Taking Care of Business! part 3: MY DOCS ONLINE

Part 3 of this series (just recapping all the projects we've completed over the past couple months!) talks about the work done for My Docs Online, a secure online file transfer service that's been a success since 1999. Huddy Design created the new logo, redesigned the website, and developed a custom Flash Banner for the new My Docs Online home page.

Steve Campbell, co-founder of My Docs Online, contacted me a while back about a complete redesign of their company identity. As usual, I started with the logo (You can check out the logo redesign process here) and shortly after, moved on to redesigning the website. I'll never forget one of Steve's first comments to me about the original website design: "We don't think our website is old school, we KNOW it's old school!" too funny. TRUE at the time, but funny. ;) So, I knew my plan of action was clear: carefully redesign their website without shocking long-time clients by the completely updated look. Incorporate a modern feel to match the new logo, implementing current trends in web design to reflect their place in the market as a top competitor- bringing modernism and their long-lasting reputation together.

The old My Docs Online logo:


The NEW My Docs Online logo:



So, I got to work on the new design. I knew right away that I wanted to use a custom Flash Banner for the home page, and I'm so Glad Steve was on the same page from the start. They're a huge trend right now for a reason: Flash banners are AWESOME for getting a lot of information across without making people feel overwhelmed, and they can be used to help present the company's biggest selling points in an entertaining and effective fashion, when designed in a sort of tabbed format. And since Flash also gives developers the flexibility to build interactivity into any Flash component, this also gives users the ability to control which points they want to see and when (if developed effectively, of course). This makes any website even more user-friendly because it's just fun and more intriguing! So professional stock photography, catchy taglines for each selling point, and custom controls (pause/play, skip to a slide) and transitions all came into play for this project.

The home page design, incorporating the current trend of using a Flash Banner to communicate the company's best selling points:

concept 1a
concept 1b
concept 2a
concept 2b

Once Steve and his team decided on the new look, I got to work on the development phase of the Flash component. Aside from developing the visuals, I also wanted to build it in a way that the client could easily update himself; an XML file was developed and utilized to accomplish this part of the task, which included the amount of time each slide was displayed, image paths to read in, and all titles and captions to be displayed. So all of these are now accessible to the Client for easy updates to the content the Flash Banner displays... Images, titles, captions, timing of each slide- it’s all there for him to update whenever he wants to. A great time-saver for both of us, and ultimately, a huge money saver for him to be able to make changes himself!

the final design, live on the all-new My Docs Online website:


See the Flash Banner and the rest of the new design in action at www.mydocsonline.com and read what Steve has to say about the new look here, on the MDO blog. (Thanks for the shout out!)

Steve and the rest of the My Docs Online team were so easy to work with, it was awesome. Thanks to them for the opportunity!!! Best of luck with the new look. :)

Taking Care of Business! part 2: STORE-IT

Soon after the re-design and development of Hudson Shuffleboards wrapped up, Huddy Design signed on Charlie Koeller, Founder and President of Store-It, a large scale storage facility company based in Montana. Store-It was started to give owners of boats, RVs and other large modes of transportation, a place to keep them. Store-It also provides general storage containers as well for everyday storage needs. Given its location (Montana, right by Flathead Lake) and lack of other storage options in the area, Charlie has come up with such a smart, practical solution for a company if you ask me! The only problem he really had was his website. It had no SEO techniques incorporated, which meant the only business he was getting was by word of mouth. And the layout design was.... well, let's just say Charlie and I agreed, a major facelift was past due!! :)

Before:





If you're a graphic/web designer, I'm sure you can imagine how excited I was to completely transform his web presence. :) With Charlie's goal in mind (to keep things as simple and clean as possible), I got to work. We definitely utilized the awesome work of his photographer in the extremely minimalist design of his new website, and kept the overall tone of the design as professional and straight-forward as possible.

The result of which is this 3-page, elastic layout (content scales automatically to fit the size of the user's browser):





To see the Store-It website in action, visit www.Store-It.us.com

All the best to Charlie and the Store-It crew! Pleasure to work with you guys. :)

Taking Care of Business! part 1: HUDSON SHUFFLEBOARDS

A LOT has been going on for Huddy Design since July 15th, let me tell you. :) All great things, and I am so grateful for that. I'm hoping to do a more detailed review on some of these projects in the future, but I just want to do a quick recap for now... short and sweet!

First up: HUDSON SHUFFLEBOARDS; ECOMMERCE WEBSITE RE-DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT (V2)

As you may know, Hudson Shuffleboards is run by my brother, Will Hudson. Within just a few short years, Will has taken over the shuffleboard market and his boards are now a top commodity to some of the biggest dealers in the market, even Amazon! His tagline is "Quality Shuffleboards at an Unbeatable Price" and his target market is just about anyone who wants to have a good time. :)

So, when Will asked me to take on the redesign and development, I kept all that in mind; "Design something that reflects quality above the competitors, unbeatable but fair and respectable prices, and incorporate an easy-going and entertained lifestyle... something that people of all ages would want to be a part of."

As always, a handful of other specs came into play which I might review sometime later. I'll just say that the main goal of this project, along with incorporating the overall feel I just talked about, was converting Version 1 of the site from being in 90% Flash, into a completely more optimized layout- one that was also a lot easier and just more accessible for Client updates and faster user-navigation.

Before:



After:



Like any piece of art- no matter its form- this project will never be completely done as there are a few items we'd like to enhance a little more. But so far, the response has been great for Will. Which makes me happy too! :)

You can check out the rest of Will's site at www.HudsonShuffleboards.com

Next up: STORE-IT; WEBSITE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

A Plus Survival Supply... Launched!

This past week was pretty eventful and very cool. Rich Gates, President of A Plus Survival, and I crammed more hours into our work weeks the past 2 weeks than I thought were even in one to get his brand new business open.

After a total of just 4 months, A Plus Survival's brand and identity, its entire inventory, its look and feel and its fully-developed online store (with 350+ products so far!) were all formed. It has been a truly great experience working with Rich, and because he has one of the greatest, most determined work ethics I've seen, we were able to accomplish all of these things in that crazy amount of time.

Below is the Flash introduction I got to create for A Plus Survival's website (in possibly the worst quality ever, thank you Blogger... :/ haha). See the live version here. It's just a taste of what APS stands for, and is meant to show how vital it is for people around the world to get their hands on APS' products.



To see the live version as well as the rest of the A Plus Survival ID, brand, and product line, check out www.APlusSurvival.com


CONGRATULATIONS TO RICH ON THE GRAND OPENING OF A PLUS SURVIVAL!! All the best!

"The last kiss is always sweet than the first."

Pretty cool little story- Jana Harvey of Jana Winery and Scott Harvey Wines, who I've worked for in the past on some cool projects, RANDOMLY found my last blog post while searching for some quotes related to love and wine for an upcoming project. Extremely luckily for me, not only did she happen to find it, she loved it and asked me to help out with the project!!

The project is an 8.5 x 11" case card or sell sheet for one of their wines, One Last Kiss. Jana liked my idea behind the holiday postcard and wants to implement it somehow on the case card, this time using the quotes she's found to make up the man and woman's profile.

Here's the first concept's rough draft:



Today I plan on playing around with the text inside the profiles... want to to see if alternating word sizes will give it a more interesting and emphasized look (I started to do this in the man's profile) and also, if more quotes or less might look better than the amount that's included in the design now. We'll see how this one comes out!

Here are the other 2 layout designs (also, both very rough drafts):




The possibly final draft, as of this morning (1/13/09):


Hope you guys like it. Whether you do or don't, you should still buy a bottle or 2 of One Last Kiss... just in time for Valentine's Day!! :) You can order it online here.

Designing a piece for ASS.

Welp, it's been a different type of challenge for me this time as a graphic designer. Never before have I ever had to come up with an idea for anything remotely close to ASS. Yeah, that's right. ASS. As in A+ Survival Supply.

The first round/rough drafts of the logo designs:

No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail. -Marion Levy

I'm always up for a challenge. This, however, is a challenge unlike any other I've come across as a designer. Not saying I'm not up for it, because I definitely am!! But I'm not sure where to start exactly. :) The task: Design a logo for a new company called A+ Survival Supply. "What's so challenging about that?" you ask. Well, YOU try putting the letters of the company together and see what you can come up with. Bet you it'll take at least 10 minutes of valuable time spent wasting away on Twitter, or whatever other site or project you could be spending your precious time on (or should be anyway) to come up with a logo that doesn't scream "ASS!!!" to all who see it. LOL. And no, only playing around with type and using the full company name does not count.


Anyway, here's my first concept:


Before you pick out the details, just know that this is a VERY rough draft and I have a lot of smoothin out to do, obviously. Especially in the S's. Ok, now you may comment. :D

Long Beach State Hall of Fame Poster Design- Final Draft

Long Beach State Hall of Fame Design

This is my second (and last) pro bono project for Long Beach State Athletics. The final design will be printed on a 40" by 40" poster and will be showcased in the LBSU Pryamid for all spectators to see. The Olympic Medalists poster will be one of probably 4 special edition posters that I get to design; The other 3 will be something like "All-Americans" and "National Champions". The special edition posters will be mixed in with other posters that have pictures the other Hall of Famers of each year- each year gets its own poster. So, they'll all make up the new Long Beach State Hall of Fame wall!

I only used 2 athletes' pictures and copied them a bunch to get a feel for what it would look like, but once I get the concept approved, I'll edit/enhance/crop/trim the other 30 athletes' pictures and put them in the mix!

Hope you guys like it.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. -Frank Zappa

At the first Women's Volleyball home game I went to this year (Thanks Ryan for letting me drag you out there!!, I caught up with Wayne, a really nice guy who's in charge of student-athlete development. I agreed to helping out LBSU and mostly, the athletic department by doing some promotional work for them, some projects paid and some pro bono. I figured, if they have an enormous audience and their mailing list alone reaches out to over 33,000 people, it definitely wouldn't hurt to keep my creative juices flowin' throughout the semester- if I have free time from school work and studying. And Wayne said I would always have the freedom to pass on a project if I was already busy.

So, the first project is done. I think. It's a handbill that will promote the upcoming basketball season for both the men's and women's teams. I had 2/3 of each side of the handbill to design as a coupon, designed by someone else, was to be attached on the bottom. I was given professional photos of the star players, which I simplified by cutting out all of the details of the gym and the court, leaving just their profiles and a clean, more dominant image of them as players. I've never really seen them play, but I think they look pretty dang good pictured like that. For side 2, athletics wanted to list as many of their home games as would fit, so I managed to get all of them on there. I hope people don't think it's too cluttered....

It was a busy week in the athletic offices and I haven't gotten the final FINAL approval, but here's what the end result will most likely be (or be a lot like):




This thing took me a LOT longer than I expected it to, like just about every other project I work on, but I'm pretty excited to see it printed and sent out to so many people. Ryan asked me if I thought doing this kind of work would really be worth it to me and I said definitely yes for a couple reasons. True, not many people ever take a thorough look at the design of something printed, and I'm willing to bet 99% of those people don't know what all it takes to design and develop something usually. I'm aware of this. But for me, an idea or a thought that's created is art in some form or another, and my art is my work. So as long as I'm working, I'm getting better at the thing I've happily let become my job. And most importantly for the business side of it, the longer I work at my job, the more I have to show for it-especially in my portfolio for anyone to see since it's on the web. So that's basically what it comes down to. Yeah, I truly hope more people show up for some basketball games this year because they felt inspired to by my designs. But what's more (and more selfish of me as a graphic designer, I realize), I hope that the people who see my work who also DO look at something and understand what all goes into it, ie other designers, marketing professionals, other digital or fine artists, recruiters, etc..... I hope they see a job well done. That's all it ever comes down to for me, really.

I hope for that now, but my goal is to become developed and skilled and talented enough to expect that from these types of people.

Nothing will work unless you do. -Maya Angelou

Welp, I made it. I finished this semester. I can honestly say that it was probably my busiest AND most successful semester at Long Beach yet, and for a few reasons. The reason I say it was both of those is because it was the first time I accomplished more in the past few months than I have in my previous semesters. I'm sure that if a lot of other people who know me actually read this, especially my teammates, they would totally disagree. But here's why it's true: Before the semester began, I changed my plans (and probably some of Ryan's plans) and my life around for possibly the next 2 years so that I could do something this Spring that would be completely me, and just something that I've been wanting to do my whole life basically. I changed my major so I would finally be able to take some art classes, post-poned graduation by doing just that, figured out what my goals would be for these next 2 years so that I could pay for school and other crap since my scholarship ended, and totally had the best time (scholastically) doing 2 things that came from all of that: I came back to my artistic roots and I started my own graphic design business with a great client who I'll have a lasting job with! I know that to a lot of people, that might not be too big of a deal because to them, it's not the most difficult thing in the world (and they're right on this one) to just take some art classes and pay about $80 to start a business. Well listen up punks- it was for me so I'm proud about it! I'm not looking for a huge pat on the back for saying all of this, but I do want to sit back for a sec and be happy about all I've accomplished over the past 4 months because for one, this isn't something I do very much and all and 2, it took a lot of compromising to get there for me. I won't get into it any more than that because I think all the people who are close to me understand what I'm talking about already and if not, I'd rather talk to them instead of write about it here.

Basically, I have huge plans now for this summer now that I've got Huddy Design going.
-At the moment, I'm finishing up my first published website, http://www.hudsonshuffleboards.com/ for my brother. I launched it 2 days ago and have gotten some cool feedback already so that's good. There are a ton of small things I wan to fix and add to it, but for now, it's what Will Hudson, President of Hudson Shuffleboards, wanted.
-I'm also working on some more t-shirt designs for Wah-Tah!, an awesome company I've been working with since it started a few months ago. I've talked about it to a bunch of you guys, but I haven't told anyone really what exactly it is. I'll make a separate post right after this one that tells you all about it. If you have 2 minutes, take the time to read it all because although Wah-Tah! has somewhat of a cheesy presence to it, which is exactly what Seth (the guy who started it) wants it to be, he also wants it to become a hugely powerful and positive concept, which everyone including myself sees its potential in becoming just that. So read on, kids. "Tap the Power Within... Wah-Tah!"
-Scott Harvey Wines has some new wines coming out soon, and I'll be doing more shelftalkers for those throughout this week. I also worked on a new wine label that will be coming out soon for them... it's part of their superhero-themed collection of InZINerator wines, which is very tasty by the way. So I'm excited to see that come out. I hope it's a huge hit.
-Although each of these jobs have helped me build up my business a little more, the biggest plans I've made for this summer are to get my website finished and polished within about a month and a half. I could probably do it before then, but the thing is, I want to grow a really really strong understanding of Flash- one of the most sought after jobs in the design business right now. If I can become somewhat of a master of Flash and object oriented programming (OOP), i'll be golden! There's this huge graphic design convention called Siggraph that happens once a year, and a TON of great companies are there doing their own promotions, and demonstartions and most importantly for me, recruiting. If I can show up as an experienced and knowlegable Flash Designer, I garauntee I'll be hooked up with a sweet job in no time, especially since I'm a female. It sounds weird/sexist/ i don't care what it sounds like actually, because females working in graphic design tend to be totally valued these days since most people working in the fields are males. and females have a totally different perspective on, well, basically everything- on what the designs of the characters, settings, layouts, story lines, etc. in video games, in movies with special effects, in music videos, in websites.. females are totally sought after for those jobs because males obviously dominate it right now. I mean honestly- you don't go to see LOTR or Ironman or some gaming convention without feeling overwhelmed by the nerdiness of all the boys/grown men who think they're boys that day in their favorite superhero t-shirt or better yet their favorite characters costume!! I've totally gone off on a tangent.............

This summer, I'm making it all happen:
-Wah-Tah! will have a sweet website up and running with more t-shirt designs than customers will be able to handle when looking for their favorite style.
-Will's site will be done soon with all the details, so he can start selling a whole boat-load (haaa, literally though) of shuffleboards. then to celebrate, we'd dance and sing, "do the shuffle! do do do dodo do do do do.....do the shuffle!" (sorry, had to throw the corny line that's been in my head a lot lately while working on his site!)
*****-www.HuddyDesign.com finished and responsible for landing me my first big job- hopefully as an art director at a company in OC and not LA.

Last thought for the day- I realize more and more that the creative process, paired with the inevitable process of problem solving (and especially debugging, in terms of Flash and web design work), can literally make you go crazy sometimes.. but what is so important in what I've been doing and what I will do the rest of my career is the choice I make each time a client has a new idea or job for me, or each time I'm creating what I envision. All it really takes is the choice to finish what a client sees in their mind or what I've started instead of giving in to whatever it is that's making me crazy.. the program I'm using, the blank sheet of paper, my over-worked imagination... all of these things and more. That's really all it is- it's just making that choice, sometimes a lot more often than other times, to figure the crap out!! I know for a fact now, after only 1 semester of Intro to Computer Art and Foundation 2-dimensional, that making that one single choice is what categorized just about every single student into those who got an A and those who got a B and so on.

What's great about this realization is that it applies to basically any aspect of your life that you want to deal with honestly. If you want to make an honest assessment of your life and what you want to accomplish anytime in the future, all you have to do is ask yourself if it's worth it to you or not to choose getting through all the issues that will or have already come up within them. For me, I'll have to decide a bunch of times this summer during my training if it's worth it to me to fight off feeling out of shape or tired in order to win my next race. That's what I mean by being honest- it's taking the time out to realize you have a choice instead of playing it off like the choice has already been made for you.

This summer I plan on doing all of these things, finishing in the top of my division- whether it's in designing or in Triathlon and just in life in general- all while being honest throughout all the hours I'll be putting into each job or race. I should say job AND race, actually.