First Impressions

I was reading the Entreprenuer Daily blog this weekend and I came across an article on controlling your personal image online. Basically it was a girl talking to a professor at Duke that was saying he is a professor and it would not be right to put pictures of himself playing beer pong on his Facebook page because it would give the wrong impression. Now this guy obviously was making a point I doubt he plays beer pong but the point is that so many people don’t think about anything they do and how it can affect them in the real world, they are stuck in the “Social Networking” world. This world allows them to directly effect people’s perceptions of them on a personal level, much as having a website for your business can make your business look 10X bigger. So if you want to look like a big shot, you can. I get a few resumes a week for people wanting a job, graphic designer, web designer, whatever. The first thing I do is check out their name on google and myspace/facebook. Still I find people with pictures of them drunk at a club, or with some strippers, I don’t think I have to say this is not the stuff you want as your first impression from a potential employer.

What can you do to control your image online? Well you can stop putting up crazy pictures online. If you have to share that picture of you drunk at cousin Tony’s wedding then you can email it or put it in an online album that is only viewable to certain people. Online reputation management is a huge industry right now, partially because people do not think of the ramifications of posting things online. Complaints websites, bloggers, a ton of places online will re-post anything they feel is out of line so you have to watch what you say online. My mother always told me to “Never write down anything I did not want everyone to read.” I think about this on a daily basis now especially with all the access you have to each individuals personal details.

So before you post something on someones facebook about poker night and winning money, or send a message to someone about something you do not want everyone to know remember it is only a click away from being public knowledge.

Simple Update

It has been a while since I posted on my blog, I will try not to bore you to tears with all of the stuff going on right now but I do have a few things that are worth mentioning.

Jennifer and I had our first child, Madeline Grace on January 31st 2008. You can see pictures of her on my myspace; (http://www.myspace.com/ryanharrell) and it is awesome. She looks just like me, at least that is what everyone tells me and my wife. But when people tell my wife this it is like they are telling her some bad news. They say, like jennifer I hate to tell you this but she looks just like her daddy. So i’m thinking sure I know im no Fabio but good lord I’m no Popeye Jones, do you have to be so blatant?

Also ARC Design my company has finished its first large branding campaign, sure we have completed branding campaigns for companies like Spell Construction and Highland Paving but a campaign for a county is huge. We worked closely with the Duplin County Tourism board to expand on a theme that they had created, “Uncork Duplin.”  As you may or may not know Duplin county used to be a big tabacco county, but when people stopped smoking so much they had to do something with all those acres of land. So they started making wine, lots of it. Today it is the major draw to the county, however they are a lot of other things to do in this history rich small county in NC. ARC Design created the design and look for the campaign that covers billboards, booklets, brochures, businesscards, the website, the logo and letterhead. My hats off to my design team, very nice job guys.

 With over 45 projects on our wall ARC Design is very busy. We have had a very busy two months and with more work we need more help. We have added 4 new faces to ARC Design over the past few months, two web designers, a project manager and an assistant. Things are starting to work like clockwork and we have gotten our turnaround time down, which was in the the 4-5 month range to the 2-4 range. I am interested to see how we would rank compared to other agencies our size. I know we are the largest in the area by far but maybe on a state level how effecient we are, so I have been trying to track things like turnaround time on sites, customer contact and other cool things that I think would help ARC. If you are not continually trying to get better at what you do and how you do it then someone is going to come along and do what you do better and that’s how you get left behind. ARC will always strive to be one step ahead of everyone else, hopefully this will help.

That’s all I have for now.

Davey Awards

Thursday my company ARC Design received its Davey Award. It is a Oscar like statue that is cool to get because the judges are so well known in the industry.

“The Davey Awards may be for smaller organizations, but the judges have big reputations. The Davey is sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from a “Who’s Who” of acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms. “

Hopefully I can get a picture or two up on my site here soon, because it is a cool statuette. Thanks to all the designers and staff at ARC Design because your hard work is the reason we have this award. Thanks also to the folks at Docks for allowing us to do thier site. ARC Design won a silver Davey for the Docks at the Capitol website.

Party Time

Last year ARC Design moved into a new space, an 1800 square ft office over looking market circle in historic downtown Fayetteville. When we first moved in we had a ribbon cutting open house type of get together. We invited all of our clients, friends and family. The party was a huge success, clients came, mingled, and had a great time. We had a great time also and figured this would be a nice thing to do every year.

We have enlisted the help of Chef Mei again to create an awesome spread as tasty as last year. (You can learn more about Chef Mei and http://www.chefmeipcs.com). We are doing all the last minute things like vacuming the cubicles and dusting. I am trying to get some of the 8 Graphic Design Awards we won back and hung up, they are getting framed right now and we have at least 5 done so I will go pick them up today so we can display them for everyone to see. Its cool to do something for the folks who help you keep the doors open and help pay the people working here at ARC.

Everyone is invited, and if you did not get a eCard invitation from us don’t fret, just come on over, have some food, a glass of wine and unwind before the holidays! If you need directions to our downtown Fayetteville location you can find them here. See you there!

Holiday Slowdown

“During the holiday season most design agencies come to a slowdown once the Christmas advertising has been finished. While business is picking up now I expect it to slow down soon. During this slowdown Adam and I have decided that we are going to work on our new ARC website. The ARC Design site you see now is one that I designed in about 2 hours, then showed it to Adam, and he made a few tweaks to it. We published it over our holding page when we first opened our doors. We had to get something up quick because Adam was already selling websites. Imagine that, Adam sold websites for us, a web design company only having a holding page.

Almost three years later we feel like it is time to show off what we can do. We are building award winning sites every week and we need a website for ARC Design that showcases our talents. The new website will have a dynamic flash area and we are going to use ourselves as the prime example of how powerful video can be on a website. Hopefully we can get this site live by February. Launching 2-3 sites a week puts a strain on doing work for ourselves but we have to do it.

If you are looking to redesign your page yourself please at least consult a professional to learn a few things that you can do to help your search engine positioning. I have seen websites fall off searches completely after a website redesign. Or you can come to ARC and we will handle it all for you, all you have to do is sit back and relax.”

2007 Davey Awards

My company ARC Design received word last week that we had won another award. A silver Davey Award to be exact. This is the second international award that we have won this year, 15th so far this year. We should be getting our 8 GD USA awards back this coming week from the framing shop. We are getting them framed at Ty’s Gallery, Ty Barnes is the man and he always takes care of our awards so if you are in the Fayetteville NC area go check him out. International Awards are always cool to win because you know you are up against a lot larger talent pool and the competition these days is amazing.

On another note, Amanda Inderbitzen is leaving ARC Design. She was an intern with ARC while she was finishing her BA at Campbell and she worked full time with us until she was accepted at UNC for some masters work. Wanting to be closer to school she got a job at a not for profit in Chapel Hill NC. We wish her the best in all she does and we know she will work hard and acheive her goals no matter what because she is a very smart girl.

A little less than 100 days and I will be a dad, now that is better than the awards and all the chocolate pizza I can eat, I can’t wait!