Happy New Year!
A New Year’s thank you to clients past, present and future for your support of Design Delineations!
Change…
An overarching characteristic of 2004 was the pace of change: continuous and rapid. At the beginning of 2004, Design Delineations officially lost its status as a home business with our entry into office #7 of the St. Lawrence County Chamber’s quarters. The move provided me with room to stretch my legs, think without interruptions from my enthusiastic youngsters (who by the way, are my greatest supporters) and get access to office equipment beyond my small budget’s constraints. It also prompted a refocusing of the business from graphic design for print publications to web and visual identity design.
New Clients
This past year has prompted growth in the Design Delineations portfolio. New clients were added to the Design Delineations roster in 2004, largely without a marketing strategy in place. Word of mouth has so far worked in our favor and continues to be our strongest method of marketing … perhaps largely because I have not had time to develop other marketing avenues. This is a classic case of, “Do as I say, not as I do!”
Technically Speaking…
Technically speaking, 2004 saw us shift from a focus on HTML table based web design techniques to XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) layouts. While creating code that is less cluttered and more easily parsed by search engines, this has the added benefit of being easily maintained and providing more control over the stylistic unity of a web site. For example, we can now make changes sitewide to our clients’ typestyles, background colors and images, and even to the behavior of hyperlinks.
What’s Coming Next…
Since we are still a small business, I am sure 2005 will see additional growth and perhaps more focusing of the Design Delineations mission. I plan to develop this web log with content for both my clients and peers. It will function as an outlet for my many internal conversations regarding web design aesthetics, technology, web content, and visual identity design. Stay posted and feel free to suggest a topic!
Again, many thanks to my clients and supporters for a growing and profitable 2004!
January 1st, 2005
