Blogs

I am very excited to announce that we have won a Silver ADDY Award for our work on i3 Strategies website!

ADDY Awards are given out yearly by the Mid-Michigan Creative Alliance as a way to recognize local designers and companies teams that are fueling the creative revolution in Michigan. There are a number of award categories for print, interactive, and audio/visual media, as well as a category for student work. This was GreenLite's very first ADDY - not bad for our second year in business!

This year's event was held at the Old Town Temple Club in Lansing, which is a really cool venue where IgniteLansing 2.0 was recently held. Jeff and Steve were in attendance along with our client, Julielyn Gibbons of i3 Strategies. We would like to extend a special thanks to Julielyn for allowing us to experiment creatively with her original vision. And let's not forget Chris, our lead developer who transformed the design into a live website at http://i3strategies.com.

We hope to see you at next year's event!

Ag-Co, a company that specializes in selling horse stalls, recently launched their new and improved e-commerce site. Instead of pushing their products, Ag-Co was interested in capturing their customers' love and enjoyment of riding. To accomplish this, we used a large image to give the site a friendly, personal feel. By using browns and a touch of autumn orange, the site appears warm and inviting. We also simplified their navigation and concentrated on giving the site a clean, fresh look thereby elevating this St. John's-based company above their competition--both state- and nation-wide. Check out a before and after shot to see what a website redesign can do for your business. Which site is more likely to make customers feel confident that they are buying a high-quality product?

NuWave Technology Partners, one of Michigan’s leading IT providers, expanded their services to include the residential market with the launch of NuWave Home Services--Nuwavehome.com. NuWave was interested in continuing their branding but also wanted their new site to have a distinct feel. Steve, the designer, understood what they were looking for and nailed this design on his first attempt (not an unusual feat, but this design didn't require even a single tweak, which is why it's particularly noteworthy). His use of shadows, repeating elements, and lines adds a great deal of interest to this simple, streamlined site.

Next time you need some computer help or want DirecTV installed, be sure to call this Michigan-based business.

You know as a web designer nothing is more disheartening then working on a website that has a truly horrible logo and accompanying outdated marketing materials. Usually it’s a bad hand drawn of artwork or something that looks like it was rushed out by a highschool kid with his first PC. It’s not just that it makes designing so much more difficult to work around that sore spot but you get so frustrated because you know that small business or organization is doing some great things and their visual identity quite frankly says the opposite. Often the client is like “well we’ve had that logo for 30 years, it’s what people know us for, but we want a website that really shows us as leaders” Do you see the disconnect? They want a great website that really reflects their amazing organization but they never looked at a root problem, their brand and more specifically the anchor that is their visual identity. They almost feel personally attached to it and it’s human nature to oppose change even for the better.

Listen, it’s time to let that 70’s disco inspired abstract symbol with the courier font to go to pasture. It’s not what your company is…it may have been what your company was when everyone in your office was in leisure suits smoking cigarettes and drove without seat belts but this isn’t who you are any more nor how you want to be portrayed. Your competition is utilizing social media, is taking fresh approaches in how they market themselves and you continue to trudge along in the trenches not realizing your getting passed by everyone else. It’s time to set yourself apart and take your branding to the next level.

Your brand needs to have a strong visual identity that not only can reach out to your existing customers and potential new customers but your own employees as well. It solidifies your direction and connects the points in the intangibles ways about  describing your business, it’s energy, it’s advantages. It helps create brand loyalty among your customers. Just remember you need a great business/product or the logo is just lying. the new brand has to be truthful and open just like your business has to be.

Since I’ve been doing logo design in tangent with developing an online presence, I’ve seen clients renewed and energized about their business again. They love being involved with the creative process of creating a logo and more importantly clearly laying out what their business is about and how it should be represented. My job as a designer is just to focus that and make it easily communicated visually. I’m not saying every business needs a logo redesign but I think a lot of companies could use a brand makeover. It might not be redesigning their logo but sometimes an evaluation of a business goals and direction can unmask some unforeseen problems in their visual identity that can be tweaked. Even if its font usage, colors or simple thematics around it which can better support their logo both in their print materials and the web. In the end a company or business that is excited about what they’re doing makes the world a little better in my opinion. I’m glad I can try to help in that.

Last week Chris challenged me to try out a new web browser for a week. The browser is called Flock and it's available as a free download for Mac or PC.

Based on the popular Firefox browser, Flock takes the next step with keeping users constantly connected to their favorite social media. Whether you're into Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Hulu, MySpace (for real?), or any other social networking site, Flock has a way to keep it in your face at all times. To get started you just open Flock and enter your various usernames and passwords for sites you want to stay connected to. Flock adds these to a sidebar that displays updates from all of your friends, recently added pictures and video, or even just links to news stories. You'll also get a home page with a more detailed view of all this info (see the screenshot below).

There are a couple of things I really liked about Flock: it was really easy to connect to my various networks, eveyone's updates are aggregated into the same feed, and grabbing an RSS feed or media stream from a page was simple and quick. On the other side though, all of this constantly-updating information is a huge distraction. I'd log on to check my email and spend 30 minutes on Facebook, or I'd start to check my bank account only to find 10 new stories about a soon-to-be-released video game. While I wasn't particularly productive while on Flock, I always knew what everyone else was up to.

The one thing that really bugged me was that the default search was set to Yahoo. Now, I don't want to get into a "religious" discussion here, but let's just say that I generally prefer Google 100% of the time. However, a quick search (on Google) revealed that Flock is endorsed by Yahoo.

Long story short, Flock is great if you love social media. Why don't you take the challenge: try out Flock for a week and let me know what you think!

We recently got a new client, the Potter Park Zoo here in Lansing! I have a young child at home and I've been very excited to start this particular project. I think the zoo is cool, I really like their conservation mission, and I think the local zoo does a great job with the resources they have available. I've visited zoo's around the world, and I've certainly seen bigger and fancier zoo's, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a zoo that is more accessible or affordable for families and young people (for example, zoo admission is free right now!). The animals seem happy and engaged, and it's obvious the people who work at the zoo care about their charges. Oh, and they have lemurs, arctic foxes and otters which are all super-cute!

As I started to talk to colleagues and friends from Lansing about the zoo I was surprised by local perceptions of the zoo. I heard a lot of people say, "the zoo sucks", and "it's not as nice as the Detroit zoo". Admittedly, I'm still new to Lansing, but I don't understand these perspectives. I feel that it's not "the zoo", it's "our zoo". If it really sucks, let's pitch-in and help make it the zoo we all deserve and want for our community. If on the other hand, what I'm hearing is just plain negativity, I'd say we all need an attitude adjustment.

We all make our reality every day with how we think and talk about our community and the assets it has. How would our communities be different if most of the people we met in Lansing were talking about everything that this area has to offer; the great zoo, lugnut park, MSU, LCC, the restaurants on the Michigan ave corridor, the social organizations, the outdoor recreation possibilities... Let's stop trashing what we have and let's start nurturing and treasuring what we've got instead. Nothing should be swept under the rug, there are real issues and they need to be dealt with, but I say either pitch in to help, or cheer on the people who are trying to help. Let's remake the "reality" of Lansing and make it a sunnier, more positive, more supportive reality.

Whitehouse.gov is now running a version of Drupal, the popular open-source content management system. This is not only exciting news for Open Source advocates, but also for myself and everyone here at GreenLite. As you may know, every website we ship is built on Drupal. Having the White House move its website to Drupal validates something that GreenLite already knew - Drupal rocks.

Visitors to the White House site may not notice the change - the look and feel remain the same. But news outlets and Drupal founder Dries Buytaert have confirmed that the site is running Drupal.

So what's the big deal? Open Source software is developed by people all over the world, usually for free. Because it's free, this software sometimes gets negatively portrayed as being cheap or shoddy. While this may be true of some Open Source projects, a vast majority are just as polished as commercial applications that do the same thing. Drupal falls into this category. Thousands of developers, myself included, have contributed features and bug fixes to improve Drupal. To have a site as visible as whitehouse.gov running Drupal is a big indication that the Drupal community is doing something right.

Check out other high-profile sites running Drupal.

Last week I went to Michigan State University's WebDev Cafe with a few other GreenLiters. The Cafe is all about getting web-forward thinking in to the MSU community and promoting the university's web initiatives. As a recent MSU Telecommunications grad, I was excited to see that the event was being held in my old stomping grounds, the Comm Arts building.

One of the most interesting topics was the new design and branding of MSU.edu, the university's main website home page. Four years ago when the site was last redesigned, a big web trend was to have as many links as possible on any website's home page. Today, it's almost the opposite - you want to present a few clear link choices in order to not overwhelm the user.

Though not finished by any means, the new design concept has a clean navigation, lots of white space, a large branding photo, and links to social media. These are all great ideas that are in line with current web trends, and I really like their new focus on usability. I'm excited to see the final version of the new site, which will likely launch in the first half of 2010.

I also want to give a shout-out to our friends and business partners who presented: Adam Henige from Netvantage Marketing spoke about how Search Engine Optimization can improve your business, and Julielyn Gibbons from i3 Strategies discussed the impact of social media on the way we communicate.

A bunch of people from GreenLite and our parent company Artemis Solutions Group attended IgniteLansing 2.0 on Friday and it was a blast! The old Temple Club was decked out with dark lighting and looked amazing despite being under renovation.

Check out Steve Jencks's award-winning presentation about how to survive being in a B-movie:

Brian Azar also presented with a mixture of serious and humourous advice on surviving marriage:

We also want to congratulate Chris Bachelder from Artemis, who gave a presentation on the leadership of the creative class. All of the speakers' presentations are posted on IgniteLansing's YouTube channel.

I stole this teaser from the October 2009 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine, which lists East Lansing/MSU as one of the top 10 Best College Towns to Start a Business. (Note to curious potential bossholes: This blog has nothing to do with the teaser--just a shameless attempt to get your attention...please indulge me....) 

I would absolutely agree with this rather surprising declaration that East Lansing/MSU is the place to be, especially after attending the IgniteLansing-2.0 event held on Friday evening. One could definitely sense a buzz in the air. Something is happening here?! I felt as though I was living in Seattle and it was the beginning of the the grunge era. We're on to something. We know it and it's just a matter of time before the world knows it. Okay, I'm getting a bit out-of-hand, but seriously, how cool was this event. Let's all continue to strive for change, to be passionate, and to dare to share our experiences and insights.

We are particularly proud that 3 of the 15 Ignite Lansing speakers work for Greenlite/Artemis (Brian Azar: The Care and Feeding of Sue; or how to keep your woman happy, Steve Jencks: B-movie Survival Tips, and Chris Bachelder: Design Thinking and the Leadership of the Creative Class). A special shout-out to Steve, our designer extraordinaire, this was his first public-speaking engagement and he won his division. Nice job, Steve!