You're thinking about putting up a new web site. Fantastic. We think it's a great idea (we build them, after all).

Before you build, decide what will happen once it's up. 

Static, informational 'brochure' sites are a thing of the past. Today, competitive web sites are dynamic marketing engines that are a keystone of your business's identity.

To adjust quickly to market conditions, you need to be confident that you can set a strategy and execute it. Your web designer can help ensure you have that flexibility if they know how your company will use the site.

Read the rest of this entry »

 

Remodeling contractor Hamish Murray Construction, Inc. needed a show display for the Oregon Fall Home and Garden Show that walked the line between modern and craftsman, two of their largest markets. It also needed to be clean, bright, and orderly to give a sense of what a homeowner could expect from working with the company.

The center of the display holds a television display with a slide show. Quoin designed scale drawings from which a cabinet maker built the custom show display. Files were provided to a sign company for the header sign and vinyl lettering. We specified standard IKEA frames to show accreditations and work images, to hold down cost and give extra flexibility.

 

Molly’s Fund Fighting Lupus needed an convention show display that would support their Voices of Lupus campaign, which tells the stories of people suffering from lupus. We consulted with the client and sign company to determine the best solution. Then, we created the convention show design and worked with the printer to ensure accurate color.

 

Portland market strategist Rich Bruer asked us what Quoin could do to help improve his site’s legibility and update its look. We extended his existing brand and incorporated the font Futura Light as a web font. This improved the web site design’s faithfulness to the brand, while maintaining excellent search engine optimization.

Quoin installed a brand new custom theme over his existing WordPress site, which meant no search engine results were harmed in the making of this design. New features included custom menus, thumbnail images and clear calls to action that improve conversions (that’s sales, folks). Quoin also carefully considered his social media strategy throughout the design process.

Launch the site

 

Lechman-Su and Quach, P.C. asked Quoin to create a web site with the twin goals of garnering new local business for their family law practice while increasing and extending their reputation as guardians of minors from overseas. We needed to give the site an open, friendly feeling that helped users see how good they were with helping children and understanding their needs. We also worked to show how they partnered with attorneys in other countries to navigate complex adoption and family law.

This site is in development.

 

Town Center eSuites asked Quoin to extend the brand we had created to let new tenants know about the central Wilsonville location of their Class A office space. We performed graphic design of the site’s visuals that carried the brand forward and made dynamic use of their images.

This site is still in development.

Related projects include logo.

 

Town Center eSuites began leasing executive suites and needed to let people know about its professional image and high level of service. They brought Quoin on to create a new logo design. In the logo’s mark, we referenced the building in which it the e-suites are located to create this two-color logo that alludes to the scalability of the suites.

 

Wilsonville Town Center Offices needed a logo that would represent the building as they began the process of attracting long term lessors. We created a stylized line drawing that captured the principal architectural lines of the building. The colors were chosen to work with existing colors in the building’s interior design.

 

The Google search results page was just drastically improved. A clear hierarchy of user interface elements was carefully considered and executed, meaning it’s now just a little easier to make sense of the glut of information this search engine gives us every day.

In the past, Google has suffered from design-by-committee syndrome. One example where that has not been true has been their amazing maps.

The new look was created by Andy Hertzfeld. One of the seminal Apple UI designers, he worked there from 1979 to 1984.

Nothing in this redesign added server load. The user interface was improved through cosmetic changes that give better legibility and useability.

Read the rest of this entry »

As designers and project managers, we here at Quoin are regularly tasked with chasing down assets to include in printed work. When we need a logo, we often hear, ‘Can’t you just pull it off the web site’? Unfortunately, a web site graphic is a fraction of the resolution needed for print.

But now, there’s a new option: http://vectormagic.com

It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darn hot. Here’s what it did when we pulled the logo off of our own web site:

There are issues that would need to be cleaned up in a vector drawing program, and the type still needs to be identified and re-set. Still, it would save a lot of time. Put this together with WhatTheFont and you’ve got a successfully traced logo in half the time or less that it would usually take.

Now bookmarking…