Research & News

Whether it's time to create a new company website or upgrade an existing one, it’s always good to be familiar with your options. More often than not, you’ll hear about Squarespace, the simple and dependable website builder with award-winning templates, and WordPress, the open-source content management system that makes up 40% of the web. Either option has pros and cons, so which should you use?

Congratulations on working with us to launch your website! This is a big moment for you, we know that. We’ve launched hundreds of websites, and here’s a few things you need to know.

You’ve had a dependable company website for years. That may be the problem. Websites can seem like a one-and-done investment, but to use a site effectively you’ll need to update it regularly. Let us break it down for you.

Deciding to run your own business is a big step on its own. Now, how do you get people to start buying your product?

It’s all advertisers talk about: “Build your brand.” But what is a brand, and why is it so important?

You’re a small-business owner in Alaska in need of a logo. Maybe you’ve been at this for years, and have recently decided your logo needs a redesign. Maybe you haven’t started your business yet. There’s no one-size-fits-all rule for logos

One of the major challenges for marketing departments and business owners when having a website designed and coded is understanding exactly what they’re getting. Our industry is notorious for a myriad of shady business practices

Ah, Facebook. The source of so much of our joy, and an unending amount of frustration when things don’t work the way we expect them. If you’ve been trying to figure out how to embed animated .GIFs on your Facebook business timeline, well you’re in luck.

What is SEO? SEO is shorthand for “Search Engine Optimization”, or managing how high your webpage ranks in search engine results. If you want your page to be found on the internet, you need SEO. There’s a little variance between search engine algorithms and what they look for in a page, but the core principles are the same

One of the most expensive mistakes that our clients make is not having a good file structure for their assets and not knowing what kinds of files to use, when. There are a few standard logo file types that you will always need for your business, and sending the right one, the first time, means that you won’t have to spend time running around trying to find that one particular file.

You can’t talk about digital marketing without social media. After deciding to take your business online, you’re going to need a communication platform. Each social media service has things it does well, and other features that limit its effective use. Social media services also cater to different demographics.

One of our recent websites, Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, was created for Thrive Creative and Communications. The organization is all about clarity of message, and our site communicates that. We prioritized simplicity in our design. The site is clean and uncluttered, saying everything it needs to and nothing it doesn’t.

Before you call the police or child protective services, let’s clear up what we’re talking about; in typography, widows and orphans refer to lines at the beginning or end of a paragraph that are separated from the body of the paragraph.

One of our recent projects was a website for Midnight Sun Oncology. Our client wanted something simple yet effective, that would soothe potential customers. The final product is clean, calming, and looks great on both desktop and mobile devices.

It is apparent that WordPress is a great CMS platform to build a low maintenance, low cost, professional website, simply by the sheer number of WordPress websites that exist today. WordPress 4.1 has been downloaded 12.6 million times and counting since December 18th, 2014 (ref.https://wordpress.org/download/counter/). Needless to say, WordPress is killing it.

Having designed marketing pieces for corporate clients for several years now, I’ve developed a serious, burning hatred for bad stock photography. I’m going to tell you why I hate them, and you should too.

Working in marketing and design, we follow a number of advertising agencies on social media, particularly in Alaska, where we’re based. Recently there’s been an unsettling trend of businesses using hashtags completely inappropriately, and I’m here to draw a line in the sand.