The newly created homepage for dbirnbaum.com’s therapist website.

Ortner Graphics completed a new website design for Deborah Birnbaum MSSW, LCSW this week. Deborah has started a new Psycho therapy service located in Nyack, New York and needed a website to help market it. Deborah also needed a logo and business cards. Fortunately, Ortner Graphics was able to be a one stop shop for all of her needs.

The first stage of the design process on this project was creating a logo. Ornter Graphics provided six logo designs to choose from. Deborah chose version utilizing a tree as the corporate mark. This was due to the symbolic strength and tranquil nature. Being in the medical field, the site needed to be presented in a clean and simple manner.

In our initial consultation Deborah had requested that the site maintain a clean and simple design. She especially wanted the site to have an overall soothing feeling with an emphasis on a sea green color. Ortner Graphics achieved this by using photographs of woodland settings. The woodland settings had an added advantage of further reflecting and reinforcing the tree logo design. They also helped to compliment the sea green color. On close inspection, the viewer will notice that every page uses a different woodland image.

The tranquil woodland photos were further tied to the therapy concept because they all contain a unifying path. The path suggests the journey of life. To further enhance the photographs’ concept a mysterious light source was added in Photoshop. The goal of this was to make it seem that the pat was leading towards the light. The idea being that therapy will guide you to a better place or help you see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The website’s development was implemented using the WordPress Twenty Twelve theme as its programming framework. This coupled with meticulous styling in HTML and CSS results in a site which is fully responsive.

The ultimate result of the careful planning and design of http://www.dbirnbaum.com is a clean tranquil website. Ortner Graphics sincerely wishes Deborah the best of luck in her new venture. Deborah is a truly kind and caring individual. Certainly don’t hesitate to reach out to her if you reside in Nyack or the Lower Hudson Valley and are struggling with the challenges of modern times.

Thinking of Selling? Real estate postcard designed to attract potential home sellers.

In 2012, I was charged with the task of creating a direct mail postcard to encourage potential home sellers to list their properties. It was a very strange time to work in real estate because things were just beginning to transition from a buyer’s to a seller’s market. This meant that there were a great many buyers in the Hudson Valley looking for great deals, but most homeowners were squeamish about listing their properties because of the perceived depreciation in market value.

A bold message was required to convince home sellers that it was in fact a good time to list their homes. The message was simple, “Thinking of Selling?” on the front with the headline on the back “Now’s The Time.” A brief message explaining the current market conditions with just enough information to entice prospective home sellers that they could potentially get a good price for their home. All it states is, “If you are thinking of selling this is the time. Lots of buyers out there waiting for the right home to come to market. Inventory is low. Curious about the value of your home in today’s market? Call me at 914-424-7160”

The postcard was created using Adobe Photoshop and InDesign. The standard Better Homes and Gardens grass and sky branding background was utilized, but in a unique fashion. In this case I silhouetted the grass, which proved to be very time consuming, so that it could overlay a pocket watch. The pocket watch is the compelling image in this design and it is used to tie the “Now’s the Time” concept between the front and back of the postcard.

The postcard utilized variable data in print production so that the designs could be personalized for the individual real estate agents. This way they are able to include their name, photo and contact information reaching the mail boxes of their sphere of influence. This postcard design proved to be fairly effective in bringing in listing leads.

If you have a direct mail project that you would like to have produced yesterday, you better stop the clock and contact Ortner Graphics immediately.

Thinking of Selling? We'll showcase your home on all of the top national and local real estate websites. This is a variable direct mail post card for use in the real estate industry.

Creating an engaging direct mail post card design can be a challenging task. Especially in the field of real estate where postcard designs are most often simply a photo of a MLS listing along with a brief description of the property on the back. The above design breaks the mold of standard real estate postcard designs.

The Thinking of Selling concept pictured above promotes Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty’s listing syndication through social media and real estate websites such as Facebook, Trulia, Realtor.com and Zillow, to name just a few. A stock photo of a laptop computer was used to drive home the fact that this message is about an information technology service that the company offers. The real estate websites logos were then assembled in Adobe Illustrator and warped to match the laptop photo’s perspective in Adobe Photoshop. The Laptop was also silhouetted in Photoshop so that it could then be imported into Adobe InDesign and placed over Rand Realty’s standard grass/sky background branding image. The text was also written and typeset in InDesign and the logo was placed in the top right corner in accordance with Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate’s branding standards.

To ensure a cohesion between the front and back of the postcards the grass/sky image was used again as a background for the text. The body copy on the back further drives home the point to the card’s audience the significance of getting the potential lead’s home on as many websites as possible.

Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty utilizes a direct mail vendor with the ability to create postcards with variable text and photos. This gives their agents the opportunity to include all of their contact information along with headshot on the card. They also could customize the message on the back of the card to suit their needs.  This all ads up to an effective direct mail campaign. The postcard was so successful and popular with the real estate agents that the design was modified and resized to run in several of the Hudson Valley region’s publications as a branding ad.

Branding ad for Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty

Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate has created a large number of videos for the purpose of attracting a web audience to their site. These videos are also a great opportunity for the company to increase brand awareness, so they opted to create some on-air marketing to promote them. Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate then in turn syndicates the videos out to their Franchisee’s. Rand Realty used the opportunity to drive some more web traffic from their print campaign in a few local publications in Westchester and the Hudson Valley with the print ad displayed on the left.

The Power of Color certainly appeals to a graphic designer’s sensibilities. This video explains the basic principles of color theory and how to apply it in interior design. I also clearly used some color theory in the design of the ad. Three instances of Better Homes and Gardens green were placed over a black and white CAD rendered image adhering to the law of thirds. This has resulted in a logo that really stands out and text that is easily readable.

While working on this project I was both under time and budgetary constraints so I used my trusty flatbed scanner for the image of the fanned out Pantone book. This, of course, required some moderate retouching and color correction in Photoshop. The background image, Pantone book, logo and text were all assembled into the final design using Adobe InDesign. Certainly a fun project to work on and the end results make for a great looking ad.

The Explore. Play. Grow. HudsonHeartbeat.com Lifestyle Branding Ad for Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty

It was decided that a major portion of the  marketing campaign for  HudsonHeartbeat.com branding would need to be focused on the Hudson Valley lifestyle. This ad was designed with the Luxury market in Westchester County in mind. After some exhaustive image research and a few other design comps we decided that we should down play screen grabs of the actual site. Instead Rand Realty’s owners wanted to present it as a lifestyle ad. This style actually ties in more with the typical branding ads produced by Realogy‘s Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate franchise branding.

Initially the design used an image of a laptop. However, the new iPad was so much fun that we though it would be more hip to use an iPad instead of a laptop and better reach our luxury audience. The main background photo of the Adirondack chairs, dock, and water is from iStockPhoto. Eric Ortner took a studio photo of an iPad matching it to the perspective of the iStockPhoto shot. He then superimposed a screen grab of the HudsonHeartbeat.com site into the iPad image in Adobe Photoshop. Mr. Ortner then used Photoshop to place the iPad image into the Adirondack Chair Image. Upon purchase of the Hi-Res Adirondack chair it became clear that additional retouching of the iStock Photo image was required. In addition to being distressed, the hi-res photos revealed that the chairs had a great deal of dirt and mildew on them. So Eric Ortner needed to “repaint” the chairs in Photoshop. Some careful selection, masking, feathering and layering eliminated the filth. The page layout’s, photo, logos and text were then all put together in Adobe InDesign.

This branding ad is being used extensively in local publications throughout New York’s Westchester the Hudson Valley. It has also been turned into a postcard and flyer.

Flyer Promoting the Hudson Heartbeat Video Contest

On April 1, 2011  Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty released its new lifestyle blog dedicated to Westchester and the Hudson Valley. The goal of the site was to further enhance Search Engine Optimization as well as awareness of  RandRealty.com by generating traffic from an audience that wasn’t necessarily looking to purchase real estate. One chief component of the site is user generated community profile videos in the spirit of social media. What better way to garner this sort of video content than through a video contest. The flyer above was designed to entice a youthful and creative audience to enter their work in the video contest. The flyer’s design also closely follows the general design system used for on-air advertising promoting Hudson Heartbeat. This was done to reinforce the sites brand identity. The flyer has been posted in colleges and areas where young creative types may be found. This design was created entirely in Adobe Illustrator and will also be used on postcards and possibly print ads.