Skybox Creative Blog

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