“Good Design is Good Business”
“I work directly with businesses and individuals who need an aesthetically pleasing and effective professional representation. My creations are functional and affordable, imbued with elegance. Give me a call or email today to discuss enhancing the promotion of your business.” —Ronnie Herrmann
WEBSITES
Balancing the technical functionality with visual elements, I meet your business goals without breaking the bank.
Professional design is about more than color, layout, type and scale. I provide thoughtful, elegant solutions to engage your clients.
IDENTITY
My goal is to meet and exceed your creative needs and the needs of your clientele by providing exceptional branding.
Visual Elegance for the Tiny Budget
Your website has enormous potential as your business solution. The action to implement your unique website is far less than the cost of not doing so. It's just a blend of artistic vision and code, and I'm committed to your success.
I work directly with small businesses and individuals who need an aesthetically pleasing and effective, professional representation. My creations are functional, affordable websites using the latest web standards, embued with elegance. With my creative eye, I deliver distinctive expression, with clarity and authenticity in promotional and printed materials.
One thing alone leads to success, and that is action. Give me a call or email today to discuss enhancing the promotion of your business through print or the world wide web.
Providing Representation Rich in Spirit
My goal, and your goal, is the effective representation and communication of your vision to the people you serve. Your web presence should showcase your purpose in a unique way, engage your customers while putting them at ease, and at the same time support your strategic goals. I customize identity, fine-tune your image to express your core essence with simplicity and practicality, keeping efficiency and usability in mind. You have my personal guarantee of focused attention and strong commitment on each project.
The world wide web is an infinite universe. Statistics show that 81% of potential customers use it, and that number grows every year. The constant 24/7 presence is the most powerful, cost effective marketing tool, and an online presence has become a professional must. Make a decisive first impression. Whether starting anew, optimizing, updating, or refining an existing site, make that call today to inexpensively further your goals.
Services
Web Design
Whether you are launching from the ground up or incorporating changes, your needs and budget are my primary concern. Usability, scalability, optimization of pictures, and speedy loading are my speciality. Please visit my "portfolio" page to see the possibilities of a custom site. Not that there's anything wrong with using templates, but if your aim is more than looking impersonal and commercial, your site should provide authenticity in the form of your story and pictures that tell it. Whether you have one page or ten, each page should consistently showcase your identity. My services include refinement or restructuring of existing sites, and I work directly with clients, or their representatives.
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is provided organically in site architecture, title tags, and image tags. I also include content review, keyword search, and meta-tags, to further enhance your exposure for no additional cost. Beyond that, I offer specific services in an SEO package. This includes placing your site prominently for local visibility and into local news aggregators, manual URL and XML Sitemap submission to the major search engines. I also set up traffic reporting through Google Analytics.
Strategy
Strategy includes strengthening your identity, or "branding" to create a memorable impression. Potential customers develop an opinion of your brand in a few seconds. The goal is to get your browsers to become your customers. Copywriting includes your "story", which engages the customer, and explains your unique proposition. Consistency in fonts, colors, and layout all contribute to the visual total. Both content and presentation are necessary for an effective web presence.
Graphics
Branding is accomplished through consistently using your visual assets in all areas of your business exposure. Your identity should carry through to your business cards, letterhead, brochures, catalogs, and print ads. I can design, or use existing graphics to craft any of your promotional materials.
Prices
- Web Design & Development
- Up to 6 pages $1500, additional scenes or pages $100-200 each. This price is for a custom non-templated website, similar to the portfolio examples. SEO is built into the design through architecture, meta-tags and links to social media. It will be designed with your preferences in mind. You will not be held hostage, you own the website.
- Update (Restructure or Refinement)
- Price varies depending upon complexity. Please call for a quote.
- Domain Registration
- The best deal around is Google, domain registration is $12 annually, and optional masking is free.
- Web Hosting
- I host through Google, which beats every competitor for speed. HTTPS, which is encrypted for protection of sensitive data, was not necessary for websites that did not take credit card info or have a patient portal in the past. But to avoid "page not secure" warnings, loss of visitors, and risk, HTTPS has now become the standard. The cost for HTTPS is $25 monthly, billed $300 annually, and includes all associated costs. This is only $15 monthly more total than the cost of an HTTP website to give you the green lock in the browser bar.
In a cost comparison, GoDaddy charges $17 monthly for hosting a dedicated IP site capable of SSL, plus $75 annually for the standard SSL certificate (or $130 for the premium annual SSL certificate), plus $5 monthly for a daily scan, which totals $339 annually if you go with the lowest prices. They do discount the first year (ie, $60 instead of $75 for the certificate). - Search Engine Optimization
- Provided organically (without paid ads) for a one-time cost of $700. I place your site prominently for local visibility and into local news aggregators. The package includes traffic reporting through Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. Instruction on understanding and accessing the information is provided.
- Strategy
- Cohesive planning is included in the cost of the design. I provide manual URL and XML Sitemap submission to the major search engines. Connection to social media through icon links and mailing list sign-up are part of strategy, and increase SEO. Email campaigns and maintenance of large lists are available for a monthly fee to a specialty service. Databases under 2000 are free through Mail Chimp, the only cost is for the design of the emails.
- Shopping Cart
- Paypal $300 to set-up. Recommended for credit card acceptance, as the total ongoing cost is about 3% of sales, no minimums, and no merchant account with monthly fees ($$$) is necessary.
- Graphic Design
- Logo design includes design of letterhead, business cards, and style guide for $850. Cost includes supervision of printing. Call or email for printing costs or other graphic design requests.
Filling out the questionnaire 
will help me understand the scope of your project.
About
Ronnie Herrmann
Art is my life's work and passion, and many know me from twenty five years as a potter and artist. I am also a photographer, which is a useful skill in this profession. Painting is my hobby, mainly watercolor. I enjoy exercise in the form of hiking, accompanied by a camera or paints. I love coding too, it engages the other side of my brain. Striving for consistency, even in the finer details, I code in Sublime Text, and use the Adobe Creative Suite Software and Lightroom. Learning new skills is essential to creating the most functional work, and I deliberately continue on.
Design Skills
- Websites
- Logo Design
- Business Cards
- Ads
- Brochures
- Branding
Coding Skills
- HTML5
- CSS3 & SASS
- Javascript
- jQuery
- PHP
- Node, etc.
Education
- AA, Univ. of Miami
- BFA, Florida Intl. Univ.
- Computer Science:
- Santa Barbara CC
- UC Santa Barbara
- Lynda.com
- Reading List
Accessibility
I strive to ensure that this website is accessible to everyone.
If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the accessibility of this website, please contact me, as I am continually working to improve the experience for all visitors. I believe this website satisfies all Section 508 checkpoints for compliance with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, Level “A”. I cannot accept responsibility for the content or accessibility of the external websites or external documents linked to on this website.
Credits
Typefaces
- Makozin Designed by Rebecca Hurst Hashtag Type
- Italianno Designed by Robert Leuschke TypeSETit
"Good design is good business."
attributed to Thomas J. Watson Jr. (1914-1993)IBM’s focus on design has its roots in a stroll down Fifth Avenue in New York that Thomas J. Watson Jr. took in the early 1950s. He stopped at an Olivetti shop where typewriters were set out on sidewalk stands for passersby to try out. The machines had sleek designs and a variety of colors. Inside, the shop was bright and modern looking. In contrast, the display areas in IBM’s offices in those days were dimly lit and its computers were drab and boxy. The lobby of the headquarters on Madison Avenue had been designed to please Thomas Watson Sr.’s early 20th century aesthetic: it looked, his son wrote, like the “first-class saloon on an ocean liner.” A few years later, as Watson Jr. was preparing to take over as IBM’s chief executive, he decided, “I could put my stamp on IBM through modern design.” Later, in a 1973 lecture at the University of Pennsylvania, Watson Jr. declared that “good design is good business.”
Warning
May 10, 2015 - I got a very credible looking spam email. It said my domain was going to expire and it was time to renew. It was true, it was one of my domains, and it was due in a few weeks. The email had five or six links on it (renewal deadline, go here to renew, registrar site, etc). It had no misspelled words, clearly written, it was almost verbatim wording from ICANN or registrar reminder email. It even had a footer that read as follows:
"The information in this letter contains confidential and/or legally privileged information from the notification processing department of the SEListingReg 1521 Alton Road Suite #464, Miami Beach, FL 33139 USA, This information is intended only for the use of the individual(s) named above. If you do not wish to receive further updates from SEListingReg {unsubscribe here}. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that disclosure, copying, distribution or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents for this letter is strictly prohibited."
Sounds legit, but it's not from MY domain registrar. Every link could have installed malware. All of my clients have ID protect so no one can get their email addresses through the registrar. Bots cannot get the email address from the website because I have scrambled it. The only way they can get the email from the website is by manually clicking the contact link. They go through a lot of trouble to do this. When you click on an email link, it's likely they'll ask you for a credit card# to renew, or they will install malware. They are not looking to cheat you out of $25; it's too much work for so little; they are stealing your credit card, or assembling a profile for identity theft. Be ever so cautious - if you suspect it's phishy, ask your webmaster, or you can use your browser to navigate to the website, but do not click on the email links. And if you have gmail, "delete forever". The site for SEListingReg.com does not load; no one owns the domain.
Subsequently, I searched the domain. I came across this revealing blog post: Web Designer Nora Kramer got the same email before I did, and she examined it thoroughly. The domain was registered at that time, and she figured out the scam. She is warning her readers. If you have a few minutes, it is well worth the read!