Years ago when I was looking for a design/artist job, I typed ‘artist’ into a job search engine and the only result was for a ‘sandwich artist’ at subway. So…assuming you don’t feel like asking people what kind of cheese they want on their hoagie, we may have a job for you!

ProspectMX is a Lancaster internet marketing company. Does this describe you…

You like to design webpages? You like to code them in html and CSS? You’re familiar with WordPress? You have a passion for Flash and actionscript? Then apply already!

What you should send…

Resumes are good and all, and we definitely want to see them, but please send as many work examples as you can. Sites, flash, video, drawings, macaroni pictures. The more the merrier.

Click here to apply…

…and if you’re this guy or gal….you’re hired!

Our home city – Lancaster, PA – has seen visits from both major party presidential candidates in the last week. Since the 2008 election is fast approaching, and the candidates have been playing the politics game in our backyard so frequently, I wanted to take a second and analyze each president’s internet marketing campaigns.

For starters, each candidate is using the essential social media and networking sites – Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg. Obama has the appearance of being more “tech savvy,” thanks to his Twitter profile with over 78,000 followers.

Obama’s use of the web as a driver for donations has been well executed. In a random selection of ways to get to Obama’s online home – Google organic search results, Google PPC links, direct website visits, and mobile searches by Blackberry – our team found four custom lead generation forms to fill out before hitting the main page. Two were e-mail capture forms, two were for donations.

Only one pay-per-click ad led to a donation form on the McCain site, but the Arizona Senator isn’t neglecting the internet. The Wall Street Journal noticed McCain’s camp is using an ambush pay-per-click campaign. Search “Joe Biden” and check out the top sponsored listings – “Joe Biden on Obama” links to McCain’s site. Very sneaky, sir.

McCain’s campaign is placing a heavy focus on this year’s election issues with its PPC. Search “housing crisis” and “U.S. economy” in Google… McCain will have a PPC ad there – Obama won’t.

The internet is definitely playing a huge role in this year’s election. Its cool to see how each candidate has found a completely different way to use the power of the mighty internet and search engines to their advantage.

Any other cool internet marketing tools the candidates are using that we missed? Drop us a line below.

We have put together a comic in celebration of Google Chrome. Hopefully Sergey and Larry have good senses of humor… because we love the product!

I’m a big fan of just browsing sites and examining their logos. I guess it’s a bit geeky but I think it’s a pretty normal thing to do if you’re really into something. So this weekend I was clicking through some design sites and some non-design sites and saw some pretty good logos and some really bad logos! Unfortunately a good cross-section of the bad logos have been designed over the last 5-10 years while logo standards have somewhat dropped off.

The standards I speak of are pretty simple. Readability, clean, appropriate fonts and colors and the ability to be recreated for black and white usage.

Right off the bat, the first (and often biggest) offender has been the recreation in black and white factor. I attribute this primarily to the internet age. More and more often you see marketing being geared strictly to the world wide web, and since you don’t see many black and white computer screens, there isn’t much need for a black and white logo. Well, that is just craziness, you still need your logo, your brand, to be usable in color AND in black and white… even if you go green and don’t use paper, chances are that prospective clients still do, which means you must still design for print as well as web. It’s a simple concept but very true.

I think the rest is pretty self explanatory. Obviously you want your logo to be readable, else why would you have a name? If your logo looks sloppy, guess what that says about you? And if you use odd font combinations and strange colors… again… what does that say about you, about your business… and if you happen to be dealing with visual advertising and marketing, what kind of vision are you portraying with such nonsense?

So I say to everyone who would happen to come across this post, in your opinion, what are some examples of good logos and examples of bad logos? Of course this is all your opinion, but please give some backing to your candidates and why you feel they are good or bad.

The general consensus is that “web designers can make a site, but they can’t make it look good. Graphic designers can make it look good, but can’t make it work.”

I say, bollocks to that!

When I was a design student there was a clear-cut difference between Graphic Design and Web Design. You would think that the differences were easy to determine, i.e. graphic design is print and web design is internet. But that was not the case. (more…)