While it’s nice to make Mom feel extra-special on Mother’s Day, we know it’s not always easy to know how to make Mom feel special. Thankfully, celebrity chef Sara Moulton has created a way to make this Mother’s Day a huge success in the mom-spoiling department.

We just updated the Sara’s Kitchen iPhone app (which JPD Studio collaborated with Sara to create) with Sara’s very own hand-picked Mother’s Day menu suggestions to make it easy-peasy to decide the perfect meal to make for Mom. The update includes menu suggestions for breakfast, brunch, dinner or a snack. We’re especially excited about the recipes for Eggs Baked in Red Wine and the Stuffed Strawberries with a glass of champagne.

Like Sara says in her app, there is no nicer homemade gift than a meal. It’s a great way to let Mom know you appreciate all the little things she does for you! Download the app or send it as a gift now in the Apple App Store.

Sometimes it’s true that less is more when it comes to website content. With a clean and polished design, a one-page website can convey the most important information about a brand efficiently and effectively. Such was the case for our latest website to launch, www.MarchelleCharles.com, a one-page website we designed and coded for makeup artist Marchelle Charles.

We created Marchelle’s logo design and a business card about a year ago. Recently, she told us she was ready to take the next step and create a web presence. We determined that Marchelle’s website would be perfect as a clean, polished one-page website to showcase her three favorite portfolio images and contact information. This simple, clean site allows her potential clients to quickly get a sense of Marchelle’s beautiful work and provides steps to contact her to discuss her work further.

If you’d like to discuss creation of an effective, clean, one-page website to ramp up your brand’s web presence, call us at 212.213.1595 or reach out via our online design request form to get the ball rolling.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of our latest custom designed and coded WordPress website: OpenSpacesFengShui.com. We worked closely with Ann Bingley Gallops, a Feng Shui consultant in New York City, to revamp her existing company branding by redesigning her logo and website. This was a fun one!

We got started with the logo design to set the tone for the brand; use of Feng Shui elements were important in setting the right tone for color and shape of the logo. In our final design, we incorporated the “O” and the “S” of Open Spaces to identify the brand and reference the Yin-Yang symbol. The square in the icon is meant to reference the ancient Chinese coin, an important traditional element of Feng Shui.

Once the logo was finalized, we created a custom WordPress website design, complete with a robust blog, Feng Shui Tips (into which we imported several years’ worth of Ann’s fantastic posts), dropdown menus for her About and Services sections, and a custom Press page to display Open Spaces Feng Shui’s featured press items. As Ann’s old site contained a large amount of content, we worked with her to organize and present a new website that effectively organized the content within the new design. The end result is a polished, cohesively-branded site that effectively and gracefully conveys Ann’s expertise as a Feng Shui consultant.

As we worked on the website, we also worked with Ann to create a custom designed electronic newsletter template with her new branding for her fantastic newsletters. Finally, we created a fresh new business card design with the new branding. We’ve really enjoyed bringing the new brand to life through multiple designs.

If you’d like to discuss a revamp of your branding, or create a new one from the ground-up, please give us a call at 212.213.1595, or send us a design request via our online design request form.

Happy 2012 from the team at JPD Studio! It’s been a busy holiday season in our studio and we’re very excited to kick off the New Year with www.LauraVanderkam.com, a fantastic new website we designed and developed for writer, journalist and author, Laura Vanderkam.

This custom designed and coded WordPress website features a blog on the homepage to feature Laura’s writings on happiness, economics, time management, creativity and other subjects. The homepage is set up to prominently feature her blog posts so users can dig right in as soon as they come to the site.

We also created pages to feature Laura’s fantastic books: All the Money in the World (on sale March 1, 2012) and 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, with reviews and links on where to find the books. There’s also the Writing page with links to check out Laura’s clips in publications including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Fortune. We also love the Best Of page with a roundup of Laura’s most popular writings, organized by category.

We worked closely with Laura and her team to create a website design that best conveys Laura’s fantastic insights and promotes her books and other writings. The end result is a site that has intuitive organization to move users through a large amount of content, while promoting and informing users about Laura’s books and availability as a writer and speaker on a variety of topics.

We’d love to help you create a website and branding that communicates your message clearly and effectively. To start the conversation, feel free to reach out via our online design request form, or give us a call at 212-213-1595.

Sara’s mission as an author and TV host is to encourage everyone to cook tasty healthy food at home and dine with family and friends. We worked with Sara to design an app to help you get a homemade meal onto your table every night of the week.

The app includes 60 easy-to-prepare recipes that are ideal for home cooks who want to prepare something new for the family without breaking the bank or spending hours in the kitchen. All of the recipes are updated favorites from Sara’s three cookbooks, “Sara Moulton’s Everyday Family Dinners”, “Sara’s Secrets for Weeknight Meals” and “Sara Moulton Cooks at Home”. The app also contains exclusive cooking instructional videos and recipe photographs, all done in Sara’s home kitchen. The recipes are organized by category for easy browsing, with an interactive shopping list included to help you save a list of ingredients you need for each recipe. And if you have any questions about the recipes or anything culinary, you can reach out to Sara via the app for an answer.

App Features:

• Beautiful high resolution photos of every recipe
• Exclusive instructional videos filmed in Sara’s home kitchen
• Easy to follow step-by-step recipe instructions
• The “Ask Sara” section to allow you to reach out to Sara directly with your culinary questions.
• An interactive shopping list for easy addition and management of recipe ingredients
• View ingredients by aisle for easy shopping
• Search for recipes by keyword, alphabetically, by category or by favorites
• Share recipes on Facebook, Twitter or via Email

If you’d like to discuss your idea for an app, please submit the details to our online design request form, or reach us by phone at 212-213-1595 from 10 am-6 pm Monday through Friday.

This November 26 is a big day for all of us at JPD Studio. It’s the second annual Small Business Saturday, when people across the country show their support by shopping with their favorite local businesses.

We’re thrilled to be participating in this special event by offering 10% off your next service with us if you reach out to us with a project on Saturday, November 26. To receive the discount, please reach out to us via our online design request form, or email us at design@jpdstudio.com on Small Business Saturday and mention the special. We’ll take it from there!

Don’t forget to “Like” and recommend us on Facebook at facebook.com/jpdstudio. Happy Small Business Saturday!

We’re happy to announce the launch of our latest website project: MissionofMermaids.com. This special website promotes a documentary by Susan Cohn Rockefeller that has the important goal of rekindling an appreciation and love for the health of the seas. The launch of the full website comes after we created a splash page for the film while the full website was being developed.

The design of the website and logo is inspired by the colors, beauty and magic of the oceans. Because the film uses the archetype of the mermaid throughout the film to deliver its message, we designed the logo with a mermaid’s silhouette. We also created the website on a WordPress platform with a content management system to allow the website administrators to make straightforward updates to the copy and images on the site. The site has information about the film, the director’s statement, partners and crew, as well as pages with resources and information to help users take action. There’s a press page with information about the film and high resolution images for media use. We also integrated a blog for users to stay up-to-date on information about the film and its release.

We’re proud to help promote the important issues addressed in Mission of Mermaids, including the dangers of over-fishing, ocean acidification and plastic pollution.

If you have a project you’d like to discuss, please don’t hesitate to reach out via our online form, or call us at 212-213-1595 from 10 am to 6 pm Monday through Friday to get the discussion started.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of a new website we created for Financial Comfort, a financial management company and learning resource center that helps businesses stay financially strong and growing.

This custom designed and coded WordPress website was designed with a homepage set up as a blog to allow Financial Comfort founder and President Regina Iulo and her staff to publish blog posts about financial matters via the site’s control panel. To reflect the Financial Comfort branding, we gave the website a clean design with intuitive navigation for users to easily find the information they need.

Because the site is built using WordPress, Regina and her team can easily draft and publish blog posts and make straightforward updates to the site’s copy and images. Users can check out Financial Comfort’s business services, or read about the Learning Center, which offers training and business classes offered to business owners, employees and individuals.

If you’d like to discuss a redesign of your business’s current website, please reach out via our online design request form, or call us at 212.213.1595 Monday through Friday from 10 am to 6 pm EST to start the conversation.

We’re excited to announce the launch of our latest website and logo design for Healthy Aperture, a food blog devoted to healthy, nutritious food recipes submitted by food bloggers all over the world.

Healthy Aperture Badge

When we created the logo and website design for Healthy Aperture, we wanted to reflect the site’s emphasis on beautiful, nutritious food photography and recipes. Users can submit an image to be featured on the site; if it’s chosen, the image will link back to that users’ blog with the full recipe. It’s a great way to compile and share gorgeous food photography and healthy recipes. We couldn’t help but be hungry as we worked on this project!

Because we coded the site on a WordPress platform, the site’s founder, Regan Miller Jones, can publish and post approved submissions quickly and easily via the site’s control panel. We even designed badges in two different sizes and provided embed code for bloggers who have been featured to post a badge that links to their gallery of images on the Healthy Aperture site.

For more information about Health Aperture, users can visit the About page, and can get answers about how to submit to the site on the FAQ page. Finally, to submit an image, we created a custom form for Healthy Aperture to allow users to upload an image for the site’s administrators to approve and publish.

We love this site’s beautiful imagery, community spirit and emphasis on healthy, delicious food. To discuss a project you have in mind for website or logo design, please reach out via our online design request form, or call us at 212.213.1595.

It’s not news that Facebook can help you connect with users. But more and more, companies are using custom-designed pages on Facebook to get the word out to users about their brand, products and special offers. At JPD Studio, we’re coming up with more creative ways to allow businesses large and small to customize their Facebook pages and connect with users in a more effective way.

Our custom designed and coded Facebook page design for lip conditioner company LIPSTOCK is a great example of how an engaging image can create an impact for new users coming to your Facebook page. The beautiful illustration, “Lady Scissorhands” was done by LIPSTOCK principal and creator Olga Ferreira; it also currently appears on the homepage of the JPD Studio-created Lipstockist.com website. Users coming to the LIPSTOCK Facebook page for the first time see this page that promotes the company’s free shipping offer on a purchase of two or more tubes of their fantastic lip conditioner. Once a user has “liked” LIPSTOCK, they will see the page’s wall by default when they come back.

A custom designed Facebook page can be as simple or as dynamic as desired; we like to think of them as miniature websites that can do virtually anything our clients would like.

With all that can be done, what better place to engage your audience than the world’s largest social networking site, used by over 800,000,000 people? To discuss your Facebook page project, please reach out via our online design request form, or give us a call at 212.213.1595.