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Visual Lure Named as a Top St. Louis Web Design Agency by UpCity

Posted on October 3, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

Top St. Louis web design agency

Earlier this year Visual Lure was named as one of The Best Web Designers in St. Louis by Expertise.com. Today we are proud to announce that another organization has honored Visual Lure. UpCity has named Visual Lure a Top Local St. Louis Web Design Agency for 2016. The criteria was based on how well the company represents itself online; from the user experience of the company’s website, to their social media presence and prominence in organic search results.

What Does This Mean?

UpCity’s Top Local Agency marketplace is a resource designed to connect small and medium sized local businesses with high-quality digital marketing service providers in their local area, allowing business owners to get the services they need quickly, from a service provider they can trust. The UpCity team independently reviews agencies across North America to determine the best service providers in each local market, ensuring that no matter where you are, great digital marketing services are never more than a click away.

About UpCity

UpCity provides a comprehensive local inbound marketing platform to help digital marketing agencies scale SEO, local and social marketing services. The UpCity platform serves as a single operating system that includes robust project management, sales tools, reporting, and can be fully white labeled to streamline client engagements from onboarding to ongoing engagement. UpCity, a venture capital-backed business based in Chicago, was founded in 2009. Learn more at www.upcity.com.

Visual Lure’s Web Design Services

Call us at 618.407.9231, email us at info@visuallure.com or click here to learn more about our web design services »

 

Holly Ireland Photography Website Redesign

Posted on September 11, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

New Holly Ireland Photography WordPress Website

Visual Lure is proud to announce the redesign and relaunch of a new custom WordPress website for Holly Ireland Photography. Holly is our favorite San Diego photographer who specializes in engagement, wedding, family, high school senior and dance photography. Even though we designed Holly’s old site, it had become dated by how it was coded and the load times had become subpar. The new site loads quickly and the code is now much cleaner. We have already seen a huge spike in search engine rankings since the relaunch, which was one of the main reasons for the redesign.

The old website ranked organically on page 3 or 4 of Google for “San Diego family photographer”, and since the redesign, you can now see it on the middle of page 1.  The new site ranks #2 on the first page for “San Diego senior photographers” and any variation of that search phrase. (I would consider this #1 on page 1 as the first organic listing is Yelp). One of Holly’s passions is dance photography and if you search “San Diego dance photographers” you will not only see that her site ranks #1 on the first page, but also #2 and #3. Lastly, we saw a huge improvement on her rankings for “San Diego wedding photographer”. Her old site bounced between pages 4 and 5, and the new site has been bouncing between pages 2 and 3.

From a design and development standpoint, the new website features a masonry collage on the home page with a cool hover effect, a sticky header for more user friendly and convenient navigation, a custom animated testimonials widget, fast loading masonry photo galleries and a quick loading blog landing page. On a responsive level, the new website renders much better on tablets and smart phones.

Lastly, we would like to congratulate Holly on being named San Diego’s Top Wedding Photographer by San Diego’s A-List. This was no small feat as there were over 160 photographers in the running. Even more impressive was that there were over 45,000 votes cast. Again, kudos to Holly Ireland Photography (and her husband Bruce) for being ranked #1!

Learn more about our Search Engine Optimization/SEO and custom WordPress web design services.

Sales Brochure Design for State Construction

Posted on July 29, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

Visual Lure recently completed a new sales brochure for State Construction, a premier St. Louis Metro East residential home builder. They currently have three subdivisions with available lots: Bethel Ridge Farms, The Estates at Hearthstone and Cobblestone Ridge, with more in the works. The subdivisions are all located in O’Fallon, IL, one of the fastest growing communities in the St. Louis area.

State Construction has a solid reputation for their commitment to craftsmanship and for building quality homes. It was a pleasure designing a new brochure for them that reflects those same qualities.

Not only did we design the brochure, we also gathered print bids, coordinated printing and press checked the project for quality control. Printing was preformed by Schwartzkopf Printing in Alton, Illinois. In addition to the brochure design, Visual Lure is also designing and developing a new website for State. Check back soon for a post on the launch of their new website.

State Construction brochure graphic design

Our Graphic Design Services

Click here to learn more about our graphic design services, or here to view our graphic design portfolio. Please feel free to contact us with any questions about our design services or to receive a FREE quote.

 

Logo Designs for Marilyn Lou Boudoir & SoCal Headshots

Posted on June 19, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

One of my favorite photographers is Michael Anthony out of Los Angeles, California. He and his wife Jennifer are both extremely talented engagement and wedding photographers whose unique style is defined by what they do with natural light and off-camera flash. Michael’s signature shots look like magical movie posters or dramatic romance novel covers. They are truly pieces of art. Just take a look at a couple of his images below:

el-matador-beach-engagement-photography-1top-wedding-photographer-los-angeles beach-wedding-photos-california tm045z40kd2

Visit michaelanthonyphotography.com to view more of Michael’s photography.

We were honored when they came to us to design logos for two of their new independent sub-brands, one for a new boudoir line, and the other for a new headshot company.

While Michael was in town speaking at Shutterfest ’16, we met up for lunch one day to discuss the new brands. When we got into the car to go to lunch, neither Michael nor Jen knew what they wanted to call their new boudoir company. We started brainstorming on the ride from Union Station to Anthony’s (maybe a mile or so), and by the time we arrived at the restaurant, Marilyn Lou Boudoir was born. The name is based off Jen’s middle name, and part of her maiden name, which we all liked because it had an old Hollywood sound to it. Perfect for a glamorous, upscale and classy boudoir brand in Los Angeles. On that short ride, we also came up with the idea of naming their photography collections after old Hollywood starlets. During lunch, we all agreed that the logo should use a script or handwritten typeface.

Below you can see the logo, along with a sample branding package including colors, typefaces, patterns and identity design. We really love how this color palette and identity design have a feminine and classic look, yet still feels modern. We also tied Michael’s brand to the new boudoir one by using his heart mark for the dot of the i in Marilyn.

Marilyn Lou Boudoir branding designMarilyn Lou Boudoir identity design

Marilyn Lou Boudoir watermark logo

Sample Watermark

 

Next we discussed the SoCal Headshots logo. Michael wanted the logo to feel fresh and hip, while having a friendly, approachable Southern California vibe to it. We feel the final logo is exactly that. Check out the logo and brand samplings below:

branding & logo design SoCal Headshots

SAMPLE WATERMARKS:

SoCal-watermark-logo2

SoCal-watermark-logo

Click here to view more of our Photography Branding work »

Justen Hong to be New St. Louis AIGA Website & Interactive Chair

Posted on June 16, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

Justen Hong St. Louis AIGA Website & Interactive Chair

Justen Hong, the owner and Head Eye-Catcher™ of Visual Lure, recently decided to get more involved with the St. Louis design community, in particular, its local AIGA chapter. He was recently nominated and confirmed to be the new Website & Interactive Chair. The Chair is responsible for the direction of the local St. Louis AIGA website. The chair works closely with each board member as a liaison to gather information to be published on the web. The chair also works with the national office in regards to the local site.

Justen looks forward to working with the other board members to help inform and motivate other designers to get more involved in this great organization.

The AIGA’s mission is to advance design as a professional craft. With over 70 chapters and 25,000 members, it is the oldest and largest professional membership organization for design. The organization defines global standards and ethical practices, helps guide design education, enhances professional development and helps designers connect with one another.

 

Visit the St. Louis AIGA website »

 

Visual Lure Completes New WordPress Website for EWR Architects

Posted on June 15, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

Responsive designs for St. Louis Metro East Architect WordPress website

EWR Architects is an award-winning architectural firm located in Fairview Heights, Illinois. They specialize in architecture, interiors and planning, and serve the greater St. Louis Metro East area – along with most of Southern Illinois. Their services cover all commercial architecture with extensive experience in office, educational, healthcare, recreational, housing, civil/municipal and industrial.

The new website was built in WordPress utilizing a fully custom, responsive designed theme. The theme includes a high-performance home page slideshow, an easy to use column system, a fully integrated news blog, a sticky navigation sidebar, a sliding testimonials widget, and a custom admin section where EWR’s staff can easily maintain their markets and projects. We customized this section so all EWR has to do is: log into the admin section, go to the custom projects tab, then add, edit or remove their projects. This system is setup so easy all they need to do is: 1. press the add a new project button 2. select the market it goes under 3. add a title and description 4. select a featured image 5. press an “add gallery button”, then drag and drop their images in (The images automatically create a custom slideshow) 6. and press update. The project is then automatically added to their portfolio.

EWR website design custom projects page

Visual Lure completed this website in collaboration with of Cindy Sorgea, a very talented PR specialist and copywriter. She was in charge of project management and content creation. We handled everything on the design and development side.

 

Visit EWR Architects

 

Learn more about Visual Lure’s web design services »

 

Branding Package for a Tampa, Florida Photography Studio

Posted on June 4, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

Donnie Jones Photography is a Tampa, Florida photography studio that specializes in weddings, engagements, high school senior portraits and maternity photography. Donnie is a very talented photographer and someone who understands the importance of building a brand and doing everything right the first time around. He is pretty much our ideal client and we can’t wait to see his success.

Donnie Jones Photography came to Visual Lure wanting a luxury, high-end looking branding package, and we’re confident that we delivered. It started with the logo which features an integrated DJ monogram along with a logo for his premier Gold Collection. We then designed an identity package which included business cards, letterhead and envelopes. We finished everything off with a fully-custom, responsive, fast-loading, easy to maintain WordPress website. The website features a large random loading image on the home page, a fully integrated blog, a sticky header, masonry light box photo galleries and subtle CSS animation effect that give the site a sense of elegance and sophistication.

 

DJP-logo-branding

Tampa, Florida wedding photographer Donnie Jones

DJP-wordpress-web-design

 

Learn more about Visual Lure’s logo design & branding or web design services »

 

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