The List: April 26th Edition

From clients…

Alpacaville is on Facebook! Just look at those sweet furry faces, too cute. Check out the new logo as well.

James T. Davis is having a Window Fashions Sale! The Hunter Douglas Window Fashions “Celebrate the Light” sale in progress…save now through June 17 with huge rebates on their best Hunter Douglas products.

For updates on local businesses and some great marketing info and tips, follow Dayrich Enterprises on Facebook.

The Junior League of Lynchburg is hosting its annual Derby Soiree fundraiser on May 5th. Get tickets online and enjoy an evening of fun, food, drinks and dancing. Plus a lot of great items up for grabs in the Live and Silent Auctions!

From the internets…

This is some sound advice for designers, from designers.

As soon as my allergies relent I’m ready for some time in the garden. This video is cute and great inspiration, and yes, sometimes my raised beds are almost that bad too.

English Muffin French Toast. This recipe has me drooling, and thinking of making it with homemade English Muffins. Yum!

Random favorites…

I’m pining for a wide angle lens. This one at B&H is a great price, but I’m debating it’s technical abilities.

On a related note, here are some great tips for using a wide angle lens. Hopefully I’ll put these to the test soon!

Hello Dolly is playing at the Academy of Fine Arts next month, and I can’t wait to see it!

Have a suggestion for The List? Let me know via email: ESpontarelli@GetCreativeWebDesign.com

Social media for business is not a new idea by any means, but many business owners still struggle to manage and maintain various social networking accounts. There are many factors to consider when dealing with social media, from deciding which networks to pursue to knowing how and when to update them, plus the challenge of constantly generating valid content. This post will discuss each of these issues and more, providing some helpful hints for businesses looking to create and maintain a successful presence in online communities.

Tweet? Link? Like?

Deciding which social media communities to join can seem like a daunting choice to make. Just remember that you want to join enough networks that you will get your voice heard, but not so many that you cannot keep up with regular updates for your followers. For some businesses this will mean picking just one social network; others will be able to balance multiple accounts with ease.

Determining which community to join should be decided based on your target audience. If possible, find out which medium your current clients prefer as this will likely be a good indication of where to reach future customers as well. Possibilities include setting up a poll on your website or newsletter, or simply talking to a few of your best clients to get an idea of which social networks they use.

Management Position Available

No matter which social media network(s) you decide on, success will be determined by how well your account(s) are managed. Decide early on who will be responsible for keeping up with your new community, and how frequently it will be monitored. This will involve not only posting new content, but keeping up with your followers and responding to their comments and questions. Many companies have very boring and static social media pages and cannot understand why; what they fail to realize is that by becoming a part of a social network they are in fact joining a community. To be a desirable part of any community you have to put effort into adding value to other members’ experience, which includes interacting with your followers as well as other related businesses.

You should determine how often new content will be posted (we’ll talk more about generating new content in the next section). Again there is a balance between posting too often and annoying your followers, and posting too infrequently and losing their interest. The frequency with which you should post will be determined by your industry and the amount of active involvement from your target audience. Keep an eye out for signs of over-stimulation from too many posts, and lack of interest caused by too few posts. Be sure to schedule time for responding to input to your own posts as well as keeping up with the relevant activity of your followers and fellow businesses.

Giving The People What They Want

Another factor in the success of your social media presence is the type of content that you share with your readers. Whether using 140 characters or writing full blog posts, it is important to keep your content relevant, unique and interesting. If you consult current clients about which social network they prefer (see above), consider asking a few questions about the type of content they would like to see as well. Once you start producing content you can use tracking to see which types of articles, links, posts, etc. are the most popular and tweak your methods from there.

One method for coming up with content is to consider your business and compile a list of several services or products that you offer. From there, break each item down into a few topics that you can then present to your audience. For example if your restaurant serves dessert, consider the following ideas: highlight a few popular menu items; discuss the benefits of using local ingredients; offer wine paring suggestions; or even share a few of your recipes. Additionally, share what interests you with your followers. If you read a great article that applies to your industry, pass it on! Not all of your content needs to be generated by you- just be sure to give credit where credit is due.

With these tips in mind, go forth and socialize! Remember that if you are interested and having a good time with social media, chances are your followers will too. Relax and get to know your customers, since that is the real advantage that social networking provides for businesses, after all.

This trend is a photo manipulation effect that is showing up everywhere. It used to be that a program like Photoshop was the only way to manipulate a digital photo, but that has changed drastically in the past few years. New programs at a variety of price points now let anyone with a camera edit their photos. Even our cell phone cameras are now equipped with filters and editing software. With the return of vintage trends from the 50s and 60s comes the desire for vintage looking photographs as well. While I am in favor of this trend, I think it is easily misused. There is a particular type of photo that benefits from an aged filter, an overuse will quickly ruin the novelty of the trend. Enjoy the examples and resources below and feel free to link to more uses of this trend in the comments.

Instagram, a popular mobile app, is a strong influence in the Aged Photos trend.

An example of an aged newspaper filter.

Pixlr is an open photo editor that boasts retro vintage photo effects.

Dawghouse offers a tutorial for Photoshop users.

Imitation Instagram Actions for Photoshop.

Is there a design trend you think needs critiquing? Have a question about an element or style you’ve seen repeated over and over? Send an email to ESpontarelli@GetCreativeWebDesign.com.

The List: March 16th Edition

From clients…

Plastic Surgery Associates will be at the Lynchburg Women’s Show at the Holiday Inn Downtown Lynchburg tomorrow, March 17th.

Amber Grove has had a last minute postponement of the wedding scheduled for June 23, 2012. If any of you know of someone looking for a beautiful spot to get married, that is one of the prime weekends of the year at this lovely venue.

The Vintage Junkie will be at The Spring Bizarre Bazaar in Richmond, March 30- April 1. Great show with tons of wonderful vendors, click here for more info.

From the internets…

This is such a fabulous article by This American Life’s Ira Glass about the awesomeness that is RadioLab. A must read.

I was reminded this week of how much I love Paperless Post for online invitations. Old-fashioned formality with the convenience of the internet!

Check out our new Facebook Cover Photo. Need help with your own custom banner? Give us a call.

Random favorites…

I’m just letting the world know now, I want this to be my 30th birthday party.

Are you a knitter? I recently discovered Pickles and I can’t get enough of their great patterns and gorgeous designs.

I’m wearing this pretty dress in not one but two weddings this summer. It’s a crowd-pleaser!

Have a suggestion for The List? Let me know via email: ESpontarelli@GetCreativeWebDesign.com

As a website owner you know that having a website won’t do you any good if you don’t have somewhere to host it. Web Hosting is the physical space on a server that your site occupies, as well as access to the World Wide Web. For some companies, including some GetCreative clients, a web hosting account is accessed so rarely after the initial setup that keeping track of a where the site is hosted, not to mention a username and password to access it, can be tricky. Today’s find will help with the first part of this dilemma: finding out what company is hosting your website.

 WhoIsHostingThis.com allows for quick and easy web hosting discovery. All you do is enter the domain of the site in question, and WHT uses the IP address to distinguish the Hosting provider. They also display the IP and Name Servers for the domain in question, which can be helpful when setting up a new site on an existing server or transferring domain names. Once you have the name of your hosting company, it is just a matter of contacting them to regain access to your account. From there your webmaster will be able access and make any changes to your website that you may require.

LIVE Websites
Two new websites went live this month: GlobalExplorersOnline.com and and Claire Morra’s MoralPuppetry.com/DirtyDogJuiceGang.com. Click the images below to visit the new sites!

New Designs in the Works
This month we finalized the design for Light of Mine and began work for Alpacaville, LLC. We also started building the Pathology Consultants of Central Virginia website (design by Stan at Dayrich). Check out the designs below.

Office Maintenance
It’s tax season, so just like everyone else we are preparing all of our documents and rounding up receipts to send to our accountant. We also put in some new shelves in the office, and began working on a fancy office chair makeover (cell phone photos below). I’m doing some educational maintenance as well, and taking an online course by Harvard Professor David Malan called Building Dynamic Websites.

Looking at this list I feel better about my blog slacking- that’s a lot to get done in one short month! What have you been up to this February? We’ve got plenty more in store (and more blog posts, for sure) coming up in March.

A local restaurant incorporates brackets into their logo, as well as on their website.

Brackets have even been used in my own designs, such as this nav menu for Shear Image.

A collection of brackets turned sideways and displayed as typographic mustaches.

A colorful graphic pattern made entirely of curly brackets.

These brackets go beyond the screen and make a fashion statement as earrings.

Is there a design trend you think needs critiquing? Have a question about an element or style you’ve seen repeated over and over? Send an email to ESpontarelli@GetCreativeWebDesign.com.

Today, January 18th, is a day of internet strike against censorship. Next week Congress is voting on one bill that will pass internet censorship in the U.S. There are two bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate, that would largely affect Americans’ access to information online. These bills would put companies like GetCreative in legal trouble if we linked to a site anywhere online that had any links to copyright infringement (source).

The protection of copyright is very important to us and we take efforts to ensure that any information supplied by our clients is attained legally. The way Congress wants to enforce these rules, however, goes beyond copyright protection and infringes on the core rights of us as U.S. citizens. To read more about SOPA and PIPA, visit the sources below. To contact Congress, click here.

Fight For The Future

SOPAStike.com

American Censorship Page

Censorship Infographic

SOPA on OpenCongress

PIPA on OpenCongress

The Oatmeal on SOPA (NSFW)

Today I will be highlighting two new sites: Plastic Surgery Associates and Central Virginia Neurosurgery. Both of these projects were in collaboration with Bill and Susan at Dayrich Enterprises, as well as their designer Stan.

First up is Plastic Surgery, which went live this summer. The site is a big improvement on their older site (as witnessed here), and includes a lot of updated information in addition to the updated look. The site was built in Flash and has an overall soothing look to it. Each page fades in when loaded, which adds to the serenity of the design. The neutral background and text colors are highlighted by numerous bright, high quality photos.

The site contains a lot of text and photo content for viewers and potential patients. Each of the procedures offered by Plastic Surgery Associates is described in detail, and a Before & After photo gallery shows real results from real patients. Biographies of each physician as well as detailed payment information and a contact form are also available.

Next up is Central Virginia Neurosurgery, a site that was completed in December. CV Neuro was formerly a part of Centra Health and has recently become an independent practice. To commemorate their independence, we put together a new website for the company. The royal combination of blue and gold gives the design a feeling of maturity and reliability. It was important to the client that they be pictured on the site, to show that they are personally invested in their clients. The design is a balance of professionalism and personalization, to reflect the mission of the company it represents. This website was also built in Flash, and was completed with the cooperation of Dayrich Enterprises.

Visit each of these sites today to see more of the design and execution of each website. Click here to visit Plastic Surgery, and here for CV Neuro.

The List: Jan. 6th Edition

From clients…

New website up for Central Virginia Neurosurgery. More details coming soon in the form of a Client Profile, but in the mean time check it out!

Visitors at Club Infuzion are getting a shout out on their website, with photos on the new Patrons page.

Vance Barber’s podcast Ear Candy has a new studio and a new blog! Check it out for some musical goodness.

From the internets…

I love it when I understand nerd humor. xkcd is always good for a geeky laugh…and bravo for 1000 comics!

Speaking of nerdy, this website delights both the reader and organizer in me: Bookshelf Porn

And to fill your obligatory cute-baby-animal-photos quota: The Top Ten Cutest Photos of 2011

Random favorites…

I ordered these pretty glasses with a gift certificate from the holidays. Love them!

My personal New Year’s Resolution #1: Make the bed every day. So far, so good.

My personal New Year’s Resolution #2: Grow things. Right now, that includes paperwhites and cat grass in the living room bay window.

Have a suggestion for The List? Let me know via email: ESpontarelli@GetCreativeWebDesign.com