Batternay Collection launches new website designed to engage and educate visitors on how custom photographic artwork has the power to express the mood in both residential or commercial spaces. We helped founder and artist Nora Batternay explore the marketing opportunities for custom photography in the US before introducing a new brand online. Out of this process emerged a style and language that most effectively reaches interior designers and art consultants. answerYES collaborated with Betsy Moore of Brains for Rent on the art direction and copywriting. Nicely done.

In short, Eldercare Made Simple are geriatric care consultants that provide families support coordinating on the full-spectrum of elderly services. As anyone who has ever been in the position of attending to an aging parent can attest to, this can a be quite challenging. There are so many things to consider from medical to legal to spiritual, it is nice to know you can turn to the hands-on consultants of Eldercare Made Simple.

Eldercare Made Simple was formed rapidly out of necessity, answerYES was asked to create a logo, a brochure, and a “simple” website as fast as possible. Everything had to be done within a couple of weeks. We also served as technical liaison between the client and all third-party vendors such as domain name registrar and hosting company. Since the website was based on the brochure, we were able to take advantage of the latest features of CSS3 and jQuery to create a nice, clean horizontal slider effect.

It was already October when the owners of Greenwich Pool Service approached us with the idea to sell kiln dried firewood strictly through the Web as a means to offset their Summer business. Fortunately, it has been a warm start to autumn and because their target market for firewood was the same as for pool services, coming late to the game had little or no impact. Still, we had to design a logo and build an ecommerce website in record time (we opted to use Google Checkout for the ecommerce). Within two weeks Fire It Up Firewood was online and open for business!

To help spread the word, we did an email and a direct mail invitation to the company’s existing customers as well as an ongoing Google AdWords Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign that has already yielded high conversion rates. In addition, our smart approach to organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has placed Fire It Up Firewood at the top of search engine results pages for highly coveted key phrases like kiln dried firewood and firewood delivery within a week of launch. Needless to say, we hit this one out of the park and our client was pretty impressed. We aim to impress.

Created new brand identity for start-up firm Orion Consulting Group which included the logos (above), business cards, and this mini-website.

Logo design and tagline for Viking Builders construction company based in Stamford, CT.

The year was 1965, four students at Boston College form the rock band The Leafmen, named after an off-campus residence Greenleaf Hall where three of the members lived. Over the next several years The Leafmen became a fixture of Boston music scene.

Decades later the band members would reform to play small gigs in and around the Boston area. They do a lot of Van Morrison, Rolling Stones, Beatles, but their version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida sounds as if they were channeling Iron Butterfly themselves! The drummer of the band, Sal Rizzo, is my uncle but I really came to appreciate their talents when the band got up (impromptu) to play at my cousin’s wedding.

I originally created The Leafmen logo and small promo site (no music) as a tribute in 2005. But in 2007 I received a demo CD from Sal along with some old photos. I decided to convert the website into a Flash microsite, featuring three of my favorite tracks from the CD. Had a lot of fun pushing the envelope on the Flash animation. Enjoy!

Created this logo design for local toy shop Stamford Toys (formerly know as Imagination Station) which would be used on everything from business cards to display ads to storefront signage. If you are in the Stamford area you can see the signs at 970 High Ridge Road (near FedEx/Kinkos).

I recently launched the ecommerce site for start-up cookie company StaceyLu Confections based out of Weston, CT. They specialize in custom-made cookies for corporate and private events. I was hired to do logo design, website design and development (used osCommerce as the ecommerce platform), and to design a newsletter template for Constant Contact.

In addition to the server-side stats I also enabled Google Analytics (you can never have too many metrics when it comes to tracking your return on investment). Along with this came server-side search engine optimization (SEO) which includes something relatively new, submitting XML sitemaps to Google (and others). I used the free sitemap generator XML-Sitemaps.com for StaceyLu (for small shops the free version is more than adequate). The site has been live for a few weeks now so go buy a cookie already.

Aside: when asked to do the newsletter design I decided to take the plunge and learn the special Constant Contact mark-up language for creating email templates. Already familiar with XML I didn’t have any problem getting up to speed and creating the first newsletter using my new StaceyLu template. Ahh, but here’s the rub, Constant Contact does NOT allow you to keep your custom template on their server so it would be available the next time around. To do this, you have to pay them $600! Given I did all the work, this felt like a crude bait and switch. A workaround is to upload the template code each time you compose a newsletter but this is not a practical thing to ask a client to do (who was taking over the task). Needless to say, I was a bit peeved. I ended up redoing the newsletter using one of Constant Contact’s built-in templates (not nearly as chic). Going to use MailChimp next time!

{Ed. Note 12/19/06: I was interviewed by The Hour (Norwalk, CT) about my viral marketing campaigns and the StaceyLu website was pictured along with the article. Free publicity for StaceyLu but honestly not sure why the paper grabbed that picture, it has nothing to do with viral marketing. }

{Ed. Note 3/30/10: StaceyLu is no longer a cookie company. The site is being converted into a blog about “personal growth” or something like that. It has been many years, often are the whims of start-up entrepreneurs. Still, it was interesting work at the time. }