So here it is, blurred name and contact but everything else left exactly as is. An original hand drawn info-graphic of bad things happening to bad people. Even the skewed layout is original. Click the image to see every methodical detail that went into this beauty.

And that’s all I’m going to say. What do you say?

UPDATE August 3, 2010
I syndicate this blog to my Twitter and Facebook page which is where most friends tend to comment. I’m not sure what to do about that. If they all commented here it would be a party and the blog might get more comments and exciting things might happen like an exiled Eastern Europian Czar might join the conversation and be enlightened by all of our comments and the extreme grooviness and funked out flavour of my friends that he would invite us to his castle in some Autrian hide-away for a 3 week party…but no.

Here is one such comment (from Facebook) which explains the reason for an update:

“That’s actually a pretty famous old woodcut, it’s popularly referenced in the personal development movement. It’s pretty emblematic of the editorial cartoon style of the day as well. Even Matt Groening did ‘a slapdash homage to a great old illustration’.

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/preview6.jpg

Compared to a lot of Realtor ads that urge buyers to ‘buy now or be priced out forever!’ or claim that ‘prices are only going up!’ this one is actually pretty nice, if a little off-topic.”

I do have focus: Real Estate.

I like the real estate industry and position I am in. Never bored. Everyone is always in a decent mood. Right now websites are flying out the door and people seem to want to push technology to the maximum as a form of proof of (insert your communication here). Hopefully advertising campaigns will come back like lawn bowling once everyone realizes that being the first in technology is … just being the first in technology. Or that they might want to communicate something more.

The real problem I have with the real estate industry is this: Real Estate Agents are viewed as being lower than used car dealers. Real Estate developers are viewed as the reason people are homeless and living on the street. (There is an anti-real estate development poster on the wall of the complex I live in). Talk about friendly neighbours.

This is why when I see work like this flier I cringe. When I tell people I do real estate marketing, do they think I do this?

This person needs more than just listings. She needs more than a new picture photo-copied on canary coloured paper. She needs a plan that doesn’t involve bringing down the entire industry.

I put it up for you to have a laugh. For me? it’s not that funny.

Fridge vs Avocado Green, Stainless Steel, White…

Running Car vs Paint Colour, Shape window tints….

3 bedroom home plans vs spacial environment and finishes inside and out

Having worked in the construction industry for years before taking the design career by the horns has helped a lot in web design. A single building is drawn by an architect,  many engineers and a designer. The architectural drawings describe how it’s built, the engineering describes what size pipes, wiring, supporting walls etc. And the design drawing give the finishes. They almost always all work together at some point in the planning process.

Creating a web site can be just as complicated as house construction.

The web developer is like the architect. If there is no final wire frame (plan) in mind then that becomes part of the solution. The developer must create a website that allows for the design to be altered by the user.

The web designer brands, colours and re-shapes the functioning website.

If you hire a designer to develop your site, hopefully they will contract out the hard coding parts and not attempt to do it themsleves.

If you hire a developer to design and brand your site, hope fully the same will apply as above.

Very rarely do both co-exist in one person with any degree of success. It’s a simple fact of left brain right brain thinking.

No where in this post is SEO mentioned. That’s because SEO not just part of website construction alone and has nothing to do with branding and design. If SEO is important to the website owner (and who wouldn’t), it get’s built in as part of the development. It is then taught to the owner on how to use it, what content to write and where to put it. If SEO is the most important thing on your website list, don’t ask for it last.

I don’t know why my friends are sending me this stuff. I love all my clients.

How much does it cost is a common question for a design business’s email inbox supplying websites to Realtors. Of course no one minds answering. It’s what we signed up for in this line of work. But there is no easy short answer to the how much question because everyone is different – or are they?

Almost all inquiries about how much a website cost to design and build are coming from people without any branding what-so-ever. It seems a common trait in the real estate niche but for a small few. In any other business there is a plan in place but in real estate the end result is the plan and most web designers working in this real estate niche are creating the visual branding as part of the web-design and including it in their price.

“My web guy designed my logo” is a pretty common thing to hear when a sign guy needs the printable artwork to work with or a printshop is trying to put together the business cards and all they have to work with are crappy web graphics.

So the question how much is a website isn’t the really the question.

This is a week filled with meetings. Meetings with people who are in the business of designing for real estate. Together we will work to discover the true nature of the problem and come up with a unique solution – or two.

logo

Starting a new business? Think you can design your own logo?

What happens when you’re a designer designing your own logo? I found out nothing can end up happening. I sit staring at my thumbnail sketches tearing them apart with my critical mind. And I thought this was going to be the easiest part of developing a business.

Business planning done. Content written. Breakout business development tested and released. Website design nearly complete. Logo! – or not. I thought I knew what I wanted from the start. The concept was falling together so easily.

TribalYell: A  design and marketing tribe. Our difference? The health of our employees and the community we market to come first. If those two things prosper, so will the business.

This meant the logo was to be cave painted hand prints about the company name. Or some kind of stylized cave/hand print.

Well it’s not going to be a hand print now. The hand print concept falls down when you find out how used up this idea actually is. But I love what I’ve come up with. It’s just a pencil sketch right now.