As always with our private invitations, the names, address and other personally identifiable information have been changed for display in our portfolio to protect the privacy of our customers.

Need a custom birthday party invitation for your child’s big day?  Contact Maxwell Sydney Design Group and let us create something for you.

G. Robel Construction provides residential and commercial construction services for discerning customers in luxury communities.  In conjunction with Design Matters Studio (a company we are proud to have a longstanding relationship with), G. Robel Construction provides a single source of responsibility for all renovation and new construction projects.  Everyone at Maxwell Sydney Design Group is thrilled to have the opportunity to work with such talented professional artisans and skilled craftsmen.

The BinderShoppe.com site was developed via a custom configuration of the Zazzle Store Builder and php.  The site employs some great features including the ability to search a database of over 130,000 designs, the ability to create your own binder from scratch, and the chance to share your favorite binder over e-mail, facebook, twitter or dozens of other social media services.

The product pages for each binder available at Binder Shoppe allow site visitors to buy or personalize the design.  Each page also recommends a few other binders with a similar theme along with other products from the expansive marketplace.  By presenting these related products to customers, we hope to provide them with an enjoyable shopping experience that is tailored to their individual interests and needs.

While Binders from BinderShoppe.com are great for kids and school, custom binders make great gifts for a variety of other purposes.  BinderShoppe.com has sold binders for wedding albums, baby books, family recipe books, scrapbooks and holiday gifts.  Customers also often purchase binders for their business from the selection of Real Estate, Tax and other occupational and presentation purposes.  Whatever you need to organize or display, BinderShoppe.com has a personalized binder for you.

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If your company or organization needs an online store, marketplace or a website that works, contact Maxwell Sydney Design Group of Cary, North Carolina.  Our sites have been featured in major publications such as the Washington Post and BusinessWeek.com because they help generate traffic and revenue for our clients.

The EM Network hosts podcasts from such popular conservative commentators as Matt Lewis and Elizabeth Blackney, and produces The Right Doctor (Dr. Melissa Clouthier), Malcolm and Melissa, along with recent addition The Needle (featuring Caleb Howe and Lori Ziganto).   Along with the podcasts, The EM Network website features Eric Morris’ blog, links to various social media platforms and self-hosted forums.

The site itself was developed using WordPress as the Content Management System with various modifications and updates including a flash podcast player and SEO scripts.  Additionally, a self-hosted installation of phpBB was installed to run the online forums and styled to seemless integrate it into the website.  Maxwell Sydney performed all of the installations and styling including customizing the template, setup and styling of phpBB, server installation and database integration.  Additionally, we brought over all of the content from the previous website, adding previous blog entries and content to the new site location.

If you are interested in the fine work of Eric Morris and The EM Network, visit EricMorris.us.  When you are ready to take your website to the next level or discuss your marketing efforts, contact Maxwell Sydney Design Group.

Another Web site, DalePetersonFacts.com, makes lists of how tough he is: “Fact #8: Dale Peterson doesn’t ‘speak softly and carry a big stick,’ he carries a big gun and he says whatever the hell he wants.” “Fact #24: Before Chuck Norris goes to sleep, he checks under his bed for Dale Peterson.”

I’m even quoted at the end (albeit a bit truncated).  It was a fun diversion to work on the DalePetersonFacts.com website, especially considering the serious nature of one of our current projects (stay tuned to learn more).

If we can help your business, organization or campaign generate buzz on the internet and develop a new presence online, please drop us a line.

The site is powered by Joomla.  It pulls a random fact from the database on every page load, and lists all the facts in the database on a separate page.  The site also features various embedded videos and an integrated t-shirt store selling Dale-inspired shirts which we designed in cooperation with American Elephant Apparel.  Visitors from the site can contribute their own Dale Peterson facts (and many have).

Every good viral video deserves a website in its honor.  We can’t take any credit for the campaign, the campaign’s website, the candidate or the best campaign ad ever, but we do think our website is a good complement to the legend that is becoming Dale Peterson.  Apparently the Dale Peterson campaign agrees, as they called to give us their blessing last night and even put a little blurb on their site about it.  The people in the Peterson campaign are great, as is Mr. Peterson himself.  We hope you visit his campaign site, contribute to his campaign, and consider giving him your vote if you live in the great state of Alabama.

PLEASE NOTE: We are not affiliated with the Dale Peterson campaign in anyway.  Likewise, DalePetersonFacts.com is not sponsored by Mr. Peterson’s campaign, Mr. Peterson himself, or any other political campaign or candidate.  We created the site on our own as a parody of Mr. Peterson’s ad and the Facts-Site phenomenon that was at one point extremely popular on the internet.

The so-called “gurus” were wrong.

Many media or news services will offer very large images at 72 dpi for the ease of use of the end user, because computers, e-mail clients, web browsers, etc can’t inherently view anything greater than 72 dpi.  Your monitor is likely 72 dpi.  That is why its called screen resolution.  The reason they can offer a high quality image at 72 dpi is you can increase the resolution when you decrease the size.  This is a DRASTIC oversimplification, but think of it like this, a 20 inch image at 72 dpi can be resized to a 10 inch image with twice the resolution and NO INFORMATION LOSS because the same dots/data are there just in a smaller space.

Look at the example image below.  There is the same information in each block (72 dots of equal size).  The only difference between the two is that the smaller block has the dots closer together, making it higher resolution at a smaller size.

When I send files to a certain t-shirt manufacturer one of the file types they prefer converts my images into 72 dpi, but it is 4 times larger than the final printed product (i.e. the final print size is a much higher resolution than the 72 dpi because all of the dots are in a smaller space).  The shirts print crisp and clear, while a 72dpi image from the web would not.  Why?  Because even though the file size has a resolution of 72 dpi, the outputted print size is smaller than the source and thus there are more dots in a given space.  Again, an oversimplification, but you get the idea.

Back to my friend’s problem… the image they received from the professional speaker was HIGH RESOLUTION for their purposes because its print size at 72 dpi was 20 inches tall, yet they only needed to print an image that was 1.64″.  It could EASILY be converted to 300 dpi without any noticeable quality loss.  Doing so is simple, open the ORIGINAL FILE in photoshop.  Change Image to 300 dpi AND AT THE SAME TIME ON THE SAME SCREEN reduce the PRINT SIZE to the size it needs to be in the final document (in this case about 1.64″ high and .95″ wide).  The Reduce Image Setting should be “Bicubic Sharper” because this is a reduction.  Save as a 300 dpi tiff.  Then PLACE the image in the document as its true print size.  Done.  A crisp, clear, 300 dpi image instead of a soft, pixelated 72 dpi image.  And the results will be a stunning print piece with a clear image of the speaker instead of a soft, pixelated blob.

I know you’ve all been told you can’t convert a 72 dpi image to a 300 dpi image.  This is true if you are working on an image that is not reducing in size.  Quite simply, you can’t put more information into a photograph than was originally there.  However, when you are reducing the print size of the photograph or image, you can tell your graphics program to use the available information in the smaller workspace.  Thus a 72 dpi tif file that is 20 inches can easily convert to a 300 dpi tif file that is a fourth of its size (or smaller).

This is print design 101, sadly some in-house “gurus” don’t know it.

Maxwell Sydney Design Group built the BigIceTees website using php and a highly-customized version of the Zazzle Store Builder script. Maxwell Sydney performed all of the modifications and additional coding along with various Search Engine Optimization techniques. Maxwell Sydney also developed the logo and customized the site design.

Visit BigIceTees.com.

Are you ready to get your store online? Are you a Zazzle seller who needs some help? Do you currently run an online store that needs to be SEO optimized or a complete facelift? When you are ready to generate more revenue online, contact Maxwell Sydney Design Group.

SpeakShirt.com Features:

• Automatically updated Top 12 T-Shirt feed
• Automatically updated popular products from hundreds of other categories
• Directory of Zazzle Designers/Sellers that they can self-maintain including featured banners and product feeds
• Dynamic banners throughout the site for “featured” sellers

Under the hood:

• Joomla! CMS
• SEO Optimized
• SOBI2 Directory Component – custom implementation
• Zazzle Store Builder – custom implementation
• Custom product feed search field

These people generally fall in one of two camps.

1. They’ve heard of WordPress and think its just for blogging.  Their kid might use it.  Their friend might use it.  Their own company might use it, but just for the company blog (after they finally upgraded from blogger).
2. They have no idea what WordPress is, but it doesn’t sound like something a high-profile business might use.  There’s no MS in front of the name, and it sounds very uncomplicated… not something for the corporate environment.  Their own marketing and computer guy suggested some custom-programmed-whatchamacallit.

The response to both camps is the same.  Yes, WordPress is predominantly thought of as blogging software.  Yes, you can have a free or cheap personal WordPress website at WordPress.com.  Yes millions of people use it, mostly for personal journals and small-traffic sites.  But most businesses don’t use WordPress.  Smaller companies often deploy a static html site that makes updates a chore.  Larger businesses usually opt for some custom programmed alternative or industrial CMS that requires months and months (maybe years and years) of development time and requires someone with specialized training to alter and maintain.

But none of those things are negative.  That low barrier of entry and mass appeal is exactly what should make a business consider using WordPress for the backend.  And the fact that your competitors may be using something less capable, more complex (and more expensive) should also grab your attention.  If it takes them longer and costs them more, doesn’t that give YOU a competitive advantage, at least in regards to your online marketing?

The fact is that WordPress is a VERY CAPABLE platform.  While most of the typical WordPress blogging sites look the same, they don’t have to.  The power behind WordPress is both its simplicity and mass appeal.  With millions of people using it, and thousands of people developing for it, you have the benefit of the collective experience when troubleshooting problems or finding a way to implement new features.  There are off-the-shelf solutions for virtually every task in WordPress… off-the-shelf solutions that will reduce development time and costs.  And even if there isn’t a ready-made solution that works for you, the sheer number of WordPress developers means you can generally find someone to code your custom project that is both experienced and inexpensive.  Imagine that your “web guru” or “marekting guru” could spend their time customizing the look and functionality of something to fit your business and brand instead of spending weeks just getting it to work.

The other huge benefit to WordPress is something many web designers would never suggest and why many web development firms steer away from using it.  With millions of other WordPress users out there, if your current web developer leaves you behind, you have a large pool of competent people to choose from to take over the reigns.  No longer are you locked into one company for post-launch site management because the CMS they used is uncommon or even worse, proprietary.  No longer are you stuck with some guy who won’t call you back or has a bad attitude, because he is the only one who can make it work.  Yes, you should hire a professional with a designer’s eye, a teacher’s heart, a business man’s mind and the experience to put them all together… but you would never buy a car that only one person in your town could fix, so why would you pay for a website that only one company could maintain?

We strive to keep our customers for life… to not just be their “web team” but their “marketing consultant” and the “design firm”.  We want to develop your sites, maintain your sites, and tweak them along the way to make your website and your market share grow.  Using an “open” platform that so many other individuals use keeps us and our prices honest.  No, we don’t believe your high school nephew could (or should) develop your website, nor do we believe the firm down the street is just as capable as we are.  But knowing your site is accessible and adaptable both now and in the future should give you, the client, peace of mind.

WordPress isn’t the only platform we deploy, but for most sites it is what we recommend.  Contact us today and find out if WordPress can work for your business.

NOTE: We suggest downloading a running a local version of WordPress on your own server from WordPress.org.  WordPress.com sites are great for personal sites you need to get running fast but don’t offer the same customization potential or professional development that a localized version of WordPress offers.