Carbon Neutral for a Day

Chris on December 18, 2008

One Day from Brighter PlanetJeffrey Zeldman recently offered a gift of carbon neutraliy. Being an advocate of environmental responsibility, I took him up on his offer, and in turn, offer this gift to you as well.

So far, Brighter Planet has given away over 3,700 gifts and offset more than 504,000 pounds of CO2. The goal is to give away 5,000 One Day gifts and offset 680,000 pounds of CO2. Per their site:

The average American emits 136 pounds of carbon dioxide each day. About 36 pounds come from driving, flying, and other travel. Another 22 pounds come from heating, cooling, and powering our homes. The final 78 pounds come from producing, transporting, and disposing of all the stuff we buy, and from shared services like schools and street lights. 136 pounds would fill 5,000 balloons — imagine releasing that every day.

To me, its definitely worth signing up. Did I mention its free? Thanks to Zeldman for the post and passing it on to the rest of us.

Determination Reaps Rewards

Chris on June 13, 2007

This past Saturday in the business section, The Columbus Dispatch ran an article about troubled tanning-salon chain under fire. I have very little interest in the legal issues of the Hottie Body franchise, but something did catch my eye. The article began talking about a woman who wanted to open a franchise and ran into problems:

Cindi Colley was on track to open her first business this spring, a Hottie Body tanning salon franchise. She had retail space arranged in a prime location in the South Campus Gateway development and had invested thousands, including a $25,000 franchise fee to the parent company of Hottie Body, a Columbus-based tanning salon owner and franchiser. But midway through construction on the site, “it became apparent that the parent company wasn’t going to keep their end of the bargain,” Colley said, leaving her unable to open her salon.

The article then preceeds to describe the Hottie Body legal issues. But like good writing, the article comes back to our “heroine”:

Colley, who had planned to open a Hottie Body location on N. High Street near the Ohio State University campus, has since made arrangements to open a tanning salon there under a different name, said Steve Sterrett, spokesman for Campus Partners for Community Urban Redevelopment, developer of the South Campus Gateway. Her salon, No Tan Lines, opened yesterday.

If you’ve seen my previous post, you probably now know why this article caught my eye, and I am blogging about it. About two months ago, I was introduced to Cyndi and learned not only of her dilemma with Hottie Body, but also her determination to open her business under her own name. I have had the fortunate pleasure to put together for her new tanning salon, No Tan Lines, a simple, one-page web site, business cards, and promotional flyers over these last few months.

However, the biggest pleasure was to meet Cyndi and help her dream come to fruition. Congratulations on the grand opening, Cyndi! I know No Tan Lines will be successful based on your determination and hard work alone. And if anyone is in the Ohio State area, stop by No Tan Lines and say hi. To celebrate their grand opening, No Tan Lines is offering one free tan with any purchase (see store for details and restrictions).

New projects

Chris on May 27, 2007

Things have been extremely busy here for the last several months, to say the least. I’ve started and completed a lot of new projects over the last six months as well as attended SXSW 2007. Blog posts have been too few and far between to my liking, but when it comes between client and personal work, the paid side of things usually will win out. If you’ve frequented my portfolio occasionally these last few months, you may have noticed a few additions. This entry is purposed to give a little info about those. Without further ado, here’s what I’ve been up to (based on timeline):

Yahoo! Small Business
Services template designs


I actually completed this project back in the Fall of 2006, but I had to keep it under wraps until it went live in February. I designed three different templates for this project, but only one, “Mansfield,” is up there at this time. I will post something once the other two are live as well.
This project was great to work on and I’m really happy with the results. Thanks to Dirk Knemeyer and the staff at Involution Studios for bringing me into the fold on this. They are a great crew and were a lot of fun to work with. I’m also proud to mention that the two online ads that I’ve seen on the Yahoo! site has featured Mansfield in promoting this service.

tattletale Alarm Flash presentation


Launched in March, this project was a unique challenge for me because it pushed my familiarity with ActionScript to a new level. Many thanks to Paul Mayne for unduring countless emails in helping me navigate through some of the tougher areas of ActionScript.

The WaterMan web site


If you’ve frequented my portfolio section in the fall, you may have noticed this site under the web design section. The site has been under development for a number of months, and after a couple of rounds of content editing, finally made it live in March. This is one of those projects that are fun to work on because you learn so much about the product in the process. I’ll never look at water the same way again.

No Tan Lines web site


A single page web site for a small start-up tanning salon in the Ohio State University area. The goal was to market the salon more like a hip retail clothiers than another day-glo tanning store.

Lithik Systems in GRAPHIC make-overs

Chris on February 24, 2007

lithik website

I’m proud to announce that the redesign of the Lithik Systems Inc. web site was recently featured on Creative Latitude’s GRAPHIC make-over section. Lithik Systems specializes in providing regulatory compliance and security services for IT systems. In short, they develop top-of-the-line systems to keep your electronic information safe and secure. And more importantly, if you’re a financial institution, they keep you in great standing with the FDIC.

This project was particularily enjoyable for me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I’ve know Karl Fox, the man behind Lithik Systems, for a number of years. Not only is he a great guy with loads of integrity, but he’s an outright master at running an IT business. Not only does he know what he’s doing, but his staff is a clone of him, in both knowledge and values. It was a great opportunity to work with a company that has such an upside like Lithik does.

Secondly, they provided me tons of creative freedom to do what I do, and trust to do it well. Karl and Ron Kremm (the two I worked with directly) had a great vision for what they wanted the Lithik site to accomplish. With their vision and direction, I was able to explore ways to execute their goals visually. I think the end result speaks for itself, and everyone involved is pleased.

Lithik is a great example of a company that isn’t afraid to let people do their job well, and they provide the environment to allow that to happen. I’m not advocating that businesses be uninvolved in their communications and marketing materials, whether its web, print, or other. Those things are the face of the company, and it’s important that they have a voice of what that is. What I am advocating is that businesses should not micromanage the creative process. To me it seems pointless to spend money on creative services, whether staff or outsourcing, if you don’t trust them, and give them the freedom, to do their job. I’ve seen, and personally been involved in, enough projects that fall flat because the creative force isn’t allowed to be just that — a creative force. Let people do their job, that’s what they’re paid to do. Then you will learn if your money was spent well or not.

Thanks again to Karl, Ron, and the entire Lithik staff. It was a real pleasure working on this project for me.

Up and Running

Chris on January 31, 2007

It took awhile, but the redesign, and especially the blog, is working. Thanks to the many people that prodded me into finally blogging, and the input to get it operational. A big thanks to Austin Matzko for his help with the PHP subtleties that were completely escaping me. I’m still making a few adjustments to the layout when I get little breathers between client projects, so things will be tweaked over the coming weeks.