splendorgraphics.com

Electrum Inc. Print Collateral

splendor — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:25:17 +0000

We recently designed and produced a marketing program for Electrum Inc. which included logo design, brochure design, pocket folder design, stationery design (including business card design, letterhead design and envelope design) and website design. The entire marketing effort focused on the company’s capabilities for recycling lead, solder and precious metals. The print design pieces reflect the diverse industries that Electrum services, and the website offers easy contact info and even a Spanish translation version.

The design style for these pieces is clean, elegant and professional, and very effective at communicating Electrum’s message to some of the world’s biggest and most well known brands. This comprehensive marketing program and the included design elements work very well for Electrum’s business model.

To learn more about our complete design services, please Contact Us » | View Electrum’s Website Design »

Jakes Crab Shack Website Design

splendor — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 23:16:47 +0000

Great, zesty new website design for Jakes Crab Shack in Belmar NJ. This straightforward website is casual and easy on the eyes. Menus and location info are easily accessible, and the client has access to be able to update the photo gallery, the hours of operation and the menus pages. Simple, direct and easy. This website design is fun!

Contact Splendor to learn more about online solutions for your business, and to speak to our website designer NJ, logo designer NJ, and print designer NJ.

http://www.jakescrabcakes.com

Splendor Says: Rules of Design #2

splendor — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 22:37:59 +0000

Typefaces to Avoid

Typography is an all-important element in graphic design. From logo design to website design and everything in between, a well designed and properly executed piece of type can make all the difference in the success of the work. Designers are fanatical about their favorites, and extremely passionate about the ones they abhor.

There are a few factors that dictate when, where and how to use certain typefaces.

When creating a title and supporting tagline, the tagline should support the title, not overpower or distract from it.
The typeface you choose for a title should complement the meaning of the message itself – unless it is your explicit goal to achieve the opposite.
A well designed typeface is created to perform or appear a certain way. Distorting it will most often degrade it’s effectiveness.
Many common, popular and badly designed typefaces are overused and abused. They should be avoided in all professional design situations.

Some fonts are elegant and effective.
Others… not so much.

Generally speaking, any typeface that appears in your font menu when you open a software program for the first time is not the best choice. There are exceptions, but it’s best to research before beginning any website design, logo design or brochure design, to make sure the typeface you choose will do its job.

For more information and educational resources visit the following link by Smashing Magazine: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/06/50-helpful-typography-tools-and-resources/

Splendor is a NJ based award-winning design studio that produces successful design work for website design, logo design and print design campaigns for small and medium sized businesses. Contact Us to learn more about our services.

Invitations Ink Website

splendor — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:24:25 +0000

For this Manasquan-based business, we designed and developed a handcrafted look and feel to showcase the amazing talents of these designers. We capitalized on hand drawn lettering and watercolor imagery that the client supplied. The website design features an easy to navigate gallery to display their portfolio.

In addition to the amazing, hand-drawn imagery throughout, this website features a great feature called AJAX, or more specifically, jQuery, to display images on the Home and Book (portfolio) sections of the site. With an effect called “Fancybox,” the large view of the images appear in a window that overlays the webpage in the background. Previous and next arrows guide the viewer through a series of images for each project, all while remaining on the same page – without the need to navigate away to a new page (or back again).

Similarly, the contact information is also displayed in an overlay window. This makes reaching out to the business easy and quick. And speaking of quick – jQuery effects like these are a great way to present images and information to a website visitor with minimal wait time. This is all important for creating a very positive user experience…and it looks great, too.

Contact Splendor to learn more about online solutions for your business.

http://www.invitationsinkstudio.com

Scoops Wine Website

splendor — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:48:19 +0000

This all-new website launches Scoops Wine, the latest creation from Carriage House Imports. The blackboard and hand-drawn chalk design create a youthful ice cream parlor theme for the brand. This totally custom website design is a powerful marketing tool that grants Carriage House full control over the site.

The website is powered by WordPress, a powerful content management system. WordPress enables the client to manage pages and features through a backend interface that requires little technical skill. The site features a retail “where to buy” locator, a news section, and a section where industry professionals may download marketing materials. All of these features are powered by WordPress and easily updated.

This website, rich with custom graphics and unique typefaces, maintains a very search engine friendly structure, thanks to WordPress’s SEO features.

Contact Splendor to learn more about online solutions for your business.

http://www.scoopswine.com

Google, PageRank and SEO

splendor — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 16:04:45 +0000

Google has an established, simple score for websites and their pages. It’s called PageRank or “PR,” and is a number between 0 and 10; ten being the best and zero the worst. A website’s PR is largely determined by its link popularity, meaning how frequently incoming links to it appear throughout the internet.

A website with a great number of inbound links can be assumed to be highly relevant, informative or popular, so Google assigns a high PR. IMPORTANT: Google emphasizes very strongly that link popularity or PR is only one factor that determines a website’s position in Google’s search engine results pages.

Google has other evaluation methods in place, most of which are aimed at lowering the rank of poor quality sites and raising the rank of high quality sites. For website owners, a few key factors are important for your site’s visibility.

Google said it: “Content is KING!”

Key Factors For Your Website’s Visibility

Generally speaking, a website should:

Contain quality content that engages visitors
Offer a great amount of user interactivity
Be deemed trustworthy and safe to visit
Load quickly and without errors
Be updated regularly
Give visitors a reason to return to the website

It has been said time and time again. Content is King. Google suggests focusing on building a solid, content-rich website, be aware of your link popularity, and always think about your visitors. PR is important, but should not be your only focus.

PageRank Case Studies:

URL	PR	Yr. Est.	# of Monthly Visits
google.com	9/10	1996	Billions
facebook.com	9/10	2004	Billions
nike.com	7/10	1995	7.5 Million
gap.com	6/10	1993	33 Million
splendorgraphics.com	4/10	2000	27,000

Splendor Says: Rules of Design #1

splendor — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:53:40 +0000

In our new Splendor Says: Rules of Design series of posts, we’ll give a little insight into some of the guidelines that influence our design process. These are meant to be fun and loosely interpreted! So without further ado…

Rule #1 – Understand the Rules of Design BEFORE Breaking Them

Having a solid base understanding of color, composition, typography etc. is absolutely vital to a designer’s success. Drawing from the established collective knowledge of generations of designers of the past and the entire industry means you respect the history of design, and appreciate the trials and lessons learned by all who have already been here (and put in their time and work!)

What’s important here is that the knowledge of how things work visually, and understanding when and where a typeface or color is appropriate is precisely what fuels a good design. What path or form the design eventually follows is up to both the designer and the client, but it always comes back to basic principles and reasoning.

Have you ever looked at a piece of “Modern Art” and wondered…
what IS this?!

Armed with this knowledge, a skilled and experienced designer can then exercise his or her own personal style, and make judgements and decisions about which rules can be bent and even broken. But the fundamental design will still be based on a strong set of rules.

Without this basic understanding, a design (or any art form) usually gets hapharzardly thrown together with little or no direction or respect for good design sense. As a business owner, you need to be WARY of the amateur or would-be designer who has no regard for the rules. Your design, budget and business can all fall victim, with no reasonable solution except to scrap it all and start from scratch with a better design team.

Omega Networx website

splendor — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 19:09:15 +0000

For this technology solutions company, we went with a cool blue color scheme to match their technological approach. Utilizing drop-down menus and sharp photography, the website features everything necessary to become as effective as the services it advertises. Additionally, we added a slideshow on the homepage to showcase various business features and areas of interest for the consumer.

This website features excellent use of web-friendly typography which allows the design to maintain its integrity. No longer limited to basic, “web-friendly” type styles, the designs Splendor creates now make full use of a wide library of elegant fonts. In addition to the custom visual design for this website, Splendor also carefully crafted all of the copy for each page to explain Omega’s services and strengthen their position.

The website design is also driven by the powerful CMS (content management system) WordPress. The CMS allows the client to manage every page of the site, as well as select which service offerings are featured on the homepage. We also included a portfolio of projects that the client can upload, and edit, as well as a testimonials section. Additionally, the content on the website is able to be kept up to date easily with a simple news feature section, which is also featured on the home page, and a streaming feed of twitter updates.

All of these features help increase the site’s visibility and rank among search engine results. Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, is an important aspect of any website design, launch, redesign, or other online marketing effort.

Contact Splendor to learn more about online solutions for your business.

http://www.omeganetworx.com

Optima Martial Arts website

splendor — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 18:58:32 +0000

For this martial arts center, the website features extensive use of the company colors. With descriptive content and images from various events, the customer is included on all company happenings. With an easy to use form, the backend admin of this site is able to organize and export all contacts from the form to better sort based on location, desired goal, age, etc.

http://www.optimamartialarts.com

Growing Concern website

splendor — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 19:55:10 +0000

For this landscaping company, we chose to highlight the beauty of their work. Photographs of lawns serviced by the company paired with images showing the tender care given to lawn maintenance reinforces the pride in their work. With a color scheme resembling soil and grass, the undertones of the website feed in to the same mentality. As a whole, the cleanliness and orderliness of the website ties in to how the lawn care company is run.

http://www.growing-concern.com