Graphic Design Services

Adding images to a website is a great way to provide visual interest and engage your visitors. There are numerous gallery and slideshow styling options, designed in Flash, JavaScript/Dhtml, or jQuery. Some of the quality options include Lightbox galleries and images, jQuery PrettyPhoto, Cu3er slideshow, cycling slideshows, user controlled slideshows, full page galleries, flash effect galleries, thumbnail galleries, image scrollers, etc.

Flash has long been used to provide quality animation to a page, both as page accents (buttons, bars, banner, intros, embedded sound, text effects, etc) and full site designs. The concern with Flash is that it requires one to have the Flash plugin version that the design was created in to view it. Since Flash is often updated previous version of the Flash Player have to be updated to view content. The other concern is that Flash code cannot be read by the search engines (no more than a movie's contents can be), and for this reason Flash is not SEO friendly. Java and Gif animations can provide similar effects as flash, but they are not used as often, and there are similar concerns with their compatibility for all users since not everyone has the Java plugin, and Gif animations are often disabled by browser security settings.

It is important for your website's navigation to look good, integrate seemlessly into the overall design, and be SEO friendly. We provide a variety of different navigation options utilizing jQuery, JavaScript, DHTML, Flash, and CSS. Our preferred option is a pure CSS menu, or a CSS list menu with jQuery (with or without graphics). CSS menus are highly indexable by the search engines, whereas Flash and DHTML menus are not. If Flash or other type of less SEO friendly menu is needed then providing adding additional text links at the bottom of the page is an effective way to satisfy this concern.

It is important that the logo of your company or organization is both representative and looks good on the Web. We use several quality programs in addition to freehand to automate this process ensuring that the logo we design will aptly reflect your business. We also create static and animated banners, and promotional Ads. And if you need help with a brochure or business card design, one that will match the styling of your website we can help you there as well.

If you need your content scanned for web inclusion we can assist you; we use the Epson Workforce 500 Series (9600 dpi interpolated resolution with a 48-bit color depth). For PDF catalogue creation we use Adobe photoshop CS4 and Acrobat 9 Professional. These programs allow us to create visually engaging layouts, and render in a high resolution and optimized format for best quality and quicker download time. We can also convert most documents format into the universal PDF format.

Image-mapping allows for any portion of a graphical image to be made linkable. This is most often used when a site design is primarily graphical or a portion of a non-sliced graphical header design is intended as navigation. Image-mapping can also be used to make interactive, clickable 'hotspots' on regional maps. Slicing is a process where a large image is cut into smaller pieces and then joined together by code; this allows for the image to load quicker on slower browser connections.

Websites are becoming increasingly more interactive, and engaging gallery styling is one of the best options to do this. Page-flips is a good way to keep people intrigued. Graphical images are applied to a Flash or jQuery interface to provide the appearance of a book where pages can be flipped with the mouse or arrow controls; the better options of this type also provide a "zoom" feature. Panoramas (180 or 360 views) allow for images to be stitched together and then presented in a gallery style interface where the viewer can "pan" left/right, and up/down. Great for sites that want to show a full view of a location. Magnify is a great way to allow for a detailed viewing of a smaller graphic.