Need a Partner in Your Marketing Plan? From annual reports and appeal packages to collateral materials for your gala event, I can help to make it all happen. I will work directly with you to produce beautiful pieces that resonate with your audience. Designing content for the multiple channels, you’re sharing your message, (print, email, social media and your website). So, if you’re looking for a thinking designer with a fanatical attention to detail to be a partner in your marketing plan, let’s...

Websites should be one of the hardest working pieces in your marketing mix. Add the challenge of technology changing at break neck speed and the life cycle for your website is about that of a car lease, 2-4 years. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need a complete redesign, but you need to be paying attention. Sites need to be user friendly, have smart calls to action, speak to the target audience (which in many cases is both prospects and current donors), and maintain branding. Oh, and you need to be regularly adding content to it once it’s revised. This requires more than one person. I’ll pull together a team to help all the pieces come together whether it’s a complete overhaul or just needs refreshing. Let’s connect to discuss the possibilities. Some samples: TrinityLI.org, TrinityHicksville.org, JoanneBrown.com, Lutheran Counseling...

Over the past couple of years, Google started ranking “HTTPS” sites higher than regular “HTTP” sites in non-branded searches. Then in September, Google announced: “Beginning in January 2017 (Chrome 56), we’ll mark HTTP pages that collect passwords or credit cards as non-secure, as part of a long-term plan to mark ALL HTTP sites as non-secure.” What does this mean for you and your organization? It means the time is now to add “HTTPS” to your list of items to get done sooner than later. If someone searches for your organization by name it will still come out on top but if they search for non-branded keywords you will lose ranking on the top pages because you are not compliant. How do you do this? It’s working with the company that hosts your website. They will be able to get you the certificate which will cost you an additional yearly fee. It varies depending on the level you need. How does this relate to working with me as a designer? Your overall marketing strategy is important to me. Every aspect of it can help or hurt your mission. If I find out something that may not be on your radar and it can get better results I will share it, be it design or tech news. Here is an excellent article that dives deeper into...

I was re-reading an article on building accessible emails, it talked about designing smart emails so audiences of all abilities can read it, see the link to the whole article here. Coming from the print world originally, and having had a color blind boss, I had been mindful of color blindness and making sure there is enough variation in color and tones and to steer clear of green and red together. But other elements such as how a screen reader moves through the page of email content was really interesting. Here are some of the stats: “285 million people worldwide are considered to be visually impaired, with 19 million people in the US (or, 8.8% of the population over the age of 18) reporting trouble seeing, even with glasses or contact lenses. In addition, 4.5% of the population are color blind, which can also be a significant impediment when color is used to convey meaning or action in messages, both in email and on the web.” While the percentage of the visually impaired may seem small, it’s easy to build emails thoughtfully and by doing so, you can be sure all your audience can read your content. We recently discovered my son is blue color blind, it’s definitely made me more aware when creating marketing material. If you’re going to take the time to send it, everyone should be able to read it. That goes for print too! Give me a call, 516-707-2330, and I’ll be able to help create an accessible email or print collateral for everyone to...

Lately, several of my clients have been considering either rebranding or having a branding guide built out for their organizations. What’s the difference? Rebranding can be updating your logo mark and/or additionally reviewing your positioning statement and mission. Creating a branding or style guide is different: your mission and logo stay the same, but the guide helps your staff keep to a consistent look through font choices and a color palette. Quite often departments do their own thing because there isn’t a guide in place to follow. That leads to materials that look unpolished and all over the place. See my visual identity guide to walk you through the process or call me, 516-707-2330, and we can figure it out...