The title shows up on the very top bar of your browser window and usually is the second item in the code making it the first chance to give Google Search some keywords.

9. Use h1 (header) tags and include keywords in them

Don’t be afraid of a little html—the h1 header tags go around the most important headers on the page. Usually it looks like this:

Logo Design in Greenville SC

10. Create a blog and comment on other blogs

Blogs are easy for anyone to update once they are set up. You can set up a blog on a blog site like blogger.com, on a separate domain, or on your current domain in a sub-directory. When you comment on someone’s blog, they usually let you include your domain, making it a good way to do tip #11.

11. Find sites that will link to you

It could be a site that targets the same customers, but is not in direct competition with you. The larger the site the better and the more relevant to your targeted keywords the better. Include your site on the obvious sites like Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn. Switch it up and include pages other than your index page (like a product or service page).

12. Create and submit a Sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft

Sitemaps guarantee (99.9% of the time) you will be in the index, so people can actually find you.
Here’s a site that creates the sitemap for you: www.xml-sitemaps.com
You just have to download the file they give you to your computer and then upload it to your site.
Here’s where you submit your sitemap URLs:
www.google.com/webmasters
siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
webmaster.live.com

These tactics produce the best results in local searches
These tactics work great for local searches. Most people search on a local level when searching for many services and products. When I search, I usually search “restaurants greer sc” or something similar.

Want more on the subject of Search Engine Optimization? Here’s a blog entry I wrote on that subject: http://www.graphicdesigngreenville.com/small-business-marketing/search-engine-optimization-myths-revealed/

Disclaimer: These are meant to help designers and business owners alike in creating the most effective websites. The information came from personal trial and error and reading SEO articles.

If you need help with your website, feel free to contact Design Smart.

Cool Wicking PJs Logo Design

Calvin — Sat, 08 May 2010 15:30:06 +0000

This logo design project had me getting in touch with my feminine side! After discussing the goals of the company with owner, Laura Wheelock, we decided the Cool Wicking PJ’s logo design needed to appeal to her main target market, women suffering from night sweats, a common occurrence during menopause. We wanted to communicate comfort, woman, sleep (sleeping until morning), coolness, and pajamas.

Community Commerce Convention Logo Design

Calvin — Fri, 07 May 2010 22:18:31 +0000

Community Commerce Convention was put on by the Greer Chamber in Greer, SC. I played off the 3 c’s. The burst represents growth. The colors were set to strengthen the Greer Chamber branding so they stayed consistent with all other Greer Chamber marketing materials.