Flint Hills Design Snippets

First Friday Art Show in Kansas City

Joel Gaeddert — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:22:24 +0000

We’d like to invite anyone in the Kansas City area out to the First Friday @ Village event this evening. Aaron will be showing his latest grid projects alongside lots of other great art from both amateur and professional artists.

The show will be from 5pm – 7pm, Friday May 4 at the Village Church in Prairie Village:

Village Church
6641 Mission Road
Prairie Village, Kansas 66208

We hope to see some of you there!

Government Contracts Book Website

Evan Fast — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:40:15 +0000

Earlier this year we were contacted by Steven Koprince, an attorney specializing in government contracts, about building a website to support the government contracts book he was writing. We quickly became very excited about building the website when we saw the design of the book cover, as it had quite a few elements we could potentially incorporate in our design. We decided to take quite a few cues from the book cover when designing the site and ended up creating a very unique website that should help Steven market his new book.

We encourage you to check out his new website here: www.governmentcontractsbook.com

How Google Works

Joel Gaeddert — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 23:19:34 +0000

Here’s an interesting video of Matt Cutts, a prominent software engineer at Google, giving a brief overview of the search process. If nothing else, it should reinforce the importance of getting lots of high quality links back to your website!

Camp Lakeside Website

Evan Fast — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:43:51 +0000

Another project we recently finished is a new website for Camp Lakeside. Camp Lakeside is a Christian camp located in southwest Kansas near Scott City. With camps for many different age groups (children – adults), camps targeted toward different cultural backgrounds (camps in Spanish and English), and facilities that can be reserved for gatherings, their new website needed to appeal to a very diverse audience. Their new site is built on WordPress and uses many custom features that make it simple for camp staff to modify camp information. We encourage you to check out their new SimpleSite here: www.camplakeside.net

Phillip Fields: Attorney At Law Website

Evan Fast — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:23:40 +0000

We’re excited to announce the launch of a new website for a Wichita, KS attorney. Phillip Fields is an attorney specializing in worker’s compensation, social security claims, motor vehicle accidents and injuries, and probate administration. Fields has built a strong reputation in the Wichita area but decided it was time to invest in a website that would provide a way for potential clients to learn more about his experience and areas of expertise. We’re very happy with the way this SimpleSite turned out and we encourage you to check it out today: www.fieldslawoffices.com

Asbury Park Website

Evan Fast — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 20:04:47 +0000

Asbury Park, a retirement community in Newton, KS, has a brand new website. We worked with Asbury Park early this year to build them a new website that highlights their unique services and offerings. The new site, built on WordPress to facilitate easy modifications, does a great job of providing basic information to Asbury Park’s target audience while emphasizing the services that make their community unique. We encourage you to check out their website here: www.asbury-park.org

2012 has been a busy year for us, so continue checking back with our blog this week as we announce more recent website launches!

Mulberry Bush Consignment Website

Evan Fast — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:31:46 +0000

We’re proud to announce the launch of a new website for Mulberry Bush Consignment. Mulberry Bush Consignment organizes consignment sales in the Wichita area targeted to mothers and parents. They came to us wanting a new website with a fun look that provides visitors information about upcoming sales as well as ways for consignors, vendors, and volunteers to register for upcoming sales. Since many of the Mulberry Bush Consignment sales are for children’s clothing, toys, and home items, we contacted local artist Jesse Graber to create the illustrations of children and the mulberry bush elements that were used throughout the site.

We encourage you to check out their website and learn more about upcoming sales here: www.mbcsale.com

Super Bowl Commercials

Evan Fast — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:21:57 +0000

It’s amazing how the internet has changed super bowl ads. Sure, companies still pay millions of dollars to get their ads aired during the most watched television event of the year, but more and more companies are finding new ways to get their super bowl ads in front of viewers via the internet. There are many companies, such as Doritos and Volkswagen, that have begun using YouTube to preview their commercials before they air during the Super Bowl. Others, such as Acura, have created longer length videos specifically for the internet that are shortened for the Super Bowl.

However, one of the most interesting uses of Super Bowl air time this year came from Old Mikwaukee. They created a 30 second ad featuring Will Ferrell that only ran in North Platte, NE, the country’s second smallest television market. It is estimated the ad cost around $1,500 to air, pennies compared to the price most advertisers pay to run a national ad during the Super Bowl. Yet even though only a fraction of all people watching the Super Bowl saw the ad, the ad has generated more internet buzz than many other ads that ran nationally. Check out this interesting article in Businessweek to learn more about the ad.

And for all you Ferris Bueller fans, check out this great side-by-side comparison of the original Ferris Bueller movie with the Matthew Broderick Honda CRV ad. The ad is loaded with nods to the original film, many of which you don’t notice until you watch them side-by-side!

Farewell to Abe Regier

Evan Fast — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:02:32 +0000

For those of you who haven’t heard, Abe Regier, our lead exhibit fabricator and in-house BBQ wiz, recently said goodbye to Flint Hills Design and headed east. Recently engaged, Abe and his fiancé moved to Pittsburgh, PA to start a new chapter in their lives. Abe began working at Flint Hills Design in June 2009 and managed fabrication for 5 museum exhibits in addition to numerous other projects.

Abe, best of luck out in Pittsburgh. We’ll miss your constant off the wall “Would you rather…” questions and enthusiasm that you bring to every project!

Google Algorithm Update

Evan Fast — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:39:50 +0000

Last Thursday, Google announced they were updating their search algorithm to downgrade sites with too many ads. Specifically, this algorithm change hits websites that have more ads than content above the fold (the portion of the website visible without scrolling). While this doesn’t affect any of our websites, we’re still excited by the direction that Google seems to be moving with their recent algorithm changes. Last year, Google released an algorithm update (Panda, which you can learn about in one of our earlier blog posts) that begins ranking sites based on aesthetics as well as the normal technical aspects.

Some people are accusing Google of telling people to “do as I say, not as I do” because of how many ads Google shows in their search results through their pay per click program. However, we still think this recent update is another step in the right direction, pushing web designers and developers to develop sites that present relevant content instead of ads.

To read more about the algorithm update, check out this Google Search blog post.