Archive for April 2009
As the sun sets, the St. Paul Cathedral watches over the city.
“What do you think, should I kiss her?”
Just finished up anther website, Bertin Art Conservation is the studio of Patrice Bertin, AIC. Patrice came to me after suffering the work of another designer. Many inexpensive web designers use templates, which can save time, but often don’t represent the client in a good light. Templates are designed to sell templates, not your company. Often, a developer that uses templates has no idea how to modify them, so your site can end up with odd little appendages that the developer can’t figure out, so they haphazardly work around them.
My designs emphasize the client and their work. This site uses neutral colors, but Mr. Bertin’s clients are large art galleries and private collectors who would recoil at bright garish colors. Designing simply with clear, clean solutions is a lot harder than it looks.
I don’t use templates and I build my sites by hand, but that doesn’t make them expensive. I have a simple system that I’ve created to quickly and inexpensively develop a site that is unique to you and uses very clean and reliable code. My sites load fast, are easily integrated by Google and since I built them myself, I know how to adjust them to meet your expectations and changing needs in the future.
Mister Whiskers was out trimming the lawn in the morning. Mr. W is my North-yard rabbit, Rocky is my South-yard rabbit: he likes to stand still and pretend you can’t see him.
I’ve used these guys to practice my wildlife tracking technique I learned from Jim Brandenburg. The trick is to pretend that you are an herbavore as well, walk a meandering path, looking at the ground. Stop and pick things up. Take your time. If you stare right at the rabbit, it will think you a predator and run, but if it figures that you are grazing, then he’ll accept you as a fellow vegitarian.
I couldn’t pass up this textural delight, a frozen pond with an abandoned shopping cart lodged in the ice, bisected by a tree shadow.
Whilst wandering the wild and woolly wastelands, encountered the Arcade Bar, just East of downtown St. Paul. I’m torn between two explanations: either the Arcade is what is really going on, or they don’t make question marks for these types of signs.
Note that the totally awesome Arcade Bar neon sign in safely encased in plexiglass.
Distro Guys is a new company that I am starting with my friend Tom Carmody. Tom and I have worked together on several marketing and promotion projects over the years. We discovered an opportunity that we think can really help small businesses.
Tom has worked for several large companies like Coca Cola and Chevrolet putting together street team marketing promotions. Street Team Marketing is simply sending teams of professional Brand Ambassadors out to events, fairs and busy places to hand out samples or coupons. It’s an effective approach that big companies know and use. It has many advantages over other marketing techniques, especially now at a time when newspapers are going out of business, people are skipping commercials with Tivo and choosing to listen to their iPod instead of the radio. The barrier to entry for many businesses is that it’s expensive to put together, thus only large companies can do it.
Distro Guys provides Street Team marketing to smaller companies by putting together coupons or samples from several clients and handing them out together. Because we know how to efficiently organize the teams, build the marketing materials and find the locations, we can deliver 10,000 coupons or samples for only $995.
We’re excited about this new venture and are putting together our first few events or ‘drops’ as they are called. I’ll mention on the blog where we will be, so you can come see us at work and get some good deals as well. Also, if you or someone you know has a company that could use a few thousand potential customers, please tell them about us. Learn more at: Distroguys.com.
April is such a beautiful time in Minnesota, the snow melts to reveal the resplendent neutral beiges and gray-browns of the lifeless wreckage of early spring. If you’re lucky you can discover some other wreckage as well. I don’t know why everyone is so down this time of year, it’s really nice out: my face doens’t sting so much in the wind. I might go out shooting later; I’m going to go take another nap. Call me when it’s May… late May.
The last of the winter blues are on the run. This spring, the renovations around Lake of the Isles are almost complete. The shoreline fences are gone, the waterplants are doing well, the paths are all in place and they are currently cleaning and regrouting the bridges. Next on the schedule is the roads. They will be repaving the parkway which is in terrible shape. The dump trucks used to landscape the lake really beat up the road, so they waited to fix the roads after they were done, so sense in damaging a new road.
