Its that time of the year again when mercury appears to be going backwards in the sky and messes up our communications and slows us down.   The period is from August 21st – Sept. 13th.  It can be annoying because you just want to move forward and events and situations happen where it forces you to slow down a bit and check the details.  Mercury is going backwards in the sign of Virgo, no less.  Virgo is ultra picky and checks things twice and even three times!

Mercury retrograde survival guide says this is the best time to REDO and re-evaluate.  If you already have an existing project, this is a time to make it better.  This time heavily effects people in the communication field like writers, speakers, and you guessed it, web designers.

My personal experience so far is the people who have been contacting me have been thinking about getting their site created for awhile.  They may even have designed it in their heads and are now getting a kick in the pants to get started.  Other people have been contacting me for updates to existing websites.  Basically, this is a great time to RE-DO and make it better.  Its only for a few weeks, why not take advantage of this period?

In honor of mercury retrograde, I invite those of you who want to REDO a web or graphic design project and get started on the one you have had in your head for months to contact me between now and September 13th and for that I will take 10% off.

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Heather is the owner and creative director of Third Eye Studio, a graphic/web/art studio located in Lake Worth, South Florida.

…specializing in creative and unique custom print and web design. Let me help you grow your business!

Just thought I would share the creative direction process I use when someone hires me to design their website or marketing materials. Everything is a collaboration. Some companies have a formalized process where they send a series of questions. I just do it by email with a few short ones. I don’t want them to feel they have to answer every single question before I start designing though, so this is just a general rule to go by.

These can be applied to websites and other design projects…

What do you want people to think of and feel when the view your website, or logo, or marketing material?

Can you give me a few examples of what you like in design?

What do you think your brand is and personality?

What colors do you prefer and why?

What type of style do you prefer?

For websites…

Can you show me a few websites that you like the design of and why?

What type of layout do you like? For example, left sidebar, top, right…

Without creative direction it is virtually impossible to create together, so these questions help to get the process started.  Sometimes I get lucky and hit the design mark on the very first try.  I love that.  Sometimes my first proof spurs them on to narrow their tastes down.  Naturally, I prefer option number one.   Oh, of course it does help if they already like what I have done because of course my personality goes into all the work I do as well.

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Heather is the owner and creative director of Third Eye Studio, a graphic/web/art studio located in Lake Worth, South Florida.

…specializing in creative and unique custom print and web design. Let me help you grow your business!

I just finished redesigning my own website, and launched it as of last week.   I admit I have had a nasty habit of redesigning my website an average of twice a year, which is not the greatest thing to do if you are looking to establish a brand.  The good news is my logo has only gone through only one change.  I made it lighter two years ago and have kept it that way since.  I suppose interior designers act in a similar fashion in that they like to change the furniture around in their house or move things around, on a constant basis.  I know at least one designer who does this, or, the husband of the interior designer told me a few things about his life with her.  Every few weeks his wife moved everything around in their place…even to the point of when he was drinking a beverage and attempted to place on the table that was once there..the glass would fall or he would just be suddenly  surprised at the missing table.

You could say I was having an identity crisis…or I just didn’t have the time to focus on my own branding and marketing.  Around the fall of last year I took a look at my own website compared to all the sites I was building for clients and realized mine was 3 on a scale of 1 to 10 compared to theirs.  I didn’t like that.   My own branding should be top notch and reflective of my skills and personality.  I also took it way too much to heart when someone else made suggestions.

So, over the winter I took a flash animation class to step up my skills a little bit.  Our last project was to design a website completely in flash or just a flash project so I took as the perfect opportunity to upgrade my site.  I also had the time to really think about what I liked and would reflect me and my skills, not what I thought other people would like.  I ask that of my clients when we start the creative process….What do you want people to think of and FEEL when they go to your website…what are your favorite colors and why?   For me, I like green and purple and turquoise and a natural look and feel, but I am also a big science fiction fan, so the universe background was very appealing to me.  What did I want people to feel?  Well, just a professional site that reflects me and my design skils, technology,  and a little bit of magic.

Here is my redesigned Third Eye Studio Web and Graphic Design website…

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Heather is the owner and creative director of Third Eye Studio, a graphic/web/art studio located in Lake Worth, South Florida.

…specializing in creative and unique custom print and web design. Let me help you grow your business!

I just purchased this software a few weeks ago to help increase the traffic to my website and blog, plus help clients do the same.  I noticed that whenever I post a blog and then submitted it by hand to some of my favorite bookmarking sites like dig.com, reddit.com and stumbleupon.com, my traffic went up to at least 100 new visitors in addition to what I was already getting.  I thought that was pretty cool but the only problem doing it by hand is it is time consuming and tedious.  So I searched around on the internet to find some sort of software program that could do this quickly and easily and found Bookmarking Demon.

So far it is so good.  The software submits my website pages or blog posts to around 50 out of 100 social bookmarking sites.  This helps with search engine optimization because of the calculation that the engines use as a “vote”.  Websites with your link pointing to a page on your site tells the engines your site is popular and social bookmarking is a part of that equation.  I used it a couple of times with my blog posts and yes, my traffic did jump dramatically for that day.  I even had someone from the UK contact me for design work.   This leads me to believe the software program is working.

Any drawbacks?  Well, the interface takes a bit getting used to and I haven’t even gone into the professional view yet, just stuck with the beginner mode.  Another drawback is you still have to hand type in your keywords, title tag and url…but after that the submission is automatic and you just wait until it is finished.  It gives you a report of the successful submissions at the end of the run so you can see just how many were submitted.  It averages about 50 out of 100 which I say is still good because you will not catch me sitting at my computer tediously submitting my website or posts to 50 sites by hand.  That is not what I want to spend my time doing!

My disclaimer….this software is NOT supposed to be used for spamming!  It’s main purpose is to get high quality social bookmarking links going to your site so you get more traffic.  I think it is best for people that have blogs and constantly changing content.  You submit your content with the program and it gets out there faster, getting you traffic, customers, inquiries and sales!

Check out the bookmarking demon website, you can download it at the very end of the page, and you can also turn off the sound on the video…it’s kind of annoying!

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Heather is the owner and creative director of Third Eye Studio, a graphic/web/art studio located in Lake Worth, South Florida.

…specializing in creative and unique custom print and web design. Let me help you grow your business!

New project for an 11th Step Recovery program meditation and relaxation…4 panels and is being printed on recycled paper.  Her website is soon to come…http://www.GiriBek.com.

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Heather is the owner and creative director of Third Eye Studio, a graphic/web/art studio located in Lake Worth, South Florida.

…specializing in creative and unique custom print and web design. Let me help you grow your business!

1000 Business cards – $55.00*

5000 business cards – $85.00*

These are standard size business card, uv coating…

Price does not include shipping and design….
contact me if you need design work!

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Heather is the owner and creative director of Third Eye Studio, a graphic/web/art studio located in Lake Worth, South Florida.

…specializing in creative and unique custom print and web design. Let me help you grow your business!

The education director from the Schoolhouse Children’s Museum called me up a few weeks ago looking to get some large format signs designed, since the Museum was getting a much needed facelift before the busy season.  They were painting, redoing, organizing, and putting up new signs to replace the ones they already had.  Most were educational markers for the parents and kids to learn about old Boynton and it’s history like the everglades, the first post office and more.  This was a really fun project since I was able to use illustrator and design a few of them from scratch.  Here they are…

Sign to teach kids how to write a letter and send it off.

Reef Runner Ball Drop Game

Learning about the florida everglades (I myself know all about the different foliage and wetland areas from designing this one!)

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Heather is the owner and creative director of Third Eye Studio, a graphic/web/art studio located in Lake Worth, South Florida. …specializing in creative and unique custom print and web design. Let me help you grow your business!