This is the kind of project we love.

A client that's important to the community, is fun to work with and welcomes creativity, and has ideas of their own so is able to give good feedback and guidance but knows when to turn things over to the pros.

We just recently launched the new website for Halifax County Tourism, including creating a custom illustrated animated map that displays tourism sector information and provides visual site navigation.

For as long as we've been working with the tourism office, director Linda Shepperd has wished for some type of animation that would let visitors "drive" around the county to discover things. Cost, not wishing to use Flash, practicality of the feature, and several other factors always kept us from creating it.

On this site redesign, though, illustrator Erin Kipps Brown came up with a concept to treat the project like a theme park map.

Working on the rebranding and new website for Halifax County Tourism (currently under development) has reminded me of what a nice place this is to visit or live in. I know I'm biased, but the truth is that we have a wider variety of things to do and places to eat than most places with a much higher population.

Currently the Tourism website is really mostly a directory of businesses. The organization has never had the manpower or budget to develop content, so the site didn't do the area justice. In addressing that issue through this redevelopment, I'm continually discovering things about my home county that I had either forgotten or never knew about.

Just goes to show that "Discover Halifax" is the perfect name for the Tourism Deparment's marketing initiatives, because there's always something new to discover! Keep an eye out for upcoming social media campaigns that center around discovering Halifax; I'm hoping you'll open my eyes to even more unique things about the area.

Look for the new site and brand to be unveiled in a couple of weeks, along with two new features being added to the Visitors Center.

Here are just a few photos of things to do around the county. How many have you done? Did you know you can even take cheese making classes?

We were recently selected to design the logo and website for a new regional economic development group in Virginia, the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance.  Last Friday, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling was in town to kick off the alliance and to introduce the group's new Executive Director, Leigh Cockram; the new logo was unveiled to the public at the event.

If your website doesn't have a mobile version, you must correct that!  Too many sites either display poorly on mobile devices, or even worse, don't display at all.  Recently I tried to visit a site on my iPhone, but it opened up to a blank white page; when I got back to the office I browsed to the site on my laptop and found that it's built entirely on Flash.  That results in nothing to display on the iPhone!

Luckily, when I initially tried to visit the site I wasn't looking to buy or researching a company I may want to do business with; if that had been the case, they would have had a lost sale.