Donna Maria, of Indie Business Media LLC, wanted a landing page for her Facebook fan page. She wanted any visitors to her fan page, that weren’t already fans, to see this landing page. Donna Maria wanted to add a video, some text, simple instruction as to how the visitor could become a fan, and a way for visitors/fans to invite their friends to become Indie Business fans. I just (as in a few minutes ago) finished her Facebook landing page & set it up at her fan page: www.facebook.com/IndieBusinessFans. Here’s what it looks like:

Do you need a Facebook landing page? Contact bellafaith design today!

Jim DeBetta is a retail & invention expert, who mentors and coaches entrepreneurs and inventors from their initial sketches to selling their final product to major retailers. As a coach and mentor to entrepreneurs and inventors, a blog is very important to DeBetta’s enterprise. While his main site, www.jimdebetta.com, was undergoing a redesign with its original web designer, Jim turned to award-winning small & independent business coach & advocate, Donna Maria Coles Johnson, for her professional blogging opinion.

Deciding to separate Jim’s blog from his main site & have his blog located at www.thejimdebettablog.com, Donna Maria suggested he use the Thesis theme for Wordpress [that is where I fit into the picture (wondering where I was going with all this?)]. Jim & Donna Maria approached me wanting a customization of Thesis with a clean look. So with Donna Maria as Jim’s consultant, we worked together to create www.thejimdebettablog.com:

Some of the customizations include:

• date in the header
• social network icons with links in the header
• navigation & search bar
• subtle drop shadow on the rotating photo area in right sidebar
• sponsor area in sidebar
• feed of most recent tweets from twitter
• subscription in sidebar
• set-up and styling of sidebar widgets
• set-up and styling of post header
• comment count bubble
• & more!

I’m in the process of restructuring & redesigning bellafaithdesign.com (which means the business aspect is getting some nips, tucks & facelifts as well – this is the closest I get to plastic surgery). I know what it takes to make a site beautiful & successful, however I feel I have skimped on my own site. When I redesigned last year, I “jumped in” & failed to properly plan my lay out or marketing/seo strategy (which are very important things to consider at the beginning of a great web design/redesign). So, I am treating myself like a client and devoting the time and smarts to make bellafaithdesign.com strategic from a business aspect and more helpful to clients and those interested in graphic & web design.

In the process, I’m working on improving my business model so that I can work smarter not harder (which will be beneficial to my family & business). I’m using project & financial management tools to streamline the “paperwork” process & keep projects on track, so that I can spend more time doing my favorite part: the designing. Other business plans include the expansion of the bellafaith design team this year (any freelance graphic or web designers are welcome to email designteam@bellafaithdesign.com for more information).

The gem of the redesigned site will be the blog, which will feature help/advice/tips on seo (search engine optimization), tutorials on using wordpress (and other blogging /content management systems). And since bellafaith design is committed to bringing you the latest in web design as well as helpful tips for your online business, I’m excited to announce that we are introducing a free e-newsletter. The bellafaith design e-newsletter will be a monthly publication delivered directly to your e-mail inbox. You can go ahead & sign-up for the e-newsletter in the below form:

The focus of the new bellafaith design site is intended to be you the visitor, reader, subscriber, client; so I’d love to hear what you’d like to see at the new site. And, if you’re reading this after the redesign has launched, give us feedback on what you like, what you don’t, and what you’d like to see (or read)!

Booth Outfitters provides specialized branding services to small businesses with their Brand Investments, which range from banners and table covers (hence the name Booth Outfitters) to digital canvas prints, t-shirts and towels. The owner, entrepreneur Ishmael Holmes, approached me wanting a header design for his blog. He already had his logo, tagline and was using thesis (one of the best wordpress themes in my opinion) and only required a custom header and some minor customizations (like moving the blog’s navigation below the header). Here’s the end result & what is currently up at boothoutfitters.com:

And, since sometimes I feel limited if I only design just one mock-up, I created three header mock-ups for Booth Outfitters and Ishmael ended up taking two of them, here’s the other one:

At the beginning of last November, Donna Maria requested seasonal headers for IndieBeauty.com. So, I dabbled some in Adobe Illustrator to create some pumpkins in a cornucopia for a Fall look & some wintry snowflakes and swirls for a Winter look.

the fall header

the winter header

Last week, I launched a new site for Donna Maria of Indie Business Media, LLC (yes, we’ve been working on a lot of stuff together lately). The new site is for a series of conferences she’s leading in early 2010. What’s the conference about? Here it is straight from TheMediaIsYou.com:

Announcing The Media Is Y-O-U, a one-day intensive, hands on social media training workshop designed especially for Indies! If you’re an Indie Business owner, you know how important it is to use the Internet to spread the word about your products and services. Today, doing that is easier than ever with my one-day intensive, hands on “The Media is You” training program.

Donna Maria is holding The Media Is Y-O-U conferences in Atlanta, Chicago, New York City & San Francisco. She not only needed a site to get the word out, but also for conference registration & to encourage interaction among conference registrants.

For this site, I customized the Thesis theme for Wordpress.

Being a web designer requires continuous learning as there are always new tools & techniques emerging. Thankfully, a client of mine (Donna Maria of Indie Business Media, LLC), who is always up to date on the latest trends, provides me the opportunity to learn new trends through real-life experience. One of the tasks we delve into recently was creating a custom widget for her Indie Bloggers Network. Originally, we created the widget to feature the most recent blog posts from blogs where the widget was published. However, after much thought, it was decided that the widget should feature the most recent blog posts of members of Donna Maria’s Indie Beauty Network. Working on this widget was a new and fun learning experience.

The Good News: I’ve been really busy!

The Bad News: I haven’t had a chance to post any updates lately.

However, I have a lot of updates, so here’s the first one:

Donna Maria of Indie Business Media, LLC is expanding her business. Now, instead of focusing on just helping small business owners in the beauty industry, she is offering her business and social networking knowledge and services to all small business owners. With the expansion of her services, we needed to update the header at IndieBeauty.com to reflect the new branding – the branding of Donna Maria. You can see it live at www.indiebeauty.com.

I’ll have another update for you tomorrow!

I finally made the move over to Wordpress. I was previously using Blogger, but due to the fact that it wouldn’t validate, it had to go. Web standards and valid HTML/XHTML/CSS are heavily stressed by the web design community. I make it a point to validate every single bit of code I type. Unfortunately, not all web designers/developers feel this same way. Sometimes when I am working with a developer or using a program (or even a plugin) that already exists, I can’t always validate “that” code as I have limited control over the final product. However, I felt that as a web designer that promotes valid code, it would look pretty awful if my website or blog didn’t validate. So I moved my blog over to Wordpress, which does validate. [I am a little surprised that Blogger doesn't validate. I have actually found quite a few sites/widgets/plugins that surprisingly don't validate.]

However, now that I am becoming more aware of what does & doesn’t validate [thanks to the HTML Validator add-on for Firefox], I am becoming a lot more appreciative of what does validate. One of the projects that I’m working on at the moment is a customized theme for Wordpress. And not just any theme, but a customization of the Thesis theme.

At first I was hesitant about using Thesis. I had done a Thesis customization earlier this year as a subcontractor for a fellow web designer. The project had a super small budge & only required minor customizations, so I didn’t get into the meaty part of how Thesis worked. And as recently as a week ago, I heard from another web designer about how she tried Thesis once [a long time ago - that should have been a clue], it didn’t work out for her & she ended up building a completely custom Wordpress theme from scratch. So, a couple days later, when my client approached me wanting to use her Thesis theme, I hesitated. But I thought, hey, if it doesn’t work out, then I’ll just make her a theme from scratch.

Well, the first thing I noticed upon installation was that Thesis validated straight out of the box. This pleased me so much! Now that I am almost finished with the project, I am happy to report that I did get into the meaty part of Thesis this time & it has been so easy to use. [Thesis and I have been getting along great!] I will have a full review on Thesis later. In the meantime, don’t be surprised if I end up using it for this blog!

Recently, I redesigned the logo for KC Parent & KC Baby Magazine. Family Media Group launched the logo on the KC Parent Magazine with the September issue last month. They had sent me a mock-up of the magazine cover with the new logo prior to the release date, but seeing it in person had a whole different dimension to it. A couple weeks ago, I went to urgent care. In the waiting room, I saw the magazine. Just sitting in the magazine sorters like all the other magazines. I wanted to jump for joy, yell my excitement, tell the world that I designed that logo, but I restrained myself. Sitting there in the waiting room, I felt like a secret celebrity {albeit, I was the only person in the waiting room}. Thankfully, the short visit with the doctor was enough time to humble myself. But I still excitedly showed the magazine to my husband {and my mom a couple days later}. Now the October issue of KC Parent is out, but I haven’t yet had a chance to grab a copy of it.

September Issue of KC Parent Magazine

October Issue of KC Parent Magazine

Yesterday, I was out doing some shopping at Babies R Us & there was the KC Baby Magazine with the new logo! It’s just so cool to see your designs in public! I grabbed a copy of it to flip through at home. The Art Director for KC Parent & KC Baby Magazine, who designed the covers of the magazines with the new logo, has also worked with the Editor to redesign the interior layout. And it keeps getting better with each issue!

KC Baby Magazine – doesn’t that look great?