Logos, Branding, Development, SEO, Video, & Flash Services

Q. If you were a customer, what do you wish you knew about your trade? Any inside secrets to share?

A. If I were to give advice to business owners about web design, I would offer the advice that your logo and branding is a very important element worth investing time into exploring. The topic that often comes up about this issue in a work environment can go two different ways depending on the person's own point of view. The truth is, it doesn't matter how YOU perceive the world, or how you think, it matters what demographic you are marketing to. The purpose of a logo, and other graphic elements on your site is to appeal to the 50 percent of the population that are visual learners. Then, the purpose of very good "copy" or text on your site would be the other half of the population that are readers and textual based learners. It is also important to know that there are near sided, and far sided viewers to your site. So you want to have large, small and medium site elements to capture the attention of your customers. Finally, a good tag line can really help those customers that are in a hurry, and want to get the jist of what you do. Rounding out the plethora of different types of people that will see your advertising, by offering dishes of visual and textual based information so that all learners will be drawn to what you have to offer. I tend to think that design is very important for visual customers, and will make an impression on people's memory. While good copy, pricing, or other informational paragraphs will entice the more logical contextual type people. To think out side of one's self, and to reach out beyond our own demographic when creating web sites and advertising material of any kind will really give you a bang for your buck.

Q. What important information should buyers have thought through before seeking you out?

A. I have a form I ask my clients fill out that helps me ask the appropriate questions. The one thing that can really help someone looking to get a web site up would be to create an outline of what menu items and text will be on the site. Spell checking and proof reading the information can help new companies solidify in their mind what it is they would like to have on their site.

Q. Why does your work stand out from others who do what you do?

A. My work stands out from the rest because I offer such a wide plethora of services all at the same time. Not only do I offer beautiful logo design with great printing discounts, free web hosting for one full year after hiring me, feng shui web layouts, copy editing, flash motion animation, video, custom video players, video shoots, video editing and motion graphics, custom mp3 players, cms systems, work with SEO professionals, have a team of stellar coders in php, css and html, I offer accurate accounting with reasonably price plans!

Q. What do you like most about your job?

A. I love what I do. All of it, but if I had to pick one thing, it would be the branding aspect. I love bringing a company to life online and beyond.

Q. What questions do customers most commonly ask you? What's your answer?

A. A common question for 2010 is whether a customer should use Adobe Flash on their website because they have heard all the buzz that Steve Jobs doesn't plan on having Flash on ipad or iphone products. I do believe, that this was a choice they made at Apple to make the motion graphics on their products stand out above and beyond all interactivity, while removing all the Flash advertising. The way that the customer's of Iphone and Ipads are manipulated subtly is that they will have a strange sense of peace, through the removal of the Flash ads on so many of their favorite sites such as Facebook and Myspace. It was like watching TV without any commercials. I do think it was a genius way for Apple to get ahead, by offering a visual silence. I do also feel that this won't last, and it is just the latest Apple thing. I also think that the business owners, who are my customers, should consider their services to be marketed and advertised in the same way that the big corporations do. You will notice that Apple products have a fantastic intuitive interactivity that reminds us of the best of Flash interfaces. So in the end, it is interactivity that we should not throw out. And my second point is that to be as fantastic and to look your best as a company, you'll want to follow what the big corporations do. Being a designer/developer that has created literally 1000s of flash ads and flash websites, for companies like Intuit, Princess Cruises, Honda, Bacardi, Nissan, Saturn, Disney, Budweiser, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, New Line Films, and other block buster films such as Avatar, I feel that these companies are billion dollar fortune 500 corporations, and would not of spent billions of dollars and still spend billions of dollars on advertising their products with flash if it wasn't worth every penny. If you are a small business, using flash when appropriate, will bring you a return on your investment, by creating a web presence that stands out and using interactivity that gives your customers ease. As far as the industry standard, I make it a point to create a static image to appear where the flash is in an effort to give something to those iphone and ipad users in the place of the flash. At some point I do believe that the flash sites will be available for viewing on ipad and iphones in the future, and this is just a marketing stunt. I also think that HTML5 is a great way to offer motion graphics if it is something that concerns you or you have a specific idea in mind. Either way, I always make sure my clients are happy in what ever they choose to do. Finally, just as facebook and twitter are the 2010 fads, you always want to refresh your site at least once a year in order to have all of the latest updates to keep up with technology. A great thing to do is have a xml site map for your site, as well as read up on Google's instructions for web masters. Submitting your site to search engine's and making sure you have meta tags, with keywords and a paragraph about what your business does. Here is a great article on how to make Flash sites SEO friendly: http://www.roytanck.com/2007/02/14/making-flash-websites-search-engine-friendly/

Q. Do you have a favorite story from your work?

A. I recently worked on logo designs for a company called Blume Distillation. I am very excited to see that company grow, as it is a biofuel company owned by David Blume, author of "Alcohol Can Be A Gas".

Q. How did you decide to get in your line of work?

A. I am a musician, and have been one since I was 4 years old. I new I always loved music, but I didn't want to make it a profession. I am also an artist, and thought that using color and design would be a fantastic profession, one that I am passionate about! I always wanted to do both music and art as my life's work. I am doing it! I started out curating art galleries, as my first real position after graduating from San Francisco State with my B.A. degree. At the time it was 1999 and my master's thesis was a combination of music and multimedia. I thought, well it's perfect, I'll incorporate both mediums into my final thesis project which was a flash website. I have been doing this type of work ever since!

Q. Do you do any sort of continuing education to stay up on the latest developments in your field?

A. I go to conferences such as the FTIC conference, and I always have an account with Lynda.com to stay abreast of the latest software, computer languages, and industry standards. I attend other user groups in Los Angeles.

Q. What are the latest developments in your field? Are there any exciting things coming in the next few years or decade that will change your line of business?

A. Technology always changes at a expotentially fast rate. What is not changing is great branding and logo design. I look forward to all the exciting ways to make mousing and clicking less time consuming and more subconscious.

Q. Describe your most recent project, what it involved, how much it cost, and how long it took.

A. My most recent project was branding and website design and development for a company called Climb. They needed a new logo, and a site refresh. The logo took one day and by the end of the day we nailed the logo my client wanted. The next day we nailed the web design. In total the entire project took less then a grand and less then a week to complete, and my client seems very happy.

Q. If you have a complicated pricing system for your service, please give all the details here.

A. I prefer to charge a day rate for my work. I work a full day (10 hours with an hour lunch) and I require a 100 retainer fee to book a day and permanently pencil my client in on my calendar. On the day's that I book for my client, they have my full attention, and I won't over book my self on other projects, which tends to draw out the project especially if the client is in a hurry.