Utah Web Design Blog

Last day at the SEO Conference in Seattle. Learning some great landing page, twitter, seo, and traffic conversion tips!

I’ll share a few quick tips from @tim_ash, lose the address field on your form and gain potentially 17% more conversions. Also get those trust logos above the fold!

The Tuscany restaurant is a  high end italian restaurant located in the Holladay Cottonwood area near the base of the canyon. The restaurant is owned and generally managed by Mark Eaton, formally of the Utah Jazz.

It’s not everyday you get the opportunity work on a web project for one of your favorite restaurants, we were stoked for the opportunity. The design was nailed right out of the gate, it represented the high end brand superbly. Some interesting features of the site are; fully content managed, flash advertising area on the home page, fully integrated news and events system, randomized content backgrounds that match the page topic, gift card ordering system, self managed gallery tour system, and full menus.

Check out the website when you get time, we love feedback.

YouTube has been building an HTML 5  mobile version of their site which offers videos in native H.264 format, which if you have paid any recent attention to Apple are both technologies that will render Adobe Flash obsolete. Not a chance mister Jobs, but it is a cool and very clean technology, and very useful especially if you have an iPhone.  Check out http://m.youtube.com on your smartphone.  I have been testing for a while now and decided to give them some feedback on the project.  Really the only complaint I had was that they didn’t have a “New Videos” category under subscriptions.  This is a real time saver if you subscribe to say 30+ content providers like I do because it sorts all the videos across all your subs by date.   Anyway, within 2 business days, tada a new button titled “New Videos”, pretty cool.

This feature was already in the native  iPhone app but with the addition of all the iPhone users out there the iphone specific streaming servers have really taken a beating to the point where  2:00min clips now take 5 min to load if at all during peak times.  Enter – m.youtube.com.  With it you can select high def, not an option in the native iPhone app, and most importantly it utilizes different servers so it loads wicked fast.  So there you have it, faster load times and better resolution video that will play with very little processor demand on H.264 hardware compliant smartphones.  my old embedded youtube  iPhone icon is now replaced by the new YouTube icon.  Yep, they even make you a cute iPhone specific icon if you bookmark it to your homescreen.  I have no idea why Apple decided to use an old console TV for that icon in the first place.

We recently completed a new logo for Sidekix! A toy company that makes little stuffed animals that zip into a ball, and can be clipped together or onto a backpack. WAY FUN! Next up – Business cards and website. Which stuffed animals would you think would be cool for them to develop?

Red Olive was invited to be part of the Art Institute of Salt Lake City Professional Advisory Committee (PAC). This committee meets twice a year and reviews the schools facilities, curriculum, and student work to determine how well they are meeting professional needs and trends within the Graphic Design community and/or what they can improve in.

Thinking about getting into the design biz and need to learn how? Take a look at Art Institute of Salt Lake City. Great resources at this school, a library any designer would kill for. A top notch computer lab and access to printers I only dreamed about in school. They are adding new resources everyday based on the needs of the students. The teachers really seem to care about the students, if you put in the extra work you will get extra opportunities to do some great work. Check them out and tell them your friends at Red Olive send you.

A lot has changed since I graduated from the Art Institute of Colorado, but so has this industry. Thanks guys for letting us be involved.

Logo Lounge — a prestigious compilation of logos from around the world — chose four of Red Olive’s logos to be included in their upcoming 2011 Master Library Collection. We are both honored and stoked to say the least. The award and recognition is for our logo & brand identity for The Mini Brochure, Rock Cosmic, neScience and Speculate.

What do you get when you combine chopsticks with a fork? The Chork.  Red Olive had the opportunity to work on this cool project from the get go, it’s great when we can start with a clean slate and design a strong foundation from the start. Our creatives finished up the logo, print collateral, packaging, web site, and multiple marketing ads just this week.  Check it out.

This last weekend was the 2010 Susan G. Komen Race for the cure that took place in downtown Salt Lake City.  Red Olive was thrilled to both sponsor and participate in the race.   Thanks so much to the Susan G. Komen foundation for allowing us to be a part of such a great cause.

It’s official, Red Olive is now a 2010 TSA Motorsports sponsor.  If we are going to sponsor your team you know your design work on your collateral is going to kick ass. Check out the latest race events poster.  Good luck guys!

Back In Black
We just got a new shipment of the new Black Red Olive mouse pads. If you would like one let us know or feel free to stop by the office any time and we will load you up with all other types of swag. Also finally getting our new portfolio book, 8 months in the making, from the printers tomorrow, check it out while you’re here.

Red Olive Swag Request Form