The branding was the easy part, for the web site and print materials I had to balance design asthetic, with branding requirements from the parent company that licenses the brand of movement Mobius Motion provides. Which leads to lots of revisions, but it was all taken in stride. All in all it was a great project, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Click the image to be taken to the web site for Mobius Motion

Meanwhile, I’ve been back behind the camera lens a lot lately, and expect some cool things to come with that… stay tuned!

Schuylkill River Shad Festival Web Site ( Click To Visit )

If you or your business is in need of a custom web site, hand crafted and suited to the unique personality of your business, I can help. Ed Roper Designs is focusing clearly on those in need of quality web sites and graphic design services.  Please don’t hesitate to contact me, ed@edroper.com, and I’ll be glad to talk over your options with you.

Share on Facebook ]]> http://edroper.com/blog/2011/04/09/schuylkill-river-shad-festival-web-design-branding/feed/ 0 http://edroper.com/blog/2010/12/13/coming-soon-mobius-motion-studio/ http://edroper.com/blog/2010/12/13/coming-soon-mobius-motion-studio/#comments Tue, 14 Dec 2010 02:16:25 +0000 Ed Roper http://edroper.com/blog/?p=175 I’ve been working with a wonderful new client, Mobius Motion Studio. To quote their site, “Mobius Motion is a Philadelphia based therapeutic movement studio that guides clients through their personal fitness goals with the practice of GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® exercise”

I’m going to be doing a full branding and web design package for them. In the mean time, check out the cool little coming soon web page I put together.

It’s always better to have a coming soon page with basic description of your business and contact info. That way you can achieve a couple of things

1. It looks like you’re actually in business

2. You don’t have an ugly placeholder page from your domain registrar

3. You start getting indexed by Google and other search engines, so when you are up and running you’re already on Google’s radar

4. People can get a basic idea of what you do and contact info if they wish to start working with you.

All my web design clients get a free custom coming soon page included in their web design packages. For more info on my web design services, email me ed@edroper.om

And I almost forgot, here’s the web site!

http://www.mobiusmotionstudio.com

I am proud to announce that I will be offering full-service web design services to my clients in the Phoenixville area and beyond. For those that don’t know me, I started my career in the IT sector as a web application developer. HTML & CSS has always been a friend of mine. Of course, in the private sector I was limited creatively as to what I could design. Now that I am freelancing, the doors are wide open.

I hope to offer my services across all industries and disciplines, from real estate agents, to musicians, to artists and soccer mom bloggers. I will be designing browser compatible web sites using the latest CSS/HTML techniques, put together elegantly using my eye for design and creativity.

I will also be creating sites driven by the WordPress blogging platform, to act as a Content Management System ( CMS ), so that my clients can update their sites on their own. All sites will be heavily focused on usability, as well as creativity. I hope to integrate real world elements and illustrations, textures, and other things to give my sites a truly ‘hand crafted’ aesthetic.

This is something I have been considering offering for quite a while. There are a lot of web “designers” in the area, but very few I feel actually do good work. I hope to change that and to elevate the local market to a better looking and functional level.

Now, you may notice my portfolio does not have any examples of web design in it ( other than the fact my site was completely designed and coded by me ). As I mentioned, I worked the majority  of my career in the IT sector. In doing so, the sites I did make are not mine to show due to various non-compete and confidentiality agreements. So to make up for this and make potential new clients feel at ease with working with somebody new to the freelance market, I will be offering 25% off my usual rates for the first 3 clients who sign up with me for web design services.

For more details, click here to view my pdf brochure. As always, feel free to contact me anytime to discuss how I can help you and your web needs. Email me ed@edroper.com for a free consultation.

You see, the client in question was using multiple creative agencies to fufill their printing needs. In this case, they were using my colleague for printing and some design, and an ad agency for other aspects of design. In this example, they used the ad agency for their envelope design and printing.

So, as the story goes, they had the ad agency design them a mailing envelope. The envelope of course, looks amazing. Nobody expected it not to. But there was one small problem. There was a large branding design, in the envelope “clear zone”. Meaning, it was inelligible for postal discounts since this area of the envelope needs to be completely clear from any printing or marks. Since this customer has a need to mail at a volume high enough to receive automated mail discounts, all these envelopes were rendered useless. They are now out a couple grand in printing costs.

Now you may wonder, how could this of been avoided? Simple. They could of ensured that the design agency was aware of their business requirements, and had the knowledge to design for those requirements.

If you are designing an envelope for bulk mail discounts, you should ensure that you use a USPS Notice 67 template, available from most bulk mail entry units. This will show you a distinct ‘barcode clear zone’ where no printing can occur.

Because of a lack of knowledge on the design agencies part, this simply wasn’t done. And that my friends, is how you can lose thousands of dollars, by not doing something that could of taken 30 seconds to figure out.

Luckily for my clients, I have experience in designing mailpieces and have worked in the print & mail industry. If a customer comes to me needing envelopes designed around their brand, I scope out the work, and determine if these will be bulk mailed or have postage affixed. Just another example of how experience and knowledge can save, or lose, you money.

Ed Roper is a freelance graphic and web designer from the Philadelphia suburban area who specializes in print, identity, and web design. He caters to small to medium sized businesses and non-profits. His web site can be found at http://www.edroper.com.

You may click on to their web site, and be tempted by their pricing pages. Often times they have “packages” with prices from high to low. It seems like you can buy a logo as easily as shopping at your favorite online retailer. But don’t be deceived, there are quite a few reasons why you are actually short selling yourself when you use a faceless “logo designer” or “crowdsource” your branding.

To walk you through these hazards, lets take a look at the design process of one particular web site. To protect the innocent ( and to keep me from being sued ) , I have slightly altered the copy and removed any names, but have stayed true to the message they were conveying.

“…just fill out our online form and submit payment. This form gives us all of the information you need to get started working on your logo”

This particular web site gives you three fields to fill out describing your business. Your name, your “tag line”, and a little box asking you “describe your business”. There are quite a few things wrong with this right off the bat.

To start, your business identity is just that, your identity. A good logo and identity will incorporate all the things important to your and your organization. Your ideals, message, mission, goals and desires. Can this all be summed up in one simple text box? Can you, as a person, be summed up in one single text box?

A good logo design will give you a full featured design brief, or questionnaire. Often times these can be 1-2+ pages long and consist of questions asking about your business, it’s vision, what it’s values are, and other important aspects of your business. This is all part of getting to know you and what’s important, and what’s not. Without knowing this, how can you possibly hope to represent your identity?

Let’s move on with the design process, shall we?

“Within 2-3 days, you will get five or six concepts to look at. We have as many as 6-7 logo designers working on your logo, to give you many choices to choose from…”

There are two glaring things wrong with this concept. First, you can’t rush perfection. A good logo design process can take up to a few weeks, bouncing ideas and concepts back and forth between the designer and you. All the while, the designer is learning what makes your business tick, and you are learning about their creative process. Second, scattering your logo ideas amongst multiple designers gives your multiple people, who know even less about your business. It just further abstracts the process and gets your further away from crafting a truly unique and meaningful identity.

“Take some time to think over the designs. You might like the colors from one, the fonts from others, and layout from another…”

A good logo designer will usually present your initial concepts in black or grayscale. A good logo works in black and white first, and color after the concept is approved. Thus will begin another round of changes and you discuss color options. They will also make sure it works well at small sizes, reversed out, enlarged, and any other presentment options that were discussed, in the design brief. Since these logo web sites don’t first evaluate all the needs you may have for your identity ahead of time, how can they anticipate what your needs will be after the fact?

“After we finish, we will send you your logo files. Now is a good time to think about one of our letterhead and identity packages.”

Stop right there. Branding and other identity ideas should begin as soon as you have some initial logo concepts. That way, you can seamless link and integrate all the concepts together. Usually, a good logo designer will already present logo concepts along with some “rough” identity ideas such as letterhead, business cards, etc. in order to let you see your logo in context. Branding and future identity uses should never be an afterthought.

As you can see, there are a variety of reasons why you should work with a local designer. At the very least, if you must use an online designer or agency ensure you are working with one or two people at the most. There are some very solid designers out there who work primarily online, but they still extend all the best practices in branding to their clients. In fact, one of my favorite designers, David Airey ( http://www.davidairey.com/ ) works with clients from around the world. But his design process is so personal and intimate, he might as well be next door to you. A big box “logo shop” will never give you that level of satisfation and quality. And after all, doesn’t you business deserve the very best?

Ed Roper is a freelance graphic and web designer from the Philadelphia suburban area who specializes in print, identity, and web design. He caters to small to medium sized businesses and non-profits. His web site can be found at http://www.edroper.com.

More good things are to come, including a brand new web site ( to replace the current brand new web site  ).

Soon I will be getting nice, new business cards, that will surely blow you away. I don’t want to give it away,  but it’s going to look great!

Also keep an eye out for upcoming informative blog articles, and many more new great things.

http://eepurl.com/biJQH

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Utilizing their branding standards, which includes color schemes and font choices, I designed an interesting annual report that provides a clean and very professional look, something that every non-profit can benefit from.

With the client’s permission, you can view the entire publication in PDF format by clicking this link : PDF Download ( 3mb)

If your business or organization is in need of professionally designed annual reports, presentations, or other business documents, I can help. For more information feel free to contact me.