Interactive Design for
Right-brained Entrepreneurs
I am opening up my first studio and finally moving my home office to downtown Chicago. I have raised my prices by 30 percent per shoot, and the bookings are coming faster than I ever imagined. Even in a recession. — Kevin Weinstein, wedding photographer, Kevin Weinstein Photography
I used to worry my website would keep important deals from going through. I don’t worry about that anymore. —Chelsea Logan, Designer, Luxe Innovations
She transformed the publication aesthetically and conceptually, and reinvigorated it (and me) in the process. —Meg Krugel, Editor, Today‘s OEA
I contacted Deb for help with final design edits on my illustrated novel. Not only did she recommend some incredible changes which gave the book an entirely new feel and presentation but she was fun to work with and provided a great deal of insight into my target audience and how to design with them in mind.
I feel more professional now. I mean the template site wasn’t terrible but now it's looks fresh. It doesn't look like 6 million other websites. It integrates my logo into the design. The colors are not just a gray, white, blue or black page, that you get out of Blogger. It just has a whole natural look to it.
It’s cohesive, like really reflecting your business and your professionalism.
The template website was just kind of cold. It wasn't black and white as far as color. It was black and white as far as "Here are some pictures. Here's a category. Contact me if you want to." My new website is a lot more welcoming.
My website is beautifully designed. From an objective standpoint, if it were somebody else's website and I were a truck driver and it had nothing to do with me, it's just objectively beautifully designed.
People who have seen it love it. They love the clean design and how easy it is to use and navigate. And it's copy-heavy versus pictures, graphics, or anything like that, and that's appropriate for what I do. It makes sense because I'm selling myself as a copywriter.
I asked people who are really close to me, "Does this look like me? Does it look like my business?" and they said, "Yeah, absolutely."
I love my website. I loved the opening page. I think it truly reflects me and my business and the image I'm trying to portray.
My website made me feel like I was walking around with my zipper down. It was cheesy, and didn’t reflect my business. “Whoops, my fly is open, and I just showed 1,000 people.” That’s how I felt. It really bothered me.
At first, I wanted to redesign the site myself. But a year went by, and nothing happened. I’d been a technical writer for 12 years, but writing for my own website was so much more challenging. I was too close to it. I needed to bring in somebody with an outside business perspective.
Because of Deb's talent, I am opening up my first studio and finally moving my home office downtown Chicago. There is absolutely no way I could have ever consider this leap before working with Deb. I have raised my prices by 30 percent per shoot, and the bookings are coming faster than I ever imagined. Even in a recession.
At the same time, my ad and collateral have peaked the interest of several high-end wedding planners and I have booked 4 jobs that are 300 percent more than what I was charging before Deb took this job.
In summer of 2009, I hired Deb to help me with a full design overhaul on a statewide education magazine for the Oregon Education Association. She transformed the publication aesthetically and conceptually, and reinvigorated it (and me) in the process. She has been nothing but kind, flexible, knowledgeable, and hardworking (and most importantly, impressively creative) as we've shifted our “redesign” process into an ongoing “art direction” role of the monthly publication. Want to break out of the box with a top-notch design element? Need a photographer? Wallowing in fonts? Have a last-minute technical request? Deb has all the answers. I can’t imagine the magazine without her and... really... I didn’t hire her. I’m just lucky she said, “I’ll do it.”
~ Meg Krugel, Editor, Today’s OEA
I hired Deb Pang Davis in the Fall of ’09 to do the design work for my third CD release. I knew after just a short browse through her portfolio that just by finding her I’d have a great package. I’m a big believer in hiring a great artist and then letting them do their thing. After a short meeting she quickly honed in on exactly the image I was trying to put across with this new CD, which is very different from my others: simple and hip. WIth very little back and forth—though I always got the sense she'd be happy to try more things—I quickly received a design that I'm exceedingly happy with. It's just a joy to work with Deb. I'm already thinking about what I can have her do next.
~ Eric Skye, Acoustic Jazz Guitarist
Cococello provides web design, branding, identity, logo design and magazine and book design for photographers and creative entrepreneurs.
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