Blue Turtle Graphics, Inc. » Blog

Spotlight on print graphic design work

Kim Smith — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 04:16:41 +0000

As you may have seen from our most recent post, we’ve been pretty darn busy. Besides some new website launches, we’ve also been keeping busy with the print side of things, most notably a large format brochure for Minto Communities Florida. Minto Communities is a leading developer and home builder offering new homes for sale in Florida and Canada. Minto Communities needed a beautiful corporate brochure to highlight each of it’s 10 Florida communities. The booklet is an 12 3/4″ x 9 3/4″ horizontal piece with UV gloss cover and 16 pages inside showcasing it’s gorgeous communities and new home construction. Because of it’s size and hi-gloss full color cover, it has the look of a coffee table book.

Collier Enterprises Hamilton Harbor Yacht Club hosted its 4th Annual In-Water Luxury Boat Show last month. Blue Turtle Graphics has been lucky to be a part of designing the invite and program for this exciting event for the past 3 years. This year we decided to go with a red/navy blue nautical theme for the artwork. See below and let us know what you think!

A couple other notable print projects include a 13 month wall calendar for Vasari Country Club and a direct mail and ad campaign for Southwest Florida Community Foundation.

3 new website launches

Kim Smith — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 03:25:22 +0000

Yeah, it’s been a while. The only thing I can say is that I’ve been too busy to post updates and ramblings…and that’s a good thing We’ve been swamped as of late here at Blue Turtle Graphics. What have we been up to? Well, let me tell you. Besides doing our fair share of print work (see upcoming post) we’ve also launched 3 new websites in the last month and a half. Read on to learn more about them.

Manna Christian Mission, Inc. is a non-profit organization, headquartered in southwest Florida, that helps the plight of the growing Hispanic Community. It began as a source of ministry, providing food and clothes and as time passed, the vision took shape and matured. Manna Christian reaches the community through various outlets such as children’s Sunday School programs, Youth Groups, radio broadcasting as well as ministries located in Guatemala.

Manna Christian didn’t have a website yet and needed Blue Turtle Graphics to create a site that will serve as their main headquarter site. The site needed to be able to be translated in both English and Spanish. Other requirements were to have the ability to add each church to the site and have contact information, photos, etc. that were relative to each church. Also added was a master calendar where they can post various events and happenings from each church.

The other two sites we developed were for a local Sanibel Island construction firm specializing in new residential homes and remodeling. Dan Hahn Custom Builders needed to update and redesign their old site to showcase some of the new construction and interior remodeling projects they had been working on. The newly designed site gives them a more polished and refined look that accentuates the services they offer.

"After"

Dan Hahn and Kevin Vertesch (of Dan Hahn Custom Builders) recently opened the Sanibel Design Center to provide a one-stop interior design center for island residents, interior designers and other contractors. Located in the heart of Sanibel Island, the design center features examples of finished kitchens and bathrooms as well as samples of flooring, wall coverings, cabinets, countertops, appliances, and accessories. Check out their website to see some of the gorgeous interiors they’ve designed.

A blog makeover

Kim Smith — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 16:04:20 +0000

I was recently contacted by Alysia Shivers, whose blog www.aroundtownwithalysia.com was in need of some sprucing up. Alysia is a Realtor for John R. Wood Realtors and blogs about various sites and things she finds during her daily travels around town in Naples, FL. Alysia’s blog was already up and running on WordPress using the default Ten Twenty theme before I came into the picture. The Ten Twenty them is a very nice and clean theme but can be somewhat lacking in color and and graphics. Alysia had a friend create a cool header of polaroid photos and text on a blue wood background, but the rest of the site was in need of some attention. She hired Blue Turtle Graphics to take her existing blog site and “dress it up” so-to-speak. Using the aqua blue color already in the header, I came up with a color palette of additional colors (tan and orange) to use throughout the site for links, navigation, sidebar boxes, etc. The background color was a light gray which I replaced with a subtle gray texture. Alysia also asked that I add her various social media links to the site as well as add an RSS email subscription signup box. Instead of editing the color and graphics of the Ten Twenty theme, I used a child theme. A child theme, is a theme created off of parent theme, such as Ten Twenty. It allows for changing the look of the site without editing any code in the parent theme. This means that she will be able to keep her theme Ten Twenty up to date without it overwriting the changes we make to the look of her blog. Check out www.aroundtownwithalysia.com to see what a difference a little color and extra graphics can make to an otherwise plan-looking theme.

AroundTownWithAlysia.com - Before

AroundTownWithAlysia.com - After

Client spotlight: InMotion Fitness & Physical Therapy

Kim Smith — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 23:49:43 +0000

InMotion Fitness & Physical Therapy is a top-notch fitness facility located in Bonita Springs, FL. They are open 24-hours a day, 7-days a week and are staffed by some of the top fitness professionals in the area. In addition to the great staff, they also offer services such as: personal/group training, boot camp training, massage therapy and physical therapy. I’ve been a boot camp client of theirs for a while and one of things that I love about these guys is their passion for what they do. They truly care about their members and clients and helping them reach their fitness goals. These guys really know what they are doing!

This project was an opportunity for me to blend 2 passions of mine: fitness and graphic design. Once the logo and website design was nailed down, I also created business cards, social media graphics (Facebook logo badge and Twitter and YouTube backgrounds) and even branded iPhone cases. Check out InMotion Fitness & Physical Therapy today!

InMotion Fitness website

Various InMotion Fitness branded marketing materials

Blue Turtle Graphics gets a redesign and new domain

admin — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 02:06:49 +0000

Hi. Remember me? I’ve been missing in action lately, but it’s been for a good reason. Besides all the awesome client work I’ve been working on, I’ve also been hard at work redesigning the Blue Turtle Graphics website. The last redesign took place back in June of 2009 and I felt it was time to revamp the look. Why you ask? Besides just growing tired of the old design, I really wanted to power the whole site with WordPress. You see, the old design was built as a static xHTML and CSS website, meaning there was no Content Management System (CMS), which makes for editing the text and photos of my site a real pain. The blog itself was powered by WordPress, but I’ve been wanting for a long time to make the whole site editable through the awesomeness that is WordPress. Another reason for the redesign is that the old site (and blog) was at the blueturtlegraphics.NET domain. Not sure if you’ve noticed but this new site is located at blueturtlegraphics.COM. I purchased the .COM version of my domain over a year and a half ago and had it redirecting to the .NET. Instead of having to move all the old site files over to the new domain, I decided ‘what better time to redesign than now and switch to the new domain?’ So, you see, there are all sorts of fun and exciting things happening here!

The new Blue Turtle Graphics website

The previous Blue Turtle Graphics website

This redesign provided me with an opportunity to add some enhancements to the new site. Right off the bat, you will notice the slideshow displaying various works from our logo, print and web portfolio. Also added are two new main navigation pages: Services and FAQs. I’ve expanded the services page as well as included a link to my design process. The FAQ page displays commonly asked questions I get from my clients. There are only a few items on this page right now, but I plan to add to it and update it often. The portfolio pages for logo design and graphic design haven’t changed much, but for the web design portfolio, I expanded it. When you click on the thumbnail, it brings up a new page for that web project with additional details about ‘what we did’, a full screenshot (or two) of the site as well as any client testimonials that apply to those projects. For you geeks, the web portfolio section was done with WordPress custom post types and meta boxes using this awesome tutorial by Pippin Williamson. With some additional help from Pippin himself, I was able to get this up and running (Thanks Pippin!). For the non-geeks, this means I can upload a thumbnail, full-size image, testimonial and all the details for a web project from just one WordPress post and whoila! it’s added to the portfolio just like that. This makes my life so much simpler!

The rest of the site is similar in content, just a new, fresher layout. I moved my newsletter signup (make sure you signup!) and social links to the footer as well as have my latest tweet display in the bottom right corner. You may also notice that the sea turtle in my logo has been tweaked slightly, I created a more graphic/geometric flower that rests on the back of his shell. I use this new flower as a repeating pattern on the home page behind the tagline on the right side of the slideshow. I like having this additional element to use here and there throughout our design materials.

In addition to the redesign, I’ve added several new client projects to the logo, graphic and web portfolios. Since I knew I would be redesigning my site, I’ve held off from updating the portfolio for the past several months. There’s a lot of new stuff there, so make sure you check it out!

So, let me know what you think about the new website…any feedback is welcome. Make sure you check out our new twitter background as well as Facebook graphics to match.