As a designer, you find that every job presents a unique challenge and goal. There is always an opportunity to exercise creativity and bring something new to the table. Then in those cases when you have a personal connection to a job, that takes things to another level.

This past year Signal was asked to design a new athletic logo system for my former high school, Cardinal Gibbons High School in Raleigh, NC. My eyes lit up at the chance to work on this project as a Gibbons alumnus. Along with a team of fellow designers from Signal, I went to work brainstorming, sketching and collaborating with the staff at Gibbons.

After the new Gibbons Crusaders logo was complete, it was quickly implemented all over the school and on athletic uniforms to roll out for the 2011 seasons. The identity system was equally embraced by both students and faculty.

Last month I had the opportunity to take part in a career day at Gibbons and talk to students about Signal and what it was like to be a designer. Armed with sketchbooks, a laptop and printed samples, I walked into the gymnasium and found our new logo everywhere I looked. I can’t express how rewarding it felt to see that huge logo painted on the gymnasium wall, on shirts and sweatshirts worn by students, and even the chairs we sat in for the event carried the mark.

I left the school 15 years ago as a teenager entering a world of uncertainty, and revisited the school to be warmly welcomed by both teachers and students in appreciation of my new contribution. What a great experience it is to leave your mark on a meaningful part of your past.

This marks Signal’s second year as a sponsor of the fundraiser, and we have updated the promotional poster and event graphics we designed last year for the event.

The Full Belly Project is a non-profit organization whose mission is to design and distribute income-generating agricultural devices to improve life in developing countries. The Full Belly Feast is a globally inspired evening of exotic cuisine, live music and auctions to benefit The Full Belly Project’s charitable efforts. Founder Jock Brandis was recently interviewed on North Carolina Public Radio’s The State of Things program.

To learn more and purchase tickets, please visit The Full Belly Project.

The Full Belly Feast
Coastline Convention Center
501 Nutt Street, Wilmington, NC
Saturday, February 26, 2011
6 p.m. – 10 p.m.

At the awards reception held November 12 in Anchorage, the Best in Show Award went to Jontue Hollingsworth of Headron Collider for a poster on the BP oil spill disaster entitled MADNESS! Winners were selected from a total of 66 entries which were received from 20 different parties including agencies, small firms, independent designers and photographers.

Robin gave her vote to the Jontue Hollingsworth poster as the Best in Show, though she says the decision was tough to make. “Alaska had some really great work in the promotion design category,” Robin noted. “A few super outstanding designs were in that mix competing for best of show.” She cited the Anchorage International Film Festival poster, the Go-Go’s tour art, the Screamin’ Yeti Designs logo and the Alaska Distillery Smoked Salmon Vodka campaign as particular standouts.

“Overall the work of the competition had a thread running through,” Robin said. “It was distinctly reflecting back all things Alaska — which is pretty neat.”

SPARKcon is a showcase of creativity, talent and ideas in the Triangle area, encompassing the creative fields of art, music, dance, film, fashion and more. The event has grown larger and more prestigious in each consecutive year since being independently founded in 2006. SPARKcon is now a program of Visual Art Exchange, a Raleigh non-profit whose mission is to support emerging artists and connect the community to the arts.

Signal has earned SPARKcon inclusion for our redesign of the stadium signage at the famous Durham Bulls Athletic Park. The project included upgrades to all permanent signs for seating sections, party decks and concessions. We also created new gate entry and archway signs, window banners, suite murals, and a series of hanging championship banners.

The winning pieces will be presented to the public at the Raleigh City Museum on the September 3 opening, and then exhibited for the duration of SPARKcon on the weekend of September 17-19. All friends of Signal are invited to attend the festivities at the Museum and throughout the public spaces of Raleigh’s Fayetteville Street to enjoy the celebration of local creative excellence.

Our thanks to the designSPARK organizing committee for making Signal an official part of it!

As part of W. M. Jordan’s branding and corporate identity program, the company needed a new web site to better inform decision makers, students and career seekers. They wanted the site to provide more insight into W. M. Jordan’s capabilities, experience, culture and opportunities.

Signal developed a very robust site that contains a project gallery categorized into more than a dozen sections, news articles, events, and a “projects for bid” section for subcontractors and suppliers. All these features are driven by Signal’s content manager system to allow the client to make easy updates.

The most prominent visual element of the new site is the personal testimonials from W. M. Jordan staffers that appear at the top of every page and rotate in a Flash animation on the home page. The human touch of these photographs and quotations reflects the core values of W. M. Jordan Company.

To view the new W. M. Jordan web site, visit www.wmjordan.com.

One easy way to customize your brand’s fan page is to add the Static FBML application. When added to a Facebook Page, the free app acts as a blank canvas for you to add images, copy and links using the FBML code. Then, whatever you design can be added as a tab on your page, and you can even make your customized tab the first thing new visitors see when they land on your page. The more proficient you are with designing and coding, the more elaborate and engaging your Facebook page can become!

Signal recently launched two custom Facebook pages for clients, Bald Head Island Limited and PictureThatSound.

Give New Visitors a Warm Welcome

For the Bald Head Island page, Signal created a custom “Welcome” tab that serves as the landing page for visitors who are not yet fans. The “Welcome” tab also provides links to the Bald Head Island website and blog, along with a the Discussions tab on their page.

Once you become a fan of the page, on subsequent visits you will automatically land on the Wall tab. Here we added a customized, elongated profile photo featuring Old Baldy lighthouse, a major attraction at the beach vacation destination. The size of the photo immediately draws a viewer’s attention. Scroll down the Wall a bit and you’ll see callouts along the left sidebar that serve as reminders to subscribe to the Island Times blog and search homes for sale on the island.

Since the addition of these custom features, Bald Head Island saw their Facebook fan base nearly double in only three months. In addition, referrals to their website from Facebook have jumped significantly, and conversion rates for traffic from Facebook have increased.

Show Off Your Goods

Signal also created custom Facebook elements for PictureThatSound, a recently introduced product that makes it easy to add sound to your scrapbooks. Since the product is so new and original, it’s important that viewers see exactly what it looks like as soon as they land on the page, rather than arriving on the wall and searching for information. That’s why Signal created a custom landing tab with embedded Flash animation that both shows the product’s appearance and takes viewers through a step by step process explaining how it works. The tab also has a “Buy Now” call to action that leads directly to the PictureThatSound website, as well as links back to the Discussions and Photos tabs on Facebook.

Signal also designed another elongated profile image for this page. It features both the company’s logo and an image of the actual product. Since the launch, PictureThatSound’s Facebook page has become an active community where memory keepers share ideas and post pictures of their finished projects.

Be more than a Face in the Crowd
Your audience is likely spending more and more time on Facebook. When they stumble upon your business page, will it catch their eye? Are the benefits to becoming a fan pretty clear? From better visitor-to-fan conversion ratios, to increased participation and referral traffic, it is obvious that putting a little extra planning and design into your Facebook page can really pay off and help you reach your goals!

Ever wished there was an easier way to edit photos on your computer? We recently discovered a free online image editing tool that’s perfect for businesses that don’t want to invest in Adobe Photoshop, but have the occasional need to prepare images for their blog or Facebook page. It’s called Pixlr Editor, and it’s similar to Photoshop and other well-known software, but it’s very intuitive and it’s free!

Pixlr allows you to easily crop, resize, filter and adjust your images. You can even create new images from scratch and layer one image over another. The novelty of this tool comes from the fact that all editing functions are performed directly from your browser on an easy-to-use interface, with no purchase, no registration and no installation necessary. Once you’re done editing, you simply download your image and save it to your computer.

While Pixlr is not meant to replace professional applications like Photoshop, it is definitely an easy solution for handling quick image edits or fixes with a polished look and feel. And oh, did we mention… it’s free!

Give it try: http://www.pixlr.com/editor/

The Full Belly Project is a non-profit organization whose mission is to design and distribute income-generating agricultural devices to improve life in developing countries. Feast AGAINST Famine is a globally inspired evening of exotic cuisine, live music and auctions to benefit The Full Belly Project’s charitable efforts.

Signal donated our design services to create a set of promotional materials for the event, including a flyer, poster, tickets, program and email design. Among the local artists donating their work to be auctioned is Kristin Gibson, wife of Signal partner John Gibson.

To learn more, please visit The Full Belly Project.

Feast AGAINST Famine
Coastline Convention Center
501 Nutt Street, Wilmington, NC
Saturday, February 20, 2010
6 p.m. – 10 p.m.

Signal recently announced the launch of a new web site for Sequentric Energy Systems, LLC, an innovator in developing demand control products for electric utility companies and their customers.

Within a compressed time frame, Signal delivered an intelligent site that clearly outlines Sequentric’s objectives through clean design and informative content. A flash component within the site depicts the company’s various products and how they assist customers in conserving energy.

The structure of the web site is designed to easily build upon as the Sequentric brand grows.

“This website is exactly what we needed at this point in time,” says Tina Jacobs of Sequentric. “Signal’s flexibility and willingness to deliver what we needed within an impossible time frame was very impressive and greatly appreciated.”

To view the new Sequentric web site, visit www.sequentric.com.

We are pleased to welcome Robin Vuchnich back to Signal as creative director in our Raleigh office. Having previously served as a graphic designer from 2001 to 2005, Robin rejoins our team in her new role and has already delivered immediate results with her fresh thinking and creative inspiration.

“I am very excited about Robin’s return to Signal,” says Signal President Rick Haynes. “We are so fortunate to add such a talented and accomplished artist to our team. We couldn’t be happier to have her lead our creative efforts in Raleigh and our clients are already taking notice of her efforts.

Robin graduated from East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., with a BFA in Communication Arts/Graphic Design. In addition to her prior experience with Signal, she served as a senior designer at Raleigh-based Capstrat as well as principal of her own design firm. Robin’s creativity has earned her more than a dozen design awards from juried competitions including the ADDYs, the Webbys, AIGA and PRINT Magazine. Her recent work includes branding for the new Raleigh Convention Center and the Raleigh Arts Commission as well as leading creative development for The NC Health & Wellness Trust Fund’s “T.R.U.” (Tobacco Reality Unfiltered) campaigns. Other notable clients include GlaxoSmithKline, Blue Cross Blue Shield, UNC, Duke University, Quintiles and Duke Raleigh Hospital.

Robin’s duties as creative director include working closely with the creative staff to inspire and help maintain the highest quality standards. She also communicates closely with clients to make certain their project objectives and production schedules are met.

“One of the biggest things that brought me back to Signal was the integrity of the company, specifically the close-knit business family,” Robin says. “My first job out of college was as a designer for Signal. Although I thoroughly enjoyed my work with other companies it didn’t compare to the feeling I had at Signal. I am proud to see my career come full circle as I continue on with my Signal family.”