If you would like to learn more about design and what goes into creating websites, you can always Google topics like Web Design for Beginners, or How to Build a Website.

Or, if you would like to get started on creating your own website right away, you can do that too! There are lots of great resources online that are also FREE, like my personal favorite, WordPress.com. Be sure to ask an adult to help you!

To learn more about building your own website with WordPress, visit http://en.support.wordpress.com/

If you have any other questions, feel free to leave me a comment below. Thanks again for having me!

So, what is Graphic Design?

Would you rather…

• Read all of this?

• Or just LOOK at this?

Nike is a major sportswear and equipment supplier based in the United States. It is the world’s leading supplier of athletic shoes and apparel and a major manufacturer of sports equipment. Nike sponsors many high profile athletes and sports teams around the world, with the highly recognized trademarks of “Just do it” and the Swoosh logo.

Where is graphic design?

It’s everywhere!!!

• Logos
• Street Signs
• CD Covers
• Movie Posters
• Music Posters
• Brochures
• Business Cards
• Flyers
• Stickers
• ALL OVER Television!
• Websites
• Advertisements
• Billboards
• Book Covers
• Magazine Covers
• Clothing!
• Video Games

Why is it important?

Would you rather…

Which game would you rather play?

Which character would you rather go into battle with?

Which website would you rather browse?

Tawnee is a triathlon coach, personal trainer, and freelance writer (sports publications) based in Laguna Beach, California. She is also an avid triathlete, which plays largely into her business: Her coaching clientele includes local age-group athletes of all ages and skill levels, as well as non-local clients that she coaches on an online basis only. She also does personal training at a local gym for the everyday fitness seeker.

What we love especially about Tawnee is her approach to training and the support she gives her clients:

I take an “everyone is an athlete” approach to all my clients whether they choose to compete in a race or not.

And you’ll often see her racing alongside her clients, hanging out at race expos and having fun with swimbikerun. Who wouldn’t want that kind of support from a coach? We love it, totally agree with it, and can’t wait to help her coaching business grow through a website redesign.

We think there are tons of people out there that could benefit from her coaching and training abilities, so her website should (and will be!) a great help in introducing those people to “Coach Tawnee” herself. All GREAT stuff ahead!!

Up ahead

We’ll be reworking Tawnee’s site using WordPress and a really awesome theme from PressCoders. Be sure to check back soon for the official launch of www.coachtawnee.com, V.2!

Usually, it’s a painting. But, our apartment is only so big, and I’ve already painted over all our huge canvases. So this time, it was a bench. :) And I gave myself a day to make it (this past Sunday).

The Thought Process

It was a bench becaaaaauuuuse:

• My husband Ryan was out of town and it was the perfect opportunity to make something for him… and surprise him with it when he came home on Monday!

• I’m a big fan of functional design. Paint a painting that you KNOW will look good in a certain room of your home; Build a piece of furniture you’re actually going to sit on or use… It needs a purpose.
• We needed something for our bare little balcony – specifically for us to sit on and drink our pre-dinner beers together. :)
• I don’t really know what I’m doing when it comes to woodworking. I just enjoy the basics of it, took a few classes growing up, knew my retired-aerospace-engineer dad could help me if I got stuck… So a bench was doable. For me.

The Example

I found this guy’s project, saw he had no idea what he was doing but still made something, printed it, took it to my parents’ house where my huge family was already having Sunday brunch together, and showed my dad. I told him I wanted to “re-create that but do a wayyyy better version. And I need to finish it today so it dries before Ryan gets home.” He laughed and said ok, that I could maybe pull it off…

The Goods

Then I saw a bunch of tree stumps he had piled up in the backyard and changed the design; I definitely wanted to use the stumps for a more natural and raw look over the standard 4 legs. I thought Ryan would like the same thing… which, turns out he did! My dad also had a really nice burgundy-colored stain that I liked for the finish, so luckily I didn’t have to buy that either.

So, I went to Home Depot to buy the only items I would have to buy for this project: one 4″ x 12″ x 8′ piece of Douglas Fir lumber ($26) and four 6″ Galvanized Hex head lag screws ($4). We would cut the wood to 5′ long (too bad Lowe’s NOR Home Depot will cut wood this thick for you.. sucky!). I like the look of industrial/metal textures mixed with natural/wood materials. So since I wanted the screws to show through, the galvanized texture mattered… and I liked it better than shiny. All in all, this bench ended up costing us only $30. Not bad at all.

The End!

Anyway I’ll leave the technical stuff out.. I’m sure you can see how the rest of it went through the pictures. It took me the entire day, mainly because of all the sanding I had to do to make it somewhat level and smooth enough to sit on, but I’m proud of it. Best of all: Ryan was totally surprised, and he loves it too. :)

Definitely worth the 90 seconds it takes to read. Thanks for the great insight, Brian!!

Further Reading

Check out the Process of Building a Custom Website, our overview on the steps we take to build our own clients’ websites, and how we determine the final cost of each one.

Enter: Typography Design

Since I started learning about graphic design, I’ve always had an appreciation for typography. Simply put, typography is designing with type. Look around you…. typography is literally everywhere. Street signs, movie posters, book covers, t-shirts, all kinds of advertisements, commercials… just everywhere.

There are typographics all around us, too – typography designs with a graphical element. Check out these typographic ads or these typographic portraits. Infographics are another great example.

“Graphic Design, meet Interior Design.”

So, this particular form of graphic design – typography – has had a big impact on the interior design world in the last few years, with the still-growing trend of typographic wall art. I’m sure some of you have seen the trend of these growing over the past couple years especially with wall decals like these, and poster designs like these. The most popular example probably being the “KEEP CALM” series.

Well, I’m definitely a fan. And luckily for me, so is my husband. :)

Below is a photo recap of my personal experiment – Designing our own typographic wall art for our new living room deco! Woot!

Home is Wherever I’m With You

Ryan and I easily agreed on the words we would use for the design: “Home is wherever I’m with you” from Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.

Our favorite lyric from one of our favorite songs… and definitely something that would help with the whole, brightening-up of things.

One of the primary concepts

Fun with decorative fonts

Playing with textures and graphics… but too busy for our taste

Getting there! But not quite right…

And we have a winner!

The final design, printed and hanging up in our living room

Want to Have Your Own Custom Typographic?

GREAT 8 CREATIVE is all about custom design and development, whether for your website or for your home. Or a friend’s home. ;)

So if you’re interested in hanging a new piece of wall art, or have something else in mind and could use a designer’s help… we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch.

And we came across a GREAT blog post this morning about updating your website with this newest version of WordPress – a topic that raises many questions from our WordPress-using clients each time an update is released.

“Should I upgrade my blog to WordPress version __?”
“Is this something you need to do or can I do this myself?”
“Is there something I need to know before I update to the newest version of WordPress?”
“My blog/site works fine. What’s the point of updating?”
“What about my plugins? Some of them say an update is available.”

These are just some of the questions we get asked from our GREAT clients, so we thought we’d share this article with you guys; It’s a great guide in answering a lot of those questions, specifically for this update. So check it out: How to Update to WordPress 3.2: Plugins and Advice

Of course, if you get stuck or have any questions, we’re right here to help, always.

It’s a great, valid question. One we get asked almost daily. And our answer is always the same: It depends.

Every client is different. So every project is different. Every client has a different company, therefore a different goal, and a different need. We’ve never created two websites that were the same, and we never will. Now there are plenty of services out there that offer cookie-cutter design, or a “one size fits all” approach, and for cheap. But, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. And with us, you’ll always get a more valuable product. One that’s infinitely tailored to match your needs and no one else’s.

So how much would it cost to build your website? Below are the steps we go through with each and every client to get the answer.

The GREAT Process of Building a Custom Website

• First up: The [Great 8] Creative Brief. We’ll pick your brain on where your company currently stands, where you want it to stand, and how we can help you get it there. Over coffee if you’re local, over the phone, through emails, or a combination of these… any way we can that works best for you.
• We’ll take all the information given up to this point to form an estimate for everything. This might include your client questionnaire, or a link to your current site if it’s a redesign project, and all other notes we’ve gathered from you.
• In the estimate, we’ll list all the specs and give you our best, estimated cost of creating it all – the amount of pages to be built, the type of content to be built (simple text pages, maybe photo galleries, contact forms, etc.).
  
• We base this amount on the total hours we think it will take to get the job done, multiplied by our hourly rate.
• If all looks good to you, we’ll ask for a deposit of 50% of the estimate for everything. We’ll get started as soon as it’s paid.

• We’ll track our time spent working on your project down to the minute so you know you’re getting your money’s worth.
• We’ll give you access to your project and our time tracking, so that you can easily monitor how much time is being spent and make sure we are staying within budget along the way.
• During development you might, of course, decide you want additional pages, extra revisions, or other items added to your site that are outside the original specs. Keep in mind these additions might put us over the original estimate since they weren’t planned for. But we’ll let you know the estimated cost for such additions before we make them, and you can decide whether or not you want to go through with them or maybe hold off until later.
• Rest assured, we’ll track our time accordingly, and you’ll be able to monitor progress every step of the way. So no guessing, no surprises.
• When development is done, we’ll send you one last invoice for the total amount of work completed. (Hourly Rate) x (Total Time worked) – Your 50% Deposit = Final Invoice. All additional costs (if any) included.
• We’ll launch as soon as it’s paid.

Typically, the process of building a custom website here at GREAT 8 CREATIVE starts around $1,500 from start to finish – from researching and outlining pages for our clients to wrapping up development of every little detail just before launch. But, as you can see the final cost just depends on your business’ needs.

Get Started

So introduce yourself! Take the first step and tell us a little bit about you and your project, and let’s get started on an answer.

Check out part 1 of this random mini-series if you haven’t already, How I Got on Wipeout.

My GREAT Trainer

That’s my friend Jennifer Rennie over to the left.  :)  Jennifer is also a personal trainer, based in Huntington Beach, CA. I’ve been going to her workout class for over a year now and I LOVE it… So as soon as I found out I was actually going to be on Wipeout, I asked her if she was up for a different kind of client – a totally different kind of challenge compared to what she normally tackles with her clients now; Instead of helping someone lose weight, or improve their eating habits, or improve mobility, and so on… it was about helping someone get physically prepared for something as ridiculous as Wipeout. I asked her if she was up for it, and she totally was.

“Wait, you trained for Wipeout?”

That’s become a common question these days and my response? Hell yeah, I did!!! $50,000 was suddenly up for grabs and I was going to do everything I could to win it!! I wasn’t going to lose because I was too out of shape or too slow… simple as that.

Trading Dumbbells for Sweeper Arms

The weeks that followed with Jen were hard. But they were entertaining, hilarious, and just fun, all at the same time. In the beginning we bounced ideas off each other for drills and exercises. We (partially) joked about re-creating a “Sweeper Arm” somehow to practice jumping over it, and other ways to recreate a Wipeout workout. :) But soon after, Jen took on the role of “Wipeout Trainer” like a total pro and formulated the game plan.

She got down to business and put a really great bunch of workouts together. I was amazed by all she did. Before each week of training, she studied Wipeout each time she watched, then researched drills for me to do that week that would help… and she knew exactly how to get me feeling fast and strong as a result.

We went to different local parks and she had me do sprints up some steep hills and stairs… over and over and over!!

We did plyometric drills. Jumped different patterns over boxes, jumped as fast as I could, as far as I could, as much as I could… on one leg and 2 legs.

She had me climb. At the local parks, I climbed across the jungle gym, across up and back on the monkey bars.

Jennifer thought of every versatile drill or exercise out there to push me with. And It was tough, but it helped tremendously.

Who Does That?

The whole reason I wanted to write this post was to give my great friend due credit for taking on the completely random client I was, and for doing the incredible job she did. I thought I was in decent shape to begin with but I realized the impact Jen’s training had on me when I improved my times up those hills and stairs, week after week. I’ve been working out my whole life, but I never felt more in shape than on the day I did Wipeout, and that was ALL Jen. She pushed me hard but just enough, and I felt confident going into the whole thing because of her…. which was was huge! And I really don’t know of any other trainer who would have done all that.

Thanks to Jen, I'll always have the Qualifier!!

It just goes to show that no mater what someone’s goal is – to lose weight, to gain muscle, tone up, or even win a gameshow – Jennifer will always be committed to making it happen. She was for me 100% of the way. Although I didn’t take home the big win, I know for a fact that because of Jen, I was as ready as I could have been. And I wasn’t knocked out because of anything physical… It really was just unlucky, what happened. Because at the end of the day, it’s Wipeout, and you really can’t plan for everything that comes your way…. like surprise walls that hit you like a taco truck. :)

Contact Jen

If you’re interested in training with Jennifer yourself and are in Orange County, check out her website for more info: www.JenniferRennie.com

Update – April 20

In case you missed it, you can watch the full episode online: Spring Wipeout: The Wizard of Owws
There was also a photographer on the set and he or she posted a gallery online.. check it out, there are some great shots, for sure. :)
Wipeout Episode 412 – Elko Weaver Photography. Password: abcwipeout