About
A Little bit about me
ello, I am Daniel K, a thirty-three years old designer. I have been working in graphic design since the age of 18 when I was hired by Grapho-Cinco. A well-established press company responsible for the publication of the motor-sports magazine Prototipos. While with Grapho-Cinco I had the opportunity to learn from the best and most qualified publishers that were still accustomed to work without the technology we currently have. This allowed me to learn “hands on” the real process of the pre-press and publishing business. From the very design, which was my department, to the very last step of packing and delivery. Passing, of course, through the very interesting step of press printing and cutting. After a few years, I accepted an offer to work for Avalon Studios, a recognized design firm that had many important corporate clients in their portfolio. At this time, I switch from working with PC computers to Mac OS computers. I hold a Sociologist diploma from the Venezuelan Central University (Universidad Central de Venezuela) and took interest in the social study of masses. As life will have it, I moved to the US where I lived for the past 12 years. I began to work as the Marketing Director and Operations Manager for a multi environmental services company but I never abandoned my freelance work of graphic design. I am skilled and well trained in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, XHTML, and CSS. I love the potential and the results of PHP and CSS when put together. I try to learn a new skill every time I can and I love what I do to the point of not giving up on a project until I am fully satisfied with the results. Even if it means studying and learning a new skill. I can also maintain your website and make any type of changes that will adjust to your needs as well as run the analytics and make the necessary adjustments in order to improve your chances of showing up in the search engines as close to the first result as possible.
This reminds me about this website I saw not too long ago. The owner was proudly showing us the design made by a local studio. After telling me the excessive price he paid (which apparently was OK to him) he also revealed that he was paying over 300$ a month for the “website maintenance”. Unfortunately, he had already paid several months, costing him over a thousand dollars, but just for curiosity, I run a quick diagnostics of his website just to find out that his site was not even indexed by google. This bothers me because it gives a bad name to honest designers that offer these services for a realistic price and in some cases for free. There are many good designers out there to choose from. Hiring the services of the most expensive one doesn’t mean you are in good hands.
So what can I offer you?
Custom Web Design and Re-Design
Many years of working as a designer allowed me to accumulate the experience and skills necessary to deliver the most efficient results. In this ever changing world of web development, it is important to stay up to date with better ways of coding and designing. A Professional Web Design must have speed, beauty and functionality co-existing together to bring the best user experience for your visitors. Whether you need to upgrade your existing site or start a design from scratch or perhaps from an existing PSD file that you would like to see come to life, I can help you get the most of it. Imagination and creativity along with knowledge and experience will be put to work for you.
Advanced SEO
(Search Engine Optimization)
Search Engine Optimization better known as SEO is one of the most important priorities of your website and it must be kept in mind during the design phase of your site. Using different techniques and optimization tools, I will work hard to make sure your page ranks high in the search engines. I do not support, offer nor practice any unethical techniques like spamming other people’s blogs or cheating with less-than-honorable activities. Those things will ultimately damage your site’s reputation and lower your ranking faster than you think. Advanced SEO consist on understanding search engines and implementing certain rules that will increase greatly your website ranking.
Consultancy and Content Management
It is important for any Web Design project that we are clear on what the purpose of your website is and what type of audience you want to target. At this stage it’s crucial to understand the reason behind your website, whether that be to generate more sales, get more potential clients or to provide certain information to visitors. I can build a custom CMS (Content Management System) that will allow the website owner to make changes or update their content of their dynamic sites. Sometimes not necessary for static sites when the information will rarely change. For larger website projects I can adapt the design of the website into a powerful open-source content management systems such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal
Web Analytics and Website Maintenance
After the design process is finished and the website is up and running, the task is not finished yet. Every website should be a continual work in progress and they must be improved according to the data and statistics provided by web analytics. For instance, it’s great if you’re attracting many visitors a day to your site, but if they leave without signing up, registering or buying a product or even checking other pages for more information, then it’s a missed opportunity. This is called “bouncing rate”, and it should be kept at the lowest level as possible. I use web analytics to look at this data and determine ways that a website or page can be improved to retain your visitors and ultimately turn them into customers. I also provide my customers with monthly reports showing an overall look of how their websites are performing.
Custom Logo and Complete Corporate Image
The corporate logo and identity creates an impression of the company without a single descriptive term. It’s what comes to mind for a customer when they hear the name of your company. The creation of such an identity is important business and not to be handled lightly. A great corporate identity can boost a business from the ground to the stratosphere if done right. You can also get a complete corporate identity package designed that will include letterheads, business cards and other business paperwork.
Hosting and Domain Name Registration
I also offer a complete domain name and registration service so that you don’t have to worry about the technical side of things when it comes to getting your website online. Or I could guide you through the necessary steps and recommend you the appropriate providers for your website needs. Once the hosting and domain name are secured, I will take it from there until the end. In case you ask for me to take care of this first step, then I will provide you with all the login and password information for your new hosting and domain service provider.
Website Speed Optimization
Truly optimizing your code and image files can play a big role in your visibility online. Recently, Google began to include website speed as a factor to consider for ranking when crawling the web. Caching elements and fixed content is important too because it increases the speed for returning visitors. Although I like a lot the simplicity of Flash, I try to use it as minimum as posible to ensure that your website will also be fully operational in most modern handheld devices such as smart phones and tablets. Specially now that these devices are gaining so much popularity. There are many design techniques that can re-place fairly well many flash-based elements.
Cross-browser Compatibility
There are many (hundreds) of browsers out there and it is important for me to test your website to see if it is visible or viewable in multiple browsers. Popular Website browsers include Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer and Netscape (Firefox, Chrome and Safari being the top ones). Because so many people do not have the latest versions of each popular browser, it is good to ensure that your website is visible in browsers as well as the older versions. That’s why it is important for me to keep your html “good and clean” by validating the HTML and CSS and then test it in each individual browser to guarantee the page is compatible and available to all potential viewers. An average internet user is not aware of the limits of the websites to adapt to all types of browsers, and it is expected that the website will look good in any browser, when it is clearly not the case. In other words, web users are expecting that websites will be compatible with their browser.