January 11, 2012 marks eight months working for WinSome Design and to tell you the truth I LOVE IT! We have awesome clients and being too creative is not a bad thing here. Working in full color all the time and having projects bleed (sorry if I’m being too design term nerdy here) is a dream come true. My peacock wings are always visible! Taking a WordPress class with Jane at the end of the summer was a wonderful experience. I am now a WordPress nerd and have withdrawals when I am not working in it. What will this new year bring? We shall see…

Do you have a website? Did you build it yourself, or have it built? Did you ever need to know what .html, .php, cms, cold fusion, .xhtml, Joomla, Drupal or css were? (Did you start to sweat? Don’t worry—this isn’t a quiz.)

WinSome’s team are proponents of client-managed websites. Yes, it takes potential dollars out of our pockets, so many clients are surprised and concerned that we do not have them sign maintenance contracts with the websites that we create for them. Will we maintain a site for a client? Of course! But if we built a site for you in the last couple of years, more than likely you can do it yourself. I began working with Joomla, a great open source content management system (CMS) about 4 years ago. We’ve created some nice sites in Joomla, and it’s a great system. It can be a little bit confusing though—even for me. I’m a visual person, and I want it to be easy for myself and for my clients.

Last summer, we began working in WordPress. WordPress is also open source and there is a great deal of development and support for it. The best part is, it’s easy to maintain by clients. And it’s easy for us to develop custom sites for clients with that same easy interface. WinSome’s team designs sites and deploys them on the WordPress framework. This is different than buying an inexpensive theme from ThemeForest as some of our competitors do. Our designs are original, and tailored to your business.

What this means to our clients is that they are not pigeon-holed into “well, this is what the template offers.” Our clients can say, “I want a website that does THIS,” and we can do it for them.

WinSome specializes in brand development and marketing. I often find myself talking to clients and prospects alike about revamping their images to make their brand more true to the company as it is today. It was high time to do the same thing for ourselves.

The first thing was a name change. We dropped “Design” from our formal name. Not because we are no longer designers or that we don’t offer that service—we do—it’s at the core of everything that we do. But we offer so much more to our clients. I now own both legal trade names, WinSome Design, Inc. and WinSome, Inc. Now if I could only learn to answer the phone properly and introduce myself correctly! Change is great…

The second big change was the logo. I always loved the kite, but it’s caused some confusion over the years. In the early days, potential clients would stop by thinking we designed kites. OOPS. Once we gained some traction and clients knew who we were, it didn’t matter quite so much any more. Except of course, that it doesn’t describe what we do—at all. So I cleaned up the typography a bit, dropped “Design,” and added Strategy + Brand + Creative to the new logo. Voila! It took me about 4 months to do this. I am absolutely the most wishy-washy non-committed client I’ve ever had. It’s torture to work for myself. UGH. What really drove the project? Vanessa joined WinSome in April. By May, she really needed business cards. And I was loathe to print any more with the old logo. Project finished!

Next came the website. This website project moved much more quickly than my previous sites. Some of you may remember Linda, my programmer. Linda began this site design for us. We just loved it as soon as she showed it to us. She built the site on the WordPress platform—which was new to me at the time. I have since fallen in love with WordPress. It’s so easy to work on it from a development perspective. The back-end is clean, and it’s very easy to make changes. Vanessa and I can easily update the site now and add to it. I may never develop an html site again. I know, I know—never say “never.”

WinSome’s new brand is now fully rolled-out. We have a new logo, new stationery, new display banners, and new website. We hope you like it. I hope you like it. We’d love to hear what you think.

~Jane