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Realtor Business Cards and Logo Design

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Realtor Business Cards and Logo Design

Denver, CO is one of the hottest real estate markets in the U.S. It is behind only New York and San Francisco and properties are selling fast. This is an excellent time to be a realtor but standing out from the crowd of realtors can be very difficult. Jennifer Flipse was one such realtor trying to stand out from the crowd not just with her excellent service and personality but with great design. My wife and I used Jennifer as our realtor when we first bought our lovely home. Her personality – fun, friendly, outgoing was what drew us to her. She was an excellent realtor but really needed some help with her business cards and she had no business identity whatsoever.

After my closing, I worked with her and a new business partner of hers to design a realtor business card and realtor logo. The duo had no business name or ideas when they first came to me, so I was able to guide the entire brand identity process. I sat down with them for lunch and we came up with lots of ideas and I left with some good material to work with. Here is the brand new business identity and business cards for Property Gals Real Estate in Denver, Colorado. They loved it and everything turned out wonderfully!

To stand out in real-estate, they couldn’t have a bland business card that looked like everyone else. I was able to convince them to go with a bold reddish pink color to immediately stand out from the rest of the realtors who were all using bland dark colors. I was happy to show them the power of color and the power of great design!

The Logo

I created an old style skeleton key with Property Gals above it. The typography of Property Gals is interconnected to showcase how well they work together as a team. The logo mark of an old style skeleton key ties in history but also gives the realtors an elegant flair. The bright reddish pink color was an easy choice. The color perfectly represented their personalities and was completely different from their competitors who were using dark colors. These cards will help them pop in the real estate business.

Printing

These business cards are printed on a thick cardstock overlaid with a soft velvet-like texture. Texture is an important element in a design that is often missed. The reddish pink color is the boldest part of this design and it helps this realtor duo pop and echoes their personalities. They both have fun and bubbly personalities. Finally, a silver foil stamp was used to cover the logo area on the business cards and that really makes these business cards stand out.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

February 6, 2016
Cloud Backup – Backblaze is Incredible!

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Backblaze – online backup service

As a graphic designer, I am always looking for the best and the easiest way to back up all my files. It’s scary having all your hard work and portfolio stored on a computer that at any moment could bite the dust. Therefore I tried the whole external backup which is a pain and there is no guarantee that those backups won’t fail too. It also doesn’t help in the case of a natural disaster or theft, I could potentially lose everything. Multiple locations ARE a must, BUT having multiple backup drives is difficult to manage and so is having to remember to backup. I’ve looked into online cloud backup solutions before but the cost was prohibitive until I discovered an incredible service called Backblaze.

I love it. The service is easy to use and it is priced just right for me at $3.96 a month with unlimited storage. There are a number of similarities between Backblaze and better known competitors like Carbonite, SOS Online Backup, and Mozy. All of these companies let you back up files to the cloud, in case of any sort of local disaster, and also to restore the files to the original computer, or to a new computer but not at this cost!

Backblaze will back up every drive attached to a single PC/Mac, including internal drives, USB drives that are connected at the time of the backup, and other external drives. It even comes with an app for your phone to download a file in a pinch. I’ve used that quite a few times to download a PDF file before a meeting to show clients on my iPad.

I’ve been using Backblace services for quite a while now and I absolutely love it. It’s simple, fast and easy to use. I now only keep one local backup for quick restores but I rest assured ALL of my files are backed up.

Check ’em out today! You get a free 30/day trail if you click the link below.
http://www.backblaze.com/partner/af4829[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ width=”1/6″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

April 1, 2013
Strange Glyph Font in Chrome – Temporary Solution

Chrome Glyph Font Problem – A Temporary Solution

Recently, I’ve noticed that Google Chrome has been displaying a weird glyph font with unreadable characters of certain fonts. None of the typical resolutions have helped, including: refreshing the page, closing the browser or even restarting the computer. I am using the latest version of Google Chrome version: 37.0.2062.120. The other browsers – Firefox, Safari, Opera – all display these same webpages just fine.

I did some research and found out that I am not alone with this issue and that Google is currently working on a solution. The problem seems to be related to the fonts Helvetica, Helvetica Neue, and Arial. I’m not sure why Google Chrome is the only browser with this issue but I have noticed there are some fonts on web pages that display just fine interspersed with this strange glyph font.

Because I am a graphic designer and I love typography, I found this problem very intriguing. I discovered that if I changed the CSS font-family of a page that had the weird chrome fonts to another sans-serif font such as Gill Sans, I was able to read the page just fine.

A Temporary Solution

I reasoned that if the problems were with those specific fonts – I could deactivate them or replace them with a different font. Unfortunately, some of these fonts are system fonts and cannot be deactivated because they are used by my mac system. So my other thought, that actually works (but is really just a band-aid to the problem until Google solves the issue) is to edit the user specific css file for Chrome.

To find the custom.css file (on a Mac it is in a hidden folder on the newer OSX) go the Finder then click on the Go menu item at the top. After the go menu is listed, hold down the Option key to display the Library option. Releasing the Option key will hide the Library option. You’ll find the custom.css file under the Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/User StyleSheets/custom.css.

This file is blank unless you edit it. Open the custom.css and add the following code:
@font-face { font-family: ‘sans-serif’; src: local(‘gill sans’); } @font-face { font-family: ‘helvetica’; src: local(‘gill sans’); } @font-face { font-family: ‘helvetica neue’; src: local(‘gill sans’); } @font-face { font-family: ‘Arial’; src: local(‘gill sans’); }

Then save the file, restart Chrome and viola! A temporary fix to the font issue.

March 29, 2013
Oktoberfest Logo

I was written up in the Greeley Tribune.

Local artist’s design chosen for Greeley’s Oktoberfest beer stein

GREELEY, Co. – The Downtown Development Authority teamed up with local graphic designer, Steven Held, to create the logo and marketing materials for this year’s Oktoberfest. DDA Director of Marketing, Mandi Huston, unveiled on Thursday the primary mark that is to become the Oktoberfest-wide brand and identity this year. Held’s design will be used on event promotional items, as well as a beer stein.

In a press release the designer, Steven Held, stated he wanted to create a logo that promoted the festive atmosphere of Oktoberfest with a strong use of color and pattern. More of Held’s work can be viewed on his design portfolio website StevenHeld.com.

The Oktoberfest logo will be featured on 1-liter and 1/2 liter steins for purchase at the Oktoberfest event held Sept. 28-29 at the the historic Lincoln Park in downtown Greeley, between 8th St. and 9th Ave. This year’s Oktoberfest events include a VIP tasting tent, craft beer, authentic foods, vendor booths, kid’s world, music, dancing and much more. Oktoberfest will be held Sept. 28-29.

For more information about Oktoberfest please visit DowntownGreeley.com.

October 3, 2012
New Twitter Logo
Twitter released a new blue bird as its sole logo mark and rid itself of the horrible bubble Twitter type and box with a “t”. Good job Twitter! This was nearly a fantastic move but fell flat on one account. Twitter should not have released a new twitter bird. Reinstate the old Twitter bird. The new Twitter blue bird has no character.

Besides the fact that I liked the old Twitter bird better there are reasons why the company should not have kicked it out of its nest.
1. The old mark was more recognizable. Reeducating the mass public with a new logo can be difficult. Although any solid light blue bird has come to represent Twitter, changing the official one just seems superfluous.
2. It had more character. The little puff of hair on his head, the curvature of the beak, and the small wings all were character traits and made the old mark more interesting. All those subtle lines told a story about the bird that no other bird had. Removing these elements reduces the bird to any number of the mass of blue birds that fly out my window. I don’t care about the masses. I want to see that one bird. This is up for debate but I believe the old Twitter bird could fly circles around the new bird and kick its butt.
3. When a symbol can come to represent an idea/company it doesn’t need changing. The only thing that should be removed was the type. People know Twitter and they knew the Twitter Bird logo mark. It didn’t need cleaning up, a beak job, or a more modern look. The Mcdonald’s arch – the Nike swoosh – all have retained the original mark and got rid of the type that once supported it. The logo can stand on its own. Twitter should have done the same and kept the old Twitter bird.
Twitter has made the light solid blue bird a recognizable symbol and in the end this new bird will come to represent the company but sadly the recognizable bird that was full of character will be lost.
June 8, 2012