A couple of days ago, we notice an influx of visitors to our little corporate site and to our blog. Upon further investigation we discovered an interesting business card gallery called “Cardobserver.com”:http://cardobserver.com/.

And with a little scan of their beautifully designed site, we discover that our first run of “Armadillo Moo Cards”:http://cardobserver.com/gallery/armadillo-studios was the *featured business card for January 21st, 2009*.

It’s always neat to be recognized for our design work and we’re happy to see that our corporate branding has made a bit of an impact. We want to thank Cardobserver.com for the recognition and spreading the Armadillo brand.

If you are curious, Cardobserver.com is a recently launched web site and a fantastic gallery for those looking for corporate branding inspiration. Have a quick look and examine some of the unique ideas coming out of our industry.

Working together with Caitlin Currie (a very close friend to the company), Armadillo Studios Inc. proudly launches “Glutastic.com – A new lifestyle site about living with Celiac Disease”:http://www.glutastic.com.

Utilizing the WordPress Content Management System, we handcrafted a template for Glutastic.com. With this site, Caitlin wanted to create a little enclave on the web to provide important information about Celiac Disease and the struggles of living a Gluten-free lifestyle to the 20-30 year age bracket. The catch was she wanted to bring the information with a lighthearted and positive outlook and provide more exposure to the disease in the Calgary region.

Utilizing Veer’s wonderful “Candy Script”:http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=UMT0000254 and an assortment of vibrant colors we crafted an engaging and enjoyable layout. We designed this site to catch the eye while balancing the fine line between bright and intrusive.

In addition, to the engaging layout, we also included some helpful plug-ins to increase WordPress’ usability and to also increase the interaction with the site. We included an advanced Rich Text-Editor to allow for better control of the layout for the posts. We also incorporated social networking links, which allow readers to share their favorite Glutastic articles to their favorite social networking site.

So we encourage you to check in with “Glutastic.com”:http://www.glutastic.com and learn a little about the struggles and joys of life with a gluten allergy.

One of the first projects Armadillo Studios launched was for the Corporate Entertainment site “Empower Entertainment”:http://www.empowerentertainment.com. Almost two years later we are proud to launch our second project for Emil Nath.

With that we proud to release “EmilNath.com”:http://www.emilnath.com – The new home for Corporate Entertainer and illusionist Emil Nath.

This new corporate web site incorporates the floral design elements from the original Empower Entertainment web site, with personal headshot of Emil and Veer’s wonderful “DF Egret”:http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000191&WT.ac=home.081001.1.txt_img.luxury font to create a enticing atmosphere.

Our goal with this design was to provide a minimalist web site, which would focus on Emil as a performer while also providing potential clients a glimpse into his unique performance. We feel the subtleties of the fonts and layouts combine to really showcase his professionalism and his unique performance.

Armadillo Studios is proud to announce that we will be participating in two very important Industry events in the 08-09 calendar.

First and foremost, Armadillo Studios is heading back to Austin for “SXSW Interactive 2009”:http://sxsw.com/interactive. This will be our second straight SXSW and third overall. We’re looking forward to seeing some old friends and getting involved in the international Interactive Community.

Secondly, we will be attending the Calgary Events for “National Media Digital Day”:http://www.irefreshforcontent.com/learn-more.html this Thursday. This includes a meet and greet hosted by “Digital Alberta”:http://www.digitalalberta.com/national-digital-media-day-september-25 and also the “10th Edition of DemoCamp”:http://barcampcalgary.com/2008/09/23/democampcalgary-10-this-thursday/. It should be a great evening and hopefully it brings some much need exposure to our growing local industry.

So if you happen to be in Austin in March of next year or better yet happen to be at Melrose this Thursday, pop by and say hello. We’ll be glad to see have a chat.

We’re pretty sure that there are dozens upon, dozens of articles dedicated to this topic. And we’re sure advice on building and purchasing a web site has been covered at nausea by “dozens of companies”:http://www.cairril.com/articles/webdesigner.html. But we here at Armadillo Studios thought we’d provide our own little spin on the topic. So here is the first part of our three part series:

*Shopping For a Web Site? Six Useful Tips for Businesses Looking to Set-Up a Web Site.*

1. What Should You Look for in a Designer/Studio?

First and foremost when looking to hire a Web Designer/Studio, you have to remember that you are not paying for the Web Site itself, but for your _Design Studio (or Designer’s) experience and time_.

This is probably the biggest conceptual block we run across when people inquire about our services.

It is a given that most of our economy functions by paying for physical products. For example, a basic white T-shirt has universally accepted cost of about $15 dollars, so you expect to pay anywhere between $10-20 dollars for your basic run of the mill white T-Shirt. If you pay $1.50 for the T-shirt you know its bad quality and you would only pay $200 for a white T-shirt if it was something really, really special.

Unfortunately, Web Site Design is *a service* rather than a product based industry. Sure your Web Designer/Studio will produce a product (_A Web Site, Business Cards, Banners, etc.,_), but the price you’ll be paying is for the _service the company provides_, rather than the web site itself. While that might appear to be the same thing as the T-Shirt examples, the truth is that they are two different ideas.

So with that in mind, a web site from a large established design firm is going to cost you far more than the same web site from a struggling freelancer. It could be the same amount of pages, content and functionality, but again you’re paying for *their* experience, expertise and time.

It’s best to find a studio/designer that you feel comfortable with. Explore their portfolio and previous work. Visit the sites they have previously built. Look to see how active these sites are? Are the current customers using these sites on a constant basis? Search the designer/studio’s name in your favorite Search Engine. Do they have any published articles or blog posts that explain some of their philosophies?

*Armadillo Tip*: _The business cards of any potential studio/designer are a great gauge of the type of product you can expect._

_The swankier and more detail orientated the appearance of the business cards the greater likely hood of a decent product. Rounded corners, imaginative colors, a good stock quality, and a nice finish will demonstrate their commitment to detail. Also be sure to check their email address. Is it a generic email address (hotmail.com, gmail.com, or yahoo.com) or is it a company email address. A studio/designer with their own domain and email address is more likely to provide you with a great product. Plus, if they can’t even create-up their own email account, what makes you think they’ll be able to set-up an account for you?_

2. So How Much Should You Spend on a Web Site?

The first thing you’ll notice about every _studio/agency web site_ is that they *never* reveal their rates and or have a *fixed price for a web site*.

It may seem like that we only do this to be elitist and mysterious; but the truth of the matter is you can’t put a standard quantitative price on our industries services.

For example a four page web site can potentially require far more billable hours than a 10-15 page web site. It all depends on the features, layout, requirements and design. Therefore most reputable companies won’t provide a flat rate, but will charge a hourly rate based on the requirements.

Does that answer the question? Not really? Okay.

So if your looking for a good quality web site, one that will let you standout above your competition, expect to pay somewhere in the *thousands rather than hundreds*. Be very weary of any company that promises a site and hosting for $500. It will be a waste of money, a major headache and you’ll eventually have to contact a more established studio/designer in a few months.

Trust us on this we’ve rescued a few clients in the two years that we’ve been operational.

*Armadillo Tip*: _If you need a web site and you don’t have that much money to spend, we suggest that you stake out your nearest Art College/Graphic Design school._

_Hey! Art school is expensive and those plus those kids are dying for experience. They’ll be able to provide you with some high quality work for a little bit of cash and another piece to bump up their portfolio_.

The 2nd article in this series will discuss “The Difference between Flash & HTML web sites and What Trends you need to know about”:https://www.armadillostudios.ca/shopping-for-a-web-site-part-2/.