Margaret Szerlip Launches Newton-Realtor.com

Margaret Szerlip of Coldwell Banker hired Perugi Design for a new web site. Margaret teams up with Cynthia Cronin on all listings to better serve her clients. She is the author of several monthly realty blogs, "Szerlip & Cronin Real Estate Update" and "Update on West Newton Hill." Her blogs are regularly shown on Boston.com's new town page http://www.boston.com/yourtown/newton/.
[Since this posting, Margaret's domain has changed. Please stay tuned for the new url.]

NNCC 2009 Membership Directory

Perugi Design's cover illustration for Newton Needham Chamber of Commerce's 2009 Membership Directory just rolled off the press. It was presented by NNCC's president Thomas O'Rourke at the Achievement Breakfast on November 25, receiving positive feedback from members present.

A combination graphic and photo illustration, it features the Charles River incorporated with multiple photographs of both towns by David Fox. Echo Bridge crosses the river in the distance. Deb worked with Director of Membership Development, Joe Halpern, using existing photographs from the Chamber's library.

Printing Green

I recently attended a sustainable paper seminar hosted by Kirkwood Printing of Wilmington, Massachusetts. The event was held at Westin Hotel in Waltham and offered coffee, bagels and pastries, a big draw for me! Many paper companies set up their booths with paper samples and handouts. My favorite memento was a ready to plant spruce seedling. Companies represented were Monadnock, M-real, Cascades, NewPage, National Envelope, Finch, Mohawk, Crane & Co., the Italian company, Cordenons, Neenah and Sappi among others.

What I learned from Tammy Coe, associate of Sustainable Forestry/Smartwood, is that there is a third party certification process that printers and paper manufacturers go through to obtain the sustainable paper seal of approval. Many of these companies have strived to obtain this seal after a three year certification process. Kirkwood Printing is one of them. This assures customers that the wood and paper products they are purchasing come from forests managed to conserve biodiversity and support local communities.

For more information go to the Rainforest Alliance website.

Flash Templates

On a recent trip to Virginia, I was talking to a young man who proudly showed me his video company's web site. It was a spiffy site made by a very high-in-demand web designer he knew. "Tom" said this designer often used Flash templates in creating web sites. I'm not sure Tom knew it, but I'm fairly certain his site was made from a template as well. As long as Tom was happy with his site, there was no reason for me to point it out. When I got back to my office I looked up "flash templates" on Google. There were quite a few companies offering these templates, most of them offshore, from India or Singapore. I finally settled on a company recommended by Adobe: Oh My Flash. (ohmyflash.com), which prices Flash components inexpensively at around $30-$35 each.

Since then, I've used Flash navigation components for several websites. If you know a bit of Flash, but not up to creating it from scratch, then this is a good way to go. You can provide some spiffiness at good value for your clients. Other template sites I've bookmarked for future reference are: Flash Components, Template Tuning, Templates 247 and Templates Factory.