Field Notes Blog
News and thoughts on UI/UX, web design, and more.
 I’m excited to announce that I've just completed a website redesign for the Huntington Beach Saltwater Desalination Project. This Orange County initiative aims to bring a carbon neutral, drought-proof water supply to the Huntington Beach area of Southern California. As a redesign/upgrade from Wordpress to Weebly, this site represented two tricky technical challenges. Firstly, I needed to recreate - and improve upon - a scrolling RSS news reader feature. Secondly, I needed to recreate a javascript that counted UP (not down) in a unit of gallons (not time). Everything I build is user-editable, so these puzzles came with a big additional requirement ... my non-techy users needed to be able to edit them in the future. Our other goal was to bring the site into line with the company's established branding and associated online assets.
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 Seaport San Diego is a wildly creative and ambitious new downtown development that will add an array of amenities to the waterfront area. With world renown architects and public relations by the talented crew at MNM Advertising & PR, we’ll no doubt be hearing a lot about this over the coming months. This website upgrade project consisted entirely of one key objective - replicating the look and feel of a technically-problematic Wordpress build on the much more user-friendly Weebly platform. As I often find with Wordpress, the site was originally created to be maintained solely by the developer, so the site owner did not have the ability to add additional features over time. Additionally, the site owner wanted to escape the tedious security hassles of maintaining an aging Wordpress site.
As we close out 2018 I want to wish you and your family a very merry Solstice, a merry Christmas, a happy Kwanzaa and a joyous New Year. From the launch of my new Partner Program to my trip to Japan and a whole new business endeavor, 2018 has been a whirlwind. I hope that the holidays bring you peaceful joy and that you share my excitement for the coming year. From my family to yours, Happy Holidays.
July Newsletter: Digital Summer Camp, Part 1 | Partner Program Raffle | Summer Special Treat7/1/2018 June Newsletter: World Oceans Month Promo Ideas | Partner Program Success | 15 Social Media Ideas6/4/2018
 Over the years, the most powerful marketing I've seen is word-of-mouth. Most of us ask for recommendations or read reviews for everything from a restaurant to a new car. At Pixel Lava, I've always offered a simple referral commission - if you tell someone about me and we end up doing business together I send you a check for $50. I recently realized that my favorite projects have come to me this way so I decided to expand the program. I now offer three partnership levels; Affiliate, Colleague and Team Member. Anyone can sign up as an Affiliate and earn generous $80 commissions. The Colleague and Team Member levels are for fellow graphic artists, marketers, agencies etc. who want to expand their service offerings without hiring staff. By bringing me in as-needed you get a reliable partner at a great rate. You also get access my Partner Portal with white label marketing materials, small business resources and special perks. No matter what the level, joining the Partner Program is 100% free. There's nothing to sign or do, the only goal is to make it easy to recommend (and fun to work with) Pixel Lava. Sign up during the month of May and you'll get a Referral Card Power Pack by mail that includes customized referral cards in an artsy card case and a nifty Pixel Lava sticker. Why not sign up for free right now?
 I've just completed a big update to my Complete Workshop DIY Kit! I dialed in the templates, added info to the Tips & Tricks sheet and updated the Set Up Checklist. Workshops are a great way to deliver valuable information, create community with clients, cultivate sales & referrals, generate social media buzz and more! But putting a workshop together is a lot of work. First you need to create and assemble the materials - your presentation, handouts, sign-in sheets and door signs, etc. Then you need marketing so there are flyers and posters to be made, social media graphics to be created, email announcements to be written and more. And lastly you need to get as much value as possible by using evaluation forms, gathering reviews and tracking your results. Why struggle to make quality, matching versions of all of it from scratch? My freshly-updated kit includes field-tested materials I’ve developed as a professional graphic artist and used in promoting and running my own client workshops for several years.
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About the authorAs the owner of Pixel Lava Interactive I've helped hundreds of small businesses and nonprofits with websites, graphic design and more. I hope you'll find this blog full of useful information.
~ Ame Stanko 
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