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Looking Fresh: Keeping Your Website Design Well Groomed

Maintain brand interest with refreshing website design.

It’s important to keep your website design well groomed. Our eyes are being introduced to so many new things each and every day that they eventually begin to tire of the things they are used to seeing. We’ve become gluttons for online information. With the ever so prevalent and rapidly growing network of social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, as well as the seemingly endless world of blogging, new pictures, videos and facts are coming at us full throttle. With the amount of new information being fed to us by the minute, our eyes simply have too much to process. In order to deal with this overload, they begin to glaze over those things that are familiar and after awhile the old information loses its knockout effect, becoming “old news”.

Think about your closet. I know that some of mine is filled with clothes that date years back. At one point those old clothes shone with brilliance and I used to feel a rush of positive energy upon putting them on. This is until I got tired of looking at them. Some of them I gave away and others I kept and then, with all the empty space left over in my closet, there wasn’t much left to do but buy new ones. It felt fresh and exciting when I wore those new clothes but like the others I eventually grew tired of them.

The great thing about visual trends is that they can be recycled. What might not fit the wearer’s personality or mood today might fit them a few years from now.  There is a time and a place for most everything but no matter how good something looks now, there always comes the time for a refresher. Sometimes you need to peel back some layers.

Our old website wasn’t bad but we’ve grown a lot since 2008 and the time called for a new look to go along with our new growth. Sometimes the issue isn’t even whether it’s good or bad, but whether it fits. Let’s say you’re a car dealer and you have a beautiful website design but it’s crazy loud with color and overweight with content. While it’s a nice, user-friendly website, it doesn’t serve your goal–to sell cars. What you should have is a more simple framework that focuses and highlights on the quality of the cars. People want to SEE what they’re buying so with a tangible product such as a car you want to make the driver feel like they’re virtually in the driver’s seat. What you should have is a more simple framework that focuses and highlights the quality of the cars by featuring 360 degree views with short descriptions of features and specifications.

The internet is an ever-changing, ever-evolving realm and in order for your business to keep up you’ve got to keep your website from going stale. Sometimes this requires peeling back some layers while other times it means adding some cool new feature. Like I said, it all depends on the message you’re trying to get across. Just trust us when we say that when it comes to keeping your website design well groomed, the juice is always worth the squeeze.

Note to reader: If you’re now second-guessing your company’s website, guess no further. Our website design and web development team knows how to keep things real and fresh and we’d love to help you make it happen! Just drop us a line.

 

  • e 06/21/2012
  • f Creativetopia
  • 4 Blog

What makes a good logo design?

It’s a competitive world out there for logos…So what makes a good logo design? Our talented Creative Director, in his naturally direct tone, answers, “Something that’s memorable.” But what is it that makes a logo design “memorable?”

It obviously all starts with a creative concept but how then do you turn that concept into a brand identity? How do you define your services in a way that is both unique and memorable yet simple enough that it can be used across a multitude of mediums?

So fresh and so clean, clean.
You want your logo design to speak to your brand’s feel, cause and tone but too much detail and complexity can cover up your message so much so that your audience won’t know what they’re looking at anymore. The simple, straightforward logos that have a special treatment or a pop of color to further enhance and portray the image or mood, are the real lookers.

Think versatile.
These days, with the outpour of apps, special effects are no big deal to produce. However, that doesn’t mean that every logo design should have multiple textures and filters. In fact, doing so makes for a pretty corny, overproduced aesthetic. When designing a logo it’s important to think about its application. You’re likely not just going to apply it to your business card and website design; you’ll want to pimp out some clothing, maybe advertise on a billboard or use it in your packaging. In order for it to transfer well to all of these mediums, it needs to work on a number of different backgrounds and textures. If it’s too detailed, your logo design can become unreadable especially when reduced in size to fit a narrow pen or pencil. You know your logo design is a winner if it can maintain its integrity in grey scale, in just two colors, can work on dark, light and white background, is scalable in all sizes, and, of course, holds true to your brand of course.

Your logo and brand should have a marriage.
Make sure that your logo design appropriately represents your brand’s image and that it resonates well with your audience. Color plays an important role here as different colors evoke different emotions.

Pay close attention to the details.
It’s important to check your logo’s accuracy. Review negative spaces and make sure there are no flaws as they will show dramatically when the image is enlarged to, let’s say, billboard size. A great logo needs to be produced using clean, smooth lines and should have that clean precise finish. This refining process is essential and takes a well trained artistic eye. If you find yourself struggling to come up with an iconic logo design and brand identity you might just want to hire our talented eye for graphic design.

Live Long and Prosper with Creativetopia

Graphic Design Nashville: Live Longer With Creativetopia!

Graphic Design Nashville has brand healing powers.

For years, researchers have been speculating whether or not happiness is the key to longevity. Our surroundings contribute to our mood. Have you ever noticed how people just seem to exude a more positive attitude when the sun’s out? There’s a link between sunshine and Vitamin D and the more Vitamin D your body is exposed to, the more serotonin is produced. This, in turn, raises your happiness meter. The world just appears so much clearer and livelier when the sun shows its face.

Just think about those rainy, overcast days when the last thing you feel like doing is getting out of your cozy bed to get in a suit or primp your hair just to have it ruined by the foul weather so that you can work an 8 + hour day feeling and smelling like a wet dog.  However, when the weather is nice you feel this drive to get out and experience as much as possible. The world is yours and you’re ready to make things happen!

Graphic design works in the same way.  When things look and feel clean and orderly they are easier for us to process. And, when they have balanced, enticing accents such as a pop of rich hue or a stylized motif, they tend to evoke a sense of passion within us. No matter how interesting the information, it’s the presentation that can make a huge difference. Professional and engaging graphic design does not have to be comprised of a lot of detail. In fact, sometimes the cleaner the better. You want to initially draw the viewer in so that they want to see, hear or read more. You don’t want to muck things up because too much busyness will likely frustrate the viewer and deter them from digging deeper. You want people to feel good about the total experience of your website so that they will react the way you want them to.

Here at Creativetopia we help make the world more eye catching so that people are more inspired and driven and happy and hopefully (if the premise rings true) will live longer…or, at the very least, their businesses will! Whether you’re interested in getting more short-lived quick results through email marketing, direct mail marketing, and social networking, or you’re looking to increase your brand’s value and overall longevity through a whole identity transformation and website design, Creativetopia, the best in graphic design Nashville, has the skills your business needs to get to that next level!

Keyword Optimization Nashville

Don’t Oversaturate: Keyword and SEO Protocol

At Creativetopia, we create website content in order to maximize the page rank of our client’s websites over various other search engines. We help you stand out by combining marketing strategy and internet savvy to produce optimal keyword saturation.

So what exactly is keyword saturation? Simply put, it’s using a keyword or keyword phrase (more formally known as a “long tail” keyword) repeatedly in your article or website, therefore saturating the copy with that particular word or phrase.

Why is this important and why should it concern you? Well, keyword phrases are as essential to developing high search engine rankings and valuable website traffic as effects and the principles of design are to creating amazing graphics.

With that being said, there is an art behind effective keyword saturation. You can’t just simply stuff your copy with keywords and expect your site to get a million hits. This isn’t a chubby bunny contest. The content has to work together to help people easily search for you while still keeping them engaged in what they are actually reading. If your copy is too keyword heavy it’s going to scream desperation…and no one wants to sound stupid these days, especially on the internet.

2.5 to 3.5 percent is the magic formula when it comes to SEO protocol. You want to keep the reader focused on the main topic at hand rather than distracting them with echoing words and phrases. So, to avoid diluting the focus of the article, blog or page, you want to be sure that the keyword or phrase appears no more than 3% times the total word count. You want to scatter those words to help mark the path but blend them so that they aren’t huge roadblocks. If you come to a roadblock trying to take optimization into your own hands then, lucky for you, you’ve already managed to navigate your way to us–your SEO experts!

 

 

web design nashville

Web Design Nashville, what’s the point?

There are those that know how to draw, there are those who can create and crack code and then there are graphic and web designers who usually do a little bit of both. So, web design Nashville, what’s the point?

Think of your brand like your home. If you’re going to be inviting you want to be easy on the eyes, easy to find, and you want your audience to be impressed. Creating an effective website is easier said than done and usually starts like this.

You know that you need to get your company online because that’s where everyone else, including your competition, is spending their time these days. Or maybe you already have some sort of template website but it’s extremely outdated and bordering on embarrassingly ugly. All the big money makers in your industry have sparkling new websites that are easy as pie to navigate around and they have over 1,000 likes on Facebook while you, wait…you’re not even on Facebook are you? We’ll get to that later. The point is that your business is not living up to its potential and, despite any skepticism you may have, a multitude of studies have shown that a well-built website with a great user interface will generate better customer traffic and will bring in new business at a steady growing rate.

A study conducted in 2004 concluded that design is a key determinant to building online trust with consumers. For motivated users of an information site, bad design (busy layout, small print, too much text) hurts more than good design helps.

You might roll your eyes at that or let out a sigh of frustration. I mean how can something as seemingly superficial as your website’s design have such a direct effect on your success as a business?

For starters, there’s consistency and all good websites have it. Repetition of your logo and brand colors help your customer identify and differentiate your brand among all the others. If your website is just a random mish mosh of imagery, your audience will be thrown off into thinking they landed on the wrong site. If and when they figure out that they are at the right URL they’ll just be even more confused and may feel uncomfortable, causing them to form negative associations with your company. You see, when a brand’s visual communication changes abruptly you lose that consistency, which in turn has a negative impact on your brand loyalty.

While good design aesthetics are an integral part in positively representing your company, there are many other factors that go into a truly successful website, such as user ability. The navigation of a website can make or break a site. You don’t want someone to see your awesome website and have trouble figuring out how to get from page to page or get distracted by an uneven ratio of graphics and text to white space. You want everything to be accessible. In most cases, you want to oversimplify so that it’s intuitive enough that a young child could find and comprehend all aspects of your site.

Here at Creativetopia, we live eat and breathe the world wide web so we’re definitely the right people to come to for help in creating and launching a website, especially if you’re looking for something with 20 plus pages of custom design and content. After all, we haven’t even begun to touch upon the importance of SEO.

copywriting nashville

Copywriting Nashville: Why Good Content is Essential to the Success of Your Brand

The Best Copywriting Nashville Has To Offer!

First off, being that we’re in Music City, I think it’s important to stress that when we refer to the term copywriting we do not mean copyright laws or anything of that nature. We’ll leave the piracy debates alone. What we’re talking about here are the clever facts found on the inside of Snapple caps, and familiar phrases like “Breakfast of Champions”, “The most interesting man in the world”, and “Have it your way”. We’re talking words that have emotional impact, words that will make people feel and react in a certain way–we’re talking COPYWRITING Nashville.

Unlike art, which can be interpreted in so many ways and can often be misunderstood, the written word can help steer your target audience in the direction that was intended. Sometimes it takes a single phrase, sometimes it takes a whole page of content, but when strategically chosen words are used they can hone in on achieving your marketing communications objectives by clearing up any uncertainties.

Words help produce emotions that drive you to react in a certain way, which is exactly why they are so important to incorporate when selling a service or product. After all, the world is not silent. It’s important to be heard just as much as it is to be seen. While the look and feel of a product helps capture your eye, we are so visually stimulated throughout the day that the look might not stick with you. Plus, with trends changing so frequently something else is needed to really solify the message. The art of combining well-chosen words, also known as copywriting, can enhance the visuals and make the impact more long lasting. And the best copywriting Nashville has to offer always hits a marketing home run.

“Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.” — Joseph Pulitzer

I mean there’s always the off chance that a Tide commercial comes on just as you’re trying to scrub a stain out of your new shirt and you’ll dart to the store in search of a Tide to-go stick.  Though, in most cases,  it takes a little more persuasion. The same goes for any product, and there are A LOT of products out there with a lot of variations.

Think about what sets your brand apart. What’s going to convince someone that your services are better than the next person’s?

Figuring out the answers to those questions lies at the crux of the issue.

Here at Creativetopia, the hub for the best copywriting Nashville has to offer, we can help you drive traffic to your website and/or convince someone to use your services by helping you produce original and engaging content that your target audience will be eager to read.  Let Creativetopia script your brand a voice that will resonate with your customers! Our savvy team of wordsmiths can make even the most monotonous thing sound clever and appealing.

Paying it Forward: How Our Branding Services Pay You Back

When it comes to successful branding, many people think they can do it themselves. All you need is a cool logo and a complementary catch phrase, throw it on a business card and a website and wam-bam you’re done. Right?

Not quite. You’re on the right track though.

There is a lot of strategic thinking that should be involved in the branding process and sometimes it’s hard to step back and look at the big picture, especially when you hold your brand very close to you. You might be an expert at forecasting what your current clients want but maybe the future of your business is a hazy image in your mind. We at Creativetopia are here to serve as your strategic expert and a critical second set of eyes, to show you your brand in a 360 degree perspective. What this means is that we help leverage your business to get it where you want it to be and to ensure that it keeps growing.

There’s a lot of competition out there so it’s imperative that you stand out as unique and different. That’s why the branding process, while it may seem like a small feat, is actually what will determine the future of your success. Making sure you hit the nail on the head the first time by investing a little money in good design and marketing services will have you thanking yourself later. You have all the ingredients but, unless you know how to blend them the way we branding professionals do, your efforts may not result in that perfect treat. Why risk missing an important step and blowing up the final product when we have the knowledge and expertise to help make the most of your business capabilities and represent those advantages to your clients and customers? Let us show you how the incremental results you’ll get from tapping into Creativetopia’s skillsets will pay for the services themselves. Now you can’t ask for a much better ROI than that.

So how do we increase your brand’s worth? In addition to giving your brand the cool factor with an awesome logo accompanied by a clean and professional looking website, we make sure that your various branding outlets are getting clicks and views by optimizing them with the all the right keywords. That means that we can get your brand higher up on search engine results. After all, who wants to be on page 6 of a Google search, for example? Because we deal with brands on a daily basis, we know what’s out there and we know what’s trending. We take our background and knowledge and find a niche look, feel and tone that will make your brand appealing to your most devoted customers as well as those who might just happen to stumble upon your website and think, “Wow, this is awesome!”

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