Design of the week (July 27 – August 2, 2014)

Most designs begin with a concept and this client’s concept was a perfume bottle that was elegant as well as eye-catching. A bottle shaped as a curvaceous body in a flowing night gown was the client’s vision to bring out the character of the perfume. The design began with a simple outline of the shape of the bottle. This outline was then converted into 3D and colours were added. Through constant input from the client and refinement the final product is pictured on the top left. The top of the perfume bottle is shaped as a pair of lips and the colour fuchsia  at the bottom contrasts sharply with the mysterious black body of the bottle. The client had an influence on the design of this bottle every step of the way and this design is an example of a design done specifically to client specifications.

It’s the middle of summer and depending on the type of business you do this could be your slow period or your most hectic period. If it’s your slow period this is a great time to get your marketing geared up for the rest of the year. If it is a busy time for you, ensuring that your website and social media presence is active and updated can help minimize the number of questions you have to answer, freeing you up for other duties.SeizerStyle Designs has been busy this month updating Client Handbooks, monitoring client websites and looking for new partners to do business with.

Updated Client Handbooks

Our website design clients now have access to a comprehensive guide  to their website resources through our Client Handbooks. These manuals not only explain how your website works but also includes instructions of updating and maintaining your website using the content management system it is created with. We have created Client Handbooks for our new clients and have also updated the Handbooks of current clients to include the latest information. Our Client Handbooks are a great resource for understanding your website and how to utilize it effectively to promote your business and serve your customers. These Handbooks bear the SeizerStyle Designs branding merged with the branding of the client it caters for to signify a unified goal of satisfying our clients’ needs.

More Accurate Metrics on Google Analytics

We recently noticed some activity by bots on many of our website statistics which skewed some of the metrics  available to our clients on Google Analytics. These bots crawl websites and inflate the bounce rate because they simulate a user visiting a single page then leaving the site. This may seem trivial  but it actually affects how you measure the success of your website search engine optimization. We have put measures in place to exclude these bots and display more realistic metrics in Google Analytics for our clients’ web properties.

Looking for business partners

We continue to look for business partners with complementary services to our website design, graphic design and marketing offerings. These include but are not limited to web hosts, printers and advertising agencies Our goal is to provide the best quality of service to our clients and we are constantly looking for business partners who can help us accomplish this goal. If you think you suit the bill feel free to contact us.

Add us on Skype

SeizerStyle Designs prides itself on being accessible via various forms. Feel free to add us on Skype to contact us via instant message, call or video call. Our Skype username is seizerstyledesigns.

Social media is such a popular channel for marketers that many businesses are looking to benefit from a simpler way to monitor activity on various social networks. The same can be said for monitoring website statistics for website developers. Cyfe provides a customizable dashboard of useful information from many different popular online services that can satisfy both groups.

You can use Cyfe’s configurable widgets to get an overview of metrics for networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Webmasters can also benefit from metrics from Google Analytics, Alexa, Chartbeat and many other services.

You will have to grant Cyfe the permission to access information from the various services that you want it to be connect with. You can also separate your widgets by dashboards to group related widgets together. If you are looking for an all-in-one overview of metrics for social media or website  analysis feel free to give Cyfe a try.

Design of the week (July 20 – July 26, 2014)

This poster, designed to bring brand awareness to the Isle Cloud web hosting services, provides minimal information teasing the audience to visit the website or contact the company for more information. The Isle Cloud logo is predominantly placed at the top of the poster while contact information is located centrally. Below this are brief descriptions of the benefits of hosting with Isle Cloud. The poster is intentionally simplistic in design to minimize distractions and uses colour to visually separate text.

Isle Cloud is a subsidiary of SeizerStyle Designs and is one  of the web hosting solutions we use for our clients’ websites. For more information about Isle Cloud web hosting visit www.islecloud.com.

You can change your Google Chrome theme to customize the way that the browser looks for a more personalized browsing experience. There are many themes available for you to choose from made by both Google and independent artists. Changing your theme is a simple 4 step process.

1. Go to Settings in Google Chrome

2. Click on the “Get themes” button

3. Click on the theme you like from the Google Chrome Store

4. Click on the “Free” button to download and apply the theme

If you do not like the new theme you can always go back int Google Chrome’s settings and click the Reset to default theme button.

Design of the week (July 13 – July 19, 2014)

SeizerStyle Designs will be designing customized 2015 calendars throughout the summer of 2014. This is a great opportunity to order your calendars early and avoid the end of year rush. We design calendars based on concepts, photos or the themes that you choose. As this ad suggests you will need to contact us for more details and to explain exactly what you want. You can also explore our graphic design portfolio of calendars for examples of previously designed calendars.

Customized calendars are a great way to keep your business in the minds of customers throughout the year. They are also great at storing personal memories of family members. How will you represent your brand and loved ones in 2015?

As useful as our browsers are at giving us access to content on the internet they are not as useful without plugins. Some websites will not function properly, or have limited functionality, without specific plugins installed. Adobe Flash Player is one of the most popular web plugins but various other programs utilize plugins to provide seamless integration while you are surfing the web. Fortunately, there is an easy way to check the plugins that are installed for Google Chrome and disable or uninstall those that are not needed.

To see the plugins installed in your Google Chrome browser simply type chrome://plugins in the address bar and press Enter. This will show you a list of the plugins that are used by your Chrome browser along with a brief description and a link to disable (or enable) them. You can also click on the Details link at the top right of the page to see more information about the plugins such as where they are saved on your computer.

Design of the week (July 6 – July 12, 2014)

If you have ever wondered what it takes to create a website this infographic can serve as a guide to the general process. These are 5 of the main steps that SeizerStyle Designs uses when developing client websites. Other steps such as the consultation and the request for a quotation have been left out so that the infographic can be more general rather than specific to a particular business as well as to keep it less technical. Feel free to share with others who would be interested in what it takes to create a website. As always you can contact us for more detailed information.

You can change the speed of videos on YouTube if you are using the HTML 5 player rather than the Flash player. To check which version you are using you can visit the YouTube HTML Video Player page. There you can see whether you are using the HTML 5 player and switch to using it if you are not.

Once you have switched to the HTML 5 video player YouTube will no longer use the Flash Player to play your videos. By clicking on the gear at the bottom right of videos you will now be able to change playback speed.

Related links:

Enable Variable Speed Playback in YouTube (LifeHacker)

Design of the week (June 29 – July 5, 2014)

Our website design clients all receive a Client Handbook which explains the intricacies of their website design plans. It explains how to update the website and provides definitions  of technical terms. The cover of this resource includes the SeizerStyle Designs logo along with the client’s logo. The cover also contains the client’s colors and the SeizerStyle Designs green stripes. This design features the covers of 3 Client Handbooks.