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Rockstar Comments is a new comment site I started because I got really bored and well I had one before. If you have looked at the Anonymous Space entries you can tell this is old news for me but with a spin…. I am better at designing now.

The user interface has been tweeked a lot to give users a better experience of the site and so they can look through the index of images more quickly.

The marketing atmosphere has changed but I am fairly certain that the old ways of doing business still hold true. Give them something of value in your marketing apporach and be real the rest is just a matter of time.

Stay tuned for more information.

Filters:

Human beings have an advanced filtration system to allow us to distinguish between what it is that is important and what can be disregarded. The occipital lobe is where all visual information is processed. It should be noted that these are the smallest lobes found in the brain and process all the information sent from the retina through the optic nerve. The retina is like the focal point of a camera where light is cast on a series of special nerve cells that create the picture we are viewing. This information is then sent to the occipital lobe for processing.

The retina sees all and does not distinguish anything. It cant tell the difference in importance between a tree in the background or that truck that is about to run you over. It is the job of the occipital lobe to decide what is important and this is decided by how it has been programmed.

Ever had a day when everything seemed to go wrong. Even the sun may seem dim or too bright. It wasn’t but your brain had been put in bad day mode and even your perceptional vision had been altered. This is an example of how this information is put to work. Vision is less a function of Biology then it is Psychology for our purposes. It is knowing how things will be translated and how to actively engage the audience in a way that is constructive that must be sorted out.

So whats important:

Well food, sex, shelter are the basics that are biological imperatives. If you have ever wondered why sex is one of the major staples in advertising it is because our eyes and our brain is Biological designed to constantly seek out sexual partners. The reason this is often used in conjunction with alcohol is because alcohol inhibits so called “higher” brain functions. In a sense it inhibits the things we have been taught are wrong our fearful and we are more drawn to do what is basal to our biology. People are not biological designed to buy cars or wear clothing or many of the other things we do though out our day. These are culturally learned and this comes back to what is important.

Culture:

Aside from the basal needs of Homo erectus we are taught ways to meet these needs and these are described by our culture. These are things that we teach each other through modeling, shaming, praising and other forms of behavior modification.

This is why it is an extremely bad idea to hire someone outside of your culture to market to your user base or audience. Many business have gone to countries such as India for cheap design and development work only to find out that the audience is repelled by the design.

example:

If you where trying to sell the idea of Christmas to Aborigines you would not use someone from Northern Ireland who would likely use depictions of snow and reindeer. Your audience has never seen snow so there is some evidence to believe that they would not even see it.  Things that are so completely foreign to our reality are disregarded by the occipital lobe because it has no memory to base it on and subsequently sees it as irrelevant (having no relationship) to getting the persons needs met.

Emotion:

If we can find a way to get the occipital lobe to pay attention to us for five seconds we have now moved into short-term memory. This is not a bad thing but we still have a lot of work to do. The easiest way to move from short-term memory to long term is to evoke a severe emotional response to what we are presenting.

example:

The use of humor is a great way to bridge this gap to long-term memory. Laughing releases endorphins and makes us feel good. This in turn releases polypeptides that are distributed all over the body. These cause reactions on a cellular level communicating to every cell in the body that it is time to feel good. If you don’t believe me and you are over 35 years of age I have on thing to say to you “Wheres the beaf?” Now that’s long term memory… way to go Wendy’s.

Subconscious:

Or more correctly unconscious thought is that which we do not perceive as important but still retain or that which is repressed do to so internalized fear. Regardless it is perception that has crossed the occipital lobes and made it into our reasoning process. This is another tool often used by companies with larger war chests to work with.

example:

Virgin Mobil used this technique when it first hit the market in order to help the brand enter the main stream. The company realized that they were up against ATT and other companies who had become household names and thus had incorporated into how we saw ourselves. You see for many people they spend most of their lives looking outside themselves to define who they are. As apposed to asking how I can come to some form of internalized balance they attempt to become balanced with the things they see around them. This is where Virgin Mobil came in.

They ended up being everywhere. They bought adds all over Myspace. They did extensive product placement in movies and TV. They even purchase landmark building adds to appear part of our environment. It was a brilliant strategy because it was the marketing that never happened.

This form of marketing works well even on a smaller form. The point is not to be overtly recognized but appear important at the same time. This way the visual cortex basically says… “Nothing really to see here but I have been seeing it a lot and so I will hold on to it.” This is also often connected with a mood word or phrase. Something like “Be you!”. And a visual color scheme that adds to the contextually desired emotion. The reason for this is because of how the brain stores information by locating relevant pieces of information together. So the company name stored in close relation to something that invokes a pleasurable feeling will fundamentally link them together. And walla you have a brand!

The real issue is keeping it… as we saw with Virgin Mobil who spent more many on their marketing campaign then their products which always causes a negative back loop.

Conclusion:

This is very relevant to the web since we are using interactive marketing involving several forms of media presentation. Simply remember that it is all magic and the trick is in knowing how it is done. And it is all done by manipulating perception.

Thanks for reading and I hope that it helps.

All of my consulting tips are free to use but of course everyone’s situation is a little different. If you would like consulting on your particular needs feel free to contact me as some of these tips may not be appropriate for your needs.

First the good news.

If you were nice enough to stick to white hat rather then  black hat SEO methods then you are actually benefiting from the misfortune of your competitors. I can actually help your site play nice with search engines like Google. We do not guarantee ranking as some so called “SEO” companies do but a quick look at these companies Google rankings will tell you they are full of (insert inappropriate word choice here). I often have to laugh at the SEO claims of sites on freelance websites were the SEO company site ranks no where on google even after a 50 page spider search. If their company was ranked on the first page they wouldn’t be hitting up freelance websites for work they would be getting plenty of clients through Google.

Unfortunately many companies attempt to use Black hat SEO tactics that will kill your site in the long run by that time they will have cashed your check and moved on. Sometimes the long run is several hours or even minutes but generally its weeks or months down the line. Also Google has a huge algorithm backing their engine. How it ranks and indexes your site is so convoluted and secret that no one can predict exactly what will happen.

A final note on ranking promises…

I have explained this to many clients that seek high ranking for their business. They all want to be found on the first page of the Google search engine. Well there are only ten links on the first page of Google search and there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of sites competing for that search position.  Guess what, many of these sites employ SEO specialists to help with their ranking. So with only ten slots its best to play by the rules. Not only will Google like your site more but there are plenty of other ways to market to your audience.

If you are in trouble the following Black hat methods may have been used with your site.

Doorway Pages -

This is a site that has keyword stuffed pages directly linked to it. Basically that means there are pages linked from your home page that have nothing but a long list of keywords or keyword stuffed content.

Keyword Stuffing -

This is where keyword terms are STUFFED throughout your page. Sometimes it looks down right ridiculous and causes the content to be disconnected and unreadable.

Auto-generated content -

This is auto generated content that is placed in pages. The content is scrambled and makes no sense. Guess what Google, like any five year old, can read. It knows about grammatical structure and it knows when its being tricked.

Cloaking -

This is a page presented to search engines that looks nothing like your actual content. Using the no follow method of linking you can prevent Google from indexing certain content on your site. Guess what that does not mean it does not read it.

Hidden Text -

There are several ways to hide content on your page. The first was basically to match the text color with your background color or image. Also there are several ways to utilize CSS to produce hidden content that will appear in the source code but not actually displayed on the page. Google is hip to all these tricks.

Link Exchange -

Hanging with the wrong crowd can get you in trouble. Be careful who you link exchange with because not only can their SEO practices look bad on them but it can come back on you. Also its pointless as Google has severely decreased the weight they place on inbound links and now search extensively for relevancy from the linking page. If the pages linking to you does not have similar content then it is disregarded as an inbound link.

Buying links from spamming farms -

Bad Bad idea. If your linking text is thrown all over and is identical which it usually is when you work with these companies Google will punish you for trying to trick them.

Duplicate content -

This is one everyone has to watch. With dynamically driven sites like Busted Designs  Google will sometimes think you are trying to trick it by posting multiple pages with the exact same content. Most good CMSs have fixed this issue in their systems but some older sites screw up in this regard. Also posting link backs from .com, .org and .net sites will drop your ranking.

Selling links on your site -

This is different from advertising on your site. The Google spiders know not to follow those links and index them. If you are not careful in setting up your advertising or are actually selling links on your site kiss your Goggle ranking bye bye.

Linking out to bad sites -

Liking to link farmers will effect your site ranking. Just don’t do it.

SEO can really help a site and can really hurt one. Although I often tell people not to worry so much about Google and look for other ways to market your site it is a factor and why not work with Google. If you need help please feel free to contact me.

Damn Google

After reading this you may be upset that Google has decide to punish your indexing. You may be feeling upset but remember that Google has to do one thing well in order to stay in business and that is properly index sites. Coming up with ways to trick Google to index you over your competitors is detrimental to Googles business model because i they can not return relative results in the search returns then people will stop using thier service. The fact that Google punishes bad SEO practices is not only good business but it is good for anyone who utilizes the Google search engine. I for one am glad that Googles black lists people who dont play fair because in my mind it is just another form of disohesty that is placing greed over a usable product.

Thanks for reading and I hope that it helps.

All of my consulting tips are free to use but of course everyone’s situation is a little different. If you would like consulting on your particular needs feel free to contact me as some of these tips may not be appropriate for your needs.

Companies in today’s market are having a really hard time gaining any traction on the internet. Gone are the days when you could graduate with a degree in marketing and not end up pulling your hair out over failing campaigns and zero traffic.

I personally out lived two marketing directors at my last position who completely ignored me do to their fear of the web.

I was running a website that generated millions of views a month and they shut it down to advertise with Chrysler or something equally as wasteful and more expensive. Did they sell car parts… nope… not even close.

The company also had a really horrible PR problem. After the CEO was spanked on 60 minutes things pretty much went from bad to worse…

Here are few good reasons to ditch your marketing director for a web PR and marketing expert.

No Formal training available for the WEB.

The fact of the matter is that there is no formal training on how to market successfully on the web. No schools have cracked that nut, and if they claim to have a methodolgy by the time the individual graduates the nut will have gone from a chestnut to a peanut or perhaps an orange.

The problem is that web marketing changes, evolves and mutates at an alarming rate. The reason for this is that the medium is so cheap and anyone can add content. Once something works it is quickly mimicked a thousand times over and it suddenly becomes annoying and your target audience tunes it out. Rule number one don’t annoy your customer.

Most marketing directors are afraid of the internet.

This is a fact because companies lose billions of dollars each year on the web. This is not the Internets fault but is due to lazy and inexperienced web marketers who want to throw money at problem as opposed to thinking outside the box. If your Marketing director is not utilizing the web its not because it isn’t valuable its because he or she has no idea how to utilize it successfully. Also if this persons idea of marketing consists of only buying and tracking Google Adword campaigns be prepared to kiss your budget good bye or at least be completely ignored. Click ratios for Google adwords have pretty much gone through the floor.

If your marketing Director has never used Myspace, wikipedia, twitter, facebook, or an of these other social networking sites then your penetration and stickiness will suffer.

True web marketers know how to utilize all aspects of the web. We don’t just focus on SEO or SEF ( same thing actually) but instead are constantly seeking new areas to find target eyeballs. Sometimes we even find our own ways to create this right out of thin air. Marketing on the web is more an art form then a Science so you need an artist not a lab rat.

Example:

GOOGLE -

Google has a tremendous amount of clout on the web and yet it is not successfully turning these eyeballs into money. The problem is that Google is suffering under its on success. In the infantsy stage of Google it was small and much more able to evolve with the internet. Now it has gotten big and bulky and it has not properly spread around decision making ability. The big money maker for Google has been Adwords but what was initially a great idea has turned on them. The concept that anyone can post adds in an unregulated environment was genius in that it offered to make $ for Google with little or no work. Unregulated and completely Automated was nice at first until Google ads began suffering from a lack of credible advertisers. Finally the ads just where not appealing to the end user and they stopped clicking on them because Google ads where inundated with spam and crap.

Now Google is suffering do to loss of ad revenue and they just don’t know what to do. The company has gotten to big so any fix could be months if not years down the line. Sites are pulling ads cause they are not making any money. I personally ran a site that was receiving 4 million views a month. Google ads even showed 4 million views a month. For 4 million displays I received around $220. Thats .006 cents a view or 5.5 cents per 1000 views. This is down from where it used to be many years ago. The exact number cost per click over time is difficult to follow since Google does not release these statistics. Why does Google not release stats on average CPC over time were adsence account holders can easily gain access to them?  Because they are going down and you just don’t advertise that you are losing money or your product is broken.

There are reasons for Googles troubles and most web marketers can give you some insight but due to the fact that its marketing strategy is so inflexible and run by pedigreed marketing people who have probably never touched Myspace or Twitter it is this persons view that Google will have to restructure or continue to have losses.

Thanks for reading and I hope that it helps.

All of my consulting tips are free to use but of course everyone’s situation is a little different. If you would like consulting on your particular needs feel free to contact me as some of these tips may not be appropriate for your needs.

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Scrubs Indigo is a new comer to the market of making scrubs. They are offering more, so much more, for your dollar. I love start up companies cause I can really get my branding brain going. Unlike its competitors we wanted to convey a lot in a few simple lines and curves. A logo is basically lines and curves put together to tell someone who you are.
Design:
The color choice was obvious since indigo is a nice shade of blue but how do we get some congruency to help communicate the companies’ personality. A company is like a person and is perceived by the public as such so we need to start them off on the right foot. I wanted something soothing and friendly. So nice smooth font was needed as a starting base and as I worked my sketchbook I wondered how indigo was made. Since this new material they are using is environmentally friendly I hoped it was not made for the whiskers of your common house cat.
What is Indigo:
Well as it turns out the color indigo is made from a several plants in the genus Indigofera. Some people may have thought that I just through some leaves on a word and called it a day but that’s just not me. I went and researched what this plant looked like and even though it has green leaves just like many other plants, photosynthesis and all, I used the color and combined it with the leaves of the plant to come up with this wonderful logo.

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Clean Clean Clean:
So we needed the logo to be clean. I mean who uses scrubs? Hospitals and other such facilities and they want their scrubs to be clean. So I used a lot of white in the logo to offer familiarity to the clients these people will be marketing to.
Competition:
After researching some of the competitor’s logos I was amazed at how far off they were from a real branding idea. The logos were powerful, forceful and almost scary. Not something that went well with the product. They where also complex and difficult to screen on the products leaving me to surmise that this company is going to fair well with this little piece of work I did for them. Placing this logo against its competitors made you want to run screaming from the mean ole competitor logo to this loving warm piece of work.
Its just a logo:
Yes its just the piece of art that will forever be associated with your company. It is just something you are going to hopefully not feel “stuck with” years down the line. It is just your first impression and your company name. It is really the door opener and the deal sealer. And yes it is just a logo.
Micrologo:
These are becoming more and more popular due to the web 2.0 market. You see the web 2.0 market had a limited amount of space to brand with and could not show the entire logo in the area allowed. Because of this we have scene the emergence of the micrologo. While it may not seem pertinent to need one for companies that are not primarily on the web people respond to their environment and their perceptions change when their daily habits change. If you want to stay in the game you have to appear to be up with the times and a micrologo can do this for your company.

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I bet you didn’t know I was a rock star. Well actually I am not. I cannot even play an instrument but that doesn’t not mean I cant act like a rock star or even feel like a rock star.
To be perfectly honest with the domain situation the way it is this was one that I liked and it conveyed the theme of the site. The basic theme was my I belief that you are awesome and in your universe and that is what matters. I am a big believer in perceived reality and knowing that most people are governed by their subsequent fears I really wanted to offer something different. I actually created this podcast as a way to do my part in helping people realize that most of our day to day fears are not real and that we can recreate ourselves when ever we decide to.
That is not to say this is easy. On the contrary it requires a complete mental shift from not only what we were taught but from what we are continually being taught throughout our entire life.

Fear is a great way to control large groups of people. When you need a group of people to do exactly what you want keep them in fear. Tear down their self-esteem and make them dependent on you as their only salvation. This seems to be the way many marketing firms work today.
In my opinion they are wrong.

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If you really want to get someone’s attention you have to set him or her free. Our society as a whole is tired of fear. We fear running out of money, losing our homes, not paying for our kids college, not being attractive to our partner, being alone… these and many other fears are how many people attempt to control us.
We are offered salvation if we buy this product of stay at that job. We conform and with every sacrifice we loose a little bit of who we really are. Our uniqueness.
You want to get someone’s attention tell them something different. Let them know that they are fine just as they are. That you don’t need this product to attract that cheerleader but hey it smells great and will enhance how you perceive the world cause nice smells are nice… That confidence is what you need so look inside. Buy the car you like take the job you love and remember that it is your relationships that you need to really value. Your wife… your kids… your mother…
These are the things that bring true depth to your life and we are here for you. We are striving to make the world a little better. We sacrifice to ease your suffering. We fight the good battles and will never fail to act if evil is attempting to prevail.
We also understand that your concept of good is just as valid as ours and that perception is what is real and we want to help you perceive the most important thing with more clarity. Yourself. Because you are awesome… you are a miracle a combination of atoms, molecules, cells and organs that have taken billions of years to align them selves in the perfect way to create you. And if that is not a miracle I don’t know what is… So tell those who tear you down or tell you you are not complete that your done listening to them.
When you can do this you too are a rockstar! Embrace your inner rockstar!
See good marketing is ethical don’t you want to be a rockstar now.
Hehe…
Oh yeah the site!
Well its your basic podcast with me as the star. It holds many of my older podcast that used to be housed on The Recovery Podcast . Yet another casualty of the Hythiam shut down.
It is multimedia and very exciting just like me and I added a neat little Iphone layout so be sure to check it on your phone.

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Anonymous Space was the most successful site that I created and promoted. It almost makes me sad that it was taken down in its prime but it was fun while it lasted. The site was my idea, my concept, my baby and I developed it, marketed it and nurtured it to what it became.
A few of the stats about the site.
Total visits:
1,640,374
Total Pageviews:
22,068,826
Banner views:
176,550,608
Average time on site:
9:52
Total time on site:
Over 23,000 hours
Direct Visits:
384,104
Myspace visits:

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249,211
Best day visits:
16,663
Best day views:
242,220

Feel free to click the images for more information.

The site was a great source of traffic to push in other directions. It lead to the success of 12 Step Space and the fact that The Recovery podcast was listened to over 50,000 times.

Not only that but it was a lot of fun to manage and was a much needed resource at the time. My marketing efforts and unique style of managing the site was one of the biggest reasons why it was so successful. Many people who try to achieve some type of success in the web 2.0 arena find that their personality is getting in the way. It is a fine line between hands off and direct managing that takes some time to learn. But when you have mastered it it will apear that nothing at all is happening.

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Anonymous Space was one of my big guns that I created in 2007 and was up until 2009 when the new owners mistakenly shut if down. Come on who shuts down a site that has an Alexa ranking in the 20,000 and is still climbing. Who shuts down a site that is serving 100’s of millions of inbound links. Well no use crying of spilled milk especially if you where not the one who spilled it.
Concept:
This site was a based on a simple concept… Image sharing. This model has been done again and again but Anonymous space was one of the first. The premise was simply to offer a place where people could upload and host images for their social networking sites. The point was to keep it simple and make it easy to use.
Design:
We used some Javascript to limit what had to be present in the html alone. This allowed us to save space for presenting images and images where why people where there. We didn’t want to distract people with fancy design and kept the design simple although another site is under production that will appear more exciting due to the fact that this site may have been a little to plain which may have contributed to why it took some time for it to really take off.

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Modifications:
While the site itself is based on an open source engine I did bring in a developer to make the user interface more friendly. Don’t get me wrong I love the CMS it ran on but it was developed be developers and they would have really benefited from a designer to help with the interface. The final design allowed members to feel like they had more ownership over their contributions to the site and made it more attractive and friendly.
Marketing:
We started it out as a site targeting the recovery community, which offered a good user base to draw from, but the site attracted everyone eventually due to the inclusive name of the site. In its prime the site indexed over 20,000 images and they were sort able and placed in categories.
Its to Simple:
Honestly the site is too simple to really write to much about it. It served images and did traffic that was amazing in comparison to anything else I have ever worked on. This is a great place to point out how important it is to keep your concept simple.
What Happen:
The site was up from over 2 years and was finally a casualty of Hythiams money issues and a new more unsuccessful marketing strategy. Personally it was a bad move because the site was established which really is the most difficult phase. All that was left was to determine how to make it profitable.

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Addictive Answers is another logo I created for a possible future start up. Note that is also targeted at the recovery community so the use of AA in the logo just made it all the more marketable. The idea was a place for people to offer advice and answer questions in regards to recovery oriented questions.
Design:
This is a base one color design easily styled in Photoshop for the web. The use of the word bubble instead of a traditional boxed frame adds an element of playfulness to the artwork while the blue gradient is soothing to the eye. The font selection was to add an element of structure to the design offering the idea that the information found here can be trusted.

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Unity
The above is a little example of my drawing skill… or lack there of. Heh. If you were in recovery you get it if not then don’t worry about it it doesn’t affect you. Remember my shirts are not supposed to be cynical but instead a little tongue in cheek or perhaps even dark humor. The point was to present something they had not scene done before.

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Stop Looking
I love this shirt because it implied that sex is not spiritual, something I firmly do not agree with, but it also speaks to objectification in every day media of which I am still on the fence. But all in all it is just funny and I liked it… this one did fairly well in the shop.

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STO
The company was Sicker Thann Others and I have always wanted one of those loud ass muscle cars that you can just feel hum in your chest. Well after giving it some thought and even though the GTO is my second favorite, only bowing to fords Mach1 (sorry my dad was ford guy), it did have something I needed. I needed a reason to put it on a shirt. Well look close at the emblem on the front of the car… hehe.

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Somewhere
This was done after I did a very successful movie called Somewhere. I did it in flash and for sometime it was all over the web. I did find it funny that many people on Myspace who disagreed with my podcast and thought I was the most evil thing that ever came down the pike had this little movie on their page… rofl

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Recycle
In the rooms I have often heard people use the following saying and pardon my French but “He is such a piece of sh*t.” Or “I am such a piece of sh*t”. This got me to thinking about excrement and how we viewed this stuff. Then I was lead to how the universe sees it… nature… it is rich in good stuff that plants and bugs need… these bugs and plants feed the things we eat… unless ofcourse we are eating the plants and bugs themselves. With out this part of the process we would have nothing to eat. Nature wastes nothing. Everything has value to something. Its awesome! Humans are the only creatures that create things that have no value… and we do it to people to… we create people with such low self esteem that they feel they are of no value… and of course they are, nature is pretty clear on that point…
So in recovery we take something that seems to have no value and make it valuable… people.

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Guns
Ok they where just cool not to mention the relationship between guns and defects… they are both used as a means of self-defense. And in a perfect world neither would be needed. This also did fairly well in the shop.

Conclusion:
It should be noted that these are all vector based objects that are easy to screen and print. I learned a lot about the silk screening process in doing this project.
It was loads of fun!

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Attack Ant was a development company I started and did a few projects under. The idea was to offer solutions from simple websites to large social networks and everything in between. The company was founded by myself and a developer that I had worked on several successful projects with. We accepted projects for most of 2008 until he went to work for a software development company and I returned to Busted Designs as my primary source for freelance work.
The company was to be edgy and geekish hence the name and the logo. The logo was a simple vector based objected styled in photoshop to give it the techish feel. I felt that it was important to make sure the logo was visible with limited colors and this one worked well as it was highly recognizable with even one color usage.
I like clean creative design and this is one of my favorites.