Posted on December 14, 2012

12 months of the Chicago Web Designer

As 2012 rolls to a close I like to take a look back at some of the projects I’ve worked on over the year. It’s been a real mixed bag but I must have enjoyed myself as the year has flown by. I have created websites, logos, brochures, illustrations for a book, power point graphics, car magnets, lawn signs, business cards, mobile websites, e commerce sites, an icon for one of the largest banks in America and even the cover for a book. My clients have been located both here in Chicago and a little further further afield… St Louis, Louisville, Wentzville and further away still … Belgium. There are no geographical boundaries for the Chicago Web Designer – your creative partner.

So here is a little showcase of my 2012 web and graphic work

January: Powerpoint graphics for a large national bank

February: Web concept project for a St Louis bank

March: WordPress conversion project for Ruth Hasser

April: Identity design for Select Food Sales

May: Community Website for the Humble Catholic

June: New website and branding elements for Restore North Shore

July: Refresh of Lincolnshire Academy of Dance

August: Rework of The Rockwood

September: e commerce site- Zagros Robotics

October: Illustrations and cover design for book: Mr Bison’s Journal

November: Responsive web site design for Mr Bison

December: Identity deign for InDeBom

I am looking forward to another bag of design challenges in 2013!

Posted on December 10, 2012November 6, 2015

The Chicago Web Designer?

The name of this blog is “The Chicago Web Designer” but that doesn’t mean our clients are all based in Chicago or that we only offer web design.

Take this recent project for example; a logo and business card design for a company based in Belgium.

Web design makes up about 70% of the creative projects we undertake but in the last year alone we have seen projects ranging from icon creation for one of the biggest national banks in America to illustrating a self published book. We are more than happy to work with clients requiring traditional design skills, say for the design of a new logo, business card or brochure, but also never shy away from any creative project. Sometimes a client will call with a report or presentation that needs to look top notch and are looking for our creative input. No project is too small for the Chicago web designer.

View our complete logo portfolio

Posted on October 18, 2012November 6, 2015

New Web Design for Authors Web Site

Last week saw the release of a new book by one of our clients, Edward Bison. His book, Mr Bison’s Journal, is a very funny collection of stories and observations and is a laugh out loud read. I was commissioned to not only illustrate each of the stories but also design the book cover. It was a fun project and fingers crossed it will become one of the top humor books of 2012/2013. It would make a great Christmas gift -see it on Amazon as a paperback and Kindle ebook

As part of the launch we updated his website www.mrbison.com moving it from a blogger powered blog, to the all singing and dancing WordPress platform and giving the site a mini design overhaul.

The home page now features a prominent call to action to buy the book and a video clip of a sample chapter. The site navigation was revised to include such as his Facebook fan Page

We also took the opportunity to re-code it as responsive website – I’ll fill you in on the ins and outs of that tomorrow.

Posted on July 25, 2012

Keeping a website fresh: Chicago web designer tip of the day

As well as designing websites from scratch one of the services we offer our clients is website maintenance.

This can involve anything from updating text, adding pages for new services or updating a look and feel with new photos.

We have refreshed the look of The Lincolnshire Academy of Dance website today, updating all the photographs with recent ones taken during their June recital.

chicago web designer

Keeping a web site fresh with new content, photographs and news will keep you visitors engaged and more likely to pay you repeat visits. Search engines love fresh content too, so it is a win all round.

Posted on June 27, 2012

New Website for Chicago Home Remodeling Company

Launched today is a new website for Restore North Shore, a Chicago home remodeling company.

We designed and built a custom WordPress template which incorporated not only a blog but pages for project galleries, client testimonials etc.

chicago home website

If you are in the Chicago area and are looking to update your kitchen, bathroom or even an entire house check out the project galleries

Posted on April 3, 2012

New WordPress websites for Life Celebrant Ruth Hasser

Launched today are two new wordpress powered website for celebrant Ruth Hasser.

Ruth has two sides to her business, weddings and funerals, or life tributes. As you can imagine the target audience for each is very different.

A first generation site, designed and developed in 2009 for her wedding business, served her well and really helped grow her client base as a lead generation tool.

“Last year at this time, pre-website, I had one wedding scheduled for 2009. By the end of the year I had done 25. Right now, I already have 17 weddings scheduled, and I have been receiving an average of one lead per day since the beginning of January- outstanding!”

But like all tools they need to be refined to offer maximum effectiveness, so this second generation site offers social media integration allowing her clients to connect with her via Facebook and YouTube and we took the opportunity to move the site to the more robust blogging platform WordPress. This has the added advantage that Ruth now has full editorial control of the content of the the site. Ruth was happy with the look and feel of the first generation site so we kept the design the same but did increase the width to accommodate the most common screen resolution.

A website dedicated to the funeral side of her business is a new endeavor. We kept the brand image the same as the wedding site but used different imagery and a more muted color palette.

Switching from Blogger to WordPress can be a little daunting for a client and there is definitely a learning curve. As well as training we also provided Ruth with a set of screen cast videos which outline how to do the most common updates such as publishing a new blog post and uploading photographs.

Posted on March 15, 2012November 6, 2015

New WordPress websites in progress

I have been working recently on a number of custom WordPress sites.

Ruth custom wordpress site The first is a double project for Ruth Hasser, a St Louis celebrant. Ruth wanted to move her current site over to WordPress so she could take advantage of the content management (CMS) it offers. She also needed a new site for the funeral and memorial side of her business.

We have kept the design the same for the wedding side of her business ( she loved it so why change it) but designed a slightly different look for the funeral site, with a more muted color scheme and different imagery.

Both sites are in the final phase of production and will be launched shortly.

Humble catholic custom wordpress website The second custom WordPress site is for a Chicago group, The Humble Catholic.

This site will serve as a community allowing users to upload prayer requests, affirmations and suggest stories, all driven by the excellent blogging capabilities of the WordPress platform

The site is just going through some final testing and client review.

Posted on March 2, 2012

A distraction for the Chicago Web Designer

Sitting beside me as I work on this grey dreary Chicago day, is a vase of beautiful tulips. Nature does a wonderful job of creating color palettes and my eyes keep drifting from the website I am designing to these beautiful blooms. I had to photograph them to capture the fabulous colors.

open purple tulip color inspiration
Anything interesting on your desk today?

Posted on January 31, 2012

The Eye of the Chicago Web Designer

I can’t help myself, it seems it is not enough for me to be creative during the day designing websites, logos and the like. My creativity spills over into my spare time too. The outlet for my endeavors is my personal blog “Creative in Chicago” which is just sky rocketing along.

Here is one of my latest creation, a piece of String Art where the negative space does the talking!

Posted on January 27, 2012November 6, 2015

Chicago web designer tip of the day: Check your Google Ad preferences

The Chicago web designers tip of the day.

Here is a little short and sweet thing for you to check out on this amazingly warm Chicago afternoon, it’s 40 deg F and I have just been out WITHOUT a coat on!

If you have a Google account click HERE and see if the profile Google has of you, is correct. They use information gathered from your web browsing history ( if you have that enabled) to show ads more relevant to your interests.

But it seems not all profiles are correct.

Here are the categories and demographics of my profile.

google ads optout

Amazingly I only seem to have three interest categories which is a little odd as the very nature of my web and graphic design job, means I run a huge gamut of searches across a wide range of subjects and industries. Secondly they have me pegged in the 25-34 age range …which is sweet … but incorrect. Just about the only thing they got right was my gender.

Google allows you to remove or edit anything you like and also opt out of the tailored ad system completely.

Does Google have your profile correct?

Your Creative Partner

A Chicago web and graphic design company

Tag: Chicago Web Designer