Fifth Season Landscape Design is spearheaded by Chauncey Freeman. A recent graduate of the University of Oregon, he has been making ripples in Oregon’s landscape since he was 12.

We created a custom web site design that is simple, easy to navigate and gives a spectacular showcase for his work. It’s also easy to maintain: Text pages are managed through the WordPress dashboard. Photos are managed on Flickr. We pull them through via the Flickr API, along with photo sets, titles, descriptions and other data.

Launch Web Site

 

We’re shameless bocce fans here at Quoin Central, and have been playing in the Portland Bocce League since 2009 (and our team silver-medaled in 2010!).

The league has reached an important stage of its development. It is becoming more competitive and wants to expand and project a strong, professional image.

The bocce ball looked like a rose to us, the symbol of Portland, so we added leaves and set it on an oyster-shell court. Red, green and white are the colors of Italy, the motherland of the sport. We also choose to believe that somewhere in the logo is the inspiration of the Modernist posters of 1920′s Italy.

In the coming months, the logo will be adapted and applied to the team web site, t-shirts, ball bags, announcements and posters.

3 Things to Know About How You’ll Manage Your Web Site (Before you build it)

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.

Some questions to answer:

• Who has the technical skills to maintain your site?
• Who in your company is responsible for content decisions?
• How will it dovetail with your larger social media strategy?

Knowing this information at the start of the design process will help you realize a better return on your investment. 

Let's take the questions one by one:

Who has the technical skills to maintain your web site?

Your Web Designer

Your web designer probably maintains a wide variety of sites, and, depending on your employees' skill set and the number of changes per year, that may be a cost-effective option. Of course, they must be able to make changes quickly.

Divert, Hire or Train

If that's not right for your company, you will need to find someone in your org who already has the skills to maintain content, or you will need to train or hire someone. 

Many of Quoin's sites are built on WordPress, and training is always a component of our new site design packages. Most people who can readily operate Microsoft Word can maintain a WordPress site through it's well-tested user interface. However, a basic knowledge of HTML can save time if a tag gets broken.

If you have an in-house IT department, this might be the answer to the question. But suddenly you're asking your IT department to support marketing. This is a relationship you (or they) may not be accustomed to. 

Who in your company is responsible for content decisions?

What we're really asking here is: Who is responsible for strategy decisions? What blog posts will support your new product release? You have a benefit coming up. What do you say about it, and how often? Does the content manager have the images she needs?

How will your new site dovetail with your social media strategy?

Your web site and blog posts are the foundation of your organic search results. These are fundamental to your site's success, whether or not you're also buying online ads.

Traffic between your web site and your social media network is a two-way street. People can find your site first, and then engage with you socially, or vice-versa. But your web site designer will need to provide the right tools for them to do that. 

Some common social media tools are:

• Facebook 'like' buttons for your company's page: When a user clicks this, your site's news begins to populate their feed, keeping you connected to them.
• Facebook 'like' buttons for your individual blog posts: When someone clicks this, they post that particular blog post to their wall, so their friends can see it.
• Twitter 'follow' button: When they click it, your user starts seeing all of your posts in their Twitter feed.
• Retweet button: posts that blog post to the user's feed.
• Many other social networks can be integrated with your web site, and it's a flexible process wherein networks can probably be added or deleted as your strategy changes. But it's best to know up front if, for instance, you're going to be making inroads into GooglePlus.

Set your strategy and stick with it

But not forever. The best thing about online marketing is it's flexibility. Sometimes that flexibility can lead owners and marketing managers to change tack before they know if a strategy has been effective. 

Decide how long you can wait to see results. A month is very short in search engine terms. Make sure you take baseline measurements before you put up your new site. Then stick to your time line. 

Having the right people and strategy in place to support your site will give you your best chance of success.

If you're considering a new web site, please check out our recent work.

 

Disclaimer: I read an article with (almost) this title today, and it was so close to the mark in some places, I wanted to add my own input to the global discussion.

When Should I Use WordPress for a Business Site?

WordPress is perfect for most types of small- and medium-sized business sites. It has advanced in every quadrant to become a top-flight CMS. It is free and open-source, and it’s fully search-engine-optimizable (SEOable), as long as a decent theme is used or built.
Read the rest of this entry »

 

Peterkort Roses wanted to showcase arrangements made with their roses on their delivery truck. They teamed up with Portrait of Portland and Portland Bride and Groom to use cover images from their magazines. Quoin designed the graphics and managed color quality and installation with the sign company.

 

ywca clark county had outgrown their old web site and needed a complete redesign. The new site stays on brand while giving this nonprofit tools to manage all of their content, including classes and events, volunteers and donations, and downloads such as newsletters and PDF forms.
It dynamically adds to the brand by drawing on the new look Quoin began with their print materials, yet expanding to encompass the needs of the web user.

 

ywca clark county’s Summer Social at the Vancouver Airfield included a jug band, so we took our cue from old time posters and combined their signature persimmon color with a blue for an old-time summer vibe. Overprinting of the blue and persimmon bring focus to the event name in a casual way.

The poster folded down to double as as save-the-date self-mailer (it didn’t need an extra envelope, saving money). The invitation was accordion-folded to keep recipients interested, while reinforcing the event’s brand.

Other materials for this event included an RSVP card and envelope that went with the invitation, as well as a program for the social itself.

 

As a part of the y’s continuing rebranding effort, we created their annual report. Our favorite design solutions in this piece include the financial information on the back page, as well as the perforated wrap-around which allowed the piece to be mailed. Once again, working in two colors doesn’t mean our client has to accept a less-exciting design. What’s more, publicly-required notification of financials becomes an opportunity to give back to their donors by thanking them, as well as encouraging new donors to give.

Steve Rubel over at Advertising Age revealed some statistics:

According to an eConsultancy study of 1,400 U.S. consumers, 42% said they prefer to receive ads for sales and specials via e-mail compared to just 3% who said the same for social-networking sites and 1% who preferred Twitter.

I was shocked at first, until I thought about my own online habits. I’ve clicked maybe 5 ads since I started using FaceBook heavily 2 years ago. On Twitter, the only advertisements I ever click are for cutting-edge web sites. I’m not going to be on the lookout for a great deal on a new barbecue. I contrast that with my personal account with Yahoo (which folks I trust to keep SPAM in the junk folder where it belongs). In email, I get to decide when I receive the information.

Looking through the newsletters I subscribe to, they uniformly give me a great deal (usually one that makes me think, ‘how can they afford to do that?’) and/or keep me up to date with the very latest professional information. Another species email I enjoy is from designers or companies doing work that excites me.

Only those companies that have successfully earned my trust by delivering me more value than value proposition will earn a check in the opt-in box on their subscription form.

 

For one of the partners of Quoin, this was a dream job. He had always wanted to bring stronger graphic design to the brochures you see in social welfare offices and other non-profit locations.

The YWCA Clark County approached us for a wide-ranging rebranding effort. Part of that was graphic design for their brochure system. These pieces are the front line for this non-profit in fulfilling their mission to help individuals in crisis. The system had suffered a range of variations due to organizational changes over the years. The result was an incoherent look that was messy and disorganized.

Drawing elements from our recent redesign of ywca’s brand, we created an energetic layout that prioritizes easy comprehension. We find that getting the best result in non-profit graphic design means that we must remain flexible as each stakeholder brings their input to the table, while we advocate for our own design viewpoint and build consensus.

Once the designs were complete, we guided the brochure through the printing process.