Last year, after what I consider a reasonable waiting period of 10 years, I took the plunge and married my girlfriend. Since I made her wait so long I decided to make the proposal special.  We had planned a trip to Ireland for a week so while we were there, at the top of Blarney Castle kissing the Blarney Stone, I popped the question.

The wedding turned out great.  We had the reception at the local Portuguese club and the ceremony took place on stage at the new Capitol Theatre.  We were lucky enough to be the first people to use the new theatre after it’s restoration.  It actually came so close that they were still finishing things the day of the wedding, but I have to commend everyone that worked at the theatre for making our day turn out so well!

Being a designer I couldn’t see anyone else handling the design of our wedding invitation other than myself, so I took on the task along with my girlfriend at planning, designing, printing, cutting, and gluing the 80-something invitations.  Now while 80 invitations doesn’t sound like a lot, doing the cutting and gluing ourselves was a lot more work than I expected.  I have a new-found respect for all invitation designers out there and I can positively say that I won’t be entering that market.

The design process of the invitations was fairly smooth.  We knew what we wanted to say and the colours we wanted to use.   I started with the idea for a logo or monogram.  Working with businesses for so long has engrained in my head the importance of brand identity so starting with a logo and building around that seemed the only way to go.  After a series of sketches I came up with the concept I liked and moved on to Illustrator to start fleshing it out.  It didn’t take too long before I had something we were both very happy with.

Once the monogram had been completed we moved onto laying out the invitations.  This took a little longer but overall he process wasn’t too bad.  We tried to keep consistency with the colours and style of the monogram throughout the entire invitation.  We went with a pocket folded invitation with inserts for details, directions and menu.  We used the studio’s HP OfficeJet K8600 to print the invitations out on nice stock paper.  We used a few different stock sheet colours then cut them on my paper cutter and glued everything by hand.  We had some great help from Kim at the Paper Pickle. She offered some great advice and I highly recommend them for any paper needs.  The final product of all our hard work is below, including our ceremony programs and glassware which we handed out for guest gifts.

We decided on the glasses for our guest gifts because it conveyed a bit about us.  Alli and I both enjoy trying different beer styles and visiting breweries when we travel so we thought it made sense to give a beer glass.  The size chosen fits a bottle perfectly.  To make them somewhat unique I decided to create a logo which looked like a brewery identity and included our name and wedding date on it.  I designed it as an old style logo that would be common to an old British brewery.  I made an insert that fit into the glass and has Thank You cut our into the top along with a small toast.  I had picked up a Silhouette SD a month early.  It looks like a small printer but instead of printing it uses small blades to cut paper and vinyl.  This was my first test with it and I’m incredibly happy with the purchase.

Our guests all loved the glasses.  A few even asked if they could have a couple more.  We ended up with extras ourselves and we use them regularly around the house.  It’s a happy reminder of our special day.

It’s been so long since I’ve updated this blog that I feel I need to blow the dust off this thing and overhaul it a bit.  A bit of a fresh look and some new posts coming down the pipeline should give this place a bit of a jump-start.  I feel like a bit of a hypocrite as I look at the last post dated over a year ago now.  I spend much of my time telling clients how important it is to keep content fresh and blog regularly to establish a strong online brand presence and improve search engine performance but I’ve strayed away from my own advice.

So with a slap on the wrist and a few posts pre-written, we’re off to the races again!  So much has happened over the last year that I could bore you all for hours, but I won’t.  Here’s a brief summary of what’s gone on and what to expect:

Here we grow

With the studio workload getting to the point of overwhelming, we brought in a new face to help out.  Brian Gallagher is our resident contract programmer and sometimes designer who we keep busy through the days with a flurry of client updates, WordPress installations, and template programming, among other things.  He’s been a great addition.  I’ve been personal friends with Brian for years so being able to work together has been a lot of fun.

We have some other occasional contractors that we bring on as projects call for it.  Having a list of regulars gives us the ability to expand to meet any project need.  It’s one of the biggest reasons Logix has been able to work with so many great clients.

Burning a trail with WordPress

Our use of WordPress for projects has become so common that we are very rarely creating static sites any more.  It’s ability to act as a content management system and it’s ease of customization has made it an invaluable tool in our arsenal.  We’ve been getting into heavy development with WordPress Multi-sites as well, creating portals and large networks for clients. The last year has seen us work on custom plugin programming, multi-site networks, massive amounts of customization and a large number of conversions of static sites to the WordPress platform.  WordPress has quickly become one of our core specialties.

iOS Development

Logix is now an Apple certified iOS developer which means we can program applications for the iPhone, iPod and iPad products.  We’re very excited to start working on projects and are on the lookout for clients interested in having an application developed.  We’ll also be program some side-projects to test our capabilities.

Facebook Applications

We are also working quite a bit with developing Facebook applications for clients.  Working with the Facebook API has been a lot of fun and we hope to keep working closely with it on more projects.  The potential for applications on Facebook is huge and it’s a market that’s becoming more popular.  It provides businesses with a great platform to reach thousands very easily.

There is so much more going on in the studio and we’ll be following up with more news and announcements shortly, so check back soon!

February brought two more print design projects for Logix.  One is a fundraiser for the Myles Miracle Mission, while the other is a business seminar.

Myles Miracle Mission needed a poster designed for their upcoming fundraiser. The Walk to D’Feet the Burden of Cancer is a family fun walk taking place May 2, 2009. Visit www.mylesmiraclemission.ca for more information on how to participate.

The design was completed as full-colour, 8-1/2″x11″ poster.  It consists of a grassy path with someone standing at the top.  The title of the event was sunken into the grass and detail was added to make the grass appear as if it were growing around the words.

Chatham-Kent Economic Development needed a flyer to promote a session on March 25, 2009 focusing on improving employee service skills and establishing strong brand identities. The session takes place at Smith & Wilson Estate Wines.

The flyer is a 2-sided, full-colour 8-1/2″x11″ promotional piece that was being distribuetd around Chatham-Kent.  The front provides general information about the seminar and the back details specific aspects that will be covered.

By Kevin Gray (www.bykevingray.com) is a recently launched website for an American magazine writer.  Kevin’s work has been featured in numerous magazines and has taken him around the world.  Logix has been working on the programming alongside Kim Eddy who handled the design.  The site itself is fairly simple and easy to navigate, featuring Kevin’s past magazine articles, biography, and a blog.

The real power of the site is in it’s back-end.  Every page is managed by a custom WordPress installation.  The unique setup of the Stories and Publications pages allows Kevin to manage each category on a single page, upload the PDF of his article, and insert the rollover images that appear to the right of each article name as you pass your mouse over them.  The site is also set up to allow pagination on the article pages so the client is able to show 6 articles at a time on each page.

It was a fun little project to work on and allowed us to show again how versatile WordPress can be as a content management system.

Logix has helped integrate an online shopping cart and content management system into the existing Birdie’s Nest website.  The shopping cart was put in place to feature select products from the store online and the content management system allows staff to easily update content pages and products.  The backend of the shopping cart system provides advanced report generation and sales tracking allowing them to track order trends, stock, and much more.

The integration is the first step in a full upgrade of the Birdie’s Nest website.  The site will eventually have a fresh new look and many other new features to allow Birdie’s Nest to sell their unique products to a worldwide market.  The initial online store is set up as a test-run for the client.  Future upgrades such as a customer newsletter system, updated photo gallery, and much more are in planning.

Check out the progress at www.birdiesnest.on.ca.