Brand Design Blog, News and Ideas

We’ve just launched the all new Michael Butera website at michaelbutera.com.au

Michael is an up and coming singer/songwriter from Melbourne Australia who contracted Crimson Fox to help create a more central online presence for his music releases and event schedules.

The custom web design we’ve created, matches the funk, pop styles of Michael’s music, while delivering a dynamic launching pad for listening to his music through the flash controlled music player.

We are currently working with a number of musicians who are serious about taking their careers to the next level. So if you have any ideas about how we can be of service to you, please let us know.

For news and music releases from Michael Butera sign up for his updates at www.michaelbutera.com.au

One of our great clients JHL Civil have just launched a redesign of their existing website.

The new web design aims to make it easier for visitors to find information.

By sectioning the business website into it’s 5 main categories we’ve achieved more clarity in the way information flows through the site.

The site now incorporates a customised content management system allowing the staff at JHL Civil to add new projects and news updates at any time of the day.
JHL Civil are water and wastewater experts currently located in Port Melbourne.

Trades people, including builders, carpenters, plumbers and electricians are finding that the online space is really where advertising dollars are needing to be spent to get results.

We’ve seen some great results from customer website, including $480,000+ client work coming directly through search engines and websites.We’ve just completed work on a new project for Glenrich Builders, a Building and Construction Company in the Northern Suburbs of Melbourne.

Glenrich builders specialise in New Homes, Renovation and Extensions and the task here was to get that message across through the use of text that would later be indexed by Google Search Engines. We we’re also required to include all content from the existing site while rebranding the look for their new corporate identity.

The new site design, copywriting and back end structure should lead to some profitable results for the year ahead.

If you’re a trades person looking for a web solution including online advertising, web design and search engine optimisation, give us a call to discuss the possibilities.

Designers and their clients often have trouble seeing eye to eye.

Why is that?

Because designers are pretentious, elitist, know it alls?  Well some are…but no.

Is it because business people are paying, so what they says goes…again, somtimes – but mostly, this is not the case.

The problem is that both parties are looking at the problem from different points of view.

So what is the solution?

The solution needs to come from the designers side. When explaining design decisions, a graphic or web designer needs to put on their business hat and see the project through the eyes of their client.

If you are a designer, you need to explain your design decisions from a practical stand point.

“I did it that way because it looks good” - isn’t a good answer.

‘I designed it that way, because the style I’m using is currently reflected in our target markets popular culture (state examples). Your potential customers will be drawn to this style because of these examples, which should help increase sales” – this is an answer that a client can understand.

When you are designing, make sure to always have client problems and objectives in mind, so that when asked you can explain your design choices in a way that means something to their business.

If you’re employing a designer and the same issues crop up, make sure to take a deep breathe and ask the question – how is that going to help my business.

It will save both designers and clients a lot of time and frustration, while giving design work more potential to do what it was intended for.

You’ll appreciate how it will lead to a happy working relationship going forward.

So remember, two hats. One for your design flare and one for your business brain.

We’ve just completed work on the base branding for skinsaviour, a great new range of skin care products designed for both men and women.

Their inital logo concept reflects the Punga – a native fern in New Zealand, where the inspiration for skinsaviour was born.

Using the Punga as a base we’ve expanded on the idea to create a brand image that reflects the natural feel of the New Zealand forests.

The website at www.skinsaviour.com.au draws from this imagery as well as combining cool blue colours and imagery that describe the fresh clean feel that the skinsaviour products create.

While we’re still completing the finishing touches to the site, it’s fully functional and receiving orders.

When you get the chance visit www.skinsaviour.com.au for a closer look.

Crimson Fox has been working with Ausway on a new cover design for Sydney’s most detailed Street Directory – Sydway.

The new design combines white space with a new colour scheme to allow for more brand recognition and a cleaner look.

To find out more about Sydway and the Ausway brands you can visit their website at:  www.ausway.com.au

If you have a comment or thought about the new cover design you would like to share, please leave a comment below.

I’ve been working hard again (well done me!) and here is a sample of what I’ve been working on.

SmartTrainers.com is a fitness training business situated in South Gippsland.

We’ve used a Joomla content management system as the back end, allowing the client to edit content from an internet connection, anywhere in the world.

We’ve then laid a completely customized website design over the top allowing the customer to work with their unique brand positioning.

The design was created to receive new contacts and to inform about the wide range of fitness services that Smart Trainers supply.

I feel it’s a great start. With some search engine optimization added to the project I can see it becoming a huge success in their region.

What do you think?

Hello everybody.

I’ve been incredibly busy over the last couple of weeks so unfortunately there has been a break in recent posts.

So, I thought I’d show you one of the recent projects that I’ve been up to.

R & R Real Estate is an Estate Agents based in the South East Suburbs of Victoria.

The aim on this site is to draw customers to the 3 core business areas of the business, Selling, Buying and Renting Property while at the same time allowing the web site to maintain a pleasing, professional aesthetic.

I think we’ve succeeded with this solution. What do you think?

Helping future clients find you online.

Millions of people search for products and services each day on Google, Yahoo and other Search Engines.

So, of course, we all want our part of it. But how can we help your web sites to be found online.

Search Engine Optimization.

We optimize our sites for keywords and phrases that people use to search for our business.

But how can we be sure that the keywords we’re aiming for are the right ones?

Well, we could guess. Pick words that we think people will use to find us.

Unfortunately, it’s often hard to know what words people ‘outside our business’ might use to describe our business.

Now, Crimson Fox fixes the problem by providing you with a keyword testing system that will allow you to test your keyword theories and get some real results about what people are searching for.

The customers that have used this service so far, have been surprised at the results.

We’ve been able to help them redirect the aim of their web site and they are already showing the returns.

If this service sounds interesting or if you would like to know more – contact us and we will be more than happy to let you know more.

We’ve just completed work on a Life Insurance Website.

Life Insurance Advocates are specialist insurance brokers working out of the Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.

The brief was to encourage more people to contact the Brokers via their website presence.

So we broke the task down into two major areas.

Firstly, to take the old, dated design and restyle the website branding to give it a new, fresh look. While in the process giving it a friendlier face and making the sites ‘online’ contact areas more accessible.

Second. Our client wanted a stronger search engine presence for key terms within their industry. To begin this process, we cut out all the table based design and moved towards CSS styling. Allowing for less coding and easier crawling for Search Engine Spiders.

We also moved all important keyword phases to be text based to once again make them more accessible to the Search Spiders.

All major service areas of the business were also given their own pages to make for more relevant listings and copywriting was reviewed for additional search penetration.

This natural (white hat) form of search engine optimization pays off well in the long run, as it’s less prone to the ups and downs of chasing after Googles latest Algorithms (not that that is an exact science either).

You can check the site out at www.lifeinsuranceadvocates.com.au.

I’d be interesting to hear your thoughts on the site revision.