The Challenge
Family owned and operated, West Coast Subs brings the fresh, surf style of California to Toms River, NJ. Residing next to the family’s fashion boutique, The Cali Way (http://thecaliway.com), the owners of West Coast Subs needed to focus their efforts on quickly opening two storefronts. They contacted Local Wisdom to design and develop a site boasting West Coast Subs’ fresh and healthy ingredients along with its Cali flair. Before beginning we sampled the food, and they are accurate; the food is great.

Design
Renowned for its surfing aficionados and health conscious residents, California is the true inspiration behind West Coast Subs. Our design experts were able to create a surf-style aesthetic that complements the shop’s healthy and fresh menu, while highlighting the owner’s passion for the ocean and all things surfing. We built the site using Jquery to provide users with a fun and compelling interface.

Development
Without sacrificing design quality, we were able to develop a site for West Coast Subs, which would deploy in two stages. We shared in the company’s urgency to have a web presence, deploying the first stage of the site to showcase their menu. This put West Coast Subs on the map allowing the site to begin impacting search results, maximizing its customer potential. Next, we tackled the full spectrum, rounding out the full content migration along with design nuances which speak to the shop’s surf-style atmosphere.

How did it go
Being nimble for a customer is core to our philosophy. We were able to share in the client’s urgency and launch the menu stage of WestCoastSubs.com within two weeks then complete the development of the larger site. The rapid deployment, professional design, and local buzz exceeded the client’s expectations.

LWers:
RJay (Design)
Melissa (Develop)
Derrick (Account & Project Management)

Learn more from the Plethora website or download from itunes.

We curate quite a few websites where we manage the use of photography. We work hard not to “slap on a photo”, but make it have some meaning and usefulness in the grand scheme of the website. Read the full article.

I’ve put the details in the images themselves to make it easy to print out.  Also I recently made 2 of these of a different width and a different purpose.  One was 30 inches wide so the shelving and corresponding silts had to be reduced in width also, but it’s easy to figure out how much to shorten them by.  The last unit I made has about 7 shelves and was made to replace a stereo rack.  Now the stereo is on the wall with all it’s cd’s, a record player and a small top shelf for pictures, but I’ll post pics later on.

If you have any questions, post a comment and I’ll respond asap

“Pundits often refer to them as “zealots” or “fanboys.” The more polite references include “Mac loyalists.” I am, of course, talking about Apple’s (AAPL) more vocal customers, those who will defend the company and its products in any debate going on around them. What is it that drives their passion for most things Apple? Is it a deluded mind, warped by the Reality Distortion Field that Steve Jobs so successfully wraps every new product in? In short, the answer is no.

The truth behind the scenes is not that Apple has a large group of customers that are too dedicated and passionate about their products, or the company as a whole. The reality is far more simple and obvious: Apple simply has a large group of very satisfied customers — and that’s the secret ingredient left out of nearly every analysis or op-ed piece that mentions these “zealots.” ”

Read the original article here

Ben Fullerton-Designing for Solitude from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.

Creative fan just posted 50 absolutely brilliant digital and computer generated artworks.

Amazing detail and expression.

Peter Shankman, the founder of Help a Reporter Out (HARO) and The Geek Factory, gave the people at the NJ Business Marketing Association a great talk on how he thinks about and uses social media to make his businesses successful. Thank you Peter, thank you BMA and thank you fellow Lwer Derrick, Christine, and David for attending with me.

Here’s what I took away from the talk

Grow your personal brand
Peter was big on the individual. Businesses don’t do business with people. People do business with people. Your business is a reflection of the people that run it. He wants everyone to develop their personal brand through social concepts like texting (twitter, facebook, linkedin, etc.), phone calling, and (yes) snail mailing notes. A quick side note on snail mailing notes. Last month we were hiring for project managers the people who are standing out in my head are the ones to followed up with a personal hand written note. Its all about doing something different to capture the minds of people. So go forth and start building your personal brand, its going to define you in the future.

Plan for backup??!!?
Peter made a great point stating that he was always told to “have a backup plan”. Why? Why not concentrate on a the plan for success? It’s better than concentrating on the plan for failure. My take is that when you have to plan for failure, what you are planning is costly thus increasing its risk. In Peter’s world (and ours) big things evolve from small things. Start small, start fast, and start now.

Information is free
The world as we knew it was broadcasted to us from only a few sources. Print, radio, and television were all broadcasted from a few to many. The internet is making information free and creating a many to many relationship. Breaking news doesn’t come from CNN anymore, it comes from twitter. In this world we are creating views of the world at the exact moment it happens and sharing that view with people all over the world.

Ask your customers, how they want to get information
There is so much information out there and so many ways to take it in. We listen to podcasts on the commute into work, we read blogs with the morning coffee, we check facebook status when we come home and sit down. We have developed routines of digesting information. So how do you get your information to your customers? Ask them. Talk to your customers often and ask them how they would like to get your information.

Peter says the Social Media is having other people do public relations for you. Here are is 4 fours of social media:

1. Be transparent - it will help you connect with people and if you don’t say it, people will still find out
2. Be relevant – media is fractured so ask your customers how and what they like to hear from you
3. Be brief - our attention spans 140 characters at a time (or 2.7 seconds)
4. Stay top of mind – talk to people often

Again thank you Peter for the great talk.