Wow! The entries to our scholarship have been overwhelming and amazing. The work is so impressive.

The selection process will work like this. While at WPPI, there will be a selection committee of myself, Justine Ungaro of Justine Ungaro Studios and Nicole Wolf of SOTA Dzine two of our favorite absolute favorite photographers. We will be choosing the best 3-5 entries, which we will be posting on the blog and FaceBook to be voted on the week of March 15th. The entry with the most votes will win an identity for your photography business, created by us worth $3000.

Best of luck everyone!

Each set contains:
two-sided business card
letterhead
business envelope
folded note card
gift certificate
mailing label
sticker (to brand your packaging)

The first set we would like to feature is our Contemporary Branding Collection. This collection is bold and ultra modern, the perfect showcase for your photos or product line.

Templates can be printed through WHCC.com, jakprints.com, and/or your local printer. They can also be saved as pdf to be made available to your clients via email.

Files are layered Photoshop CS3 or newer and are instantly downloadable from an email sent immediately after checkout.

Photography by Justine Ungaro.

Hideous photo taken with my iphone which I believe had both flour and butter on the lens ;)

Automation is great…sometimes. And sometimes it can really backfire. In a method to keep better track of our inquiries we set up an automatic feed into a folder, and when we tried to access the folder we could see lots of inquiries without any contact information. Needless to say, our grand automation scheme did not work. Oops. We have since fixed the problem, but we worry that we may have missed some of your requests for more information.

So…… if you have contacted us recently about information and not heard back, we are so very sorry. Please, please, please contact us again. Our clients are our business, and we do not take you for granted.

photo credit: Really Bad Inventions

We are thrilled to be included in the LogoLounge Master’s series. We received the book last week, and to be represented in a publication alongside of Louise Fili and Duffy + Partners (two design firms we worship) is an honor indeed. We had so much fun creating the identity for Johse Parker it is a pure bonus to be recognized for our efforts.

LogoLounge Master Library, Volume 1, is the beginning of a new series of books by the authors of LogoLounge, featuring the ultimate collection of logos by category. The first book will focus on logos featuring crests and initials. As with Rockport’s other books on logos, this series has the same inspirational draw, featuring over 3,000 logos. Constantly looking for fresh inspiration, designers can use this new series to take a more focused look at core logo applications.

This was some of the inspiration we received to help us understand what resonated with them. Notice, the rooms and fashion. You can start to feel their look starting to brew. The final brand felt very much like a magazine, including the layout of their site.

Words to describe their style, work and brand:

sophisticated
classic
fashionable
a little sassy
1960’s
subtle
friendly
boutique hotel
european
spunky
crisp
fun

We decided to keep the moon shape (for goddess Diana), as it had been a recognizable representation of her business for over 20 years. We then streamlined the type giving the moon more importance as it now replaced the O. We also created a separate Weddings and Portraits logo. Below is the before and after.

Their extensive custom portfolio blogsite was custom designed with their collective needs in mind. Author driven blogfeed with silhouettes taken from the inspired photo shoot by Nicole Wolf of Sota DZine. It includes separate sections for weddings and portraits and multiple galleries for each photographer. They also include a “People We Love” section, so their brides can experience their extensive wedding expertise when visiting the Studio Diana site. Visit Studio Diana here.

We are honored to be a part of their new brand. Beautiful digs for some gorgeous ladies. On a side note, since launching their new custom portfolio blogsite last month, they have booked twice as many weddings as the same time last year. And that is just the beginning.

If your business has a second or third off-shoot with its own site and own blog, you could easily have 4 or more places to login and update. Add to that an order fulfillment service or payment gateway and all the social media sites… That’s a lot. Too much.

You should no longer consider these things as separate entities but should consider them different pieces of a web presence. The more we can consolidate the management of that web presence, the easier our life will be.

Some Goals

Let’s assume for a minute that we can combine our website and blog into one site. Because we can. And we should.

There a few things that we should aim for in this all-in-one site. :

• It should be easy to use.
• It should be able to handle any type of content – video, photos, text, etc.
• It should have great search engine visibility.
• It should allow visitors to connect via:
  • Ability to leave comments
  • Accessible links to social networks and other sites.
  • Feeds from twitter, etc.
• It should publish an RSS feed, which:
  • Allows people to subscribe
  • Can push content to directories and aggregators (great for building links)
  • Can push links to Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Some technical considerations:

• No Flash.
  • Search engines can’t read Flash sites.
  • Flash elements, like an animated logo or header are okay. Not the whole page.
• HTML and CSS based.
  • Makes it crawlable by search engines.
  • Makes it visible to iPhone (and now iPad) users
• It should include a Content Management System (CMS).
  • allows a user to update content
  • No need to know anything about HTML code
  • No need to call a web designer every time something needs updating.

WordPress is all of those things.

The Two Versions of WordPress

Just to be clear, there are two versions of WordPress. One is hosted at WordPress.com. One is downloaded from WordPress.org then installed and hosted on your own server. At WordPress.com there is little to no customization allowed and you get yourname.wordpress.com. (While you can pay to point your own domain there, it is not ideal and there are many other reasons not to use that version but that is a topic of its own).

The version you want and the version we use is the self-hosted version from WordPress.org. While typically known as a blogging platform, and at WordPress.com that is all it is, the self-hosted WordPress is fully customizable and can be made to do just about anything.

Looking back at our list, WordPress has all of our requirements built in. We can have portfolio style pages, a blog section with built-in comments, image galleries, and it automatically creates an RSS feed.

And if that is not enough…

Google Loves WordPress

Perhaps the biggest reason to use WordPress is that it takes care of most of the on-page SEO issues that you need to worry about right out of the box. With the right plugins and settings, it can be made to work even better and is in fact recognized by Google as the #1 CMS to use for SEO.

Matt Cutts is the head of the spam (actually anti-spam) department at Google, which makes him basically THE authority on SEO. Why is the head of spam the authority on SEO? Because to combat spam, you need to know the difference between good content and spam and then tweak the Google process for discovering good content. There is probably no one more directly connected to the process of how and why sites rank or don’t rank in Google.

In this video, he does a great job of explaining what Google looks for, why WordPress is ideal and why he uses it himself. He gets into some tech talk but makes it very accessible. It is well worth watching for anyone interested in blogging and/or improving their site’s SEO.

Meet Marty…Marty Thornley is our Gourmet WordPress Chef and Code Connoisseur. He is the programming genius behind our custom portfolio blogsites and is an integral part of the IDK team. Marty will always go the extra mile to break the barriers and create open source sites that work for the unique business models of our clients. He will be writing posts about SEO, social media and all things blogsites. Feel free to leave Marty a comment or email him directly at marty@identitykitchen.com, he generously shares his brilliance and for that we are so grateful.

And the winners are…(drumroll)

Kia Gregory
Mapuana
Scott Kretschmann

Offer good through Feb 26, 2010.

I got a call from my dry cleaner this week. A dress I had sent over (one of my most coveted) had a tiny hole where I had cut out the tag. “The hole will get bigger” is what the dry cleaner explained, you might want to wash this by hand. She also explained that the fine layers of silk would be best preserved by hand washing. Now, I do not send out to the dry cleaner often, and I do not particularly favor one dry cleaner over another. But this extra care given to my dress, and the willindness to forgo a sale and save my dress – brought about a new loyalty to their brand that will surpass price or inconvenience. Made me start thinking about the entire brand experience, and where we can improve. What are the services you’ve added or streamlined to create a better brand experience for your clients?