A few things that made winter awesome.

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Spring officially begins this evening at 5:45PM (Central Time). In honor of the last few hours of winter, here are a few things that made it pretty awesome.

  • Great projects with great clients like evolve24, Xtra Lease, Doe Run, DuPont, ZeaVision and Pi Beta Phi.
  • My nephew was born! And he’s cute. You can see him over on Instagram.
  • This potato soup. The best part is that you start with frozen potatoes, so no cutting and peeling. Perfect winter comfort food.
  • Celebrating 2 years since I adopted my goofy cat, Punx. He’s over on Instagram, too.
  • I turned 30! I’m choosing to be excited about a new decade, and not totally freak out about it… although I’d be lying to say I wasn’t a bit freaked out.
  • Celebrating 1 year since I left my full-time job. I’m so happy to be freelancing now. Get in touch if you need a designer to help you out!

Winter has been pretty fab, but I love spring and so I’m excited for its arrival! Walks to Starbucks, windows open in my house and car, getting out of boots and into sandals… I can’t wait. Happy Spring everyone!

Client Work: Newsletters

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Right before the holidays I wrapped up two newsletter projects. Both were the exact same format – a 4-page 8.5×11 size that folded down to 8.5×5.5 for mailing.

The first was for the Northeast Fire Protection District. This newsletter was sent out to community members in the NEFPD service area. The Chief was excited to share updates about the new firehouse they are planning to build, as well as other community programs.

The second was an internal employee newsletter for Doe Run. This newsletter highlighted their 150th Anniversary celebration and also had lots of information about health plans for the new year.

I really enjoying working on newsletters or publications like this, so I was happy to wrap up my year working on both these projects. Feel free to check out both newsletters below!

 

 

Trust Score graphic

Client Work: Visualizing Big Data

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Did you know that more data has been produced in the past 2 years than in the entire rest of the history of mankind? It boggles the mind!

One client I work with regularly, evolve24, works to help companies make sense of the big media madness. Since their business is data, and incredibly complex data, they often find it challenging to find the right visuals to use on their website, in their client presentations, etc. One project I did with them toward the end of 2014 was a presentation deck focusing on their methodologies. In addition to the graphics, I also created templates for all company powerpoint presentations, including cover slide, section break slide, and a few variations of content slides. Here are a few of the slides and the graphics I created for them.

 

 

I really enjoyed working on this project with them! I really enjoy the creative challenge of trying to figure out how to create a visual interpretation of a complex topic. Maybe since I am a visual learner myself, I know the importance and impact of having graphics to help someone understand something. You can be offering clients the most amazing product in the world, but if they can’t understand what you’re offering, you’ll be way less likely to make those sales.

If any other businesses out there want some help creating impactful graphics to help promote their business this year, I’d love to help. Shoot me an email at anna@annakeith.com and let’s talk about how I can help you.

 

 

Web updates and a Thanksgiving-ish wallpaper

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You might notice a few differences around here at annakeith.com. I’m still finessing things a bit, but you can probably already tell that I’ve made some updates to the site and this blog section. So, I hope you like the new look and take a little peek around.

Meanwhile, I decided last week sometime that I wanted to make a fall wallpaper for my computer desktop. I wanted it to be kinda of Thanksgiving themed but not too literal… partly because I didn’t want to feel obligated to take it right down after the Thanksgiving holiday. As I was thinking about ideas I remembered this concept of finding joy in the everyday, and the idea of being joyful feels very similar to be thankful in my mind. Hence, the wallpaper below was created! Feel free to use on your desktop as well if you’d like.

NovTechWallpaper

Catch Infographic

Client Work: Catch infographic

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So if you check out my portfolio page, you might notice I just added an infographic project I did with Oasis. This project highlights the great work they are doing through their Catch program, which pairs adults 50+ with elementary school kids to learn about healthy eating and benefits of exercise.

Fun fact about this project: There are actually 18 versions of this infographic. There are versions customized for each state in which the program is active, highlighting program locations and local participants. Why in the world did they need 18 versions? Well, Oasis is using these infographics as they apply for grants and funding for the program, some of which are state specific and some which will benefit the program across the country. I had a lot of fun working on this project and hope these infographics help them grow Catch!

See what the client had to say and see the whole infographic below. 

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Christmas Cards

What I’ve been up to lately: Christmas Cards

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Been a busy stretch with lots of fun projects… Including 12 Christmas cards for a client! It was Christmas in July for me this year.

 

Client Work: evolve24

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I recently had the opportunity to working alongside the talented marketing team over at evolve24. If you aren’t familiar, evolve24 is a Maritz research company that draws consumer insights from a wide variety of data sources, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, blogs, forums, Web news, and more. They are definitely helping to harness the big data explosion so many marketers are finding very challenging to understand!

 

They have just gone through a branding process but are still really in the process of fine-tuning and refining things, so its been fun to work in partnership with their Director of Marketing and Marketing Manager to really start to establish how the brand translates visually.

To date, I’ve designed an eBook for them highlighting research about social media conversations and trends in auto sales. You can check it out on my portfolio. Additionally, I’m working on a series of white papers about some trends in Consumer Packaged Goods. The first of which, Food is Health, is also up in my portfolio.

Megan's Piano Lessons logo

Client Work: Megan’s Piano Lessons

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I recently had the opportunity to work with a small business owner to spruce up the branding of her piano lesson’s business and supporting blog. I really enjoy working with small businesses, and the fact that I have known the owner, Megan, for years made the project even more enjoyable!

Megan initially reached out to me about creating a blog header for Pianissimo, a blog she was launching about her love of the piano and piano education. At that time, she had a different logo and website header for her primary site, meganspianolessons.com. (She had created those graphics herself.) As the scope of work was initially just the Pianissimo header, my challenge was the create something that blended with her current branding. She wanted it to be primarily black and white, with a touch of orange, and for it to be both clean and cheerful. After I presented Megan with a couple options, she selected the header and was excited to put it up on her site.

A few weeks later, she approached me again about updating the header and logo for meganspianolessons.com. She wanted it to make the sites more visually cohesive. So, using the Pianissimo header and the color palette of black, white and orange as a jumping off point, I worked with her to create the logo and primary blog header. You can see the final results below!

MPL-BRANDBOARDweb750