Redesign of Creative Graphic Art

Creative Graphic Art website  has gone through a face lift to align itself with the focus and mission of the business. The mission is to help you create.  Click the creative graphic art link to view site.

Help you create better marketing pieces through print and web. Create better marketing strategies and plans. Overall create a better brand wether you do it yourself or hire  me from Creative Graphic Art.  

This website has been redesigned so that you can find what you are looking for. A clean and simple design. Let me highlight some of the changes.

The first thing you may notice is all the added white space.  A gradient was added to the background to incorporate the company colors. This was done for readablility.  Reading reverse type is hard on the eyes over a period of time.

The header was redesigned so you immediately know what it is all about. Kept the blue, orange, and white for branding purposes. 

The navigation bar was changed for easy identification.

In the navigation bar a share button was added. This share button will allow visitors to share with there friends very easy. In order to use the share button a visitor must click on it. Then they can post the site to any of their social sites or email.

Moved the Book from the side bar to right under the navigation bar. The one on one sign up right next to the book sign up. This was done so visitors can immediately grab what can help them the quickest for the do it yourselfer.

Underneath the book you have free articles and video tutorials to learn the tools of the trade.

Back to the top of the page next to the share is a Portfolio link. This shows some of the work done over the past couple of years.

Additional pages that were not in the previous site is the about page and blog.

If you are interested in graphic design Sign up for the free book. It is a nice easy read full of articles and tutorials.

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Work Work and More Work

It has been a while since I posted something new. Ever since the beginning of this year (2010) I have been extremely busy with side projects. I thought I would share some of the projects that I have worked on over the past couple of weeks.

I have done flyers, banners, motion graphics, websites, and logos. Some are still in process but I thought I would share with you all and see what you think.

check out  :

This was window treatmeants for the new place of worship for Labourers For Christ. This is on the inside of the building.

This is window treatments on the outside of the building.

This was a flyer done for the introduction of a name change from Pentacost Word of Faith to New Life Experience Christian Center. The logo was also another project.

I did this project over a couple of months time during my spare time. A portrait of my lovely daughter.

This was a flyer done for a conference in GA. Multiple versions but this was a good selection by Family Restoration which I also dd the logo.

website – http://labourers4christ.publishpath.com/

In this website there is a short video  that I created also.

short video –  http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?v=app_2392950137&id=1311387943#!/video/video.php?v=1341351176452 

 

Last but not least a flyer/ ad that I did for Tykielah promoting her lovely parfaits. I would like to highlight the logo was also created by me.  This is one of my prized projects because I also had the previlidge of creating the labels. I pretty much had a big say in how everything looked on this product given that my wife is the owner. lol. …You can also visit the website I created by clicking on the link www.delitecakes.com

Please let me know what you think of the work.

Free Creative Gift

This has been such a good year for me. Creative Graphic Art website has increased traffic from 10-15 views per month to an average of 300-400 views per month over the last year. As a thank you, I am offering a free logo design or webpage or flyer design for free no strings attached, which ever you choose. Click on the link below and fill out the form. I am looking for small business owners, hair and nail techs, Pastors, Doctors, laywers, and anyone that need to get a message out. I will notify you by email on Dec 16th. If I currently work with you feel free to put in your request, all are welcome.

The logo design is valued at $150.00
The html webpage design is valued at $100.00/page
The flyer is valued at $50.00

http://www.cdesign8.com/Christmas09.html
Again thank you for such a great year. Iam excited to show you all what I have planned for 2010.

3 Advantages for hiring Caleb

There are many advantages for hiring a graphic designer. I would like to highlight three advantages for hiring Caleb from Creative Graphic Art.

1.) I’ll stretch your dollar to meet your needs. As a growing business with a tight budget I can suggest ideas and creative ways to reach your audience. There are cost effective ways to achieve big results. You just have to think creatively. In addition, my time in the field has allowed me to find great deals for web hosting and printing. 

2.) I’ll save you time. I have tutorials for photoshop and illustrator at  www.cdesign8.com. Anyone is more than welcome to try their hand at mastering the tools of the trade. But mastering the tools will take time.  You may not have time to figure out the tools. Why try to be jack of all trades when you’re the ace in your profession. Adding a graphic designer to your team like me is a great way to build around your skill.

3.) I’ll bring creative energy and ideas with an artistic twist and service that will be unmatched.

Drop me an email at caleb@cdesign8.com and ask about services and prices.

Consistency

Building a brand is not a one time attempt. A brand is built over time in the mind of the consumers. Creating a logo, brochure, business card, flyer, or website is not the complete outline of your business. The building in which your business resides is not the complete impression but having a controlled consistent approach in bringing them all together over time creates a more complete picture and credibility of your business  in the consumers mind.

What does your business promise to the consumer?  This is the point businesses constently push on commercials, billboards, magazines, Internet, and TV ads. Seeing the message and images over and over again we begin to formulate an opinion or thought about the significance of the product being presented. When people buy the information, product or service they tend to recommend it to their associates. If the product or service is unsatisfactory they will not recommend your business. We as business owners do everything we can to sway a good response.

To strongly influence a good response from the consumers, business owners put in many hours to perfect the product or service.  Many times businesses neglect the outer branding that must go in tangent with the inner brand. Repeatedly transmitting the news of your business to the consumers will go far. Constantly projecting an image or outer brand through your business cards, website, brochures, flyers, and posters will build your brand over time. 

In addition, inner branding must be worked on a daily basis. Inner branding deals with the product or service, employees and all internal dealings. The outer brand should always reflect the internal brand without embellishments. If the internal brand is awful and the outer brand is excellent people will try it and not return because it will seem like the product and/or service was falsely advertised. If the internal brand is good and the outer branding is lousy then no one will come because it looks undesirable. If the internal brand and the outer branding is good then you will have satisfied customers who will recommend you to their people because you are delivering what is advertised. This is what a business strives to accomplish. Bringing all the pieces together over time creates credibility and brand value of your business in the consumers mind.

Basic Webpage

1.) The first step in creating a webpage with wordpad is to open wordpad.

2.) Next place HTML tags in wordpad like the illustration below.

3.) Inside the HTML tags place body tags as illustrated below.

4.) Inside the the body tag type some text.

5.) Lastly save it as a html file.

Change the .txt to .html

Save it to your desktop and a web icon should pop up on your desktop. Double click on the icon and preview your webpage. Congradulations you have made your first web page with word pad. Below is what my page look like in a browser. I know it’s not sexy but in future post we will build upon this and create a nice looking webpage.

If you like this short tutorial visit www.cdesign8.com and sign up for the video tutorials.

Linking Web Pages

Linking web pages together is really simple. In this article / tutorial I will show you how to hand code a link and how to use dreamweaver to link webpages together.

If you have some understanding of HTML then you know that <a href=> </a> tag is a link tag. You open the link tag by using <a href=> and you close the link with </a>. In the <ahref=> tag you will enter the url that you want the person to end up, when they click on the link. For example:

1.) <ahref=http://www.cdesign8.com>

Then you will type in the text that the viewer will click on to go to the next page. For example:

2.)<ahref=http://www.cdesign8.com>click here to read on

 Lastly you must close the tag with a </a>. For example:

3.)<ahref=http://www.cdesign8.com>click here to read on</a>

This is how you create a text link from scratch.

The only thing you will see on the HTML page is click here to read on.

To create an image link to another page then the image file will be where the “click here to read on” is located with in the  link tags.

* *Your image must be saved in a location that the internet can pull the image from**

There are many image hosting sites like photobucket but if you have a website then they give you space to host your images. Download your image and reference back to that image by providing the location where it can be found. One important fact I left out is to have image tags around the location. <img src=”thememusiccopy.jpeg/>. For example:

<a href=”https://davisca8.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/theme-music/” target=”_blank”><img src=”thememusiccopy.jpg” width=”400″ height=”200″ border=”0″ /></a>

In this example I have a jpeg image with the width of 400 pixels and height of 200 pixels and no boarder. When you click on this image it will take you to my wordpress blog theme music article.

If you were to do this in Dreamweaver then you would:

1.)  Select insert tab then image.

2.) Select your image then OK.

3.) Click on your image in dreamweaver.

4.) In the link area post the url/ web page that you would like the user to go to.

You are finished. If you keep dreamweaver in Code and Design mode you would see what is going on while you make these changes.

Hope this was helpful. If you have any questions leave a comment or drop me an email at Caleb@ cdesign8.com. In addition, my next post will outline the basics of HTML. I will walk through creating a web page from scratch using word pad.

Till then keep creating 🙂

If you enjoyed this tutorial consider signing up for the video tutorials at www.cdesign8.com