SOLUTIONS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

Sandy Creek Pet Resort

The premiere pet resort needed a modern website with form and function.

The long-time local pet resort was operating on early website (template) techology using the company 1 & 1. The aging software was failing, and causing confusion for their clients. The dedicated owners of this company are deeply involved with the day-to-day operations, and needed a low-maintenance website. I used Square Space for its user-friendly interface, easily updated content and form submission. Since then, they have needed almost no technical support.

A video background captures the interest of new site visitors, and delights regular users as they complete the overlaid boarding form to make their reservations. The cute sleepy dog video runs about 30 seconds, and concludes with him falling asleep, right about the same time clients are ready to submit the form. The resort is also for humans, with linked content to the AirBNB pages for the Inn at Sandy Creek. Check out their beautiful new site here.

• Date: July 2016
• Client: Sandy Creek
• Category: Web Design, Graphic Design, Technical Support, Site Migration: 1&1->Square Space

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Special Children Advocacy

Small Business, Big Needs

Special children Advocacy (SCA) is a local Virginia Beach agency offering educational advocacy for parents and guardians of children with special needs. The agency was founded by a sole advocate with a big vision. Dr. Jana Macias relied on one person to manage the technical side of her business. When that person was no longer available, she put in a call to Laura`s Desk. Since then, SCA's website has a custom header image and custom logo, and has moved from the overpriced, outdated Yahoo! Small Business "Site Solutions" platform to the dynamic and affordable Square Space. Now, maintaining the website is a breeze, and they can focus on the good work they do - helping children. Event flyers, business cards and technical support are among the services Laura's Desk continues to provide for SCA.

Check out the SCA website here, it's awesome.

• Date: November 2015
• Client: SCA
• Categories: Web Design, Graphic Design, Technical Support, Printed Materials, SEO, Site Migration,
  YSB!->Square Space

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WindoWare Inc.

Local software developer creates products helpful to state governments.

WindoWare Inc. offers permitting and inspection software for local governments. The Hampton, Virginia based company has been in operation for twenty five years. Founder Jean Vallee continues to work directly with clients and has little time for managing the ten-year-old WordPress website (Jean is also a foster mom to Boston Terriers in need). For Jean, I placed a contact form on the homepage, with a page redirect to her demo page, repositioned her navigation menu, rebuilt the homepage slider, adjusted the typography and styling to a more readable, more updated font (Raleway), added a favicon, and re-created her site's graphics using adobe Photoshop, to include the logo (above).

Check out the WindoWare Inc. website here.

• Date: February 2017
• Client: WindowWare Inc.
• Category: Web Design, Graphic Design, Technical Support, Wordpress

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Benito

Benito was terribly behaved - for fourteen years.

I learned a lot from my first rescue dog. He taught me that however imperfect someone or something may be, there is always something to love, and that no matter how hard you may want things to change, some simply won't. In that space, you find out what you're made of. Benito forced me to ask myself this question: "When you have nothing left, can you go a little further?"

I am a proud foster home for Boston Terriers and other dogs who cross my path. I prefer seniors who bite when startled, drool a lot, snore like thunder and listen selectively.
Thanks, Benito.
Check out some Bostons available for adoption today.

• Date: December 1999 - 2012
• Client: Benito
• Categories: Hardwork, Perseverance, Love, Kindness, Dedication

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Laura's Desk

My solo endeavor, an off-shoot of Hillstone Design.

Personally I don't think anyone can achieve real sucess without a team. However, there are many occasions where a client's need could be very simply met by one person - me. I conceived the idea while assisting a friend with her website. When the Hillstone team is fully booked, solo projects go on Laura's Desk.

When working online, I prefer to rest my eyes on muted colors. The background of the header image was free on Pixabay. I actually do have an old teal deskphone that looks identical to the one I chose as the logo symbol. The retro feel really demanded a fun font to match, and the gradient is reminsicent of tie-dye. I created the typelogo using Laura Worthington's "Funkdori" font. She was kind enough to send it to me while I played around with different looks. I found a wealth of great options on her site. My next step will be to animate the receiver of that phone on page load, so it "rings".

• Date: May 2015
• Client: Laura's Desk
• Categories: Web & Graphic Design, Logo Design, Bootstrap, SEO

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Hillstone Design

Its a team effort.

Hillstone Design has been evolving since 2013, when I first conceived the idea. In web design, large firms expect mutliple skill sets from their employees. Your website might be assigned to a developer with some design skills, or a designer with some developing skills. Hillstone assigns a specialist to each stage. Project Coordinators advance each site through the stages, and monitor customer satisfaction through completion and launch. Our process requires close scrutiny of every aspect of a website, and results in an end product of robust quality.
Assembling a team of the very best people has taken years. With staff working remotely, the business is scalable and limited only by the amount of work we take on. Why not join our team? Check out our JOBS page here.

• Date: July 2016
• Client: Hillstone Design
• Categories: Web Design, Graphic Design, Logo Design, Video Production, Bootstrap

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Dr. Anna Drzewiecki

A Step Forward on the Web.

"Doctor Anna" is as well loved as known in the close-knit city of Virginia Beach. An established client base spanning decades left her website trailing far behind good old fashioned word of mouth. The Start Logic site was top of the line when it launched in the mid 90's, but the internet's constant advancement left it unresponsive to mobile screens and incompatible with new devices. We recreated her handwritten initials, in the same way she has written them all of her life, using the typeface Tangerine, resulting in an elegant custom typelogo.
Walk in her office and you'll know, Dr. Anna loves not only art, but beauty - in all forms. All of the artwork on her site is customized including her beautiful header image. I used all original photography and added the photo effects on her testimonials page. Check out her website here - it is a masterpeice!

• Date: July 2016
• Client: Dr. Anna Drzewiecki
• Category: Web Design, Graphic Design, Technical Support, Business Cards,
  Site Migration: Start Logic->Square Space

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Plant Dining Partnerships

Supporting plant-based and vegan initiatives in restaurants.

"The Axis of Evil doesn't run through Iraq, or Iran or North Korea. It runs through our dining tables. Weapons of Mass Destruction are our knives and forks. This is the Swiss Army Knife of the future – it solves our environmental, water, health problems and ends cruelty forever."
- Philip Wollen, Australian Philanthropist, Former VP of Citibank

I sent about fifty iterations to the team at PDP while they organized their company. As a designer, I know that what I like and what I think is good may be world's apart from the client's point of view. Creating unique and numerous ideas for mine to reject is half the fun. The other half is striking gold! Check out the Plant Dining Partnerships website and cracking logo here.

• Date: September 2019
• Client: PDP
• Category: Web Design, Graphic Design, logo design, Inkscape

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Old Dominion Boston Terrier Rescue

A volunteer project, and a labor of love.

Everyone knows animal resue groups are overburdened and understaffed. It was my pleasure to offer technical support to my long time rescue boss, Christine Coulter in Hampton Roads. The site is on a Weebly theme. The adoption application submission settings were off and they weren't going through. Worse, the applications they did receive were not formatted and very hard for volunteers to read. The site had little styling, beyond what the theme offered. They wanted background colors and photos of the beloved Boston Terriers they serve, to give warmth to the site.

I spent the majority of time on this project troubleshooting their application. The form builder is good but the output is, unfortunately, not formatted*. I was able to use more text areas instead of checkboxes to eliminate extraneous code in the output, and other work-arounds like line breaks and "unlabeled use" of fields to create pseudo-section headers in the ouptut. I needed to access the CSS code to add the earthy background colors, but Weebly makes that easy which is a very nice option for a site builder. I used photoshop to edit a free image of dog bones from Pixabay adding a tilt shift effect and some color-matched text. The team over there knows how to add and edit content on the Weebly dash, so the site continues to flourish! Check out the Old Dominion Boston Terrier Rescue Site here.

^{* I wrote to the team at Weebly to ask for assistance with formatting the form output. They responded immediately, and said they aren't offering that now, but encouraged me to submit the issue for voting in the Weebly community. I did so and it has received a few upvotes! Maybe in the course of this project, we will have made Weebly better for everyone.}

• Date: February 2016
• Client: ODBTR
• Category: Web Design, Graphic Design, Technical Support, CSS, Weebly

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