Making a Mark

One of the things that gets my brain moving at light speed is creative storytelling. So when I stumbled on 99% Invisible, the website, blog, and podcast that talks about design, I was all over that like flies on…well, you know.

And then they released this episode: Making a Mark: Visual Identity with Tom Geismar.

What makes a logo resonate?

This is one of those immeasurable qualities about design. It’s a feeling that you can’t quite put your finger on, but you know when it works. Or, in 99% Invisible’s argument, sometimes design is so good you don’t notice it. That’s what the episode delves into. Tom Geismar designed logos you’ve undoubtedly seen.

from 99percentinvisible.com

Mr. Geismar has some insightful thoughts about logo design and making an impact with your branding. He talks about why it’s important to take this seriously, and what his firm does for its clients. He is, in a word, #lifegoals like Ellen Lupton and Paula Scherer.

Give the podcast a listen if you ever find yourself wondering, “What’s the point of hiring a professional designer when my niece/friend/student will do it for free?” If you have the funds for a good designer, hire one. They think of things and follow instincts you might ignore.

It’s not just about knowing your way around the software–the software is only a tool, like a circular saw or stethoscope. A talented designer has acquired skills beyond these tools.

It’s my job to listen carefully, build trust, a deliver home runs.

I firmly believe in listening more than talking, and to get clients talking about themselves and their passions. I build relationships and we work from the trust and confidence we have in each other. Contact me and we can start that journey together.

Posted on September 14, 2018September 14, 2018 by Lacey Pyle

Wacom PTZ630 vs. Huion H610Pro

You may remember on Instagram that I posted about my new drawing tablet, the Huion H610Pro.

A post shared by Lacey Pyle (@graphicstrategist) on Jan 26, 2018 at 1:27pm PST

For some background, I’ve been using the Wacom Intuos 3 (model PTZ-630) since 2008. Or 2007. I can’t remember. It’s been my all-purpose mouse for most of the last decade. I LOVE this thing, and am certain that using a drawing pen for ALL mouse input has protected me from any form of carpal tunnel.

I needed a new tablet since after a decade of daily use, my Wacom was starting to show some wear and tear (the tablet’s drawing surface started peeling up), plus the driver was giving me more and more attitude as Adobe and Microsoft released newer and newer versions of their software. I shopped around, dead-set on another Wacom, but figured–what the heck–a medium-sized Huion is a fraction of the price (only $77, versus Wacom’s $350 one I was looking at) and has a 60-day return policy. I’m not a Photoshop Painter, unlike my buddies Gavin and Sita (who are amazing), so I didn’t need Wacom’s $1,000 beast (and if you’re reading my humble blog, you probably don’t either). I’ve been using the Huion for a week.

Huion H610 Pro Graphic Drawing Tablet with Carrying Bag and Glove

Features Smart Sensitive Performer Varying the pressure of the pen against the drawing pad can create variations in line width and opacity, which makes you feel as if you are drawing with a real pen on paper. With 2048 levels of pen pressure sensitivity, Huion H610 Pro gives strokes of what you d…

For those interested, I’m running a Windows 10 PRO PC installed with an Intel Core i5 processor and 16G of RAM on dual Samsung monitors with NVIDIA GeForce 9400GT graphics card. I ain’t playin’ around.

Well, I have updates.

I am going to assume you’ve been using a Wacom, and want to know what a Huion is like. This post is for experienced designers who are thinking about making a switch, not designers new to drawing tablets and trying to decide between them.

Now on to the update.

Most annoying: the pen lags.

Like I said, I use my tablet + pen for all mouse input: Browsing the web, in Illustrator, Microsoft Word–everywhere. Using the pen in Adobe Illustrator CC while creating this logo was a bit frustrating: the pointer on-screen would “lag” or get “sticky,” staying in one part of the screen after I’d moved to another. Sometimes the problem would resolve itself, sometimes I had to hit ESC or plug the pen into its charging USB to “reset” it.

Second, if I haven’t used the pen for a while because I’ve switched to my ultra-sensitive Razer Salmosa Gaming Mouse out of frustration with the lagging, I have to tap on the tablet with the pen to get my computer to recognize the pen input method again. It doesn’t just pick up where we left off like we’re old pals.

While we’re talking about the pen…

The pen has a battery.

The pen must be charged. This eats up my highly-prized USB port real estate. The pen does stay charged for quite some time, so I guess I could unplug the cable from my USB port when the pen isn’t charging, but then I’d lose the cable. I am a mess.

If you don’t make a habit of charging it every night, the pen could potentially die in the middle of whatever you’re working on. Sure, you can use the pen while it’s plugged in, but that’s a heckin’ AWFUL experience…

Second most annoying: Text Selection.

I cannot make copypasta with any significant reliability. To highlight a ton of text (say, like in Word) is a pain and sometimes the pen just doesn’t do it (like from a webpage). Double-tapping will select a word or a sentence or nothing or bring up those little iPhone-like teardrop selectors. Whatever the pen is in the mood for. It only works this way on some text, not all, and I haven’t figured out the pattern yet. I’ve resorted to shift+click to select text when the pen won’t play nice.

The construction is definitely China.

I am not hot about the construction. The pen is very lightweight, almost so much that it feels flimsy. Unlike the solid-feeling Wacom tablet, the Huion feels hollow. Like you half-expect the Huion to be filled with packing peanuts or butterflies. I do like a little more weight to my pen, but for reference the Huion pen weighs about the same as an unsharpened No. 2 Pencil. A knockoff Mont Blanc pen is heavier. The weight of the hardware gives me concerns about its durability.

There’s no mouse option.

That’s pretty self explanatory, but it’s significant because see annoyances number one and two. It would be nice to have a wireless mouse come with the Huion, but I already have a dozen mice, so I guess this is more of me being spoiled by the Wacom than any fault of Huion. Plus my gaming mouse has surgical precision and I prefer it anyway.

Summary

If you’re a student or a newbie to drawing tablets, buy the Huion. If you’re a professional Photoshop painter or a professional digital illustrator, buy the Wacom. The rest of us will fall somewhere in between. The Huion isn’t terrible, but it is inferior to the Wacom if you need an insane degree of accuracy. I’m not set on keeping the Huion, but I’m not set on returning it, either. I am set on giving it a real chance. While my intention with any tablet is to use it for all mouse input, I can say that the Huion is not that tablet. Maybe the new Wacoms aren’t either. Maybe I’m just SOL.

If you have a tablet (purchased new in the last five years), tell me. I want your input; maybe I’ll even update my blog later with what others have said about their tablets.

Posted on February 2, 2018February 2, 2018 by Lacey Pyle

Some Web Hosts Just Aren’t That Good

“Web Host? A What?”

First things first, if you are already familiar with what web hosting is, you can skip this section. For those who are not internet-savvy, a web host is a company with lots and lots of computers who allows you to lease space on those computers to store the data for your website. It is the computers where your text, images, and dancing bananas GIFs () are stored for your domain name (www.mysite.com) . Hosting is something you must purchase in addition to your domain name if you want to be found on the web (unless, of course, you keep a server handy in a broom closet).

Oh, ok. So They’re not all the same?

Heavens, no. Of course, you can pick any one you want, from the cheapest you can find to the most robust supercomputers that could plan and power a fully automated trip to poor, old, evicted Pluto. The problem in taking a random shot with any old cheap web host is that their servers are unlikely be powerful or modern enough to fuel a professional website. They could be slow, unreliable, outdated, poorly supported, or neglected.

What’s wrong some of them?

Well, we all like a good deal. But when it comes to many things, you get what you pay for. The reason some of these hosting sites are super-cheap (like, $1 a month) is because they skimp on important features, like the storage space you receive, the number of visitors you can get each month, the level of technical support you’ll receive if your site goes down, or, in the case of Yahoo Small Business Hosting, outdated server protocols.

Case Study: Yahoo Small Business Hosting

Cover your eyes, it’s about to get very nerdy in here.

We ran into an issue with launching a website on a very basic Luminate/Yahoo Aabaco Small Business’s hosting service. The .htaccess file is a very normal and common part of a website; this is not some voodoo file that casts spells on visitors. Yahoo doesn’t allow an .htaccess file to be uploaded (reputedly for “security reasons”), which can cause an issue when navigating around the complex website we built. The home page looked and worked fine, but if you clicked on any internal link on the homepage, you received an Error 404: File Not Found. The .htaccess file has a redirect functionality, which will resolve ugly and complicated URLs to tidy and easy-to-remember URLs. Without this file, we had to change our permalinks from Post Name to Custom Structure, appending /index.php/ after the root. All the pages in the site after the home page looked like this: www.mysite.com/index.php/my-page, instead of the preferable www.mysite.com/my-page.

Further, Yahoo’s hosting is slow to upgrade to the newer versions of PHP. This can cause an issue with certain features of a modern website, from contact forms to how the site actually renders and functions.

Okay, you can look now; the nerding is over.

Now, we’re not picking on Yahoo here. Cheap hosting is fine for personal sites: simple HTML sites that don’t do a whole lot or for sites that don’t have a whole lot of data (e.g.: mostly text, a few small photos or graphics, and no fancy animations or slideshows). Cheap-o hosting is not for professional sites.

Who should I pick, then?

Well, you can host through us when you purchase a web design package. We can walk you through the entire Getting-A-Website process and tell you why and how we’re doing everything. We offer hosting plans starting at $39/month. Hosting is fast, reliable, and you speak to an American when you call. This hosting is secure, and prevents downtime, SPAM, hacks, and costly data loss. Most importantly, it is robust enough to power a professional website with the allocated resources necessary.

And you won’t regret having a lightning-fast site with nearly 100% uptime, I promise.

Posted on December 8, 2017December 8, 2017 by Lacey Pyle

Graphic Strategist Wins Two National Design Awards

Thanks to all of my clients, partners, and colleagues for helping make 2017 a great success in design! Graphic Strategist has earned a 2017 Health + Wellness Design Award and a 2017 American Graphic Design Award, both from the 50-year-old awarding body, Graphic Design USA (GD USA). These mark the fourth and fifth awards, respectively, my clients and I received. These awards acknowledge the team effort and collaboration involved in brand strategy and graphic design. According to GD USA, winning multiple awards in a year is “rare,” and only 15% of the over 10,000 entries are considered for recognition.

American Graphic Design Award

Health + Wellness Design Award

2017 GD USA American Graphic Design Award

GD USA awarded an American Graphic Design Award for Destin Brewery’s Can Label Designs, which were based on the brewery’s unwavering vision of supporting and representing the local community. These cans stand out on the shelves like no other.

GD USA 2017 Health and Wellness Design Award

The Health and Wellness Design Award was earned for the Three H Medical Logo, a by-veterans, for-veterans prosthetic limb company. The health + Wellness Awards were a newly minted competition for GD USA, started in 2017.

For Clients

What these awards mean for you, the (potential) client, is that you receive top-notch creative services from Graphic Strategist. We offer branding, identity development, logos, websites, eCommerce websites, online stores, social media management, photography, writing, and a host of other creative services executed to the level of all our award-winning design.

Posted on November 1, 2017November 14, 2017 by Lacey Pyle

Drone Video for BOTE Destin

Check out this awesome video we completed for BOTE Destin’s Wednesday night paddle boarding demo! This project was recorded in one evening and edited over the course of a just one week!

Edited and finalized over the course of a week, BOTE Destin received a copy of this file to share across all its social media channels. Your golf course, sports complex, or resort could benefit from showing off its amenities and beauty with the help of an aerial video. Music or no music, this is a service any manager can’t pass up; your potential customers and current clients will gather a full understanding of just everything you offer.

Posted on August 14, 2017August 12, 2017 by Lacey Pyle

New website completed: Villa del Mar

We just wrapped up the design and launched Villa del Mar, an all-inclusive vacation villa in Costa Rica.

Villa del Mar, All-Inclusive Costa Rican Vacation Villa Home Page

Villa del Mar, All-Inclusive Costa Rican Vacation Villa – Interior Photos Page

Villa del Mar, All-Inclusive Costa Rican Vacation Villa – Testimonials Page

Working an international project was no small undertaking. Thankfully, we have a well-oiled team to handle up on this task and distance was not a problem. Together with Gab 4 You Marketing, we coordinated with professional on-site photographer Pura Vida Photo for photography and videography of the property.

The website has a few bells and whistles: a large slide show on the home page featuring the accommodations this villa offers, a live Instagram feed integration, a Google Map location, and a weather forecast for the Costa Rican province in which Villa del Mar is located. Check out the Video Tour which is located both on the home page and as part of the “Photos” menu item.

Villa del Mar will also receive social media management and blogging services to continue the momentum of their new promotional efforts. Follow Villa del Mar’s story on Facebook or Instagram!

Posted on August 8, 2017August 14, 2017 by Lacey Pyle

Destin Chamber Ribbon Cutting

Clients, friends, and business affiliates showed support for Graphic Strategist at my Ribbon Cutting ceremony.

Please join me and my clients, friends, and partners on Thursday, August 10 at 4:00 p.m. for my Ribbon Cutting Ceremony. I’m celebrating one year in business in Destin, and I’ll provide beer from Destin Brewery, wine from Vintage Distributors, and lots of elbow-rubbing at the reception to follow.

Click here to see the Facebook event hosted at the Destin Chamber of Commerce, 4484 Legendary Drive, Suite A.

Posted on August 6, 2017August 14, 2017 by Lacey Pyle

Why You Can’t Buy “Branding”

You can buy a logo. You can buy an identity package.

But you can’t buy branding. Why not?

Partially to blame for the misconception that one can buy branding, it seems, is because some people confuse their “brand” with their identity and/or their logo (“brand mark”). This is understandable; many people view these terms as interchangeable, but in reality, they are very different–yet very related–things. And I do use the term “branding” in place of “identity” sometimes because it’s what most clients understand.

Increasingly, we’re finding that it’s better to think of brand not as cause, but as effect.” — Robert Jones with Wolff Olins, March 2013

Actual “branding” happens over time. It is the impression your customers get from your company. It is how your customers experience, interact with, and interpret your company. Your brand is how you connect with people, places, and missions. It is what customers say about you when you’re not around. By this definition, you don’t even “own” your branding–your customers, colleagues, vendors, and suppliers do.

Create your brand by implementing your identity package

A post shared by Photo Buzz Studios (@photobuzzstudios) on May 25, 2017 at 10:51am PDT

You can, however, heavily influence your branding through graphic design and selective marketing. What you really want to focus on, then, is how your customers experience your company. Think about how your colleagues interact with customers, where your products or services are sold, which causes you support, and the creativity with which you implement your identity guide. Communicate the purpose of your company, and your brand will develop much more authentically than advertising your way into people’s hearts.

Sure, you may be thinking of the traditional way of doing things: A company forces “brand positioning” through buying a logo and a tagline, slapping them on everything, and telling customers what to think about the company. That’s not how contemporary brands thrive.

Take Budweiser, for example. During craft beer movement, Budweiser tried beating people over the head with their “cherished traditions” and “hand-made with care” craft-like messaging to regain some of their dwindling market share. But Budweiser finally figured it out: it doesn’t matter what they told people to think about their brand, people had already formed their own opinions about their products. How Budweiser connected with customers, where the company focused their investments and efforts, what causes they supported, and the behavior of the company was already firmly in people’s minds. It was decidedly not “craft.” Budweiser, finally embracing this reality that no one believes they are “craft” beer, launched their Superbowl ad in 2015, marking a turn in its strategy: “if you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em.”

The moral of the Budweiser story is: you can tell people over and over again who you are, but they will form their own opinions about your purpose. Patagonia, through the causes they support, how customers connect with the company, and the way people talk about Patagonia have allowed storytelling to create their brand. They didn’t say, “THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD THINK.” They said, “This is our purpose. You decide what to think about it.” Granted, they carefully planned and chose how to influence their audience, and they did so successfully.

Branding is simply how people experience your company’s purpose. And if you think about it, the word “brand” originally came from the Viking Norse word for burn (brandr). We branded cattle with a red-hot iron. Is that really how we want our customers to experience us?

Posted on July 19, 2017November 14, 2017 by Lacey Pyle

They Interviewed Me

Emerald Coast Brew Review, From Beer to Brains: Lacey Pyle Is The Graphic Strategist

Emerald Coast Brew Review is Destin’s craft beer news and events site. They cover beer releases, industry leaders, brewery news and events, and businesses in the industry. I have lots of experience designing for craft beer, and Emerald Coast Brew Review took notice.

Posted on July 6, 2017August 6, 2017 by Lacey Pyle

Why it’s important to purchase web maintenance even if you’re not changing your content

People often think of a website as a one-time purchase: you pay for the design, the designer launches it, everyone high-fives, and you move on. Like most things in business–daily accounting, fleet vehicle maintenance, dusting the shelves, or following up with customer inquiries–a website requires routine attention to serve you best. Further, the web isn’t just some static being that sits and waits for people to interact with it; the web changes continuously.

Web programming is always evolving, getting better, more secure, and more powerful. Some of the tools web designers use to make your site better, secure, and robust also change continuously. These include content management systems (CMSs), like WordPress; payment gateways, like PayPal; and IDX feed integrations, like MLS.

Even if you purchase the most basic maintenance offered, here are very good reasons to purchase a maintenance package:

Security Updates

Many web tools require manual security updates. A friend of mine had a property management company whose website was hacked. The hackers took his entire website down and replaced it with a photo of a masked man pointing a gun toward the viewer. This is well-documented and does happen. He ended up paying his web designer several hundred dollars to fix it.

Having your website taken down isn’t the only thing that could go wrong. Mean people do all sorts of things: change your site’s information, reroute traffic, steal your or your customers’ data, distribute malicious code (malware), and a host of other things.

Third-Party Vulnerabilities

Third-party vulnerabilities are related to security updates. For example, on WordPress-managed sites there are powerful tools called Widgets and Plugins. Widgets are small info blocks that perform a specific function. A PlugIn is a separate piece of software that performs a group of functions. These are often developed and maintained by someone other than WordPress. While they improve the functionality of your website, they can also create vulnerabilities. Since these both run some sort of code, they will need to be monitored for bugs and security updates.

If you’re telling yourself, “Well, I just don’t want any PlugIns or Widgets,” then you are also saying you don’t want payment gateways, a Facebook feed integration, a contact form, a professional-looking photo gallery, or your contact information on the sidebar of every page.

If you want a hand-coded page (no CMS like Joomla, Drupal, or WordPress), that’s fine, too, but they cost considerably more, take much longer to create, and are far more expensive to update. Hand-coded websites are neither cost- nor time-efficient.

Forced Updates

All reliable CMSs require updates. WordPress, for example, will eventually force its most critical updates to your site after it’s noticed you’re running very outdated versions of its software, but this is risky. The new version may not be compatible with some of your plugins or widgets, theme functionality, contact forms, photo galleries, or other tools that make your site sing. You risk losing all your data, or breaking your site entirely. Eventually, if your site has been neglected and only received these forced updates, it will break. It is like playing Russian Roulette with your website.

In fact, 27% of all hacking occurs on sites allowing WordPress to force updates.

Regular Backups of Site Content

Creating a copy of everything on your website is important in case you move your hosting, allow only forced updates to your site, get hacked, or someone messes something up while tinkering on the back-end. Without a recent copy of everything, you risk losing purchases, inventory catalogs, order histories, customer databases, messages, testimonials, and anything and everything else on your website.

Functionality Updates

Remember how I said the web is continually changing? This means web programming languages are enhancing mobile friendliness, usability, accessibility, speed–even the web languages themselves. Archaic or antiquated HTML won’t look clean or function as nicely in a modern browser, and some programming protocols have become completely obsolete and browsers flat-out ignore them. These may sound like fluff, but they are important; a poor user experience hurts your credibility–both to the actual users and to search engines.

Summary

You don’t realize the value of someone monitoring these tools until something goes wrong. Often, it is more expensive to fix problems after you’ve neglected maintenance because basic security must be updated before the problem can really be fixed. I encourage all my clients to purchase web maintenance. It will make your life easier, invoices less expensive, and relationships more productive.

Posted on May 17, 2017August 14, 2017 by Lacey Pyle