Author: Ken Granger

For eight years Ken was the Director of Operations for a multi-million dollar retailer at Walt Disney World, Disneyland, and Universal Studios Orlando. During his tenure, the company grew to support over 60 Cast Members and nine retail locations. Ken excelled at delivering a unique product to millions of theme park visitors every year and worked with theme park executives to build strong relationships

What’s the Big Deal About Blogging?

Posted on by Ken Granger

If you do anything on the internet these days, every one is talking about blogging, but really…what’s the big deal? Why are people blogging at all? What does it do? Why should I waste my time?

What is blogging?

verb
gerund or present participle: blogging
  1. add new material to or regularly update a blog.
    “it’s about a week since I last blogged”
    • write about (an event, situation, topic, etc.) in a blog.
      “he blogged the Democratic and Republican national conventions as an independent”

Why should I blog?

The best way to encourage yourself to do something is to know -why- you’re doing it.

Search Engine Optimization

Simply put, blogging’s main purpose is for SEO. Search Engine Optimization, the ability for people to find your website within searches on websites such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo, is usually the end-goal for all of this work we put into our websites. Every page your website gains due to a newly-updated blog post adds to the pile of results search engines can provide their users. The more content and pages, the better your chances are of someone finding your website in their search.

To Keep Your Website Current

Isn’t it the worst when you get to someone’s website and it hasn’t been updated in years? What are you most likely to do in that instance? Probably leave and go to another website that has current information. That’s what I would do. You don’t want this to happen to you. Be the one with that up-to-date info that your current and future clients can come to rely on! Updating your website on a consistent basis is what blogging is all about! Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress came about to make it easier for non-tech savvy people to maintain and continuously add information to their websites. This has removed the -need- to know HTML and other forms of web-coding, and instead put the website owner in the driver’s seat.

You just need to start driving.

Logo Spotlight – Roldan Real Estate Group

Posted on by Ken Granger

Starting a brand new business can be incredibly exciting. Getting all the ducks in a row, establishing and defining a client base, and venturing out into the world of branding for the first time is both exhilarating and terrifying. Creating a logo helps lend credibility and trust to companies both large and small. Debi Roldan of Roldan Real Estate Group is doing just that, setting out to make her own identity, and one that will carry her business into the future. She put out a call, seeking the perfect logo to encapsulate what she stands for. BrandCo’s Logo Team was there to answer that call.

Debi was looking for something that she hadn’t seen before. We talked about trying out something simple, something real estate related that would invite people of all walks of life to come to her with their business. There was a definite desire to appeal to all audiences, but also be able to fit in with the luxury crowd. So we knew we had to create something modern and classy, and simple enough to fit in with the big leagues.

DebiRoldan_InteriorImage_11-6-15

Using a modern type face, we integrated the roofline imagery into a nice monogram shape. Letting the right side of the roofline complete the leg of the R is something that might not be very obvious immediately, but once you see it, you can’t unsee it. When it comes to the colors, purple can help a brand look more regal, elegant, and professional. The color was something Debi decided on from the outset, and honestly we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Logo Design Tips

Posted on by Ken Granger

At BrandCo, We treat your business as our own! In doing so, we take pride in providing helpful design suggestions to all of our clients. The following is the first list of many Design Tips & Tricks we will be sharing with our valued clients:

Logos Design Tips

 

Say less, mean more.

When it comes to your business name it can be tempting to put everything out there. You may want to use “The Johnathan Doe Real Estate Consultants” or something to this effect – Don’t! When it comes to the name of a business it should be short and sweet. It is vital to have a name that people can both remember and spell easily. Your clients could hear your name in passing or drive by a yard sign without stopping, and trust me when I say you want to make it memorable. People these days get information thrown at them from every direction and attention spans are shorter than ever. Make sure your business stands out from the crowd even with just a glance.

Thinking outside of the box.

Clients all the time tell us they want to have their logo spell out exactly what they do everyday. Although this seems necessary, it’s not. Look at some of the top companies in the world such as: Apple, Nike, Target, and Coke. These companies are wildly successful and don’t have obvious imagery. We will use Apple as our example, they have the very famous fruit on everything they do. You may wonder why this is the case. Well…Steve Jobs worked in an apple orchard when he was younger. During the process he believed the apple to be the ideal nutritious fruit. They also did not damage easily and held up to wear and tear, thus Apple Computers was born. This is a great example of how not using a computer as their imagery can still make sense and speak loudly about their products. Keep this in mind when considering a logo to represent your business. In a world of oranges, be an Apple.

Say no to taglines.

Sure taglines can be great and help describe what you do best, but you don’t have to use them in your logo. When it comes to logos they should be timeless and represent your business for a long time. Taglines may need to be changed as your business grows and this isn’t possible when it is part of your logo. Just like a tattoo, choosing a tagline can sometimes be regretful as the company matures. Maybe your business grows out of the old, dated slogan, and now you have an irrelevant statement attached to your logo. The logo itself should be timeless, but your now defunct tagline dates it. We suggest keeping taglines to marketing pieces such as a website, business card, or flyer – this way they can be easily switched out at a later date.

Employee Spotlight – Meet Zenadia

Posted on by Ken Granger

Zenadia has been a valuable asset here at BrandCo for quite some time now. She’s constantly designing custom Email Stationery for BrandCo’s clients, making it possible for each person to send a personalized message to each of their clients. Z, as we all call her, is a snappy dresser and a great friend. Let’s learn more about her…

What do you do here?
I am a graphic designer for the emailStationery team. My duties include Consulting, developing and implementing custom email stationery designs for clients.

What got you into developing / design?
I was inspired to become a designer as a young teen. There was a small photo gallery in the Bahamas, seeing all those life-size Interior_ES1230photos that captured the subjects true emotions ignited a passion inside of me that moved me to become a designer. I always loved how art inspires and moves its audience.

If your co-workers could describe you in 3 words…
Easy-going and a little mysterious

Favorite resource / place for inspiration / brand:
My favorite place for inspiration is nature and people. Everyone is so different (unique) in there personalities, their personal style and their life stories I find that inspirational along with how the world (nature) is constantly changing (the colors, textures, aromas and sounds) all that is so beautiful.

Best thing about BrandCo:
Best thing about B-Co its a non stressful job and we have a great leader that is encouraging that fuels growth and positivity in each individual.

If you had a super power…
I would want to be like the guy in the movie limitless, I believe he had an abundance of knowledge just by taking a smart pill. (that would be cool)

What is the defining cartoon of your childhood?
Bobby’s World & Winnie the Pooh

When you’re not at BrandCo, what are you up to? (Interests, Hobbies)
When Im not at B-Co I’m spending time with friends, usually trying eating at a new restaurant, YouTubing beauty / health and wellness, at the gym at Zumba class, or helping out with graphics at my church.

 

Stay tuned for another Employee Spotlight coming up soon!

October Team Festivities

Posted on by Ken Granger

IMG_9883October here in Orlando, Florida doesn’t necessarily mean that things begin to feel like Autumn, but all of us here at BrandCo are big fans of celebrating Halloween. While Ken may hate spiders, we filled our head quarters with “occupied” webs. These were accompanied by bats throughout the office, too. Our Party Planning Committee enjoyed decorating and buying cool party favors for our team such as syringe needle pens, ghost erasers, paper pumpkins, and cool Halloween themed tumblers.

IMG_9896Thursday, October 29th, we had a fun time getting crafty. Our whole team sat down along a long table and got to decorate and paint our own little paper pumpkins. Each person seemed to have a different take on how they would embellish or color theirs. While we were getting our “Martha Stewart” on, our Office Admin, Mackenzie, quizzed us with some hard-core Halloween trivia. Think you know a lot about Halloween? Well, this quiz definitely would have tested your knowledge.

Give these questions a try….

  • A pumpkin is a fruit. Which fruit classification is a pumpkin in? (Berry, Pits, Core, Melon or Tropical Fruit)
    • Answer: Berry
  • Due to a very small budget for the first Halloween Movie, what mask was spray painted white and worn by Michael Myers?
    • Answer: William Shatner

Team Creepy Crawly made up of Bianca, David, and Jake reigned supreme to the challenges and got to take their pick of the two kinds of creepy Tumblers (One said it was filled with Poison, the other literally was a scream).

Here are some photos of our team being creative while painting, glittering, and embellishing their pumpkins from Thursday…

IMG_9908Starting first thing Friday morning, we began our Murder Mystery. All were “invited” to attend the Abby Manor Annual Masquerade Ball and were assigned our specific characters. I was Mag Niffie, an ill-tempered, rude Optometrist (do you get it?). Other characters included Blondie Fawn (actress), Dolly Dee Seiner (a doll maker), Jackey T Pressen’ (dry cleaner), and Yuna Verz (an astronaut). Through 3 rounds of our Murder Mystery, we followed our cues and left clues for each other depending on our actions to other players. Essentially, this Masquerade was full of drama and it was crazy to watch and be part of.

IMG_9906After our potluck Chili lunch, we all enjoyed a nice toast of sparkling cider. Little did we know, while we were toasting, a murder occurred! Sherlock Tracy was killed with a broken wine bottle. But…

Who did it?! 

Friday concluded as we all divulged our characters’ secrets, protesting that we weren’t the killer! I won’t spoil things, but it definitely wasn’t who we all suspected it would be. At the Abby Mannor Annual Masquerade Ball, everyone had a motive to kill Sherlock Tracy, just one person was pushed a little too far.

October is always a fun month around the office here at BrandCo and this year was by far the best! Hope everyone had an amazing Halloween and is happily looking forward to a great Thanksgiving holiday.

Logo Spotlight – Austin Property Consultants

Posted on by Ken Granger

Tech savviness is a powerful thing in 2015, and it’s a quality that Christina Austin of Austin Property Consultants is quite proud of. Christina understands the power of social media and connecting with clients on all levels, and knew that was something that her new logo should hint at. She also wanted to make sure there were two ideas combined into the same logo, whether that was something regarding her area, or her tech savvy nature. The logo team knew that there must be a way to mesh a social aspect to the real estate business, and started hashing out ideas tying the two together.

ChristinaAustin_InteriorImage_10-23-15_b

Once the logo team got to work, some of the most interesting concepts came from combining the @ symbol with a key. After playing around with typography and different colors, we ended up going with a soft gray and aqua blue combo. Attentive members of the crowd will notice the subtle “at-sign” in the head of the key to the left. Using the length of the key to create the cross of the A, we tied everything all together.

After all was said and done, the logo team helped create a modern new look for a tech savvy agent. Being able to appeal to the millennial crowd in the Jacksonville area was one of the final goals we had to tackle, and after seeing the final product, we feel confident that Austin Property Consultants will do just that.

Too Many Plugins Could Be Hurting More Than Helping

Posted on by Ken Granger

WordPress website users are notorious for using too many plugins to accomplish their goals. Little do they know, that the more plugins used, the more your site could suffer. If these awesome little packets of code are meant to help your website, why would it end up hurting it? Well, there’s numerous reasons. Let’s explore…

Load Speed

Believe it or not, plugins greatly affect the load time of your website. Some plugins add just a small query which has little to no impact on your site’s load time. Where as other plugins add jQuery and CSS on each page load. So for example, if each plugin adds one jQuery file and one CSS stylesheet and you have 8 plugins like that, you just added 16 HTTP Requests. This can get really out of control when plugins start adding more than one stylesheet or jQuery file.

Now, that may be a little over your head. So, in layman’s terms, for each plugin you install and activate on your website, it has to work harder and harder to load each and every page. So, minimizing the number that you have activated, or even installed, will greatly affect the amount of time it will take for your users to see your work.

Security Threats

WordPress users need to realize that they are putting their websites’ health in the developer’s hands every time they install a plugin. If the developer is good at what he does and responsibly minded, the chances of running into problems are slim (although it is far from guaranteed). But sadly, not all developers are responsible with the plugins they create.

When we install a plugin, anything can happen. Your website’s load speed can be seriously affected. It can even crash entirely. In fact, some unscrupulous developers create bad plugins (or hack into otherwise trustworthy plugins) with no other aim than to cause others pain. These are the possibilities we face every time we click ‘Activate’.

Compatibility Issues

The more plugins you add, the more conflicts you’re going to get, especially with low quality plugins. One of the most well-known symptoms is that things stop working in your dashboard – ie. you can no longer drag and drop widgets, you can no longer access certain menu items, etc. You probably have a Javascript conflict. Retrace your steps. It may not necessarily be the last plugin that you installed that is causing the conflict. It may be one you installed ages ago that is the source of the problem.

When you tell your developers that you’re unable to access your website or that you’re having issues with it, their first line of defense and trouble-shooting is to deactivate and slowly reactivate plugins. This will let them have a better idea of what is causing the problem.

Additional Maintenance

As with most things in life, the more that you have, the more you have to take care of. Plugins regularly require updates to increase their security, to fix issues, or to add additional features. Updates are probably the hardest thing for most WordPress website owners to keep up with. On top of that, plugins never seem to need to be updated at the same time. Let’s say you updated Jetpack yesterday and then you log into your website today and find out that Gravity Forms has an update. It’s quite common to have this as a regular occurrence. Keeping your plugins to a small number and only downloading highly regarded ones will keep you much more sane and your maintenance low.

Logo Spotlight – Innovative Property Group

Posted on by Ken Granger

This may be the freshest logo we’ve ever blogged about! Approved just moments ago, ladies and gentlemen, BrandCo is proud to unveil Connor Jordan’s new logo for Innovative Property Group. Based in Denver Colorado, this real estate company is looking to grow their luxury and high end business, while still maintaining a connection to the average buyer and seller. Connor chatted with us about creating a logo that spoke to a mid-century modern flair, and something higher end but not stuffy; Contemporary, clean, and understated was the name of the game and BrandCo was ready to play.

The logo team spent a lot of time browsing Pinterest, Google Images, and other inspiration sites searching for the perfect look. One of our muses took the form of vintage wallpaper patterns, home decor, and ultimately lighting and art fixtures from the 1950’s and 60’s. Geometric patterns and faceted shapes caught our attention during our searches, so we figured that would be a good jumping point for the logo.

We decided to go with a modern font like Futura to bring a retro but contemporary feel. By replacing the O in Innovative with an icosahedron, we were able to make the connection between the geometric interior design styles from the mid-century modern trend and real estate.

Clients Love Getting Fresh with our Responsive Refreshes

Posted on by Ken Granger

When clients come to BrandCo they get a custom design that both caters to their clientele and represents their brand. Our talented team of designers and developers are happy to take the template websites Keller Williams agents are given and turn them into something special! Responsiveness is extremely important with any online presence due to the changes within search engines and general usability on the myriad of devices that exist today. We’re so happy that we can help our clients be as future-proofed as possible with their newly designed website.

Nex Door Realty

Suzanne Murtha came to us looking for a new city-themed website for her business, Nex Door Realty. The featured image that greets you once you visit the website is a gorgeous city scape of the Charlotte night sky, alight with beautiful fireworks. Further down the page, you’re able to learn more about Suzanne and her team. Calls to action spotlighted on this website include ‘Buying a home’, ‘Selling a home’, and ‘Research a home’.

JV Dream Homes

Breathtaking is an understatement when it comes to Jolene Vollmuth’s website. This Colorado-based agent’s site prominently displayed a majestic mountain ridge, thanks to designer, Tony. Six areas are highlighted that Jolene serves, including Arvada, Golden, Wheat Ridge, Lakewood, Morrison, and Littleton. You’re easily able to click on these areas and see available properties within them. This modern-styled website uses bright yet earthy tones throughout and feels extremely welcoming.

Holly Wilton Homes

Located in Winter Park, Holly Wilton contacted BrandCo looking for a luxurious design for her real estate website. Our leader designer, Denika, was more than happy to deliver! The design exudes a careful combination of luxury and modern style. Soon, Holly’s website will be filled with great information on walkable communities that encourage healthy lifestyles. While building out the website, web developer, David, was able to add in some extra spice with the actions that happen while the cursor rolls over various buttons. Such a beautiful website!

At Home With Christy

Christy Dunfee is a Keller Williams agent that specializes in homes for Military relocation in the Colorado area. This patriotic design proudly shines in red, white, and blue thanks to Christy’s designer, Bianca. With the help of our developer, Marc, the site was brought to life with activity. Communities Black Forest and Forest Meadows are being showcased from the website’s menu. You can visit Christy’s website to learn more about her and hear amazing reviews she has received from her clients.

Employee Spotlight – Meet Mackenzie

Posted on by Ken Granger

Time to put the spotlight on another happy face around BrandCo HQ. This time, it’s that sweet voice that you get the pleasure of hearing when you call our office. Mackenzie is a sparkling breath of fresh air that takes care of her fellow employees’ needs, not to mention, Ken’s, too! We’re lucky that we have someone as great a Mack to take care of us. Learn more about this blondie below.

What do you do here?

My Title at Brandco is Administrative Assistant. Basically what I do here is answer the phones, stock up on our sodas,water and snacks, pay everyone :), keep the fish alive, make sure everyone’s birthday is celebrated, help with party planning events and all other office related stuff.

What got you into developing / design?

Luckily for our clients, I’m not in developing or design 🙂 My boyfriend works in a similar atmosphere. He loves his job and I knew jobs like this don’t come around very often. I couldn’t pass up a chance to love where I work too. Even though I’m not assisting in the design or development aspect, I’m doing what I love, which is helping others.

If your co-workers could describe you in 3 words…

Helpful, Quiet and Smiley.

Favorite resource / place for inspiration / brand:

Though I am not a designer/ developer, I still love to make things and get crafty! I am a Pinterest addict and I don’t see myself ever recovering from it ever. Unless of course they come out with some updated form of Pinterest.

Best thing about BrandCo:

The best thing about BrandCo is the people who work here. Everyone is so talented, creative and just really good, kind people. Everyone is so eager to help each other, it really makes you want to be your best self everyday.

If you had a super power…

Time travel. I think it would be so interesting to see how everyone lived and dressed from a different time period.

What is the defining cartoon of your childhood?

I have a few… Fraggle Rock, Mister Rogers Neighborhood and Pee Wee’s Playhouse. I realize none of these are cartoons but this is what I watched.

Any special awards / milestones / fun facts about you?

Interior_ES1118Fun Facts:I worked for Walt Disney World for 9 years in entertainment. I spent a year overseas working for Hong Kong Disneyland. There’s only 1 Mickey Mouse and yes, Cinderella does have sleepovers in her castle and her mice and birds braid all of her princess friends hair. Also, animals do talk and love wearing clothes.

When you’re not at BrandCo, what are you up to? (Interests, Hobbies)

Usually I spend my free time with my boyfriend going to car shows and supercross races. We also love coming up with future furniture creations. I also spend time with my mom, who is an artist. We like finding new stores with unique things.

The one thing you’d like to share about yourself that maybe people don’t know:

I was an Artistic Roller skater, which is pretty much like the ice skating you see on tv, only on roller skates. My grandparents owned 2 roller skating rinks in Michigan around the 1950’s. One is still in business today. I competed competitively and I still enjoy lacing up my skates for 80’s night at the local Roller Rink.

 

Stay tuned for another Employee Spotlight coming up soon!