Up until now I have not typically offered Custom Logo Designs outside of a full Website or Blog design package.  That changes today.

To jump start this new service, I’m offering free letterhead and business card designs (printing not included) for all logo designs booked through the end of April.

If you’re interested, you can submit a survey here and I’ll get back with you shortly.  You better hurry, spots are going to fill up fast!!

Wanted to show off my new branding materials!  This is the first time I’ve ordered print material for Restored 316 (aside from some old business cards) and I’m so so excited!  I can’t wait to start handing out these new business cards.

For those interested, the little business cards, little stickers, and the card holder are all from Moo.com.  I went ahead and ordered the postcards from Zazzle because I had placed another order with them at the same time!

Many months ago, my friend Michele contacted me interested in having me develop a theme only available for her PT4P (Pinkle Toes 4 Photographers) Membership clients.  I jumped at the chance!

For those not familiar with PT4P: This is a membership program for photographers just getting their business off the ground as well as for established photographers.  Michele provides a ton of materials from Dressing Guides, Announcement card designs, to the workflow she uses to go through her post processing and much much more!  With your membership you also get private access to her forum where you can discuss anything you’d like!  I’m telling you… LOTS of wonderful information here!  You can check out all the details here.

Michele basically gave me a list of everything she wanted to include, and let me run with it.  I sat for quite some time just brainstorming what direction I was going to go in.  Michele had mentioned that she wanted something different than the typical photography blogs you see around.  Huge undertaking… huh?

Horizontal blogs are becoming a bit more popular but people are still hesitant on them since they are so new.  Michele and I chatted about doing one, but the more we talked about it, the more we steered away from it.  It’s different, but it may be TOO different at this specific time.  So… I took the horizontal blog concept and threw it into a vertical blog concept.  The result- South Paw.  By leaving the header static, this constantly kept the branding in front of the client at all times while still being unobtrusive, and I felt this was hugely important.

Once I had my idea for South Paw, I wanted to still offer a more classic version of a theme as this is what photographers are more used to.  But our goal was to have everything accessible on an iphone, ipad, and ipod.  Most of the photography blogs you see have a flash based header, and we all know, that doesn’t work on todays electronic devices.  So in Clean Slate, you have a theme that is fully accessible on the iphone, ipad, and ipod, so no matter where you readers/clients are viewing, they can always see your work!  Very important thing if you ask me!

I also wanted options in both themes to easily change fonts, colors, etc. to work with everyones branding, so this is included as well.  You have the shell of the theme, but you have full control of your design. Exactly what I intended!

Each theme comes with 10 predesigned layered psd headers that can be easily edited with your colors, logo, and images.  They also come with 10 predesigned backgrounds in which the colors can be changed as well.

Michele chose to use the South Paw theme for her new PT4P blog.  She used one the headers included with the South Paw theme and I think it looks great!

Interested in purchasing? First you must be a member of PT4P.  You can do that here.  Once you’ve done that and gained access to the forum, you can find all the purchasing information on the themes here.  Pricing for each theme range from $150-$500 depending on the amount of help you need installing and customizing your design.

As most of you know, WordPress 3.0 was released last week.  I wanted to give it the weekend before posting to make sure there wouldn’t be any problems updating your blogs.  I’ve updated everything on my end, and everything is running smoothly, so you shouldn’t have any issues upgrading your wordpress site.  Just be sure to backup your database before doing so, in case something does go wrong.

If you do upgrade and experience an issue, it is most likely caused by a plugin.  I’d deactivate all your plugins, and then start activating them one by one until you find the culprit.

If you need any help updating your wordpress blog, please shoot me an email!

Remember this blog design? Well after we launched Heather’s new site, she realized she needed to reorganize a few things along with redoing the colors.  She thought she liked our original color palette, but after looking at it for a while, she decided it just wasn’t fitting her and her new blog.  So she came back and we revamped everything a bit.  We moved the social media icons from the sidebar to the header portion to fill in the space up top a bit, and she also needed some extra space for her navigation bar, and wanted a background on it to make it pop a bit.  Heather LOVES all the changes we made now!  Yay!

Every once in a while, this will happen!  Clients have their ideas on their colors, or placement, but after seeing it in action or working with it for a while, they realize it actually isn’t what they needed or wanted.  I’m always here for those things!  If you ever have some modifications you need taken care of, just contact me and let me know!

Come check out my office makeover and how I did everything under $125.

Multiply Delicious, the blog I just recently launched, was nominated for the I Heart Design Award.  And now it’s time to vote!  Heather and I would love it if you would go cast your vote! Thanks in advance!!

For those of you who follow this blog, you’ll know that I launched House of Design the first of the year, to post any inspirational pieces I come across.  It started as something of a personal project and then turned into something I truly love doing!  So it needed a real space of it’s own on WordPress and a more grown up design to suite the wide range of inspiration that I’ll be posting.  So here it is!  And I’m so excited about this project!  I really truly am!  And I’d love it if you were to spread the word by grabbing a button!

Go check it out!

This would be me

Although I work at a desk and not on the couch obviously, this is the first illustration I’ve seen that has curly hair, and does a nice job at it!

O I am so loving this new design I’m working on! I just had to come and give everyone a sneak peek of what’s in the works. The big reveal shouldn’t be too far off either. We are just starting to install everything so hopefully I’ll be able to share the whole thing very very soon!