graphkin

Sometimes good and fun ideas come about when you least expect it. My letterpress cards line, TOTA Press, came to reality while slurping on some soba noodles at the Sobaya counter here in the East Village. And at the time, there was some napkin sketching and listing that went on. So when I saw this designed product - Graphkin {by Colin O'Dowd} - I immediately thought of that time. Not only a clean + clever design, but functional in encouraging the mind to brainstorm and evolve some of those itty-bitty ideas that can become so much more~

{Images courtesy of colin o dowd website}

townhouse green group

Please welcome an informational microsite for The New York City Townhouse Green Group, a one-stop solution to renovating or building a high performance townhouse. After designing the logo, Studio TOTA designed and developed a microsite {basically, one-page mini website} to highlight introductory information of TGG's services. This group is a collective of amazing design and construction professionals who have joined forces to provide comprehensive high-performance, sustainable, green design/build services. Visitors are encouraged to jump to the individual company websites that make up the collective to learn more about them.

Microsites are a good way to launch your business and get web presence without investing too much time and money into creating a full fledged website project. Robust websites are not a bad thing {at all!}, but when your business is just starting or you are increasing traffic to your own site - such as TGG that is comprised of 3 established businesses that formed this group to offer a packaged solution/service - a microsite is something that may make sense for you and your company.

one funNY kid {studio bento}

Getting a lot of news from friends saying "we're expecting!" and so for them, here is a super cute shirt that caught my eye. From Studio Bento - a design studio based in Brooklyn - this tee photographed above is a creative spinoff of the famous "i heart ny" t-shirts. I love the play on words and the big bold lettering. Design is available at their online shop in tees and onesies styles.

On a sidenote, this e-shop brought me to learn about Big Cartel - a great e-commerce setup that allows independent businesses to easily sell stuff online. For those of you who want to dip your feet into the e-commerce world or for those who have only 1 or 2 {but those 1 or 2 items are MUST HAVES}, check them out for some reasonable e-commerce capabilities that an help you get up and running!

{Photos courtesy of Studio Bento's e-shop}

delicious photos {hey cupcake}

Big photos of cupcakes - yum! These are the creations of Hey Cupcake Bakery and what a beautiful job of capturing the essence of their business by these styled shots. The power of the visual is something that I always try to convey to my clients. It's worth it to pay that professional (even semi-pro) photographer in the beginning to get the right images to represent your business or services. Beautiful (or in this case deliciously cute) imagery is priceless over wordy words, especially on the web where we are all victims of short attention spans. Don't these photos make you want to go to this *particular* bakery and get a dozen just for yourself? So for you business starters, it's not a bad idea to budget this as an expense - it will be worth it, for sure.
With more photos of yum cupcakes, have a wonderful weekend~

seven virtues pdx

Just in time for the Grand Opening celebration for Seven Virtues Coffeehouse, our friends out in Portland (PDX), Studio TOTA has created a blogsite for them that includes information about their coffeehouse, their events, the local artists featured on their walls, and more. Having a strong sense of community and wanting to share a warm and healthy space to neighbors, we felt as though allowing their customers add to their website through comments and feedback would be quite appropriate. So utilizing Wordpress blog software with a custom CSS upgrade, we were able to create a low-budget website that communicates essential information for their business to their existing and new customers. Something to consider for new businesses out there that may not have the budget to build out a full out customized website, but wants something that is not your typical generic template website (<-- not so pretty).
For those of you in the Portland area, Seven Virtues Coffeehouse's Grand Opening is on June 7th so go join them with a full day of free samples, live music, coffee demonstrations and more!

pictobrowser

Looking for a good way to show your Flickr photos on your website or blog? Try Pictobrowser - a free web application - super easy to setup and works quite smoothly too. Check out some of my pics from Japan...{click on the center to see next photo or hover over the bottom and thumbnails will appear...cool}

stamp it

A custom stamp is a great way to literally put your mark on something that is unmarked. A blank piece of paper. A solid colored envelope. A piece of memo paper. For smaller businesses, instead of getting EVERYTHING custom printed, this is a good solution to put your identity on something that you don't necessarily want to or can't mass produce. I got my self-inking stamp here - all you need to do is upload an image and voila~