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The LeMoyne Center for the Visual Arts, a Tallahassee-based nonprofit art gallery and education center, asked Taproot Creative to help promote its 47th Annual Holiday Show. With memberships and private donations dwindling, LeMoyne sought to use this opportunity to demonstrate its cultural and economic value to the community and promote art as a legitimate business.

The Florida Chamber of Commerce hired Taproot Creative to conduct a usability study and technical audit of its website and use the research findings to effectively redesign the site. Through this process, we discovered that website visitors were overwhelmingly dissatisfied with their experience, primarily due to their inability to find relevant information quickly and easily. Furthermore, the lack of a consistent layout, poor aesthetics, technical flaws, circular navigation and unclear content jeopardized the Chamber’s brand in the minds of key stakeholders.

The Florida State University College of Social Work hired Taproot Creative to asses its existing brand and develop and implement an integrated marketing campaign to raise its profile among target audiences and attract top-notch students to its on-campus, online and distance learning programs.

I’m a sports fan, not a sports fanatic. There’s a difference.

Fans don their favorite team’s colors week after week and relish in the inevitable emotional roller coaster ride that characterizes a season. Fanatics, on the other hand, experience emotional extremes that distort their worldview and compel them to think and act in ways that often defy social norms. Fans innocuously paint their faces and wear foam fingers. Fanatics subversively throw punches and set cars on fire. Fans opine around the water cooler. Fanatics call in sick after their team misses a game-tying field goal that could have ultimately landed them in the Super Bowl (sorry Ravens die-hards). Fans would agree that college football lost a great coach this past weekend. Fanatics would claim the sport lost a great man.

Again, there’s a difference.

The type of paper you choose for a project can make a design sing or fall to the ground in a clumsy, unfortunate mess. It’s as important as any part of the design or the message, and it should never be an afterthought. It’s not something to be thrown into the mix at the last second, or reduced in quality to marginally lower the budget. Paper is a design choice, along with typography, color, form, layout, illustration, photography… all of it. It matters.

Fear is an interesting emotion. It’s much more deceitful and sneaky than, say, happiness or sorrow or anger. When I’m happy, it’s pretty obvious. When I’m pissed off, it’s even more obvious. But often, I can go for long periods of time, completely unaware that my decisions are being driven, or at least influenced, by fear — whether as a father, a husband or as a business owner.

Looking through design annuals used to kill me. I repetitively mumbled “Why didn’t I think of that?” as though it were a mantra while flipping through page after page of remarkable work. Any and all work of my own that I was pleased with just moments ago was suddenly discarded as less than. Secondary. Coach class. Expected. Boring. But this other stuff? This stuff in the magazine? That was good. I should be that good. I should be better.

As a junior designer at Taproot, I’m learning new things every day. The most recent revelation? Keyboard Shortcuts. Taking the time to implement these techniques into your Photoshop workflow will streamline processes and make things go significantly faster. Plus, as an added benefit, you can impress others with your newly formed finger ninja skills.

Who doesn’t love a little mobile technology to help you get through a busy workweek? I rely on my smartphone to guide me to my next meeting, remind me to run errands and connect with friends while on the run.