The new Orange Environment website went live today, celebrating 25 years of rigorously keeping an eye on the environment. They have upcoming events - March 1st there’s a free conference for farms/agriculture, and on April 21st they’re celebrating Earth Day in Orange County, NY.

Please help this terrific non-profit survive another 25 years!

Preamble: I have decided I don’t like Gallery2 as my portfolio application. I’m going to be working on moving back to PmWiki for my portfolio in the future — so my latest work is not in my portfolio.

I re-created the Business Exchange Network’s website in December, 2006. The old site may still be available. This is a template rather than custom design, however I custom programmed several features for the site, then donated the instructions on how to do it for other sites back at the application project site. This site incorporates a calendar, member business directory, and each member has a profile page that acts as a mini-website for them. Since a few people in the group don’t have websites, this gives them a real place on the web to call home until they decide whether they want a website.

I helped out at KwicTax, LLC - programming a form on the site, adding required fields, and generally making the form and subsequent information revealed after filling out the form behave properly.

An ongoing client is up to her usual beautiful designs - Apryl of Silverflux Design has been outsourcing programming and general geekery and software installations to Eclectic Tech. This week we finished working on the Serendipity bead store website in Canada. My handiwork is the calendar and newsletter subscription integration.

In-progress Sites

Almost completed: Beth Ward of Jaidens Jewels has requested a website redesign and shopping cart. This work is in progress and if you’d like to see it before it’s finished, feel free to email me.

Almost completed: Chris Zino of Zino Technical Services in Bayville, NY has requested a website design and wiki application — he’s absolutely thrilled to be using a wiki and is already creating pages on the site, and I haven’t even gotten around to training him yet! At the time of the writing, we’re still hashing out the logo for his business, and once the logo is decided we may well be changing the colors on the site, but the site is up, works, he’s in business, and his contact info is there if anyone needs home audio installations, networking installation or repair, computer service, or a dozen other techie services on Long Island (Nassau & Suffolk Counties), he’s your guy!

New Client: I’m under contract for the redesign and reworking of Orange Environment’s website. I’ve started working, but there’s nothing to show yet. Orange Environment is a non-profit that has been working to save the open spaces of Orange County, NY for 25 years. This is their 25th Anniversary website overhaul, and this year they’ll be holding an Earth Day celebration on April 21st. Location(s) TBA. If you see my company name at the bottom of the site, then I’ve made progress enough to go live on my work. Until then, if you want to see the development site-in-progress, feel free to email me.

New Client: My newest client is Middletown Community Health Center (MCHC) who has requested a modernization and more features for their website. Again, if my company name is not at the bottom of the page, you’re looking at their old site. Ask me for a URL for their development site-in-progress. As of the time of writing, I haven’t gotten that far yet but work should begin shortly.

A bunch of things to quickly jot down. First, in response to my last blog post “The Check’s in the Mail” — it was certainly Murphy’s law at work, it took an entire week after that post for checks to start to come in. The day the first check came in I landed two new contracts for websites, along with the respective deposits.

On the subject of rain — apparently Orange County, NY doesn’t do rain halfway. Another few inches over these few days.

My business agrees with the weather — I had 12 incoming jobs (that doesn’t mean they’ll all go to contract, or all go to contract at the same time), two of which went to contract as I mentioned above, and one established client called me with several rush jobs. Feast or famine, but nothing steady! Yay!

I’ve been a networking fiend lately. You can find me at Orange County Chamber of Commerce events, BNI events, Orange County Women’s Professional Network events, Orange County Networking Alliance, Toastmasters, etc. Anyone in the area looking to network, I’d love to hear from you.

On those notes, I have some work to get through then I’ll have new information for my portfolio, clients page, etc.

Good luck out there!!

Ok, I give. Not everyone wants to have to dig around to see the cool stuff. The Portfolio link takes you directly to a gallery, where you can page through all the artwork. But you aren’t totally spared my verbosity. Each detail page may have a blurb.

In the item detail pages, there are links back to the old portfolio pages, where there are case studies for those of you who still care about my babble. So it’s the best of both worlds. Everyone can pretend to be illiterate and look only at pictures (like coloring books, ya kno?) and click around playfully, etc. Those who prefer snuggling in bed with a nice book and some warm cocoa can click through to the juicy ramblings and corporate scandals. Can you beat it?

Good luck!

Myrna, a massage therapist of 20 years, finally has a website after years of rejecting the typical website-for-massage-therapist templates always being pushed onto her industry.

Myrna is a tough-as-nails massage therapist, very straightforward and to the point. At the same time, she is an attentive listener, and flexible in her massage style. She has 20 years of professional massage experience, specializing in therapeutic massage for a variety of health ailments, and wanted a website that was a blend of medical, sports and that touch of down-to-earth holism that she has without being at all fluffy.

personalcarebymyrna.com, designed by Eclectic Tech and hosted by Archutech Consulting, is a wiki. Myrna has the password, and I bet she’s not sharing! All the content on the site is by Myrna.

Case Study

I have the pleasure of being a member of the Orange County Chamber of Commerce (I really need to put a member logo up to that effect), and as part of their membership drive I get to include a letter-sized flyer in a mailing.

I opted for the July mailing, since I have a couple ads coming out in June, and I want to see what impact they have. Also, I wanted the June 15 deadline to get them the flyer. Brainstorming and printing up 3000 flyers is no joke.

I’ve opted for 100% post-consumer paper, and I’m on the third laser cartridge (if anyone knows of soy-ink laser cartridges, I want to know! Now!).

Why the brainstorming? Boy, I’m so glad you asked!

You see, most of the flyers that come in the mailers are typical. Boring. Dry. Unimaginative. I’m a designer, a creative spirit — and adding to the boredom in the world is counter to my Declaration of Don’t Waste My Time. Boring flyers destined for the round (or *cross-fingers* recycle) bin and tantamount to spam. To environmental waste. I’ve come up with a unique idea, and unlike most people I’m going to use both sides of the paper (novel, isn’t it?). I’m making sure it has as low an environmental impact as I can muster on my low-budget-advertising strings. This chamber mailer is sent out monthly with other fliers anyway, via snail mail that gets delivered daily anyway. No extra envelopes needed. The recycled paper helps too, though I would prefer renewable treeless, denim, soy ink, etc. I just can’t afford the printing costs, and if I print at an environmental printer’s there’s delivery costs, the truck to my place — the extra pollution-per-mile of delivery.

I put a plea on the paper, right next to the recycle symbol, asking people who don’t need it to pass it on to someone else. The box of 3000 pages is rather large. Did I mention 3 laser ink cartridges? I hate to think of all my effort going to the waste basket.

I also don’t think any other company put as many man-hours into designing their flyers as I have. I’ve already put about 50+ hours into it. Creativity has a price. But now that I’m done, it is also be a viable stand-alone flyer for private mailers. It also has the potential (with a smidgeon of effort from me, I did my retouching on the greyscale images) to be printed in 4 color glossy (and look great!) eventually, but this time I think it will just be a laser print. I doubt a 4 color printer with sufficient ink for 3000 flyers is in my near future, and 4 color environmentally sound printing isn’t in my near future either.

I have preview images for y’all on my inhouse portfolio page.

Enjoy!

Today I completed and sent out the third round of revisions for Oxelot’s corporate identity. I’ve added round four samples to the Oxelot case study page in my portfolio. Amazingly, I’ve already heard something back from the client

I’ve been busy. I haven’t had a chance to update my news page, so here’s a brief list of what’s new:
* New portfolio work including logo case studies, more branding work, and some of my newest web design work.
* busy with several clients in addition to the holistic website. Much of our latest work is Comments (0)

e-Trailblazer Consulting gets a facelift - e-Trailblazer has 2 websites, both given major design overhauls by Eclectic Tech, LLC preceeding the release of Equimanager 2.0 software.