Through the recent design and launch of Harrison Development’s newest website, www.harrisonspotlight.com, we are proud to have formed a strategic partnership with Agent Shield.  The problem with many land development and community sites is that real estate agents are often hesitant to direct leads to a website for fear of losing valuable leads. Makes sense right?  In comes Agent Shield, their Web 2.0 patented pending technology allows realtors and land developers to utilize a new development’s website as a marketing and sales tool while maintaining control of their prospects and leads.

Lets see an example, first visit the site, harrisonspotlight.com. As you can see, all contact information such as phone number and address are located on the home page as well as on the contact page here.

Now, lets go to a realtor’s page where the Harrison Community is being advertised,for example here. Scroll down about half way and click on the “view details” for the Harrison Development link, which will then take you back to the Harrison home page.  See the difference?   That’s right, the site has now been masked to show only the realtors information on the contact page.   The user’s computer is also cookied in the event that he or she goes back to visit the homepage, even if they don’t go through the realtor site.  Seller gets the credit for the lead, both parties are happy.

NOTE: Use this link to clear out your cache.

Read more about Agent Shield at www.agentshield.com

In these times of economic want and woe, it’s more important than ever to stick together. Chances are pretty good you’re feeling the economic pinch — especially if you are a small business owner — making the 2009 Small Business Summit here in Effingham County all the more important. Finding out what some of our area’s most successful business owners and entrepreneurs are doing to find new clients and customers, lower their operating costs, adapt to changing markets and succeed in today’s economic climate seems like a no-brainer. We’ll be there.

When Ken Stoner of  Effingham County Chamber of Commerce, contacted us about developing a logo for this chamber-sponsored event, we were honored.  We worked out several idea sketches and ended up going with a light bulb illustration, with a red-and-white on black color scheme. The DIN 1451 font family was applied. It is a realist sans-serif typeface that is used as a standard typeface for traffic, administration and business applications making it a perfect fit for the summit logo. On the vertical version, Futura was also used. The logo will be used on print products and advertising for the event.

The Summit is April 4, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the Savannah Tech Effingham Campus. Reservations are limited. Reservations are free for Effingham Chamber members. (Non-members $49). Includes admission to keynote address, class sessions, course materials, trade show and business roundtable discussion groups. Call 912-754-3301. See you there!

What can we say, good design makes for good neighbors.  Our next door neighbor Cindy Barnett Interior Design needed a website presence and well, we felt we had to.  Heaven forbid good interior design be show through bad website design right? All website design, build and content development was done by bighouse.

Most of the photography on the site was done through Azelle Photography.   Our longtime friends at Azelle have a great eye for good photography and composition which really came together on the final site design.  More of their work can be seen at their site here or take a look at a few of the thumbnails below.

This site is a CMS site with a mix of flash and PHP thrown in. Look for their online storefront this summer.

www.cindybarnettinteriors.com

Bighouse is proud to have helped launch yet another restaurant with our good friends at VSAG. All branding to include logo development, signage, menu boards, and take out menus was done by bighouse.

Located at Cross Creek Mall in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Kobi’s Fast Wraps  is a fresh food fast concept, specializing in sandwich wraps and grilled paninis. Unlike the usual food court offerings of deep fried and the other not-so-good-for-you selections, Kobi’s prides itself in using only the freshest ingredients and roasts their sandwich meats daily.

We are proud to announce our newest site launch, Hernandez Construction Services based out of Akron, Ohio. All copywriting, design and build was done by bighouse.

This site was built on a Content Management System (CMS) platform, allowing ease of use for their administrative staff when it comes to making edits and updates in-house.  No need to contact tech support or learn new software for this one.  Bold colors and large easy navigation buttons present the info in an easy to read format.  A neat little feature we built into the site is a Project Locator found here.  This nifty little flash application gives visitors a quick visual map highlighting project locations through the use of rollovers.

www.hernandezcorporation.com

Considering we never really know what’s  in our food, its good to know that All Natural Hardwood Lump Charcoal is just that, all natural. No chemicals, No additives, just natural charcoal, ala mother nature.

Then again, considering the philosophy and green practices of our longtime friend  Wood Products International, it’s no surprise to us that they chose this route.  Along with this product, they are also promoting the use of their All Natural Fatwood Firestarter stick. Are you seeing a trend here?

For the logo design and to maintain that clean, natural approach, we felt simpler is better.  Bright colors were used to draw the shoppers attention on the shelf, taking  advantage of  kraft paperstock that will serve as the packaging material for the bags. For the package design itself, we presented minimal use of illustration for the how-to steps.

We are also proud of the site design me put together as well. Take a look www.allnaturalcharcoal.com

The Savannah Philharmonic, formerly the Savannah Choral Society, is a community-based organization performing professional-quality live choral and orchestral music. Having recently restructured and expanded to include The Savannah Philharmonic Chorus and The Savannah Philharmonic Orchestra, the group found itself ready for an update to their identity. We were excited to take on the challenge (we actually designed their past logo, a sample can be seen here) The challenge was to develop three logos that worked together and have a common style, while at the same time be able to stand on their own visually.

Drawn to the concept of free-flowing brush strokes to show the creativity and the energy of the choral group, Zach used watercolor and acrylic paint to create a series of brush strokes representing a lyre and a conductor that were then scanned. Some digital editing was done combining several of the paint strokes in Photoshop. Then the image was imported to Adobe Illustrator with text applied. This finished logo was then incorporated into their new website and print collateral.

Although a few of the other samples may not have come to light for this project, a few below are ones we were proud of.

To round out the package we put together a CSS site, allowing staff to update the and edit their own site.  Let it free. Visit their new site and give us your thoughts. www.savphilchorus.org.

We are proud to launch the new site for Kenwood Management Company. Their site needed a much agreed upon redesign and we were happy to oblige.  Kenwood’s goal is to build client wealth through property investment and acquisitions.

For a design approach,  limited use of flash animations keeps the site interesting without having it too busy. In addition to a standard top navigation, the site features 3 large navigation buttons  to make the user experience even simpler, providing quick, at-a-glance navigation.

The geographic focus of Kenwood is the Washington, DC metro area and outlying cities.  We designed a handy little interactive flash map here which makes it easy for the user to locate their portfolio properties quickly.   Kenwood also has several properties for lease that are only listed through a 3rd party vendor website.  In order to keep the user on the Kenwood site rather than have them click a link and leave the site (and risk losing them), we incorporated this database site directly into the Kenwood site as you can see here.

www.kenwoodmgt.com

Glaze Beauty Boutique and Day Spa — Rincon’s newest beauty salon and day spa  — came to Bighouse looking for a website. We love new businesses as they offer a blank canvas for us to flex our creative muscles. Glaze is Rincon’s premier Day Spa, also housing both a hair salon and clothing boutique.  Featuring the newest salon products from Redken and Pureology, spa treatments and the latest trends on the rack, their site incorporates a content management system (CMS) to allow the staff to easily update the web site to showcase specials, new products and the stylists’ work.

The approach to Glaze was to have a contemporary, edge using bold colors and images to contrast with a dark background and at the same time clean and approachable. We used organic design elements and soft edges on shapes and navigation to help in that effect. The site design presents a simple, intuitive navigation that breaks the site into the three main parts of Glaze;  the Day Spa, The Salon, and The Closet.

We have already noticed a steady bit of traffic in and out of Glaze — who coincidentally happens to be Bighouse’s next-door neighbor. Welcome to the neighborhood!

www.glazebeauty.com

Phantasia’s Jewelry is “The Original $5 Jewelry Company.” This Richmond Hill based company offers affordable, high quality products and proven fundraising strategies. The project started with the redesign of an existing Web site with the addition of an online store featuring over 800 products.

Phantasia’s is Bighouse’s first e-commerce site. The site uses a mix of html, Flash and PHP in construction. Additionally, the site acts as a tool for fundraising. We also designed business cards, roll-up banners and other print material for their on-site fundraising promotions. We worked to give Phantasia’s the tools for a strong visual presence at their numerous fundraising events and trade shows.

Phantasia’s goal is to provide the best fundraising products available, at wholesale prices, so groups can make the highest profits for their efforts. Our goal is to make sure they look good doing it.

Visit www.phantasiasjewelry.com