Graphique Communications Design

Yesterday was crazy right?

Most of us got a taste of what it would be like if SOPA & PIPA where passed. Many web giants took action to protest both pieces of legislation. Google launched its End Piracy Not Liberty petition and censored their logo, Wikipedia shut itself off, and several Senatorial websites where knocked offline from the rush of people writing to them. People from tech committees in New York City and San Francisco protested in the streets. Millions of people who make up what the Internet is today joined together to defend their freedom. Whatever their efforts, the people of America made their message clear, “Don’t mess with the Internet!”

When we initially heard about these bills it seems like their vote was months away, but it’s getting really close to the wire. As we approach Monday's crucial Senate vote, there are now 25 Senators publicly opposing PIPA; a great outcome from last week’s five. It seems like everyone’s efforts are paying off because it only takes 41 votes opposing the Act to permanently stop PIPA & SOPA in the Senate.

Despite all this, many are still feeling unsettled because those who promote SOPA & PIPA can make small changes to these bills and gather the votes to get them passed. The Senate returns next week and while members of Congress know SOPA & PIPA are unpopular, many of them don't understand why.

Graphique would like to recognize those participants in the American censorship protest: Mozilla, Mashable, Metafilter, OpenDNS, WordPress, Anonymous, BoingBoing, Tumblr, Reddit and their community, Wikipedia, Google, Wired, TGWTG and thousands of others who are taking action to change the world. In addition, we would like to recognize the politicians who abandoned SOPA due to the strike: Marco Rubio, Kelly Ayotte, Roy Blunt, John Boozman, Ben Cardin and Orrin Hatch and Ben Cardin.

Share the following video to help spread awareness of the threats that come with censoring the Internet through PIPA & SOPA.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! - http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa

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U.S. Commerce Association’s Award Plaque Honors the Achievement

NEW YORK, NY, October 19, 2011 -- Graphique Communications Design has been selected for the 2011 Best of Scottsdale Award in the Graphic Design Services category by the U.S. Commerce Association (USCA).

The USCA "Best of Local Business" Award Program recognizes outstanding local businesses throughout the country. Each year, the USCA identifies companies that they believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2011 USCA Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the USCA and data provided by third parties.

About U.S. Commerce Association (USCA)

U.S. Commerce Association (USCA) is a New York City based organization funded by local businesses operating in towns, large and small, across America. The purpose of USCA is to promote local business through public relations, marketing and advertising.

The USCA was established to recognize the best of local businesses in their community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations, chambers of commerce and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to be an advocate for small and medium size businesses and business entrepreneurs across America.

SOURCE: U.S. Commerce Association

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Recently, I have received requests from clients to have websites compatible with older versions of Internet Explorer. If you have ever coded a website, you know that making a website look and work correctly in any version of Microsoft Internet Explorer® (IE) older than version 8 can be a real pain in the patootie. Luckily, I came across certain tools to help alleviate some of the hassle of testing and troubleshooting issues that come with designing and coding websites for older versions of IE.

For Mac

If you have a Mac, you can use NetRender. This site will let you take a look at a single page of your website and show how it would display based on the version of IE you chose. (Note this tool renders and then displays an image of the page, so you will not be able to interact with the site or see any moving elements.)

For Microsoft Windows®, or a Windows partition

The remaining solutions require you to have a PC running Windows, or a Windows partition on your Mac, with either having Windows 7 or Vista installed.

There are two ways to test multiple versions of IE on a single system. The first is IE Tester. This program has multiple versions of IE in a single tool so you can open up different tabs, all with different versions of your site to see how they look and work. This allows you to identify the areas you will need to tweak and those to make exception rules for. The second tool is IE Collection. This program installs versions of IE going as far back as 1, which is not necessary unless you want to have a laugh.

Now that you can view your site on multiple versions of IE, there is still one last tool that can really help. If you design and code websites, you most likely use Firebug or something similar, depending on which browser you use. But what do you do if you do not have any good web developer tools for older versions of IE? That is where Firebugger comes in. Enter a web address from any browser into Firebugger and it provides you with a debugger bar that allows you to manipulate a page like you would with Firebug.

Hopefully these tools will come in handy when you have a client asking why the website does not act right on IE6. You now have the ability to make a website look as good as it did when you showed it to them in an updated version of Firefox, Chrome or Opera.

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Steve Jobs (1955-2011) His innovation will forever be the foundation for Apple, a company that only he could have envisioned. He changed our world and how we use it. He will be missed. OK, enough mourning comments...

Question of the Day: If Ben & Jerry's made a new ice cream flavor in honor of the late Steve Jobs, what would they call it? 

We've got some ideas. So far our creative team and online fans have come up with Apple of my i, Chewy GUI, PistachiOS X and iScream. Let us know yours by visiting our Facebook page.

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For those of you looking to revive your product’s branding, web color pallet or your print materials for Q3 and Q4 2011, we’ve decided to provided some insight into business color trends for fall and winter.

Let’s reevaluate some of this year’s prominent color trends. As those of you in the design field may know, Honeysuckle - 18-2120 was announced as Pantone’s color of the year for 2011. That’s the pink one folks! Since then we have seen several complementary variations to this hue. As an ensemble, they created vibrant color pallets for spring.

Businesses have embraced spring’s color pallet by including it in their development of new branding, or applying it to their existing products. Some would argue that spring pallets are often too vivid to be associated with business graphics for fear of being seen as weak or unprofessional. With its use of bright, yet cool and complementary shades, this year’s spring palette was a bit more subdued than in previous years. However, it was still lively enough to be included in a wide-range of business communication graphics.

At Graphique, some of our most vivid design work has become our client’s favorite. So much so that we have clients specifically come to us requesting a logo or business identity designed with the same “whimsical and colorful feel” in mind. This spring and summer we worked with a wide variety of spring pallets, including an assortment of bright sports team colors for a corporate identity design and assertive hot pink logo design.

Color trends do not always translate into all fields of business. We pride ourselves in finding modern colors to help harmonize our designs in everything from tradeshow displays to branding and webpage design. Being aware of innovative color pallets helps us suggest contemporary looks for our clients requiring a brand update. Designing with the Pantone color formula guide makes it easier to match and apply our client’s pallet of choice to virtually any product type.

Now let’s focus on the forecast for fall and winter 2011.

Blue becomes an emerging color in print for fall and winter 2011. Color forecasters believe it is due to heightened awareness of global water reduction. Blues are shown in paler, inky and darker navy tones that give an ethereal feeling.

Red will be a vivid, orange-red hue to evoke a hot, energetic and intense feel.

Pink will be a mixture of hues that are dynamic, assertive and anything but subdued.

Purple will emerge as a red-based hue. It gives a passionate, complex and vivid feel when applied to patterns and print.

Green will be seen this season as either a foggy or vibrant shade of green. Think of an olive based, fresh and un-intrusive shade when you think of foggy.

Orange will be preferred this season in mixes of bright, attention-grabbing yellow-orange, pink-orange and coral.

Brown, as always, will be popular during fall and winter. This season it will be seen in combinations of orange and brown, or with an adaptation of leather tones.

Neutral, which has been popular in past years, will continue to be seen as shades of warm camel and coffee. It is comfortable, upscale and understated.

Gray has also been popular for the past few years. This coming season it transforms to pale, mid-tone shades that feel classic and unassuming.

We have seen plenty of competitive branding in 2011. Companies demand modern treatments to update their image to stand out in today’s tough markets. Rebranding your entire business’ systems may seem challenging and costly, but it doesn’t have to be. Subtle redesign with a modern color pallet applied to different branding and communication mediums such as web, print and even office space can really draw your target market’s attention. Whenever people see orange and brown, they think Graphique!

The opportunity to update or refresh your company color pallet is yet another means of subtle rebranding. Whether a website, product package or print campaign, embracing 2011’s fall and winter color pallet is your chance to communicate with your audience.

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Graphique would like to congratulate one of our IQ team members, Matt Hakes, for graduating from The Art Institute of Phoenix, and receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in Graphic Design. He is now an ‘official’ designer and an important part of our company. However, it is significant to recognize that during his studies in college he was also a Graphique geek.

Matt started out at Graphique as one of our web development and design interns and quickly moved up to become an in-house web designer. He has brought to Graphique an abundance of creativity, innovation and knowledge. His contribution and hard work was essential in the success of many of our website design and marketing projects. Matt applied his creative IQ to his projects and designs in his final graduate portfolio, as seen above, as well as at Graphique. A big congratulations to Matt from all of us at Graphique. We are very proud of your excellent achievements!

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If you use Facebook to promote your business online, then you are probably aware that it currently boasts over 500 million active users. This makes it one of the largest mediums around which to create a targeted marketing community for your business.

Facebook allows its users to express their “like” for certain things such as images, updated posts or pages. Facebook then tracks those “likes” for uses such as advertising, networking and connecting businesses to each other. Facebook also allows people who like something to comment on it. Use this feature as an advantage to build credibility for your business, by offering expert advise to those within your network. All of this information as well as personal data is tracked by Facebook. It’s then served up for you in the form of analytics that identify your brand target market of visitors. All the while while building credibility through its social network.

Each user’s page has a news feed section, allowing them to share information with their friends, to express their interests and thoughts. This is convenient if your company has a Facebook business page as well. A user can visit your page, “like” it, and comment their reason for liking your page. This makes for instant community review and credibility. You can also benefit by adding a Facebook “like” button to your business web page. When people “like” your page, updates posted along with comments will show up in their friend’s news feed. This can also be set up to allow people to comment directly on your website and display which of their friends also liked your page. This provides your business’ website instant live social reviews, presence and reference.

The average user on Facebook has over 130 friends. Wouldn’t you like to have a competitive market advantage of having as little as five people on Facebook “like” your business page, and tell 130 of their friends about it, and so on, and so on? That makes for fast and effective word-of-mouth marketing.

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10. Being a Messy Marvin
Always be selective when it comes to the content on your site. Be organized and logical in the manner in which you present the information. Try not to force feed too many details on your homepage. Use a grid to lay items out and stick to that grid on all pages.

9. Requiring GPS to Navigate Your Site
Keep navigation simple, direct and logical as your visitors move from one page to the next. The general rule is to always keep your navigation in the same place and on bigger sites only change the side navigation from section to section.

8. Forcing Customers to “Do it Your Way”
Make the route from first click to sale easy and unencumbered. Is it really necessary for them to have to set up an account prior to making a purchase? Put yourself in the place of the site shopper or user.

7. Avoiding Change and Being Boring
No one wants to see the same thing over and over and over again. Create new ways to engage your customers/users while developing exciting and fresh new ways to keep their attention. And make sure to let your visitors know when you have new content. You can accomplish this through email, social media, RSS feeds, etc.

6. Looking Like the Guy Down the Street
It’s important to know what your competition is doing and how they are ‘dressing’, but you don’t want to be exactly the same. Be sure something about your site makes you stand out and differentiates you from the rest of the pack.

5. It All Looks Like Fine Print
Understand the needs of your customers and tailor your site accordingly. Make it easy to read (large enough type) or less jarring (softer, subtler color palette). Do your homework to get it right. If your target audience tends to be retirees, shoot for larger type. You get the idea.

4. Don’t Forget About the Metrics
Take advantage of all the analytic tools that are available. If you are investing in a new SEO campaign, review Google Analytics to understand where your traffic is coming from and what words they are using to find you.

3. Only Designing for One Browser
With all the various internet browsers that are out there, it is critical that you verify that your site functions properly across all of them. What looks great on Internet Explorer 8.0 may not be so hot on Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Those three browsers together account for more than 60% of the browsers used today.

2. Not Securing Your Domain and a Few Variations Just in Case
Don’t let a competitor steal some of your traffic because you didn’t secure your domain and several variations (ie. .net, .info or .org). It’s inexpensive to buy several different domains and redirect traffic to your preferred URL.

1. Not Getting Help from Someone who ‘Knows’
You’re the expert on your product or service, not on website development or search engine optimization. Enlist the help of a person or team that ‘does this for a living’. In the end, you will get much better ROI in a much shorter time frame.

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