» 2009 » January

I decided to begin the year with an entry on our vision for 2009.  As it stands, like most everyone, I’ve just returned from the holidays in sunny Palm Beach, FL and found myself back in frigid Washington, D.C.   As I find myself battling the tail end of a cold and trying to stay warm, I began to think about my accomplishments in 2008 and what lies ahead in 2009.  For starters, I decided to take inventory on our accomplishments in 2008:

• Founded and launched, RushMyPassport.com which had over 5 mil in sales its first year in business.  We employee over 20 full-time employees between both our offices.
• Launched client websites: ME Hotels & Resorts,  Jupiter Pointe Marina, Neptune Research and Palm Dale Oil.
• Presented at Bar Camp Washington, D.C. and Social Dev Camp Baltimore.
• Entered the AppsforDemocracy.org contest and won agency first prize for entry, DCHistoricTours.com.
• Opened up an office in Washington, D.C. (Georgetown) and I personally relocated here.
• Launched the new BOALT website and blog.
• Created KidActsBlog.org and got featured on CNN.

So 2009 is going to be even more exciting.  Last year, we decided to only take on 1 client per quarter so that we could focus on building our start up, RushMyPassport.com.  This year we plan on actively pursuing more client work and focusing on search marketing, search optimization and social media marketing.  The year is already started out well and this is what’s in store:

• BOALT welcomes new clients: Kesmarc and Starquine.com.
• Launched a strategic partnership with Orbitz.com and just finished a major integration with their systems which allows customers to expedite passports through their website.
• Just launched RushMyTravelVisa.com and plan on making it the #1 travel visa expediter.
• Currently working on the Expedited Travel website which will be geared to corporations and universities around the country providing them with travel logistics.
• Our new blog will have an increased focus on services: search marketing, search optimization and social media as well as industries: travel and government 2.0.
• Plan on launching a new KindActsBlog.org in January allowing random acts of kindness to posted automatically through Twitter, Google Friend Connect, AIM, Facebook or MySpace.  I personally plan on contributing 1 kind act a week.  Check out the new design here.

So that’s it for now.  I will continue to update as more comes up.  I hope everybody enjoyed their holidays!

Smashing Magazine recently cited some design trends for 2009. As a designer that’s seen the evolution of the web from it’s early incarnations in the mid 90’s to where it is today, I’m noticing some design styles and practices that are starting to come full circle. Because of the accessibility of CSS-based layouts, web and screen design is starting to break away from the standard web paradigm that dominated in the early part of this decade; left logo, horizontal nav bar, flash brand area, neatly clustered sub-content boxes — to large expansive displays of content, vertically and horizontally. Bandwidth and screen resolution no longer seems limiting. Designers have evolved from designing within a 780 pixel wide area to designing wide layout-breaking backgrounds for widescreen displays of up to 1980 pixels wide. For designers like myself, there’s a opportunity to expand the boundaries of what is generally thought of as baseline web design architecture. But doing so effectively, and maintaining the end goal of optimizing the experience for clients, users, and ultimately consumers is the core challenge. Pretty layouts, and ego-centric design can be nice on the eyes, be the main question usually is… will it drive the sale?