anoki.net

Although the economy’s tightness has been encroaching around every client and industry I work with, I have been very lucky to attract a clientele of true die-hards who are ready to innovate and renovate when times get tough. Also, after two years of taking a few weeks in the summer to travel the world, I was very happy to take on all the incompra design work for June so my beloved business partner could enjoy Europe with her husband for a month! Hooray for a busy Summer!

Following last month’s launch of the main NET Centers website, this month I was happy to work with James and his team at the NET Kirkwood Detoxification Center to furnish them with a split-off content-manageable site for them for use with their own particular client base. Built on Wordpress and trained by me, the Kirkwood staff have all they need to keep the site updated and fresh. www.net-kdc.org

Some other projects that I have been proud of while working with these entrepreneurs who are defying odds in these times are Your Meaningful Treasures and Patchouli Roads Photography. Your Meaningful Treasures is a Delaware-based jewelry studio specializing in memory, commemoration, and recovery jewelry, with wares ranging from customized traditional bangles and necklaces as well as never-seen before adornment ideas. I had the honor to work with the creator Pat on her branding, physical materials and online sign-up page as she went on her first east coast jewelry tour! Have a look and sign up for updates on her up-and-coming new site detailing all her newest styles. Fun fact: if you look in the diamond of the logo, you’ll see a Y M and T!  www.yourmeaningfultreasures.com

Patchouli Roads Photography is a start-up by a friend I made through the multi-faceted outlet of Twitter. When Adam approached me with what he was looking to achieve for the launch of his business, he and his wife/business partner had a few Skype conferences with me and within a few weeks we had a fully functioning branding package and content-manageable portfolio site that I have to say I am pretty proud of. From both the logo to the layout of the site, when Adam simply wrote “Dude, you nailed it” in response, it was a good night. The logo came very quickly, as Adam and Alex were able to cite great examples of what they liked and talked out what they envisioned eloquently. Photographers of the first degree for sure. Have a look: www.patchouliroadsphotography.com

Finally, I’ve been busy finishing the new look for Rustic Mountain Handrails weblog as well as Metta Yoga: Mind-Body Education, and the up-coming site for Rhonda Sacks Interiors! Stay Tuned!

There are always projects going on here and there that have such an evolutionary pace, that it really drives home the notion that patience is a crucial virtue in design. Two examples who brought the use of this skill to the fore I am happy to say we’ve just recently launched their new sites: NET Centers and DharmaDots.

NET Centers is an amazing non-profit client that Sara and I work with at incompra. They are an organization that offers a range of behavioral health and social services to adults, adolescents, children and families in Pennsylvania and Delaware. They are an amazing, multi-city service that offers support, guidance, foster care, and counseling who approached us last year to embark on an informational and visual restructuring and marketing campaign. After multiple meetings with Sara and Joyce (our amazing editor and copy writer), the team at NET quickly found the website to be the flagship for the organization, and our revamping and expansion of the site’s content (a la Joyce’s amazing writing), as well as developing the functionality and style (with Sara), were paramount.

Recreating the site in a modified version of Wordpress to serve as a Content Management System, this is easily one of the largest sites I’ve done in a while: with various sections and sub-pages, cross-linking, interactive maps, multi-page employment applications, Flash embeds and more. Patience was a true asset in the creation of this site, as the massaging and tweaking and fixing to get things just right for this wonderful organization took a number of months, but will prove the best benefit for the people they help. And thats the point.

DharmaDots, on the other hand, also went through an expansion as well, but with a different area of the world to help. DharmaDots is a “daily Dharma aggregator and Buddhist news feed hub created to highlight in one location the latest headlines, quotes, news articles and websites of the online BuddhaDharma.” Created to bring the best of the Buddhist blogging bunch to a one-page, one-stop environment, recently I’ve expanded DharmaDots to include 6 new categories of reading choices. Including over 20 more “dots” or feeds from blogs, as well as new photo feeds from Flickr, and new tweet feeds from Twitter, the site’s been graced with a new Submit page, Share page, and About page with links.

Coming Up: An Pennsylvania Interior Designer’s portfolio site, a San Diego Talior’s shop blog, and a New York Fashion Retailer’s visual and marketing revamp!

One of the great things about working in this business is how within all of the code and layouts, the emails and urls, the edits and pdfs: there are still human connections. These connections are what make this industry—and the world for that matter—work. Here are a few examples:

While working on the re-branding of a leading women’s fashion outlet (stay tuned, coming soon), they were nice enough to refer on to me a start-up small business that was just getting ready to start marketing themselves. Solera-Green, a Solar Thermal Company, installs solar-powered hot water heaters for homes, businesses, and restaurants in the New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania area and their business is growing! The advent of new data and higher oil prices have boosted the want for an economical/ecological solution, and Solera-Green needed a marketing package to meet that demand. From the creation of a logo, the development of a fully featured HTML5 website, to infographics, flyers, business cards, and handouts we were able to create a very visual site that I feel catapults the client beyond his competitors. He agrees!

Another amazing example of connections happening is with my charity-drive project, BuddhaBadges. Through connections made via the donations we were able to gather and send to The Children’s Shelter in Thailand, a wonderful new friend and client hired me to create a new logo as a gift to the organization. A great experience it was as I worked with my contact and their committee as we were able to quickly find a meeting of the minds and visualize the direction we wanted to take. Just a few versions, some great feedback, and three or four emails in and we had a clear winner. See the image the the right for a sneak peak!

Finally, connections are made in a variety of ways. This blog is one, for example; all blogs are a way to connect. Recently, I have garnered some great connections through various online resources (Twitter, Facebook) and have been more than honored to help a variety of these writers blogs go through a re-design. The latest of which for a wonderful Canadian blogger who hails at Full Contact Enlightenment. Blogging about everything from Buddhism to Punk Rock to Politics, I was happy to find the creative voice behind the words also saw creative possibility and while re-vamping her blog we created a new art style: Dharmask! See her blog and more on my new Blog Design section. It’s right above the Email Campaigns section and Banner Ad section.