Joyce Jones

You are currently browsing articles tagged Joyce Jones.

We look to our achievements to our continued success as an agency. It has been shaping into another stellar year of graphic design, and it’s always great to see our work and our staff recognized.

Two great events – on the same day last week – honored our marketing communications and service towards our clients.

Nick attended the IABC Bronze Quill Awards. Like last year, the event combined both IABC Dayton and IABC Greater Cincinnati chapters. A keynote by James Czar and some lively entertainment provided an energetic award ceremony. Professionals were recognized with awards of Excellence and Merit; each category representing the highest level of accomplishment in business communications. The winning entries reflected the combined areas’ outstanding accomplishments in planning, execution and measurement.

Antioch University McGregor Campaign

Our work with Terrain SIM and Antioch University McGregor was recognized for the Award of Excellence in the Marketing Communications category of the Communication Management division. With the University’s goal of raising enrollment for the Fall semester, we conducted marketing research and used a variety of multimedia to execute the brand messaging. Messaging was represented graphically for the many facets of the campaign that included an email campaign, direct mail, social networks, and promotional items. With the effective marketing campaign approach, we exceeded the enrollment goal by nearly 10%.

Here’s a full list of Bronze Quill winners. Congratulations to all the entries!

That same evening Roger attended the Greater Dayton Advertising Association’s Mercury Awards. A ceremony honoring advertising professionals in sales and support roles.

Mercury Award Nominee

Mercury Award Nominee

Joyce Jones was nominated as the Best Print/Specialty Buyer. She’s that friendly voice you hear from Bing that takes our creative work and helps get the message out there. Without her production skills, quality assurance, and communication management, we’d have a hard time handling the efficient process and control point to deliver qualified product.

A list of the honorees and winners for this year.

Now that we tooted our own horn. Back to the daily task at hand, to produce award-winning marketing communications, with a friendly smile on our face.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

At the heart of every designer or developer’s office is their browser. The internet provides a plethora of online applications and add-ons. This suite is dedicated to making sure that your browser becomes the ultimate productivity suite.

Browser: Firefox

Because of the useful options already provided by Firefox, its popularity is growing. There are numerous free downloadable extensions and add-ons available on the web for Firefox. Here are just a few add-ons that keep my productivity levels high:

    PDF Download – Lets you convert any (unsecured) Web page into a high-quality PDF that’s great for archiving, printing and sharing.

    Firebug – Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

    Read It Later – Save pages of interest to read when you have the time.

Word Processing: Google Docs

I use Google Docs for word processing. Sure, it doesn’t offer every feature that MS Word does, but it contains almost every necessary feature, function and utility to make it the best online word processor. You can export files in all the necessary formats — .doc, .txt, .rtf, .odt, .pdf and more! — and the online storage is easy to organize, safe and secure, and conveniently tied to your Gmail account.

Online Storage: Dropbox OR YouSendIt

For small files, it’s easiest to just .zip them and email them. For big stuff, you’ve either got to go with one of the many free upload websites (YouSendIt) or get your own upload space (Dropbox). Both allow you to send files up to 2GB. Even the most frugal of online workers can find ample space to store work-in-progress designs, documents and other important files. This also reduces the risks and costs with secure managed file transfer that seem like hours when trying to send via FTP.

Presentations: Prezi

Powerpoint and Keynote are great tools. But with Prezi is a browser-based application. Instead of putting every mindless detail on a separate slide, Prezi allows users to lay out your presentations on a single plane and move through them at their speed, in their own order, and if required, change the presentation on the fly.

Calendar and Scheduling: Google Calendar

This one’s nice and simple, with features that will keep you remembering dates and appointments. Simply set your schedule in the simple interface, decide whether or not you want SMS reminders, and leave it for the week. Check out some features we highlighted using our Google Calendar.

These tools are all part of my office suite. Once you implement all or even just a few of these tools, I hope you will see a dramatically increase in your productivity and make your work easier than ever. Would love to hear what applications or platforms keep you productive.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Map Illustration Software

Map Illustration Software

Anyone who has ever had to produce a location map knows how much time can be used up on the simplest things! MapDiva sounds like it will give Adobe Illustrator, the current software of choice, some competition! Touted as simple to use and priced low, with the emphasis on map creation, Ortelius not only allows designers to use their own geographic information, but includes fully editable, royalty-free vector outline maps of regions, countries, continents, and the world, to get you off to a quick start.

Thanks to the program’s 20 tools, designers have open options of choice of colors, fills, strokes, and adornments that allow them to assemble unlimited style and symbol combinations. Ortelius also includes WYSIWYG drawing and editing; layers and layer groups; and automatic junctions and style transitions.

Read all about it, and try out a free trial of the Ortelius Standard Edition for the MAC.

Tags: , , , ,

« Older entries