3rd Place - Monochrome Photo Entry

Although most of my trip to Italy was filled with rain, my wife and I forced ourselves to dawn our rain gear and explore the many towns in and around Tuscany. I earned third place for this monochrome photo print entry from the Atlanta Photographic Society in August, 2010. The rain finally let up and left the streets of Siena with a wonderful reflection on the wet pavement and beautiful contrast of light and darks. Well worth the wait for a break in the constant rain fall.

2nd Place – Digital Photo Entry

I earned second place for this digital photo entry from the Atlanta Photographic Society's photo competition in August, 2010. I took this image in Montalcino, Italy and call it, Evening Stroll. The funny part about this image – I had to position myself to use the women on the right to hide my wife in the background. I love my wife, but I did not want her in the shot with the three elderly Italians as they took their evening stroll.

Call-To-Action

When it comes to designing brochures and direct mail campaigns, one of the most common pieces of information I recommend to my clients is a call-to-action. Typically, this is positioned at the end of your marketing piece. Tell your audience what you want them to do. Sometimes you want your audience to call you for a free estimate, or to visit a website to enroll for an event. You can have a great looking brochure, but without a call-to-action, you're missing an opportunity for new business. Seems obvious, but I see it left off of many marketing pieces all the time.

APS turns 40 with a fresh new look.

2010 is a big year for the Atlanta Photographic Society (APS), the oldest photography club in Atlanta. This is their 40th anniversary and to help celebrate the occasion Snowball Creative Group designed a new identity, website design and 40th anniversary promotional logo.

The club’s past website was difficult and time consuming for members to update. The confusing navigation and dated look and feel didn’t attract visitors or help members. The organization’s logo was 30 years old and unreadable.

Snowball designed an attractive new website that’s fast and simple to maintain. New user-friendly site navigation makes it easy for site visitors to see all the great benefits offered by APS and for members to take full advantage of their membership.

The site now features past and present photo competition galleries to highlight members’ award-winning photographs and is flexible enough to expand with the organization. The site now includes a press room and member forum to help keep members informed and involved.

A new club logo was designed with graphic guidelines and standards to help maintain consistency across club communications.

The new online forum is regularly used by members to share tips, seek technical advice and discuss club outings. By fostering this online community, the new site allows APS to further enrich the benefits of membership.

1st Place – Color Photo Print Category

Many of you may be surprised to learn that one of my hobbies is shooting photography. I belong to the Atlanta Photographic Society, Atlanta's oldest photography club. Our club just celebrated it's 40th year anniversary. I enjoy entering photo competitions and learning how to improve my skills as well. The winning image is a shot I took at San Luca, Bologna, Italy.

Never a Dull Moment

May I just say, I love website design and development. I've been designing print marketing for over 20-years, and website design for about 7 or more years. When I started out designing for the Web, I only designed the website template and art directed the development process by using one of my developers. Over time, I picked up a basic understanding of HTML, CSS, PHP (okay, now I'm showing off). Most of the sites I do today I design and develop myself. If the site requires a lot of custom database development and a significant budget, I still have my network of techno-savvy developers to bring to the table. By developing my own sites, I've noticed each day I'm faced with a new challenge to get something to work the way it's supposed to work.

Web development is much different than print design and production. Print production rules are straight-forward and they do what you tell it to do. Web development requires a lot more rules and everyone needs to play along, or it won't work properly. But that's when the mystery begins for me. I enjoy the challenge of a good problem to be solved. This shouldn't come as a surprise because, designers have been solving problems forever.

Solving the day-to-day web development challenges results in a lot of rewarding pats on the back, whereas design problem-solving is a rewarding process toward reaching a strategic objective. The feathers in my cap as a result of successful design initiatives are extremely satisfying, but I also enjoy the smaller pats on the back.

Is A Content Management System (CMS) Right For Your Business?

I've seen an increase in clients wanting to use a content management system (CMS) for their website.

Whether this is the right choice ultimately depends on functionality required and budget available. In today’s economy, it may not make sense to develop a more expensive custom-database driven website for a small business.

To determine what’s right for your company, it’s helpful to understand what you can and cannot do with a CMS application.

A CMS, unfortunately, won’t allow you to add anything you need whenever you need it without the assistance of a web developer. Don’t forget the ‘C’ in CMS stands for “content”--adding new pages or new navigation buttons to the website design template usually requires technical assistance.

Since the content is what you're managing, take the time to prepare a clear outline of your website that highlights what needs CMS and what doesn't—before you start the process with a web developer or designer.

Independent online content writer, Irene Hatchett, worked with me to enable a CMS on her site at www.CatchCustomers.com.

Once she understood the process for entering content and using style formats online--which only took a few minutes--she was able to create and easily edit new case studies of her work.

Working with PulseCMS, all she has to do is input her content and the Pulse system provides a small piece of embed code she sends to me to post. All I have to do is click to create a new page, paste the embed code and re-publish to her site. Now the new page is up and she can edit that content anytime she likes. And best of all, the changes are instant to her website.

Talk to your website designer if you’re interested in a CMS for your site. He or she can recommend a solution that is within your budget and meets your goals for managing your own content.

Launching a Blog That’s Custom-Designed for Your Business

It's no secret having a blog can increase traffic to your website. I often recommend adding a blog when clients come to me for the design of a new website. It’s easy to set up and easy for you to update (regular updates are key for increased traffic).

The websites I design integrate nicely with Blogger. This is a free service from Google, so you know it's going to help put you higher up in their search results—as long as your content is current and relevant to those in your target market.

First, go to www.blogger.com and setup a new blogger account. Make note of your blogger ID, password, and your unique URL. This is the info I would need as a website designer to develop a blog on a website. Don't worry about step 3 (choosing a theme). Just use the default theme.

Then, it's up to the author (that's you) to post new blog content online with your new blogger account. I take your blogger account URL and build the blog page for your site. The best part is you don't have to rely on a developer to update your blog page. You can do it yourself and the posts that you make are live on your website instantly.

For help with the design of an effective website using your own blogger account, contact Snowball. I'll be happy to collaborate with you to design a new website. Visit my site at www.LetsBuildMomentum.com