New Project: Liana Randel Photography Logo

I got the opportunity to work on designing a logo for a great photographer, Liana Randel.  She is not only an awesome photographer, but a wife and mother to two precious girls.  Visit her website here.

I met Liana through a co-worker, whom I'd previously designed a logo for (Miss B's Sweets).  Liana wanted a fun, spunky and cool logo that reflected her personality and photography style.  After many rounds of designs, she finally picked one she fell in love with.   It was really fun to work with Liana and happy to know that she got the logo she wanted to represent her brand.

I always start a logo design in B&W first, because it must look good in a plain black and white palette.  Once my client picks a logo, that's the stage we start working on finding a color palette.  This logo was a little different....

Since Liana is a photographer, she wanted to be able to change the color of the logo to blend with all her photos, so I solved the problem!  I created her a layered Photoshop file, giving her the ability to change the color of her logo anytime she wanted!! Below you can see the finished black and white version.  Visit her website or become a fan of her's on Facebook!

Visit my website and see more of my cool work!

New Project: Fight For Fresh Figh Logo

I became involved with Grassroots as a volunteer several years ago. Grassroots helps non-profits gain access to graphic and web designers to help promote and build their brand. Their goal is to adopt 10,000 nonprofit members, and to provide each of them with an average of $10,000 per year worth of services at no charge (for a total savings of $100 million per year!). I would highly recommend any designer to become involved with Grassroots or any similar organization....it truly is a wonderful feeling when you are helping others.

My latest project with Grassroots was to design a logo for Alaska Youth for Environmental Action's (AYEA) new campaign: Fighting for Fresh Fish.  AYEA inspires and trains diverse youth leaders to impact environmental issues through community action projects and campaigns; skills training in leadership; environmental education, civic engagement, and community organizing; and green jogs that sustain their communities and future.

The Fighting for Fresh Fish campaign is a group of Alaskan youth fighting to save our Wild Alaska Salmon. They are preparing to launch a statewide campaign to educate Alaskans about the importance of, and threats to, our salmon.Visit their Facebook page here to learn more.

The students sent me a sketch of what they had in mind for a logo, and I tried not to disappoint!

 
Visit my website and see more of my cool work!

New Project: Five Rules for Life logo

I was introduced to the blog "Five Rules for Life" awhile back.  Whether we admit it or not, we all have rules that we live by. They empower us and propel us towards happiness, significance and fulfillment. Jon Andre has created the site, "Five Rules for Life” so people can share and learn from one another what they think is most important when it comes to leading a happy, successful, and fulfilling life.

I was lucky enough to be able to contribute by creating the logo.  It was fun to play around with the "five" element in the logo.  I probably designed 15 different versions before settling with the final logo design.

Visit the site. Read the submissions of others. Share with your friends and family. Then submit your own Five Rules!! I did and here are mine!

1.) Become a life-long learner.
Commit to the process of constant learning and change. Be humble enough to acknowledge your own weaknesses, and be flexible enough to adapt from what you may be accustomed to - otherwise it will deny you the freedom of new possibilities.

2.) The grass is not always greener.
The other side of the hill may appear to be greener than your own, but being there is not the key to happiness. Be grateful for and enjoy the things you have, the people in your life, and where you are on your journey. Appreciate the abundance of good things you have, rather than measure and stockpile all the things you don’t have.

3.) Don’t allow yourself to be chained by possessions.
The world is filled with stuff. Don’t let it get in the way of what is really important to you. When you become chained to stuff, you are no longer leading your life. If you had to give up 90% of your possessions tomorrow to pursue your dream, could you do it effortlessly? If you hesitated, your ability to lead your own life has been weakened by your attachment and attainment of things.

4.) Travel.
At least once a year, try to go someplace you’ve never been before. Experiences shape you as a person, so open your mind to new cultures and adventures. You only have one life so live it to the fullest.

5.) Know when to move on.
After you’ve hit the point of diminishing return, the energy you put in is more than what you get out. Whether it’s from jobs, relationships, friendships, or hobbies - don’t wait until things get stale; by then you’ve waited too long.

I had a hard time narrowing it down to just 5 Rules, so I have 6...and as many of you know, I could probably go up to 100 rules!! :)

6.) Success in life.
Judge your success by what you gave up. If becoming successful meant destroying relationships (personal and/or professional) along the way, the success isn’t justified. Live a good, honorable life so when you get older you can look back and enjoy it all a second time.

The "ABC's" of SEO

A former colleague asked me recently about SEO and could he do it himself.  My answer to him was, "Yes."  With a little information anyone can manage their SEO campaign and not have to pay tons of money hiring someone. So I figured I'd share with you what I shared with my friend.  I hope it helps you too!

The most important think you need to do is go through and define all your key phrase (sometimes called keyword) searches. Start with you homepage. Look at it carefully and write down the words and phrases that best define your site or what you want people to search for to find you.

Example: If you are selling toys, you would want key phrases to be: “buy toys” not “sell toys”. You will want to get in the mind of your target and think about what they would be typing in when they search for you.

Try to form two or three word phrases, since competition for one-word key is fierce, and it is virtually impossible to get a top position for them. Once you have got your list of possible key phrases you will need to check to see how these are ranked currently in search engines.

Go to Google’s home page and type-in each of your key phrases in the search box. Enter your key phrases within quotation marks and see how many results each individual phrase produces.

Make a note of those with a relatively small number of results, because those will be ones you will want to use. Remember to stick with the key phrase that best describes the content of your page, is popular and generates a small number of search results.

Once you have chosen the key phrases for you homepage, do the same for the other pages on your website.

Once you have completed these steps with all your pages, you will need to go back and optimize your pages heavily with them. This involves placing them in the title, headings and body of each page. Of course you may have to rewrite some of your content, but it is totally worth it to get your site up on Google searches.

Depending on how your site is built, you should be able to add your key phrases/words and metatags yourself for each individual page. Usually this is found in the html code at the top of each page. Some other sites have built in a feature for the words to be typed into a special section, specifically designed to accommodate SEO.

Some other considerations to keep in mind:

1. Remember to use text strategically with key phrases / words.
2. Search engines don’t really like flash or javascript, so the less you use the better.
3. Always have a sitemap on your site.
4. Don’t try to cram everything into one page; it will confuse search engines and dilute the content of your page. Always create specific focused pages.

One of the last things that will help your site is to get other (reputable) sites to link to yours, write articles in your field of expertise that can be posted on other sites, which will link back to your site.

You can create a free Google Analytics account, which will show you where your traffic is coming from, what words are searched, etc. This will help you decided if you need to update your key phrases. You can also advertise with your Google account and pay-per-clicks.

Firefox also offers a free SEO tool you can download, I’ve never tried this, but hear good things about the functionality.

Life Lessons

“Spend life with who makes you happy, not who you have to impress.”

This made me really happy when I ran across this quote.