PIXL Designs

Color. Color. Color.

This is the hardest aspect, I believe, to launching a new Web site. There are so many options with color (literally unlimited options), and thus it takes QUITE A WHILE to settle with a color choice I am satisfied with.

Usually we choose a color to begin with and slowly but surely customize it as we go. With Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, we are currently working through a color scheme that matches the church interior. There aren’t many accent walls, so the carpet (a maroon color) was our first choice.

Maroon is a churchy color. It is also traditional, though, and can speak to some of the aspects of Pleasant Hill. But Hill speaks of green grass. And there is a lot of this surrounding the church.

So do you combine the two? Find shades of each? Choose one over the other? Choose and interior color or an exterior color? Orlinda, TN is also the ‘Sunniest spot in Tennessee,’ so do you choose a color reflective of the community?

SOOOO many choices and so few answers. But that’s fine. Color evolves as the design comes together. Choose a palette that is the most rounded in matching the overall experience of your church or business. Complement it with the community makeup or the nature-related themes around your location, and finally let it be creative and have its own voice.

Wow, that sounds so assuring and concrete, eh? Creativity is just that. And those are a few of the questions we ask and thoughts we have as we work through a very critical part of the initial design process – color.

Here is our second edition of Awkward Fridays. We are consistently showcasing some of the things in life that may have seemed like a good idea at first, but ended up being… awkward. Enjoy.

Does this even need a caption?

One of my favorite social media apps currently is Twitter. This is an amazing tool for personal or business use. Twitter provides real time content in a manner that forces you to be concise and efficient by limiting your posts to 140 characters or less.

And as you know, efficiency and trimming the fat are key components to running a freelance business.

So back to Twitter. I believe Twitter is here to stay. People crave consistent content and love knowledge. Twitter enables users to follow trending topics in the world, add their input, share their own experiences and contribute to the ongoing stream of consciousness on the Web. Freelances have a great opportunity to share articles with other freelancers which can generate authenticity for their business. In addition, they can communicate to prospective clients or comment on trends they follow. This gives them a way to seem like more than a Web site, but rather a person.

So here are a few tricks I have learned since using Twitter:

• There is power in the RT. Retweeting is a huge feature in Twitter and interesting content can get your audience spreading your posts to hundreds of others in a short amount of time.
• Don’t post anywhere close to 140 characters. You want to be retweeted and you don’t want another user to reach this limit when they retweet your post. What do I mean here? Well, our Twitter account is @pixldesigns. So anything that is retweeted will have “RT @pixldesigns” on the front of it. This is an extra 15 characters added to your original post!
• Shorten your links with bit.ly. You don’t have to do this, but I recommend using either bit.ly or a URL shrinker (Tweetie for iPhone provides one built-in). This enables you to post links to internal pages in your site without all the extra domain paths

Of course these are only a few short things you can do with Twitter, but following them will definitely help you grow in your business presence and become a smarter user of social media.