Over the weekend, we launched the beautiful new design for Catherine Caine’s newest website, CashandJoy.com.

Instead of just showing you the awesome design, I got on Skype with Catherine and asked her some questions about how the process worked for her, what she brought to the table, and what we were able to create together.

Catherine and I have known each other for less than a year, and I already care deeply about her and her wonderful, meaningful work. I think you’ll fall in love with her too. (Plus she’s got an amazing Australian accent, which is such a treat to hear opposite my boring-to-me Michigan accent.)

Interview-y goodness

Design showcase

Here’s Catherine’s design, so you can see the bright, eye-popping colors and get a feel for the energy of her work and her website. She also has a spiffy new Twitter background, which you can see in action here at her profile.

CashandJoy.com Design

P.S. If you click through to her website, scroll all the way down to the footer for a special graphic surprise.

I absolutely love working with brands. There is nothing more engaging or more exhilarating than perfecting the look, feel, and image of a brand by creating the best web presence possible at that particular moment in time.

Working with brands, especially brands that resonate with me deeply because their primary purpose is to change the world in some meaningful way, is the reason this studio exists.

This post is the first in a series about brands and branding.

What is a brand?

Put simply, your brand is the experience that you give your customers.

In order to give your customers the best possible experience, you have to know them. And in order to know them, you have to love them.

Without knowing and loving your customers – your Right People (the people who are meant to be your customers) – you cannot give them the experience with you that they really need.

Without knowing and loving your customers, you can only give them what you think they want, rather than what you know they need.

An excellent resource on customers and love can be found at the #customerlove website, if you’d like to read further about it.

Different types of brands means different kinds of customers.

Understanding what kind of brand you have is the first step toward knowing who your customers are. It can be hard to understand what kind of brand you have if you started it organically, the way many entrepreneurs have done.

Do you have a personal brand, or a personality brand? Do you have a business brand? Is it a service brand, or a product brand?

(These are the five brand types published at Dummies.com. Here at my studio, we specialize in working with personal, personality, and business brands.)

Here are three specific questions to ask about your brand’s outward-facing identity:

1) Does your brand hinge on the brand creator’s image for its meaning?

2) Could someone else take over your brand without wrecking everything it stands for?

3) Can your brand be represented by other people within your organization?

Please feel free to post your answers in the comments; and stay tuned for next week’s brand post.

I’m going to do a crazy thing.

We recently restructured our prices here at the studio (see the new services and pricing page if you like), and have taken some of our usual offerings off the table.

However, I’m a little sad that we don’t offer them any more, so I decided to have one last ridiculous design fling and offer three of our no-longer-available design services for the ridiculously low price of WHAT YOU CAN PAY.

(Yes, you read that right – I am offering these for what you can pay. For real.)

Three Design Services to Choose From (or pick all three!)

Here are the three things you can choose from:

1) Header / banner design for your website or blog

2) Square ad banner for your sidebar (or someone else’s sidebar)

3) One hour’s worth of Thesis tweaks to your existing Thesis website (I work fast, so this is an awesome deal!)

To give you an idea of how much these usually cost, the prices used to run from $100 up to $300 for each service listed.

EDITED TO ADD: A few things that I would also like to offer, that I’ve been asked about:
4) A newsletter signup graphic + CSS tweaks to make the form look nice. (examples? check out the front page of this website, and the sidebar at the Connection Revolution)

5) Multiple hours of Thesis tweaks; just specify how many you think you need.

How to get your services

Leave a comment here with what you want and how much you want to pay, and I will personally email you back with payment details and how to get your new shiny design service on my design schedule.

If you’d rather not leave it here, email my business email with what you want and how much you want to pay.

For a limited time, blah blah blah

I’m not running this sale forever, so make sure you not only take advantage of it while you can, but that you tell your friends and best Twitter buds too. All of you deserve to have something caffeinatedly awesome on your website.

THE SALE IS NOW CLOSED. Thank you all for a wonderful, awesome experience. Stay tuned to see the work I’m doing for everyone!

This will be a short post, because what I have to say is pretty straightforward.

I have finally come to the conclusion that, although I am really damn good at lots of different things, the time has come to SPECIALIZE. Yes, that dreaded word, the one that means saying ‘no’ to some things and saying ‘yes’ to the Right Things.

(And what this means is that sometimes, you say no for now to things that might be Right Things later.)

My Right Things

So, in the interests of being really awesome at a few things, here are the things I love doing, that I would do for free if it weren’t for the fact that my electric bills can’t be paid in warm fuzzies, and that I would love more than anything to do for you:

Websites, logos, and Twitter backgrounds.

And also, very very soon, coaching for creative rockstars like you. Except it might not be called coaching, I haven’t decided yet.

This doesn’t mean that I won’t ever ever do the other things on my current Services page; I can still do them and do them in an awesome way. And I will still offer them, but one of my lovely Ninjas will do it for you instead.

So. It’s your turn. What are your Right Things? What do you love?

Ladies and Gentlemen, My name is Michael Beckwith, and I am a self-confessed minion. I am at Rachael’s command. When she tells me to go make a site update, I go do it. When she tells me to go convert a newly arrived web design into a theme for your new favorite blog, I go do it. When it comes to her bidding, I’m on it. Such is the life of a caffeinated minion, and you know what? I would not have it any other way.

The Meeting

Perhaps I should tell you how I got to this minion state. Let me take you back to the start of Rachael’s and my acquaintanceship. I was at a point in my life where I was just starting with twitter and microblogging in general, and was following anyone who seemed interesting. Rachael was one of those people. I am also a self-confessed coffee junky so when “caffeinatedelf” showed up on my screen, my ears perked. At some point I read a post on her blog about a financially tight time for her and her awesome husband Troy. My little heart percolated with intrigue and kindness, and I contacted Rachael about donating $5 of my hard earned money to help two people who I didn’t know at all. I reasoned that $5 is not a lot and is equivalent to giving up a large mocha from Starbucks or any higher end coffee location. I could live with parting with one beverage worth. Needless to say, Rachael was extremely touched by the gesture.

The Hiring

During the course of our friendship;, another idea started percolating. I attended college for five years studying graphic design and multimedia/web development, but have yet to really find my footing afterwards. I knew I needed a way to stay in the game while working a general 40hr/wk job. I was not, and still not, completely confident in myself yet to go full time freelance but if I could pick up some work from time to time, that would be wonderful. I knew that Rachael was running Caffeinated Design Studio so I offered my knowledge and skills. I reasoned that if some of the work load was off her chest, together we could get work done faster and have more time for new work. I felt confident in her company and wanted to help make Caffeinated Design grow.

The Work

My first minion assignment didn’t arrive right away, but I got to get my hands dirty soon enough. Rachael proceeded to introduce me to a client named Amy Crook. She runs Antemortem Arts, which she uses to promote her paintings and traditional arts. The website was going to use WordPress as its CMS and Amy had a theme design ready, being a designer herself. This was my first assignment. I had a good fun time making the theme work and provide an awesome website theme.

Minion assignment number two was very much like the first one but with an added layer of work. Once again I was working with Amy but this time she had a separate client who also needed a wordpress theme implemented. This time I was sent the design’s .psd file and I had to export the elements myself. The rest of the theming process was like the first assignment and in the end, another lovely website was given to the world.

The Payoff

Through these two assignments, I have helped provide some wonderful looking websites for people using the ever-awesome blogging/cms platform WordPress. I am confident enough to say that everyone involved is more than happy with the final results and the internet is that much of a better place.

There is no telling what the future holds for me and my minion status with Rachael. I know that I have really enjoyed the work provided to me so far, and hope that Rachael will let me continue along the same vein. I have heard some rumblings that I may be given some practice runs at creating designs myself to see how well I do there. I know that that half has never been my forte because I think I may be better suited on the developer side working with the code and markup. The design experience would be positive and would definitely help refine my rough edges, allowing me to be a bigger asset to both Rachael and anyone I work with in the future. Now if you excuse me, I think I hear an overhyper elfling calling my name.

Michael Beckwith is a budding Graphic and Web Designer residing in Sioux Falls South Dakota. Some of his interests in graphic/web design are WordPress, vector graphics, and available open source tools to make it all work. He dreams of the day when pirates and awesomeness rule the world.