The New Office!

Yes, we have moved! After spending most of the long weekend packing and unpacking, we are finally settling into the new space. Our location is now 345 Zerex Street, on the corner of Highway 40 and Eisenhower in Fraser. Last Tuesday was the first day we were officially open for business in the new location. To celebrate the new office’s grand opening, we felt a toast was in order, so we enjoyed morning mimosas toasted in oh-so-classy red party cups.

When we began our search for a new office we wanted a better location, more space, and more features. So far, we’ve gotten all that and more.

Our new office affords us a location with even more exposure. We’ve been in downtown Fraser for a while now, but now we’re even that much more downtown. We have a sweet new sign on the awning over our front door, displaying big and bright over Eisenhower. A second sign is also in the works, soon to be displaying right along the highway for all to admire.

The new space also actually has more space. The old cabin office had its charms, but this place feels like it’s at least twice as big. Between the wide room, lots of windows, and more actual square footage, we now have more space to stretch – both our legs, and our ideas.

With our new office comes new everything – new furniture, new decorations, a new coat of bright green paint on the walls, even a new bed for the pups.

Our new space has new features as well. We have a large conference table for important meetings and brainstorm sessions.

We also have a lounge area in the corner, complete with a big cushy couch, for those times when we want a meeting to be a little more comfy.

Indeed, we found our better location, bigger space, and new features. It’s even starting to feel like the office we wanted all along, though we’re still putting some finishing touches on the place. Even though there’s still a little unpacking and decorating to do, the office is just beginning to have that familiar, broken-in sort of feel.

So, now that we’re just getting settled in, we’re pretty sure the only thing our new location is missing is…you! Most importantly, we wanted our new office to be a space we could share. We wanted somewhere for us to sit down and comfortably collaborate with clients and share stories with friends. So seriously – stop by and say hello! (mimosas optional).

O2 Creative Design, your Website Design, Graphic Design, all in one marketing stop!

Click here for our next blog – The Foundry!

Goodbye, little cabin office…

This is a transitional time in O2 Creative. For those who haven’t heard, we’re moving! This is the last week in our quaint little cabin office. Since 2009 we have operated at 208 Eisenhower, right in downtown Fraser, just a stone’s throw from the train tracks.

This cabin has been more than just an office. It’s been a haven for creativity. It’s been a meeting venue for clients and friends. And it’s been a place for the pugs to snooze, play, and…well, mostly snooze. It’s also been cool to say we work in a cabin, which adds to the mystique of working and living in the mountains.

This location has served us well, but alas, the time to move has come. O2 as a company has been growing – more clients, more projects, more employees. With all that growing also came the need for more office space as well.

So where will we be moving? Right down the street, actually. The address will be 345 Zerex Street, or more commonly referred to as “that red building on 40 on the corner across from the gas station.” Our front door will still be on the Eisenhower side of the road, so we’ll still be able to hear each and every train that comes through town, but hopefully it won’t be quite as crazy loud as it has been in the cabin.

This is the point in the blog where we’d usually have a photo – in this case, a cool pic of the new office. However, the new place is still getting some finishing touches. We still have a little painting and cleaning. We still need to furnish the space. And we still need to hang our sweet new O2 signs on the signpost and awning. It’s just not very photogenic quite yet. So please wait for a pic of the new place until we’re a little more settled in.

But until then, at least check out our sweet new signs. They’ll be hanging big and bright right over our office in the middle of downtown Fraser…soon!

We’ll have more space with all-new furnishings, including a lounge-conference area. What better way to do business than while seated comfortably on an overstuffed couch?

But for the time being, we have lots of packing and moving on our agenda, on top of an already busy work schedule. We hope to be all unpacked and settled in by next week. Until then, please look forward to seeing us in our new location, because we sure are looking forward to it.

Just remember – we’ll still be the same O2 Creative either way. We’ll still be located in downtown Fraser, just now even more downtown. We’ll still offer the coolest designs and the cleverest campaigns. And we’ll still have an office full of playful puppies ready to greet anyone who comes in.

So we’d like to invite you to visit our new office. Feel free to stop by and check out the new space, have a sit on our couch, give the pugs a pet. Just please give us a little time to unpack.

Click here for our next blog post – The New Office!

Livin’ the Pug Life

At O2 Creative, we’re animal lovers. Anyone who has ever visited us in the O2 office quickly realizes one thing – the dogs are in charge here. Wylie, Sophie, and Thumbelina roam throughout our office, setting the professional tone for the workday. From early Monday until late Friday, the pups are in the office, regardless of rain, wind, snow, sleet, sickness, or even a bad hair day.

The morning usually begins by responding to lots of important emails.

They eagerly await the arrival of clients, business contacts, and FedEx deliveries. Well, they’re mostly just eager for the FedEx guy, because he gives them treats.

They stay so busy, there’s no time at all to get out of the office. Well…okay, maybe there’s just enough time for a nice walk…

But they can’t walk for too long. Gotta get back to the office – they have to sit in on lots of important meetings.

The pooch’s greatest professional strength would have to be their teamwork abilities. They put their heads together to tackle some of the biggest group projects…like napping (which is coincidentally another professional strength of theirs).

At this point, perhaps you’re thinking all this puppy in the office business is silly – that it’s not actually hard work, it’s just the proverbial piece of cake…

But, we assure you, these pups all take their jobs very  seriously. It’s all stone-faced business as usual. Does Wylie look like he’s joking around?

To meet these pups in person, stop by and say hello at the O2 Creative office. You can also follow Pugs and Buggs on Facebook.

Click here for our next blog – Goodbye to the cabin office!

The benefits of hiring a graphic designer

Some businesses may frequently wonder whether hiring a graphic designer is worth it. They’re usually concerned about professional design work costing too much, or perhaps they feel they should simply do the design work themselves.

Believe it or not, though, hiring a professional designer might actually save you money in the long run. It’s also even more likely to save you another valuable resource: time. And a designer can help you focus the vision you have for your business. Good designers use their expertise to help you create recognizable graphics that make you stand out, communicate your value to your market, and make your business look even more polished and professional.

First of all, hiring a graphic designer really can save money. Sure, you can try to design your own graphics, but if you don’t know how to prepare a graphic for a printer, the cost of revising and reprinting your materials can quickly become even pricier than simply hiring a designer right from the start. Designers have the know-how to make sure graphics and marketing materials are designed and prepared correctly the first time. (If you aren’t familiar with terms like bleed marks, cropping, or CMYK, we recommend consulting a professional designer before trying to produce designs).

Graphic designers can also save you time. Many businesses pride themselves on self-sufficiency, but trying to do design work can quickly become a time-consuming frustration if you don’t know what you’re doing. Say, for instance, your plumbing broke. You could spend all the time and effort trying to fix the plumbing yourself, sure. However, if you’ve never done any plumbing work before, simply hiring a plumber who already has the knowledge and tools is usually a much more cost- and time-efficient way to get the problem fixed.

A good designer has the skills and experience, as well as the industry-standard design software and programs, to do even better work in even less time. Let’s face it – time is at a premium for most businesses. Your time is best spent focusing on the operations of your business, not trying to create graphics that a designer could do better, faster, and cheaper. Hiring a professional to do design work for you means you can spend your precious time on other important matters, like managing your business, meeting with clients, and fixing the plumbing.

A graphic designer can also help improve the look and feel of your business. A professionally trained designer with state-of-the-art programs and resources can develop much more polished graphics, logos, and branding. These are resources not available to you if you chose not to work with a professional designer. The result is a much better visual representation of your business than if you were to simply throw something together using ClipArt in Word.

That’s what a designer has been professionally trained to do – create quality graphics and materials that get you recognized. Good designers are good communicators who are able to convey your business’s values and ideas through graphics and images. Good designers get it right the first time, too, so you don’t have to worry about an inferior design or costly revisions during the print and production stages.

If you are thinking about having design work done, get in touch with us at O2 Creative. Our talented, experienced designers are happy to work with you through every stage of the design process. We’ll help you efficiently create designs that make you look more professional, communicate your value, and gain you recognition in your market.

Click here to read about Digital Media vs Print Media

Contact O2 Creative today at 970-726-8021 or at [email protected]

Check out Christine Parizo’s article here for more info.

Click here for our next blog post – Pug Life!

What should your business be doing with social media?

Should your business be on social media? To answer this question, simply ask – are your customers on social media?

The answer is likely a yes, considering how many folks use social media these days. Virtually everyone, every business and organization, and even dogs have an account on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or some other site. Odds are good that most of your customers already use one or more of the many social media networks. This means that unless your business is making the most of its social media opportunities, then you’re probably not maximizing your marketing potential.

Social media marketing has many benefits. First of all, it’s free. Most social media platforms don’t charge money to activate, access, or post. The advertisements, specials, and other promotions your business can run on social media will reach both existing customers whom you have already engaged, as well as their friends with similar interests who are potential new customers – social media marketing is viral in nature. With social media you can reach a large customer audience (Facebook alone has over a billion users).

Paid advertisements on social media obviously cost money, but they also offer “geo-targeting,” which works within the social media to direct your message to the most relevant audiences. This means paid social media ads can offer a better return on investment than many other ad mediums.

Publishing on social media can be done almost instantly, so you don’t have to wait for the turnaround and production time that other media may require.

Your business can increase traffic to its website by using social media to direct customers there. If you do not yet have a website, a social media page can serve as your business’s online presence until you get a site up and running.

Social media also allows you to better interact with and understand both your customers and other businesses. You’ll be able to see what your markets are up to, based on their posts and comments. You’ll also be able to communicate directly with your audience, since customers will be able to message you and post on your business’s wall. This allows for new channels of customer service.

Of course, just because most social media is “free” doesn’t mean it comes entirely without cost. An effective social media page takes time and effort to be managed. Accounts must be checked several times a day to make sure your business is maintaining the presence it wants.

Since social media can be published quickly, it also means most messages have a short shelf life before they’re buried at the bottom of everyone’s news feeds. Social media must be updated regularly to stay fresh to your audience. Customers expect a quick response when they message you or post on your wall. Your business must also be prepared to account for and mitigate negative comments if they are posted on your wall. A poorly maintained social media account can look bad in the eyes of customers and hurt a business’s reputation.

Often, a business may not have the social media savvy it takes to build a quality presence, or they may not be able to afford the time and effort that social media requires. That’s where O2 Creative comes into play. We’re experienced with all kinds of social media for all kinds of businesses. We can offer advice and consulting on better social media practices, or we can even manage accounts for businesses. We’ll help your business utilize social media to its maximum potential, and get you better connected with your market.

 Click here for our next blog post – web design!

Digital vs. Print Media

Digital vs. Print Media

Nowadays, consumers are exposed to digital media at least as much as print. The growing prevalence of smart phones and tablets, and the wireless networks that connect them, mean that more and more folks will view media on a digital device. Of course, this also means more and more consumers will view advertisements on digital devices as well.

For marketing and advertising, digital media has several benefits. It can be less expensive than print media, depending on the details of each campaign. Digital campaigns can also usually be produced, launched, and updated faster than print.

Digital media can be interactive in several ways. A promotion on social media allows for marketers to communicate directly with consumers, using messaging, commenting, tweeting, wall posting, and other methods to answer questions and offer incentives. Users are also usually able to search for a digital document, or search within the document itself. A digital advertisement could also be interactive, such as a game or contest that allows for participation and further engages consumers.

Digital ads allow for relatively more control over exactly who sees them than print ads, so marketers can more easily target them toward specific demographics. Many digital ads can generate consumer information as well, offering insight over who exactly is viewing the ads. For instance, Google AdWords and Facebook Ads offer analysis on user trends and successful referrals generated by the advertisements.

This is not to say that print media is dying out – not by a long shot. Print media offers a more physical, tangible medium to consumers. It’s something folks can take with them. It’s more professional, more convenient, and just nicer to be able to give someone a brochure or business card instead of having to say, “Hey, let me email you real fast” or “Hey, go find me on Facebook real quick” every time you want to make a contact.

Print ads can also have a localized presence that’s much harder to achieve with digital media. Signs and banners can create attention and help consumers physically find you. Well placed posters, flyers, and other print media can be distributed within a community to help generate exposure and direct consumers to you. Plenty of consumers also still get information from print media such as newspapers and magazines.

So which one is better – digital or print? That’s a complex and nuanced question, but we think there’s really only one good answer – BOTH.

Each medium has unique advantages, so a good campaign should incorporate both digital and print media. The best ad campaigns utilize the right combination of media, depending on market size and scope, demographic targets, products or services offered, budgetary considerations, and other factors. Certain consumers are best reached on digital media, others still prefer print. The right combination of media channels allows for the best communication with your entire consumer audience, and also maximizes your campaign’s return on investment as well.

At O2 Creative we work extensively with both digital and print media. We can create the most innovative advertisements and get them distributed on the most effective media channels, whether it may be digital, print, or the right combination of both.

After all, the end goal isn’t simply to debate whether digital or print media is better. The end goal is to create a campaign that will be most successful for you.

Click here to read another blog!

SEO – what it is, and what it does

We’ve had more and more questions lately about search engine optimization, or SEO. What is it? How does it work? What does it afford me and my website? The answers to these questions can get pretty long-winded and technical, but we’ll try our best to keep it short and sweet.

Search engines (like Google) work in 3 ways. First, they “crawl” the Internet, or use algorithmic computer programs to fetch data from websites. These programs determine which sites to crawl, how often to crawl them, and how many pages to fetch from each site. The programs do this by using data from previous searches, as well as sitemap data provided by webmasters – you know, the webmasters who design websites to be optimized for search engines.

Next, the search engine programs use all that data they obtained from crawling to create a massive index of the Internet. This index includes the words on webpages as well as other info, such as key content tags and attributes designed by webmasters to help search engines find websites.

Finally, when a user conducts a search, the search engine serves up search results based on what indexed data appears to be most relevant. Relevancy is based on many factors, including content keywords, behind-the-scenes website data, and PageRank, which is the measure of importance of a page based on how many other webpages link to it. Webmasters who design sites for SEO optimization account for these relevancy factors to improve the ranking of a page in search results.

In plainer terms, webmasters who optimize your website for SEO do lots of things both to a site’s displayed content and a site’s architecture to make sure your website can be found when folks search for it. Because, if no one can find your site, what good does it do?

It should be noted that search engines don’t accept payment to crawl sites more frequently. There are indeed paid advertisements that will appear as “sponsored links,” but the “organic” search results appear based on whose site is the most relevant and best optimized, not who paid the most to get it there.

And since websites are added and updated virtually all the time, SEO also must be continuously managed for the best keywords, content tags, and links. This is what we do at O2 Creative.

When clients ask us to manage websites for SEO, we consider it an ongoing process. We’re constantly making sure all the content and all the design and all the architecture and every other little thing about a site is as current and complete as possible. We’ll continually look at your website, consider what search engines think of it, how it compares to competitors, how many other Internet users will end up linking to it, and many other factors to make sure your site stays optimized.

Because we want to keep our clients and their websites…well…relevant!

Click here for our next blog post – digital vs. print media!

O2 Creative’s new brand logo!

At O2 Creative, we’re always trying to keep things fresh. New concepts, new perspectives, new designs, and new ideas are just another day in the life for us. We’re constantly trying to push the limits for both our clients and ourselves. We strive for a spirit of innovation, and avoid simply reworking the same old tricks.

That’s why we’ve recently decided to rebrand ourselves.

(Considering we spend so much time thinking up new branding for so many other businesses, we thought it was only appropriate to give ourselves a new look as well.)

With our new logo, we went with a design we think is clean, cool, and one-of-a-kind, just like everything else about O2 Creative. We hope you like it, because we sure do.

We want a brand to be unique and recognizable, as individual as the company it represents. We look for branding designs that are contemporary without just being trendy; timeless without being dated; something that will make folks stop and wonder, “Why didn’t we think of that?”

We believe every business should stop and revisit their brand identity every now and then. A well-executed rebranding can improve a business’s presence within its market. It can generate attention from new audiences while also revitalizing the interest of existing customers. And it can ultimately refresh a business’s identity to help it move onto bigger and better things.

If you’re a new startup that is trying to establish an identity, or an existing operation that is thinking it’s time for an updated look, let us know. We’d love to help you design a brand that is sure to make your presence known in your market and your community. And since it’s coming from the clever folks at O2 Creative, you know your new brand is going to be original and exclusive, instantly recognizable yet unlike anything anyone has ever seen.

In other words, we’re all about the freshest, most exceptional brand designs. Because cookie cutters are for baking, not branding.

To the left is our new logo, which is the one representing us going forward. For reference, our old logo is to the right, which you still may see around from time to time. It has served us well, but over time we decided it wasn’t quite as identifiable as we wanted it to be, and ultimately agreed it was time for a crisper design.

Click here for our next blog post – mobile websites! 

Winter Park Jazz Festival Design

Winter Park Jazz Festival 2013, graphic design for all collateral, online design, print design. Winter Park, Colorado’s favorite playground present the 2013 Jazz Festival design.