Website redesign for Crown Bay Marina in Saint Thomas provides a fun and user-friendly online experience.

Crown Bay Marina is a fabulous Marina in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, whose website needed a redesign that would truly represent their brand and the high level of service they are able to offer their guests, without forgetting to include a light-hearted Caribbean feel to connect with the mood of travelers and yachties in the industry.

During the preliminary content consultation phase, we helped Crown Bay Marina (through their management team at Marina Management Services) come up with a clear structure that would provide an easy and intuitive navigation through the site. Once we moved into the design phase, we helped build a new image and brand for the marina that will help strengthen their presence in the area.

Among the cool features of the new Crown Bay site:

• Excellent and clean design with a Caribbean feel
• Custom mini-banner ads to promote different vendors and tenants within the marina and direct traffic to specific sections within the site.
• Blog feed on the home page to provide bits of the latest news right from the start.
• Facebook widget with latest posts right on the home page.
• Flickr photo gallery feeding directly from Flickr photostream for latest image updates.
• Client managed blog within the site
• Contact forms and email capture for email  subscriptions.
• Secure reservations form.
• Connections to several social media outlets that we recommended to improve overall web presence.

Check the new site at: www.crownbay.com

For questions or information on web design projects and marina marketing, please contact: 
natalia@studiorod.com  |  www.studiorod.com
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New ad campaign for the Horizon EP148 introduces new adventure yacht with creative visuals

Advertising a brand new yacht always presents an interesting challenge to builders, the sales team and the marketing and design experts, especially when the campaign must be launched a few weeks before the yacht is fully photographed.

Such was the task at hand with the new Horizon EP148, an adventure-style luxury megayacht, fully Ice classed and capable of sailing to remote and hard-to-access destinations worldwide.

A combination of approximately 7–8 different images and renderings were utilized in order to visually transport the rendering of the EP148 to a beautiful location with an inspiring backdrop of icy mountains, pristine waters, and bright blue skies. Extensive photo retouching can do wonders to communicate an idea, particularly when the original pieces or “image-building-blocks” are all of the highest quality. 

For questions or information on advertising and design projects, please contact: 
natalia@studiorod.com  |  www.studiorod.com
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Just designed annual concert programs for Kentucky piano school.

For the eigth consecutive year, on Mother’s Day Weekend the children of the SCAPA piano school in Kentucky (The School for the Creative and Performing Arts) received their beautifully designed annual recital programs.

We love supporting good causes, especially when so many key ingredients are in place: Art + Music + Kids + Design. These programs have helped the SCAPA team strengthen the image and perception of their annual concert, and have made the children happy and proud.

The programs were designed as elegant trifold brochures showcasing all 18 young pianists with their pieces as well as quotations by famous composers, artists and writers. One of my favorite this year:

“A painter paints on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.”
— Leopold Stokowski

Congratulations to director David Gillespie and to the talented pianists!

For questions on any design projects, please contact: 
natalia@studiorod.com  |  www.studiorod.com
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A periodical newsletter is a great tool to keep clients engaged with you, informed and aware of new opportunities

Now on its second year, Churchill Yacht Partners’ “Charter News” newsletter continues to be a great way to stay connected with existing and potential clients, communicating new vacation opportunities and keeping people engaged with Churchill from season-to-season.

Tips for creating a successful newsletter:

• Consistency is key. Decide on a schedule and stick to it so that your effort is worthwhile. It could be monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly or even bi-annual depending on what suits you. Churchill does a quarterly schedule.
• Provide relevant content that your audience is interested in. Churchill offers unique yacht charter itineraries that get people dreaming of their next vacation, as well as activity calendars for important seasonal destinations.
• Make it visually appealing. Your newsletter should be well designed and beautiful. Churchill features gorgeous photography that covers both destinations and yachting lifestyles. They also showcase custom drawn maps that help transport readers to their island-hopping adventures. 
• Keep it practical to deliver. A 6x11 folded size is larger more unique than traditional letter, but still remains practical and affordable to mail. 
• Offer options for direct mail and online viewing. While clients love to hold the printed newsletter and may event write over maps or calendars, it’s useful to provide online access too. Check out the Issuu version below and flip through the pages.

Open publication - Free publishing - More bahamas

For questions on newsletters and other design projects, please contact: 
natalia@studiorod.com  |  www.studiorod.com
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Creative logo redesign for Fort Lauderdale’s Marina Mile Yachting Center strengthens name recognition.

A logo is a crucial aspect of the branding and name recognition of any business. A well-designed and carefully though-out logo can determine how quickly the name of a business becomes “engraved” in people’s memories.

Marina Mile Yachting Center—a Fort Lauderdale based marina and shipyard—had been using the logo shown above-left for a number of years, and while the investors and managers loved the nautical flags and were eager to retain them, they knew their logo needed some work.

After detailed analysis of their initial image, we made a number of suggestions that resulted in the new logo (above-right), which was quickly accepted and adopted by team.

These are some of the benefits of the new logo redesigned for Marina Mile Yachting Center:

• The name is the most important aspect of the logo, and it is no longer overshadowed by the flags.
• The new typography is easier to read from a distance, especially on signage made to be identified from boats in the water.
• The name is broken down into two lines and two color groups (navy and grey), making it easier on the eye and on the reader’s brain. MarinaMile now appears as the main name, and YachtingCenter serves as a reminder of their service and what they do.
• The flags are still here, serving as a connection to their previous image, and linking with a lot of existing materials. 
• “Fort Lauderdale” identifies their current location, and resonates with international audiences, when people in the Med see this logo in a marina directory, they’ll know MMYC is in Fort Lauderdale. The previous reference to “Marina Bay” was more obscure and difficult to identify.

We tend to ask a lot of questions at the beginning of a logo design project, because far beyond a simple pretty-picture, a logo is a 1-symbol translation of the brand, concept and mission of any business.

For questions on branding and logo design projects, or for a consultation that may help you find out whether your logo needs a facelift, please contact: 
natalia@studiorod.com  |  www.studiorod.com
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