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!

QR (or “Quick Response”) codes are essentially the next generation in bar codes. They’re also known as 2-dimensional bar codes because scanning devices read the pattern both horizontally and vertically. Compared to the familiar UPC-type bar code that consists of a single row of lines, a QR code can store a much larger amount of data in a compact area.

QR code technology was originally developed in the mid-1990s for use in Japanese manufacturing, and was then adopted in the shipping business as an ideal means of tracking parcels. The need for specialized scanning equipment previously restricted QR codes to industrial and institutional use, until a popular new invention came along: the camera-equipped smartphone.

Now consumers can have easy interactions with the technology by taking pictures of QR codes and using software on their mobile device to decode and use the stored data. The end result might be a link to a web address, a special offer or some type of electronic transaction.

QR codes can serve as a convenient shortcut between the physical world and the online world. It’s like having the ability to insert hyperlinks in our everyday surroundings, which is especially helpful for directing people to a lengthy, database-driven URL that would be impractical to write down or type into a browser.    

Signs posted on homes for sale make a great example. A prospective buyer can simply can simply scan a QR code on the “For Sale” sign to get immediate details about the property instead of having to look up listings on the real estate agent’s site or try a hit-or-miss search on Google.

But QR codes have wide-ranging potential uses besides delivering web links. Here are a few examples of other business applications:

Conferences and tradeshows can print identifying QR codes on attendees’ name badges. When people meet and wish to exchange contact information, they can simply scan each other’s badges instead of trading business cards.

A number of airlines including Continental, American, Delta and United are offering “mobile boarding pass” and “paperless boarding” options using QR code technology. Passengers receive a virtual boarding pass on their phones that can be scanned at airport security checkpoints without needing to be printed out.

Google has created a system of Google Favorite Places as a feature of Google Maps. Businesses can place QR codes in their store windows or ads linking to their corresponding Google Place Page, where people can find detailed information, customer reviews, special offers, etc.

Companies like QRickets and EventBrite are introducing systems for organizing events online and sending electronic tickets to attendees in the form of QR codes to be scanned for admission.

QR codes can be used to facilitate online payments. A company called PortaPayments generates QR codes that link to a pre-populated PayPal payment form. This makes it possible to set up a virtual tip jar or print QR codes on invoices for easy payment.

Want to learn more? Contact Signal to discuss how clever innovations with QR codes might be Quite Right for your business.

Bald Head Island Limited came to Signal seeking a mobile app that provides visitors and residents with easy access to current information. Signal has just released a multi-functional mobile app with up-to-date Bald Head Island news and weather, an interactive map of the island, a calendar of events, a live web cam and more. It’s a must-have whether you’re exploring the island on vacation, looking for property or counting down the days until your next visit.

The Bald Head Island app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch is now available as a free download from Apple’s App Store. Download it now to check out some island culture and get a taste of what Signal can do in the mobile app world. Just let us know if you’re interested in having us help your company develop your own mobile app.

NCMS came to Signal for a web site refresh to improve site organization and page structure and layout to improve overall usability. We also updated the universal look and feel of the site to give the site a fresh, clean appearance that matches the new NCMS logo and identity system that Signal previously developed.

To view the new North Carolina Medical Society web site, visit www.ncmedsoc.org.

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.

We are proud to announce the release of the Signal mobile application for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, now available as a free download from Apple’s App Store.

Download it now!

The app gives you the latest news updates from the Signal blog, plus contact information and driving directions for our locations in Raleigh, Wilmington and Nashville. You can browse a mini portfolio of our design work and watch videos we’ve produced. Meet the Signal team in our staff bios and in fun photo galleries from special events and creative challenges.

The Signal app marks the first finished product resulting from our extensive study and research into the mobile application market. We have plans in the works to release versions of the Signal app for the BlackBerry and Android platforms, and we will soon be debuting nifty mobile apps created for our clients.

Mobile is the most popular and most rapidly adopted technology in the world with an estimated 4.6 billion subscribers, about 70% of the world’s population. And with smartphone sales accelerating rapidly, mobile devices are on their way to becoming the #1 means of accessing the Internet. In this new landscape, mobile apps will change from novelties to necessities. Ask us how Signal can help you stay ahead of the curve by developing your own mobile app.

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!

We're Branching Out!

Signal is pleased to announce the grand opening of our third studio in Nashville, Tennessee. We’re excited about the opportunity to bring our Creative Power to a whole new market in Music City USA.

Our Nashville operations will be led by Signal’s interactive director Adam Howard and account executive Ann Howard. Family connections and a yearning for new challenges got Adam and Ann interested in making the move from Wilmington to Nashville. After careful consideration and research, Signal came to the decision that the Nashville area would be a ideal place for us to do business.

“Nashville is a great market for Signal and we want to be a part of it,” says Signal president Rick Haynes. He expects the new venture to follow the successful example of Signal’s 1996 expansion into Wilmington, which was similarly pioneered by the husband and wife team John and Kristin Gibson.

Signal is finding that Nashville has a great entrepreneurial spirit.  Mere days after the move, Ann and Adam attended the Southeastern Regional SMPS (Society for Marketing Professional Services) conference, where they heard Economic Developer Janet Miller speak about the Music City Brand. As a city known for music, Nashville has created a creative, entrepreneurial environment that goes beyond the music industry and success stories abound.

Ann and Adam are working hard and finding that “America’s Friendliest City” is a great place to be in business. The new studio is located in the historic Stahlman Building in the heart of downtown Nashville. Got any advice for Ann and Adam? They’d love to hear from you!

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/