Headstand Media

Headstand Media is excited to announce the launch of a brand new online community website for The Blacksmith Project, a recording studio and Christian musician collective based in Bull Valley, Illinois. The site was built around emerging Web 2.0 strategies, and offers in-depth content, photos, music sampling and purchasing, blogs and social media integration for its artists.

Project Strategy

Headstand Media, a Chicago web design company, met with the founders of The Blacksmith Project soon after the construction of the aforementioned recording studio, and provided a comprehensive web strategy that focused on:

• Logo design, branding, and messaging
• Educating the client in regard to Web 2.0 best practices and social media
• How to tell a captivating story and engage the culture
• Developing a dynamic, compelling website

The Blacksmith Project needed a site that was both visually exciting and able to handle multiple user accounts. Since there were a handful of artists involved, it was important that each artist had their own unique area of the site, where they could develop their own content and sell their music. Equally of importance was the building of the site with a technology that would be versatile and scalable for future expansion and additional features.

Project Technology and Integration

Theblacksmithproject.com was built in a content management system called WordPress, the world’s largest blogging and content management platform, using open source technology. For this particular project we used WordPress MU, to facilitate multiple users and accounts. We designed the custom theme that controls the way the site looks and feels, using industry standard best practices in HTML, PHP, SEO, Javascript, and CSS web coding. The site is an excellent example of our balanced approach of creativity + technology—a strategy we consistently employ as we’re solving business problems for our customers.

More About The Blacksmith Project

The Blacksmith Project was founded in 2007 by Duncan Mathieson and Mark Filippi, both longtime musicians with a passion to both teach and empower new artists in their pursuit of recording, performing, songwriting, and promoting themselves and their own original music. The founders met around the time that Duncan was considering retirement from a business career and Mark was an interim worship pastor at Moraine Valley Church.

Since its inception and the completion of the recording studio in Bull Valley, Illinois, The Blacksmith Project has amassed a handful of talented musicians and hosted benefit concerts in their area. One of their big goals is to raise awareness and support for local ministries and meaningful causes in order to impact their local community. Their next free concert will be on February 6th at the Raue Center for the Arts in Crystal Lake, Illinois and will begin at 7:00pm. The concert will benefit the Crystal Lake Food Pantry.

For more information on The Blacksmith Project, their artists, and their events, please visit them at www.theblacksmithproject.com!

Headstand Media is pleased to announce the launch of a new website for the Morey Corporation located in Woodridge, IL. This new site was built around emerging Web 2.0 strategies, and offers in-depth content, videos, and blogs for the electronic manufacturing industry.

Project Strategy

Headstand Media, a Chicago web design company, provided a comprehensive online web strategy that focused on developing a dynamic, compelling website for the client. Our friends at Morey needed a site that was conversational, transparent, and easy to navigate, and highlighted the key strength of their business: service.

While the Morey Corporation has for decades specialized in electronic manufacturing over a wide range of platforms and contexts, this new web strategy paid special attention to their personality and relational qualities. Developing a website that both highlighted Morey’s professional and technical expertise, as well as featured their key customer service strengths, was important to the success of the project.

Entering this project, Morey had an existing site and content that where static and invisible to the web at large. The new web architecture provided by Headstand Media gives Morey an improved technical foundation, where all content is both well structured, and search engine friendly.

Integral to the strategy of the new Morey Corporation website are several new videos, which feature the Morey leadership team. These were conceived and produced by Headstand Media from start to finish, and included filming on location in Woodridge, Illinois. These non-corporate-feeling videos promote Morey’s culture of approachability, integrity, and excellence, and divulge lots of great information about the company in a creative way.

Project Technology and Integration

Moreycorp.com was built in a content management system called WordPress, the world’s largest blogging and content management platform, using open source technology. We designed the custom theme that controls the way the site looks and feels, using industry standard best practices in HTML (PHP), SEO, Javascript, Flash and CSS web coding. The site is an excellent example of Headstand Media’s balanced approach of creativity + technology—a strategy we consistently employ as we’re solving business problems for our customers.

More About Morey Corporation

The Morey Corporation is known for its rich history of providing the highest quality electronics to industry leaders. Their innovative approaches to manufacturing, prototyping, problem solving, product design and customer service makes them an incredibly versatile partner to a range of different clients. Nestled just east of I-355 in Woodridge, Illinois, Morey’s entire operation can be found under one roof. On site is also a brand new Innovation Center, where Morey employs some of the top engineers and thinkers in the industry around expanding product lines, developing new strategies, and solving complex problems for customers.

Dedicated to quality and service since the Morey Corporation’s 1934 foundation in the basement of William Morey, the people at the Morey Corporation are some of the finest individuals we’ve had the opportunity to work with.

For more information about the Morey Corporation, be sure to visit their site today!

Shands Healthcare Cancer Hospital

Shands HealthCare is the hospital system connected to the University of Florida. Their web department needs some campus maps and floor plans developed for their new cancer hospital in Gainsville. So, they went to Google and typed in campus map illustration… and who did they find but Randal Birkey! Through links they eventually contacted Headstand Media and shared their needs for the project.

It turned out that they were going to use these maps in print as well as in an interactive Flash web application for hospital guests and patients at www.shands.org, and needed a partner to develop that application as well. Funny thing… Headstand Media can handle both!

So, Headstand Media wrote a proposal and won the project.

We say to our new customer from Florida… “welcome to Chicago!”

In 1934 William Morey began manufacturing radio test sets in his basement for Montgomery Ward, an industry-leading catalog retailer. Today, the Morey Corporation continues to provide American-made electronics manufacturing and design services with the highest levels of customer service and support. Their products include ruggedized electronics and telematics for a number if industries and other well-known American manufacturers.

Headstand Media is pleased to be selected as the company’s newest partner in redefining and designing a new web 2.0 strategy and presence for the 21st century. Several web projects are being planned extending into 2010. Headstand’s creativity + technology approach will ensure that the new site messages and brand stories are compelling and perform well in the search engines to produce new business for the company.

Quaker Meeting House Interior

Headstand Media is pleased to welcome Friends Fiduciary Corporation as a new client. The Religious Society of Friends or “Quakers” are a historical church in America with George Fox and William Penn as two of their more famous historical members. The non-profit Friends Fiduciary Corporation provides financial services for meetings, schools, and other non-profit organizations associated with the Religious Society of Friends.

Headquartered in Philadelphia (City of Brotherly Love), Pennsylvania, the Friends Fiduciary Corporation focuses on socially responsible investment management and trusteeship for Quaker funds. They also offer Planned Giving administrations services for Charitable Gift Annuities and Trust, Pooled Life Income Funds, and Donor Advised Funds. Clearly they know what they are doing as demonstrated by FFC’s strong Consolidated Fund performance.

It is Headstand Media’s job to re-brand and redesign FFC’s web strategy and web presence into a more contemporary look and feel, as well as a brand message much more focused on “socially responsible investing.” We believe there will be many more organizations banging at FFC’s door once this message is clarified and strengthened in a new web 2.0 design and search engine optimization strategy.

Headstand Media has just completed a 2-day conference held in Chicago called: Ignite 2009 – The Innovative CMS Summit. This conference was sponsored by Day Software AG of Basel, Switzerland for their North American customers and partners. Headstand Media was honored to be a co-sponsor of the event as a Day Professional Partner.

Some highlights of the conference for us were:

• David Nuescheler, CTO, Day Software, on: Igniting CQ5.3: What’s New and the Roadmap – He gave us his “Top 10″ new features in CQ 5.3 that turned out to actually be 13!
• Greg Klebus, Product Manager, Day Software, on: Incorporating Microsoft Sharepoint into your Web 2.0 Initiatives – Greg gave us a sneak preview of a new Day product called Sharepoint Connector which allows the Day CQ5 CMS to tap into Sharepoint resources.
• Toby Bell, VP, Research, Gartner on: Web channel issues, solutions and success measures. Toby gave a great overview of where web 2.0 is and where he believes it is headed based upon his research.
• Erin Yarbrough & Melanee Hamilton: University of Oklahoma Case Study - a real world focus on the powerful new calendar features in CQ5

Headstand Media created a mini-site for the Ignite 2009 Conference that highlights our expertise with Day CQ5 software since we began using it in 2008 for the About McDonald’s corporate website project. In the few weeks that this site has been online it has climbed to the #1 Google search result for: “CQ5 Development” and “CQ5 Design” - illustrating one of the core competencies we talk about on the site itself: search engine optimization.

We also gave away 3 iPod Shuffles to attendees who stopped by our table and dropped a business card in a glass bowl. The winners were:

• Graham MacDougall of Dalhousie University
• Steve Garippo of Newedge Group
• Jay Campbell of Genworth Financial.

Congratulations to the winners!

Headstand Media is pleased to announce the launch of a new website for Scholle Packaging. This new site was built around emerging Web 2.0 strategies, and offers in-depth content, videos, and blogs from the flexible packaging industry.

Project Strategy

Headstand Media, a Chicago web design company, provided a comprehensive online web strategy that focused on developing compelling content, dynamic imagery, and engaging videos—all with a strong Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plan. Our friends at Scholle needed a site that was conversational, transparent, and easy to navigate, as well as a versatile tool to show why Scholle is the leader in flexible packaging solutions.

We paid special attention during the creation of Scholle’s various Bag-in-Box Application pages (such as wine packaging, juice packaging or dairy packaging): each application page pulls together the benefits of going with bag-in-box, while listing the key flexible bags, films and fitments.

Entering this project, Scholle had what we consider to be “above average” search engine optimization practices in place. The new web architecture provided by Headstand Media gives Scholle an improved technical foundation, where all content is both well structured, and search engine friendly. In addition to this foundation, Headstand Media is monitoring targeted attempts at increasing Scholle’s rankings on core keywords related to their business focus.

Project Technology and Integration

Scholle.com was built in a content management system called WordPress, the world’s largest blogging and content management platform, using open source technology. We designed the custom theme that controls the way the site looks and feels, using industry standard best practices in HTML, SEO, Javascript, Flash and CSS web coding. The site is an excellent example of Headstand Media’s balanced approach of creativity + technology—a strategy we consistently employ as we’re solving business problems for our customers.

More About Scholle Packaging

Scholle Packaging, the pioneer of Bag-in-Box™, is a world leader in bag-in-box packaging for the food, beverage, and industrial markets. With manufacturing locations on 5 continents and products that are sold in over 60 countries, they are committed to providing locally manufactured products with unprecedented innovation, quality, and customer service.

Scholle offers a broad range of packaging solutions and expertise dedicated to meeting customers’ needs. The breadth of their bag-in-box product offering includes flexible films, filling equipment, bags, fitments and caps. With significant resources deployed in areas such as R&D and innovation, Scholle is on the forefront of bringing flexible packaging technology and trends to life.

For more information about Scholle Packaging, visit their site today!

Chicago web design company Headstand Media is pleased to announce the launch of a new website for HBN Brand Design. The new site coincides with HBN’s own re-branding and it targets those in the industry who are looking for an innovative, reliable design firm to fulfill their graphic and marketing communication needs.

Project Strategy

Headstand Media provided a comprehensive online web strategy that has made HBN Brand Design the online leader amongst its competitors. HBN desired that we help them contemporize and update their web image and presence. We did this visually by moving away from a corporate look and more towards a contemporary, young and professional feel.

Special attention was taken when building hbnbranddesign.com to create a site that was designed with best SEO practices so HBN can compete on important keywords in their industry. This new website helps HBN tell their story, share their personality, and shows off the excellent creative and strategic services they can offer their clients.

Project Technology and Integration

For the more technically inclined, the site was built in a content management system called WordPress, the world’s largest blogging platform, using open source technology. Headstand Media created the custom theme that controls the way the site looks and feels, using industry standard best practices in HTML, SEO, Javascript, Flash and CSS web coding. Headstand Media brings a balanced approach of creativity+technology to solving business problems for all our customers.

What HBN Has to Say

“THANK YOU Headstand team, for all your consulting, practical advice and hard work in designing our new web site.

We believe the site is easy to use, clearly reflects the business we’re in, the services we offer, and tells our brand story in a fresh new way. The site also does a great job of addressing client needs and showcasing our expertise & creative designs. The site is so rich with visual content, yet has a simple look. We are very pleased.

We are also confident that the latest SEO strategies and technologies used will result in increased traffic and thereby additional business opportunities for HBN. A great selling tool. Thanks for going the extra mile in meeting our deadlines. ”

Dwight Nelson – President of HBN Brand Design

More About HBN Brand Design

HBN is a Chicago package design firm with over 35 years of expertise that is dedicated to telling unique stories through Brand Identity Development, New Product Introductions, Brand Repositionings, Package Redesigns and Integrated Marketing Communications in the B2C arena.

They are experts at visually reflecting a brand’s essence and getting the right messages to the target audience, resulting in great designs that sell products, emotionally connect to the consumer, build brand awareness and increase market share. Get to know the HBN Brand Design team.

Home Page

Richards Patent Law went live with a new website designed by Headstand Media today. Headstand Media designed the site and set it up with a custom theme in WordPress. The reason we did this is because Patrick Richards is no ordinary patent attorney. He actually studies the way the Internet works, and wanted to have a website that was optimized to perform better in the search engines.You see, Patrick thinks that he can actually grow his business by targeting specific keywords and phrases with his website so that his most likely customers will find him more easily in a web search engine! Now that’s one smart attorney!

Patrick found out about Headstand Media through a friend who we had also designed a website for. He heard that we know about that whole search engine optimization thing. After talking with him, understanding his needs as a new business, we put together a proposal. I think he signed the acceptance page the same day! That’s not what I expected from an attorney… like I said, he’s not typical!

So, we built a new Richards Patent Law site using our favorite content management system, and added some features and tools designed to really make a big difference for his business. We also taught Patrick how to use the tool, and how to write and develop more content for his site that will be relevant to where he wants to go with his profession and business.

We’ll certainly be interested and watching his site to see how that goes. Welcome aboard Patrick!

One of the fun things about working at Headstand Media is our clients. They are so fun to work with and they come up with all kinds of WILD and CRAZY ideas! Take our first client for instance… Sunshine Gospel Ministries. This non-profit Christian urban ministry decided to try to raise $70,000 toward their yearly ministry budget by NOT HAVING A BANQUET FUND-RAISER! Wow – now that’s risky! Instead, they envisioned a “virtual fund raiser event” where all of the potential banquet invitees and attenders would save time and expense by simply attending an online event at a time more convenient to them. They would get the same high quality ministry update information, and have the same opportunity to give their charitable donations, but cost the ministry a lot less money to actually put on a big event!

Headstand Media heard about the idea from our contacts at Sunshine a few months ago and we said – “Yes, we’re in!” What’s not to like about a Christian ministry that is forward thinking, looking to be good stewards of the money they are entrusted with, and who want to connect with people in ways that people connect – today! We worked with their great leadership team to put together a Flash-driven website at www.dreambenefit.org for this purpose. The Dream Benefit website just went live today and will remain online through September 16th.

The site features plenty of rich graphics, user interactivity, high quality music performances, videos and social networking tools. Headstand Media invites you to check out the site and consider supporting Sunshine Gospel Ministries based upon what you learn about the great work of the organization there! We also encourage you to spread the word about this unique event with your friends using your social networks. The money that you are able to either give, or influence others to give may just transform the life of a young person.

Thank you!