In the world of graphic design, web design and branding – photography can make or break your campaign. Often, scheduling a photo shoot is the best way to create a unique image that cannot be replicated, but in the beginning stages of developing a business, stock photography is a great option that saves money. Now that royalty-free stock photography has become so readily available and affordable, it’s easier to create a stunning brand identity without breaking the bank. Even better, there are many websites that offer free stock photography – either their entire collection is free or they will offer a portion of free images with others that can be purchased. Be sure to read the fine print because many photographers will allow usage only if you give them credit. Also be sure to check if the photography is available for commercial or personal use.

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1. Stock.XCHNG

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2. PhotoXpress

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3. stockvault

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4. Photo Laboratory

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5. Free Pixels

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The president of Skybox Creative, San Diego’s award-winning web design and branding studio, was recently nominated for San Diego Magazine’s Woman of the Year 2010 Award. Angelina Sereno has won the highest honors at every phase of her development and proven her metal in today’s fast-paced, rapidly changing, media-based world. She is now up for the momentous accomplishment of San Diego Magazine Woman of the Year!

The winner will be announced at the Women Who Move the City Event on September 15 at the Scripps Seaside Forum, where women will be honored in different categories, with the Woman of the Year being selected by past winners and the San Diego Magazine president. A portion of the funds raised will be donated to the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

The September issue of San Diego Magazine will also be featuring a Women Who Move the City section, where there will be a short bio on all of the women honored with the nomination.

Meetup.com is an extremely powerful resource for people in all industries looking to collaborate on a wide variety of topics in a relaxed meeting setting (the groups often get together monthly or bi-weekly).

Skybox Creative recently attended a Meetup for Refresh SD, a group that includes web developers, internet marketers, techies, etc.. The topic: discussing client management and client requests – yes, a complicated matter. This topic often comes up in the web design and branding industry, because it is important to clearly define project scope and rounds of changes before starting a project that has been estimated out.

A few good tips and resources:

• Give clients a questionnaire prior to starting a project (Skybox uses a Branding Analysis Questionnaire, which discusses demographics, target market, competition, look & feel – and more!)

• Project Management tools can be key to balancing work flow – Action Method is a good one, VUE is a good way to describe logic or the development of a back end system

• OfficeTime is a great tool for tracking hours

• Clearly define client deliverables (copy, photos, feedback)

Skybox Creative is currently in the process of making a promotional video about our company and what we do here on a daily basis (which is a whole lot of varied design, from branding and print, to web and user interface). We thought it was high time this award-winning San Diego branding and web design firm put ourselves, but mostly our work, out in front of the camera in a creative, docu-style video. Our production team – R&R Productions, have been incredibly professional and helpful in achieving our story board vision. The video will be posted here LIVE in few weeks, so definitely check back for the final product!

For now, we’ll wet your appetite with a few BEHIND THE SCENES photos…

Skybox Creative, an award-winning San Diego web design firm, was recently listed on Connectory, a nationwide, web-based buyer-supplier network that was started locally in El Cajon. The network links U.S. businesses together and also includes profiles of other critical assets in addition to companies including federal labs, university and private research centers.

Although the profile you have to fill out is rather extensive to become part of the Connectory, the potential for acquiring business is worth taking the time. Some of the key points of the service include:

• A unique way to connect with companies and other assets by understanding their capabilities

• Powerful means for government, large company, and institutional buyers to identify sources of products, services, technologies, capabilities, and capacities

• Detailed capabilities and capacities for companies at every level of the supply chain

• Focus on manufacturing/technology companies and their supplier chain including wholesalers/logistics, technical services, construction, agribusiness, and mining

• Showcase for tens of thousands of US companies at NO COST to them

• Geocoding and interactive mapping feature for locating assets/resources

• Internet speed/powerful search engine combined with in-depth company database

• Commitment to usability, coverage, quality, and continual updating distinguishes it from any other available database

• IT platform on which Communities of Interest (COI) can segment the Connectory database within Portals, specified by geography, industry, or other COI criteria

Check it out here!

The Google Toolbar is full of great features including an easy access Search feature, easy Bookmarking, Page Rank information (Google uses a scale of 1-10 to determine a website’s relevancy and importance) and more. Recently, they’ve added a new Share feature which allows you to share a web page with your friends on the most popular Social Media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Myspace, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Blogger and more…

Share any web page with your friends right from the Toolbar
• Click the Share button on any page and select a service.
• Add an optional personal note and send to your friends.
• You can modify which favorites pop up by going to Share > Settings.

Click Here to Learn More

A few Google Toolbar features:

• Share any web page with your friends right from the Toolbar.
• Contribute and read helpful information on any web page with Google Sidewiki.
• Translate web pages instantly with automatic language detection.

Download the Google Toolbar

Skybox Ink Presents…

Promote Your Business from Skybox Creative on Vimeo.

Learn how to make more money and promote your business more effectively! Summed up in one simple concept, your business materials (online and offline) are a reflection of who you are.

Skybox Ink is a subdivision of Skybox Creative, a studio with a focus on branding, graphic design, web design and multimedia.

Art & Copy, a film by Doug Pray, is playing in San Diego on June 24th at The Birch North Park Theatre (2891 University Avenue, San Diego, CA 92104) at 6pm. To purchase tickets or for more info, click here.

The Art Institute of California – San Diego with support from AIGA San Diego, The San Diego Ad Club, and Ad2 San Diego are hosting a one night only screening of “Art & Copy,” a film by Doug Pray.

Your $20 ticket purchase includes admission to a 21+ pre-show mixer featuring the Montalban Quartet at The Office Bar in North Park, two drink tickets, appetizers and admission to the film screening at Birch North Park Theatre.

Tickets for the FILM SCREENING ONLY are available for $10.

Proceeds will benefit the EDMC Education Foundation, which raises money for The Art Institutes Scholarship Fund to help deserving students in financial need.

Pre Show Mixer:
6:00PM
The Office Bar, North Park
3936 30th Street (between University & Lincoln Ave)
San Diego, CA 92104

Film Screening:
8:30PM
Birch North Park Theatre
2891 University Avenue
San Diego, CA 92104

Notes:
Tickets available for pick up upon arrival at The Office Bar mixer on the day of the show, beginning at 6:00. Pre-show mixer is 21+ only. Advance ticket purchasing encouraged, tickets will be available for sale day of show, CASH ONLY for $25.

We are huge fans of Google! Not only do they provide the best in search results, but they offer a variety of free services that make our lives easier. Honestly, if you haven’t looked into all the products that Google has to offer, you really should. Each working day, every staff member at Skybox Creative has at least one Google app open in their web browser.

From the awesome Google Calendar that lets you share your schedule or embed on your website to Google Wave for collaborative projects, Google Feedburner to update followers of new blog posts right to their inbox, to Google Docs for file sharing and form tracking…Google has what you need to make your business run more smoothly!

This post is specifically about Google Docs and the ability to create surveys, or any other type of form for that matter, and track the results in a spreadsheet. You even have the option to “Show Summary of Responses” where the data is compiled into bar graphs and pie charts – so easy a child could understand. There are a variety of templates to choose from (although we hope they add more template design options or at least the ability to customize colors sooner than later, nonetheless, they get the job done). You can create a form with ease, specifying whether you want a checklist, multiple choice question, paragraph answer, etc. Once you have completed the form, you have the option to email it or embed it on a web page (see below).

The results are tracked anonymously in a spreadsheet. You also have the option to share the ‘Results’ spreadsheet through Google Docs sharing options (now available for individual docs and entire folders). We have embedded our Client Satisfaction Survey below so you can see what it looks like. We had to force the width and height of the iframe in order for it to fit in our blog – not perfect, but again, gets the job done. If you embed the form on your blog, make sure to click on the HTML tab first, then paste the code. You can easily adjust the dimensions, just make sure to calculate the proportions to make sure it displays optimally. It’s also good to know that (for whatever reason), if you tab back to Visual, it might erase the iframe code – for this reason, we recommend copy/pasting the code in a text editing application so you can grab it again if needed!

Clients ONLY: Feel free to fill out the form with your feedback! All others, if you are interested in speaking to us about the services we offer, please email us at info@skyboxcreative.com

For all you statistics junkies and web testers, the latest browser stats are out and they show Internet Explorer is on the fade and Firefox is on the rise! Check it out here!

For all you programmers out there pained by testing for IE6 – it is quickly becoming more and more obsolete, dropping to a user percentage of 7.1% in May 2010 – down over 3% from January 2010.

And for all you web users enthusiastic about Firefox’s user-friendly browser options, they definitely have a strangle hold on the market, holding steady at 46.9% of users in May 2010.