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It has been ages since I last posted, but worry not. I have been busy working on new projects and doing my best to take over the world.

The last few months have been crazy busy. Busy doing good stuff. I got married. Hung up most of my freelance for a nine-to-five. And just this past weekend I dropped some mad skills at this years Addy Awards here in Joplin. I had heard of the Addy awards before, but I never knew that there were ones at the local level. Low-and-behold I found out about our local AAF chapter, put in nine total entries from work I did in 2009 and had a pretty decent night to say the least. Out of the nine entries, I walked away with 5 Gold Addys and 3 Silver. I also received 2 judges wards for www.TheGreatBeardedReef.com and www.JackinaStark.com. I am most proud of taking home Best of Show for my wedding invitations!

As for my new job, I am working for a local Web Design/Dev company called SPI Creative. I had been doing sub contracting with them for the last two years and it was an easy jump from freelancing to working with their team. I have been with them full time since October 2009 and we have already launched several great projects!

A good friend of mine, (and direct competitor) recently posted a blog entry about the importance of SEO. He brough this up because he just ran a quick diagnostic of his site via www.grader.com. So, i decided to follow suit and do it to my website. I have been really trying to focus and hone my SEO ranking in a few key areas so I can set myself up as the authority in my city and business market. My goal is actually to do this under a different website, but I still want this one to rank high as well.

The ability to compete in search engine rankings is something that every good and reputable freelancer, or professional needs to have in their tool belt. It’s one thing to be able to design abd build a website, it is a whole other ball game to be able to sit down and come up with a strategy that will guarantee exposure, exposure and prominence. Grader.com tool allows yo to see how you rank out of a 100, but then also see how you compare to your competition. Good news for me is that I currently beat out most of my competition. Bad news, most of my business market and city don’t use the internet to much.

The report was the most thorough I have seen so far, and I like how it broke down the different categories. It is something I am going to be using in future projects.

There were only two major problems I had Wrong:

No 301 Redierect
This is probably a pretty rookie mistake. Search engines sometimes will get url’s with and without “www” in front them confused and see them as two different sites. This can be a problem because while http://www.yoursite.com may be getting 300 inbound links, http://yoursite.com may be getting 3,000 inbound links. You obviously want to get credit for all of those links because the more quality inbound links, the higher ranking. This was a very easy fix for me… simple Cpanel adjustment, and voila!

Poor Keyword Placement
Now this one is hard for me because I originally designed this site ot be more of a personal website portfolio than a full web design agency. I worked on personal keywords, and did not think about trying to target any industry specific key words. Ideally you need to have your keywords in several important places: the page title, the page descripition, meta tags, header tags, image descriptions, strong tags, and anchor tags (and titles). If you can get them in those places, your site is going to be pretty well optimized for keywords. I have my keywords in only one of those places… actually, three now. The problem is none of them are on site. They are either in the code, or in the page title. And for search engines, that’s just not enough. Again, this is a rookie mistake seeing as I could have taken the top spot in my city for my industry. Oh well. Maybe for the next redesign.

Grader.com has some great tools for your twitter, facebook, and other online accounts.

Ok Guys, I know it has been a while since I did anything with ol’ blog. My summer has been going great. I spent a month in Chicago soaking in the beautiful city and temperate weather. Things will be up and running here in no time. I have some great things in the works for the end of the year.

Here are your jumps for the month of July:

• The Do’s and Don’ts of Modern Webdesign - This is a wonderfully designed site that has an amazing collection of tips (both personal and industry recognized) and rules that every web designer should know and implement (or not implement for that matter). This is a great resource for both beginners and experts.
• Win Without Pitching - I stumbled accross this site last week while perusing Undrln.com. This is a pretty interesting site that delves into the business theory of creative agencies. I definately like the ideas here and thought they might be useful for others.
• SlickMap CSS - my buddy Matt over at astuteo.com has come out with another amazing and free resource to be used within any website. SlickMap CSS is a SEO friendly and beautifully designed way to display a website sitemap. Great for use during a site’s development, and for after.
• We Love Icons - I have a confession, I have been on a little bit of an icon-binge recently. Forgive me… anyways… this is a great site with a good collection of free and super high-quality icons. Stock up and fill that local library of goodies to the brim! Seriously… these things are super slick!

I am currently working on a project for a real-estate agent in the Orange County area. It was great how this project came about because I can safely say it was a direct result of my website (and this means I have accomplished one of my goals via this site: generate income). I just finished up the wireframe process and am waiting to hear back from the client and I thought that it might be a good thing to try out a new step in my design process: Mood Boards. Normally I would just move right into the visual prototyping stage, but I think I am going to try and put that off for a few more days until I can get a visual pallet established outside of Photoshop.

Mood boards seem to be on the rise. More and more agencies are beginning to pick up on their value. They can prove to be a very helpful step within a design process in that they can establish the over all look and feel (the mood) of a specific project without effecting the specifics of the layout. You can very easily help clients set colors, establish fonts, decide for and against style of photos without ever having get into layout issues. Sounds like a win-win to me.

I have linked to a few really good articles on mood boarding. There is also a link to a Flickr pool that is made up of different designers mood board. Great source of inspiration.

• Website Mood Boards: A Successful Precursor to Visual Prototyping
• Why Mood Boards Matter
• Inspiration Boards on Flickr

I just spent the good part of the last two hours persusing through all of JSM blog posts on his website. I know that I have plugged his site on here before, but I really do think it is worth talking about again. There is a reason this guy is one of the premier graphic designers in the world.

A few things I love about his site:

• The Print Layout Feel
  I know this is something that is pretty popular with some of the bigger designers out there, especially after the rush to grid layouts. Jason does such as extraordniary job of compiling a print style layout and making it work for the web.
  
• It runs on Expression Engine
  I have been getting into more CMS platforms lately (which was a goal for this year) and the more I do, the more I appreciate the simplicity and robustness of Expression Engine. I have no doubt that one of the main reason he uses EE on the site is that it is one of the most flexible, and yet powerful, CMS’s out there. I have found no other system that rivals it (now if only i could find a good skin for the CP to make it less overwhelming for the client). I noticed that he has a default style for posts and a custom one for all his wacky posts. Each one is a case study in and of itself. The framework he built it on is genius, and it is all powered through EE. Gotta love it.
  
• Daily Photo Section
  Nazarin Hamid had one of these going on his site for a while. It was quite clever as well in that the primary color of the page matched the primary color of the photo.  Jason has done a similar thing, minus the color match execution. Regardless it is still a visually stimulating portion of his site.
  

I am probably going to continue to study how he has set this thing up and try to do a more in depth post on it toward the end of the year. We will see.

Here is a little sneak preview at what I have been doing the past few weeks Will get most of this into my portfolio at the end of the month:

City of Joplin Farmers Market Rejected Logo Designs:

Main Street Joplin Discover Downtown and Third Thursday Logos:

Christ In Youth Rapha House Screen Print:

Shirt Design and Sticker for Carter Hulsey:

For those of you who are not familiar with the concept of Layer Tennis. Go familiarize yourself immediately right now. For those of you who are, then you will know that this past week’s battle between Chris Glass and Aaron James Draplin is possibly the most epic and “end-all, be-all” layer battles in the history of the games. Much like the recent Chicago/Boston playoff series, this battle is one for the history books. Flat out epic.

I most appreciate Aaron’s appointment to “anything but proofreader” in round eight. The ninth round is by far my favorite and the logo mark that comes as a result of this battle is not only inspiring, but truly timeless. I am ready to join the IDWF. Where do I buy the shirt?

For all you Expression Engine developers out there, you will be happy to know that one of the leading resources in the field, Devot:ee has just upped the ante with a great new redesign. From what I understand, the new look is courtesy of Andy Rutledge and the Unit Interactive Crew. The site is an amazing resources for anyone who works in expression engine, wants to work in expression engine, or knows someone who does work in expression engine.

In celebration of their new look they are going to giving away from sweet gear for those who sign up in their “devot:ed” membership level. Head on over the Devot:ee and check out the new digs!

Here are The Jumps™ for April:

• IE6 Upgrade - The folks over at Done 21 have finally figured out how to get all those pesky IE6 users to upgrade: Fraud. They have devised a nice little info bar that mimicks the PC’s native info bar and tells the user it’s time to upgrade. If you can’t beat ‘em. Join ‘em.
• The Grid System Generator - This is a handy liitle offshoot of the 960 grid systems framework developed a few years back. The nice thing about it is it allows you to customize your grid and break out of the 960 if you want to. I currently try to develop all my sites under this framework because it speeds up build times (and it’s uber cool right now. kthxby.).
• How to Extract the Facts with a Web Design Client Questionnaire - This is a top notch article for anyone still struggling with how to get the goods from a potential client. I currently use a questionare I hi-jacked from a studio on the east coat (with their permission of course!) But, I will definately be implementing few of these. Their intentionality is spot on.
• Creattica - The new Creattica is the old Favup! And the Envato Network is officially taking over the interwebs. This great gallery based website does more than just CSS. They offer some awesome posters, photoshop, flash, logo and business card galleries as well.

Ok, this isn’t something I am in the habit of doing, but I just can’t help myself. Micheal/Yewknee has been given me a ton of design love the past few weeks and I have to find a way to reciprocate. So, I figured I would give him a shout out. It pales in comparison, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.

Yewknee.com is the personal website of Nashville resident Michael Eades. Micheal designs for KNI (kicking firm), has been know to do some great screen prints, and beyond that curates We Own This Town. His most notable achievement (i my opinion at least) is his involvement with the Whiskerino movement. Something I plan on participating this year.

Go check out the blog and make sure you put him in the ol’ feed reader.