Matchbox Design Group

Social Space Invaders

bfeldman — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:21:36 +0000

I am very proud to announce the launch of Social Space Invaders. This is an in-house project we developed that is dedicated to the vast array of social media resources available on the web. It works very similar to a blog, with the ability to sort and reorganize the channels based on features or category. We hope this is a useful tool for companies to use when looking for new ways to market their company online. Please check it out, let us know what you think and use the comments on the pages if you have a story to share how you use social media to communicate.

http://engagethesocialweb.com

Make your own link shortener site

bfeldman — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 02:06:32 +0000

Short links today are a huge part of social communication and metrics. Making short links is usually a simple task and is sometimes even automated to save character space. For a while now services like bit.ly have been making it easy to create, track and share links through their service. Even Google has http://goo.gl to do this as well.

About a year ago, we found a good 3 character domain name – http://mdg.me which would lend itself perfectly to being a short url creator but the task of creating this meant a descent amount of development time. However – the friendly folks at http://www.yourls.org have created a lightweight set of PHP scripts to help you easily setup one of these services on your own.

The process is simple – create a database, make some modifications to the config.php, upload the files, activate the admin area and you are ready to go. You can make your service public or private (ours is private) and get detailed analytics on all of the links you create. As a note, because of the rewrites necessary for the link shortening in the .htacess file I decided to make the redirect at the root of mdg.me in plain HTML.

If you have an extra domain that is short in character length this is a quick easy way to create your own custom links!

Blick&Staff website gets a facelift

cwhitmore — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:30:38 +0000

It’s been over three years since we began working with Blick&Staff Communications and today we’re excited to show off their new site. As you can imagine, a lot of things can change in a three year period and one of the things for Blick was their image. So naturally, one of the first places to show off your new look and feel is your digital presence.

When we started looking at the project with Blick it quickly evolved from a landing page to an informative single page site. We were excited with the challenges this brought on and are even more pleased with the outcome. Here’s how we did it…

Amanda worked with the Blick team to craft a new look based around “Imaginative, Meaningful Communications.” We started development with a static HTML site and implemented some jQuery features to dress it up a bit. One of the main features of the site is the fixed navigation. When you click on a menu item the page will either scroll down or up to the desired content. We also used a content slider to feature some of the their recent work. The image below is a preview of the full site but you can see it in action by heading over to www.blickandstaff.com.

Energizer 2 day promotion nets nearly 100,000 more fans

bfeldman — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 17:40:18 +0000

Energizer® had hit 100,000 fans on their Facebook page and to thank them for all the support they ran a promotion featuring a coupon for $3.00 off a pack of Energizer_® MAX® batteries. Using the help of the newly developed Coupons.com Facebook app and our artwork for a fan gate, they were able to increase their fan count while also giving back to loyal current fans. The promotion was very short – only 2 days, but the ease of the new Coupons.com app helped people to get their coupons faster and more efficiently than ever before.

Red Dough. Loaded with freedom. Not fees.

amiller — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 22:30:32 +0000

Finally, a reloadable debit card that really gives you Freedom.

The Red Dough™ Prepaid Visa Card is issued by St. Louis Community Credit Union, Member NCUA, and may be used wherever Visa® debit cards are accepted.

Matchbox designed and developed a custom microsite to promote Saint Louis Community Credit Unions’ newest product offering, Red Dough™, a reloadable debit card. Red Dough™ is marketed towards consumers who either do not trust financial institutions or cannot get a bank account due to their financial past. The Matchbox team worked with Saint Louis Community Credit Union to focus the websites’ messaging on several aspects of freedom the Red Dough™ card offers to its’ consumers:

Freedom from the high fees of other reloadable debit cards.
Freedom and convenience of a credit card without the debt.
Freedom from check cashing fees & overdraft charges.
Freedom to use your card wherever Visa^® is accepted.
Freedom from carrying cash that could be lost or stolen

Visit the Red Dough Website: http://www.reddough.com/

FoxArchitects Looks to Matchbox for a Website Redesign

amiller — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:34:25 +0000

Owner and Founder Michael Fox offers an interesting twist to the architecture industry. Coming from a graphic design background and opening an architecture studio 33 years ago, FoxArchitects doesn’t focus on projects —they focus on relationships. While other architecture studios are being clever and trendy, FoxArchitects prides itself instead on stability and the success of it’s steadfast clients.

In the next three months Matchbox will be working with FoxArchitects to redesign their website. Matchbox will focus on not only developing SEO friendly content, cross linking relevant blog posts and articles but also projecting the FoxArchitect viewpoint, “Projects build fees, Relationships build value”.

Graematter Website

amiller — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:22:04 +0000

Matchbox designed and developed a custom WordPress template which offers plenty of custom styling, utilizes color and typography as supportive elements and incorporates Lato, Graematters’ brand font, via Google Fonts.

Graematter Website: http://www.graematter.com/

Graematter Video

amiller — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:19:08 +0000

Matchbox developed a company video for Graematter to highlight how they can interpret regulatory information for companies to use to develop successful strategies.

American Student Supply Email Marketing

amiller — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:58:28 +0000

To increase compliance from school parent organizations, American Student Supply decided to turn to email marketing. A custom newsletter design was created and then integrated into Mail Chimp. The newsletter informed parents about what a MyPack® is and the benefits from shopping at American Student Supply.

American Student Supply Corporate Collateral

amiller — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:57:54 +0000

American Student Supply corporate business collateral was developed for official correspondence. Red, black and green were the colors chosen to symbolize precedence and action.