My scan of the original caricature drawing.

You can read this post to see how things went back then [spoiler alert: they went well], but we’re going to move forward a bit. Denny was an airline captain, and one of his navigators was a caricature artists on the side. One day, his artist/navigator buddy did an impromptu caricature of Captain Denny, and gave it to him as a gift. Denny and Priscilla loved it so much that they had me transmogriphy that pencil drawing into a corporate logo. Once that happened, it was clear that we had a full brand design on our hands. The kookiness of that grin just lends itself to messy coffee stains, and I had the idea of making the business card (you can see it at the top of this post) look like it had been used as a coaster. We also did a refrigerator magnet version, which they give out to first-time customers.

As you can probably imagine, with their website being my first large-scale website (technically, this was my first website), it wasn’t destined to stay unchanged for decades. I’m actually pretty proud that it lasted as long as it did! Sometime in late 2010/early 2011, Denny & Priscilla started tossing around the idea of making the website “more visual and less word-focused”. Their clientele was steadily growing beyond the retired hobbiest crowd, and was beginning to draw a younger, more web-savvy group of customers, so Denny & Priscilla wanted to innovate to stay ahead. That is very cool, and very rare.

If you’re a business owner, you probably think you have a firm grasp of what your customers want from you. If you spend much time on the phone with clients, you begin to have a sense of what to do to make them happy. However, we all have blind spots, and we all assume things that go unspoken, which means that even the most customer-aware business owner can still benefit from outside help. In this case, I created a customer survey which was posted on the website and sent out via email to all Captain’s Coffee customers which asked customers what they wanted from a green coffee seller, what their shopping habits are, what they do when they visit the site, and many more questions. The response was overwhelming! Nearly everyone responded to the survey, and we learned a lot. Some responses were expected, but many were different than we all expected, which goes to show the value of starting a website redesign with a customer survey. You don’t really know what people like unless you ask them!

Once we had the survey results, I worked at merging the customer expectations with Denny & Priscilla’s goals as owners. The most important thing was to make the site work the way customers expect it to work. That makes for a great user experience. The second thing which I added onto that primary goal was setting up the company to grow into the next decade. You can visit the Captain’s Coffee website here, or read on to see images of the site.

Check out that footer action. I photographed the green coffee beans, and assembled the other elements in Photoshop.

One of the custom pages I created, including the Photoshopped image of the ship with their logo on the sail. This was a fun page to write!

Another part of the About us page.

One of the great aspects to the Captain’s Coffee is the wealth of knowledge available for their customers. Some customers found it hard to locate articles and tutorials on the old website, so we put our brains to the task of inventing a way to catalog all their tutorials, suggestions, and more. The Learning Center was the result.

One of the Learning Center articles: Owlbert’s Coffee Selection Guide. You’ll have to read it to get the full impact, but this was the highlight of the project for me (Joseph). I asked Denny & Priscilla questions, but didn’t tell them why. I then created images of their plastic owl decoy (whom they call “Owlbert”) in various environments.

More of Owlbert’s Coffee Selection Guide.

I’m happy to say that the new Captain’s Coffee website is a hit, both with my customers, and my customers’ customers. I suppose in the case of the customer that own coffee roasting businesses, this website could even be a hit with my customers’ customers’ customers, and if said customers work better because of the yummy freshly roasted coffee, then you could even say that it’s a hit with my customers’ customers’ customers’ boss’s customers. Right?

Now the story doesn’t end there, because shortly before I finished the new website, my brother Ben and his wife Heather (who happens to also be my sister in law at the same time) started helping Denny & Priscilla out with occasional bag-filling, shipping, and other various and sundry tasks. Well, guess what happened! Ben and Heather (B&H) are now the new owners of the Captain’s Coffee, while Denny & Priscilla (D&P) are finally able to retire away to Bald Head Island, often-visited place for coffee cupping retreats and great fishing.

I think it’s pretty neat that back in 2008, none of us knew that we were working to set up my brother & sister for blessing. The system is ironed-out, working smoothly, and D&P are able to hand off a long list of happy customers to B&H. I’m glad to have been a part of the whole thing.

Susan has travelled extensively around the world since becoming a chef, and gathers inspiration everywhere she goes. From the colors of an Indian open air spice market to the spicy & hearty flavors of a bedouin meal, she’s full of amazing stories and diverse tastes. Combine that with her passion for living a healthy life (she also runs a Yoga business), and her fascinating line of food products makes perfect sense.

All the products are original recipes by Susan, and she crafts them in small batches with help from her friends. She even personally oversees the bottling and labeling processes! This is a new breed of food supplier, becoming more popular these days as folks move to a simpler, village lifestyle. Companies like Satisfy Your Soul — based around a simple, sustainable business model of locally sourced, healthy, natural products — are the companies that can survive any economic climate. When your goal is to make a great product, and to make your customers healthy & happy, you’re on the right track.

Susan brought us on board early on, before their first product launched (Apple Chutney). Susan was working with a local artist named Sara Smith to create a logo, but needed a designer to take on the package design of their upcoming Apple Chutney launch. After meeting with her, we realized that there was more at stake than just one package; it was more about branding Satisfy Your Soul, LLC as a whole. The Apple Chutney was the launch of a product and a company. Sara created the individual assets for the logo, painting everything by hand, and doing a basic layout. I then massaged things into place for the final logo that you see below.

We went on to design packages for all the products seen below, plus a sell sheet targeted to retail store managers, some large format banners for Susan’s cooking classes and trade show booth displays, and finally a great website. Jessica was able to come up with some pretty incredible copy writing on each of the packages, using information she got from interviewing Susan about her travels. We are proud to announce the Satisfy Your Soul brand:

The 2012 product lineup from Satisfy Your Soul, featuring our package designs and copy writing.

Front of our 2012 sell sheet design. Susan uses this as a leave-behind for retail stores.

Back of the sell sheet. This took some trial-and-error to fit all that text in! All the photos shown, except for the Apple Chutney, were taken by us, here at our home. Apple Chutney photo credit: Kevin Lee, Studiospace, Greensboro, NC

An 8 feet wide x 4 feet tall vinyl banner that we designed for Satisfy Your Soul’s booth at the International Fancy Food Show, a large artisanal food trade show in Washington, DC.

Accompanying table skirt banner for the trade show. This is 6 feet wide, for attaching to the front of a folding table.

Website home page design. This is a responsive layout, automatically adjusting itself for smart phones, iPads, et cetera.

Product details page on the Satisfy Your Soul website.

The store locator page we built on the Satisfy Your Soul website. Notice the custom typefaces that we implemented on the site to match the branding. We also created the Facebook page for Satisfy Your Soul, which you can see in the right sidebar.

Jessica’s got a website! Woot! It’s awesome too. Totally her design. We went with WordPress so that she could manage the pages, blog area (commenting disabled, so it’s like a true journal), artwork uploads, etc. I created a custom menu structure for her that is loaded into a sidebar region, disabling the main top menu and footer areas. Jessica had a very specific vision for the site: simple, beautiful, hand-crafted but not “crafty”, girly but not gaudy.

I chose an old Gaudy Book typeface for the body and headings, and a hand-drawn font for the menu. I also created little flourishes which automatically appear between each blog post, and the graphic on the homepage was one I made from photos Jessica took of herself and our back yard.

One thing that’s cool about this site is that it works like an iPad app when you view it with an iPad or other tablet device. It was quite an interesting project, as I was constantly trying to add in little techy widgets and visual clutter, and she was constantly removing said widgets & clutter. Haha! I’m really happy with it, and am surprised WordPress could become what she envisioned, largely due to the flexibility in the code of the Woothemes Framework. I was able to get in there and tweak things to my heart’s content.

http://jessicacotten.com

My father in law, Dave Fox, is a musician, composer, college instructor, and author. Quite a handful, huh?! He asked me to create a new website for him that would serve as a home base for all of this creative efforts. He wanted to be able to post upcoming gigs, have audio samples for people to listen to, and a blog.

I decided to use WordPress, with the WooThemes Canvas Framework and Gigpress plugin for managing gig listings. I was able to create a design that put all the important bits on the homepage without being overly busy. I wanted it to look classy and sophisticated, but also earthy, creative, and organic. I particularly am proud of the kickin background image I designed. Head over to http://davefoxmusic.com for the full impact.

Inside of the rack card-sized tri fold brochure.

After we finished our wave of new sales support materials, direct mail postcard, and the new Mold Proof website, Microbloc asked us to come up with a way for their franchisee/contractors to market themselves to realtors, distributors, other service businesses, etc. We thought of using something like a rack card or business card, since this is something that can be left in a distributor’s store or carried to a business networking get-together. Then we thought it’d be great to keep the small form factor of a rack card, but make it a tri-fold brochure — which then gives us enough room to go into more detail about the Mold Proof line of services.

The cool thing about a mini brochure/rack card is that it lets you target multiple audiences. Business owners can grab it from a vendor’s sales rack, or a Mold Proof provider can carry them in his or her pocket, and give to a homeowner if they’ve forgotten to bring the other Sales Support Materials along.

Another great collaboration with Jessica the copywriter and Joseph the designer!

Inside of the "Homeowner Brochure", showing a checklist of mold-friendly conditions.

We produced a full range of new sales support materials for Microbloc and its network of Mold Proof contractors. Mold Proof is a national network of contractors who prevent, remove, test, and inspect mold, mildew, algae and other dangerous natural pathogens. Many Mold Proof contractors are also carpet cleaners, pest control workers, exterior home cleaners, etc. I created these materials to help them do on-the-job upsells by educating homeowners and business owners about the conditions that are conducive to mold growth.

The brochure helps the contractor walk through the inspection process with the homeowner so that the client understands what their particular home needs or doesn’t need, and what precisely needs to be done to protect their home against mold. The entire design is crafted to put the homeowner at ease and to allay any fears about mold & mildew. There are checkboxes for the contractor to point out which particular conditions are present in the home, and I included a matching graph paper insert (not shown) for the contractor to draw a diagram of the home, again showing the homeowner where to look to see the listed conditions.

I think my favorite thing about this is the great slogan that Jessica came up with: “Mold: it’s sneaky. It’s nasty. It might be in your home. But it doesn’t stand a chance against us.” It says it all, in funny, quirky, ballsy way. Awesome.

Accompanying Door Hanger design for canvasing a neighborhood.

Back of the Door Hanger, showing our familiar Top Three Reasons to prevent mold.

As part of a series of new marketing material releases for the national Mold Proof network, I created a USPS-compatible direct mail postcard. The goal of the postcard is to give Mold Proof contractors around the U.S. something to send out to potential clients as a “first contact”.

The biggest challenge faced by mold prevention companies is that most people in the U.S. don’t understand the real problems that mold causes. Most people have heard horror stories about mold and assume that it’s all hype. The thing is, the biggest costs of mold are how expensive repairs can be, and the fact that mold growth is shown on a property history report — which historically has lowered a home’s value by up to 60%. Wow. That right there is reason enough to put down the money to prevent mold soon, instead of dealing with mold growth later.

Jessica worked on the copy while I worked on the design of the card, to make sure that it would educate homeowners by getting their attention, and telling them the top three reasons to prevent mold (instead of waiting for it to grow and removing it). It’s a mental hurdle for people to get over, to think of coating parts of their home with a clear spray so that mold won’t grow, instead of just dealing with mold once it is found.

The culmination of the new line of marketing materials was a new website template which would be duplicated for each Mold Proof contractor, with customizations for whatever region a contractor operated in. To start things off, I created the template for the home website at http://moldproof.com.

My goal was to communicate the friendly, easy-going, relaxed vibe of a Mold Proof provider, yet also give things a feeling of strength, reliability, and professionalism. Fear is a common motivator in mold remediation, and from the get-go, the folks at Mold Proof told me that they avoid using fear at all costs. They prefer to educate homeowners on mold, and offer their service without resorting to hard sales tactics or fear-based marketing. I like that! As a consequence, I used a very friendly sans serif typeface (Calluna Sans), via CSS @font-face properties for the body text, and the classy and slightly industrial League Gothic for titling.

An interactive map showing where Mold Proof providers are located which, when clicked, will take you to contact information for your local mold prevention specialist.

The “Mold Proof Advantages” page, which shows some custom type stylings I created, along with icon graphics I designed. Also shows the sidebar modules.