BBM&D Strategic Branding has landed in the finalists’ circle of the Western Publication Association’s annual “Maggie” Awards. BBM&D’s work on the March/April 2009 issue of “American Fitness,” the magazine of fitness professionals, was nominated in the Best Overall Health Fitness & Beauty/Trade category.

The Maggies honor excellence in magazine, periodical, and publication design. They are are awarded by the Western Publications Association to acknowledge magazines west of the Mississippi for their excellence in various categories. Nearly 2000 entries were received by the WPA for this year’s competition. BBM&D has previously won a Maggie for a comprehensive redesign of “American Fitness” in 2006, and in 2008/2009 BBM&D was twice a Maggie finalist for “American Fitness” as well as for the “Gifted Education Communicator,” a research journal for educators and parents.

“It is incredibly rewarding to be recognized for our work in such a competitive field,” said Arrate Garcia, Designer and Project Manager at BBM&D, “Our goal is to enhance the reader experience, through intelligent information architecture and strong, powerful graphics.”

BBM&D Strategic Branding is a full service agency that helps position successful companies into higher levels of profitability and visibility. Founded in 1992, BBM&D has worked with such diverse clients as Saturn, Brown Jordan Outdoor Furniture, Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. Their award-winning designs can be viewed at bbmdstrategicbranding.com.

2010 is proving to be a big year for BBM&D’s web development team and their ongoing effort to to give back on both a local and global scale. Their first new website out of the gate goes global—for Venture Strategies Innovations (VSI), a U.S.-based nonprofit organization committed to improving women’s health in developing countries.

VSI’s bold new site relies on striking photography and the vibrant colors of Africa and Asia to communicate life and emotion, as well as the urgent needs of mothers receiving medical treatment through VSI’s work. The site was programmed using current web markup standards, and is powered by a PHP/database-driven content management system with auxiliary Ajax features. It also sports a built-in blog, interactive world map, and secure e-commerce integration.

“The new website is a bold, beautiful way to foster solidarity with the women and communities we serve around the world,” said Amy Grossman, VSI Communications Manager. “It’s also a valuable resource for our in-country partners, and an educational fund-raising tool for our community of supporters,” she continued. “BBM&D has done wonderful work.”

“VSI plays an essential global role in saving mothers’ lives and strengthening communities,” said Keir DuBois, Senior Web Developer at BBM&D. “We are very proud to be entrusted with communicating their vision and goals.”

BBM&D Strategic Branding has been providing integrated design solutions since 1992. A creative-driven firm with award-winning credentials and a diverse client list, BBM&D provides intelligent strategy and powerful design across all media including broadcast, print, and the web, creating solutions that differentiate top-tier companies across many industries. Their work can be viewed at bbmd-inc.com.

BBM&D Strategic Branding has been recognized by the American Advertising Federation for outstanding creative in the annual AAF Coastal California competition. Judged by a panel of distinguished industry professionals, the ADDYs recognize outstanding work in the field of advertising.

A frequent winner of ADDY gold in years past, BBM&D took home two gold awards in 2010, both for work done on behalf of Agoura Hills-based Bellini Bistro. BBM&D’s work for Bellini in identity (a logo design) and printed pieces (a menu) were awarded gold ADDYs. BBM&D also received two silver awards for logo design work: one for a re-branding for Interface Children & Family Services of Ventura County, and a second for Ventura home goods startup Bed Bling For Your Box Spring.

Three other BBM&D-created logos also won bronze ADDYs: Carpinteria-based clothing boutique Studio Sox, Four Paws Veterinary Clinic of Santa Paula, and Southern California-based eco-business Global Green Carbon. BBM&D netted more bronze ADDYs in the following categories: advertising (Lavaggio Auto Detailing’s Fall 2009 campaign), public service (posters for Interface Children & Family Services) and special event materials (lenticular backpack tags for Children’s Dental Group).

“We are honored and proud to be recognized by our industry peers,” said BBM&D president Barbara Brown. “Having our work acknowledged with these awards reinforces the creative and professional effort we put into it.”

BBM&D Strategic Branding is a full service agency that helps position successful companies into higher levels of profitability and visibility. BBM&D has worked with such diverse clients as Saturn, Kinkos, Brown Jordan Outdoor Furniture, Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. Their award-winning designs can be seen at bbmd-inc.com.

The BBM&D design team is thrilled to expand their arsenal of creative services and embrace mobile device web development, one of the fastest growing segments on the web. That popularity, along with the wide variety of mobile devices in use, demands a level of accessibility and convenience for every brand on the mobile web—but that doesn’t have to come at the expense of branding.

The mobile web is much more agile and streamlined in function, with wildly diverse variables—browser types, connection speeds, and screen resolutions—but most websites are still designed solely for an optimal desktop user experience, virtually ignoring the mobile segment. With the escalating usage of mobiles in business and in general—the past year alone has seen a 150% surge in mobile web usage, according to browser maker Opera—redeploying a brand for this context becomes increasingly imperative.

“Forcing mobile users to deal with a normal desktop or laptop-friendly site on their Blackberry, iPhone, or Droid may be a thing of the past,” said BBM&D President Barbara Brown. “Progressive enhancement of a brand for the mobile segment is as essential now as the print-to-online transition of a decade ago.”

The most successful online brands have delivered a mobile user experience totally unique from conventional desktop web browsing. “Almost everything is different,” said BBM&D Chief Technology Officer Tony Spore. “You need to measure how your audience uses the mobile web, because you may be rethinking everything technically and stylistically in order to keep the brand seamless in both environments.”

BBM&D’s mobile web development aims to maintain a company’s online branding with an artful approach to information hierarchy, imagery, navigation, and more—going beyond merely utilitarian appearances without sacrificing practical functionality. “We create a new iteration of a brand for the mobile world,” continued Brown. “It’s translating a site’s key branding and content from its desktop form to a more mobile-friendly presentation, taking advantage of the mobile world’s unique characteristics to make a more satisfying user experience.” To view an example of BBM&D’s mobile web development in action, visit blog.bbmd-inc.com.

BBM&D Strategic Branding is a full service agency that helps position successful companies into higher levels of profitability and visibility. BBM&D has worked with such diverse clients as Saturn, Kinkos, Brown Jordan Outdoor Furniture, Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. Their award-winning designs can be seen at bbmd-inc.com.

Certain words and phrases seem to always induce blind panic among businesspeople, and over the past decade—even the past five years—the number of these things has increased exponentially. It’s been enough to inundate the planet beneath the foul cloud of this fear, as the usually-sane decision makers in thrall to this affliction dissolve into shameful paranoia.

One of the worst offenders is the ruthless and fickle phenomenon of search engine optimization (SEO), the process by which we all permit Google, Yahoo, MSN and the rest of the find-it-now brigades to catalog and regurgitate our feeble attempts at online marketing. SEO purveyors wear all kinds of hats—white, black, devil’s-blood red, portfolio-envy green—but each of them seek the same thing: instilling a nagging fear inside the hearts of potential clients via a progressively ulcer-inducing pileup of rhetorical pitches.

“Is your website optimized? No? My God, man, don’t you know much money you will lose within the next five minutes? Trust me, it’s substantial. I mean, are you targeting the crucial vampire-tween demographic? Do you know how much obscenely disposable income those kids have? Seriously, all of it could be yours—and all you have to to is add hepa yo juju and fubar gabba gabba hey to your site, then wait six months, and then we’ll be able to see if your business will stomp all online competition or fail miserably, only to be remembered as a cruel internet meme. Come on! Sign my contract! Show me your guts! DO IT!!”

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking—but they don’t all chug gallons of Red Bull. Some of them are even Nice People. I tend to fall somewhere in between, but since I have no life on a Friday night, I’m gonna tell you the Ten Secrets of SEO, so listen up. Since Google is the thousand-pound-beast of search engines, let’s lob some feeble pebbles at it, shall we?

1. Hang Around for a Long, Long Time

How long has your domain been registered? This is a big deal, because Google is a pitiless judge on its good days—and if you’ve only registered a domain within the past year or so, Google may think you’re a spammer. If you really are a spammer, well, you stink—but if you’re not, don’t take it personally. Just hang around for a while, invest some money on a years’ worth of doman registration, and follow the other steps below, and maybe you’ll be able to clear your name off the Megan’s list of domain ownership.

2. Be That Thing People Can’t Stop Ogling

Like most brutally judgmental entities, Google can’t always form an opinion on its own, so it relies on gossipy inside info for help. In this case, that means the good ol’ back-scratching that is inbound links. The All-Mighty Algorithm has declared inbound links to be ambrosia, and so we are all doomed to precariously balance between “not enough” and “too many” helpings of what the kids used to call “linky goodness.” Well, I’m here to tell you that there’s no magic number. No happy medium. However, inbound links are a bit like bonbons—scarf too many at once, and the results will be…unpleasant. Trust me.

3. Who the @(%&# Do You Think You Are?

Like any good bloated bureaucracy, Google divides itself into multitudes of interlocking and overlapping departments. Some are called “Webmasters’ Listings,” some “Sitemap Submissions,” some “Local Business Centers.” Before I go on, I have to say—who calls themselves a “webmaster” these days? I mean, is this 1999 or 2009? Anyway, the bottom line here is to find your niche and plant a flag. If that was good enough for the rest of history’s conquering megalomaniacs, it should be good enough for you. Go forth.

4. Is Your Site Worth Visiting At All?

Quality content isn’t exactly a magic bullet, but it helps keep your site stickier than a drone’s behind. If you sell honey, you better have the word “honey” appear on your site at least 162 times. Hire some starving copywriters if you have to, and chunk out that information for the semi-literate sensibilities of the modern web-viewer. Now, I know some people insist that your viewers don’t want to do useless things like thinking, but those people all hated 9th grade English, so take that silly swill with a few bushels of salt. People like good writing. They also like YouTube videos of half-naked starlets, too—so make sure you concoct some eloquent, yet pithy, descriptive copy.

5. You Named It What?

A site needs quality page titles if it will have any hope of getting noticed. Why, then, did I wait until #5 to tell you this? Well, I’m about to knock off for the night (#s 6-10 will be posted…later) and I wanted to end strong, you know? Anyway, a good title needs to be descriptive enough to stand out among a horde of search engine results, so that people will think “what does that even mean, man?” and of course be compelled to click through. The same rules of copywriting pretty much apply here: think of great newspaper headlines, and go for that. “Dewey Defeats Truman!” or “Cubs Win World Series!” might work.

So that’s it for now. What—I’m on the clock, okay? Not everyone gets to go home at 5 p.m. on Friday, man. I’ll be here burning the midnight oil all night. Yeah, it’s a dirty job, and I’m desperate enough to do it. You’re welcome.

The BBM&D design team is excited to announce a new product in their suite of services: web development for mobile devices. As mobile usage in business continues to grow and evolve—the past year alone has seen a 150% surge in mobile web usage, according to browser maker Opera—the most successful online brands have delivered a mobile user experience unique from conventional desktop web browsing.

Most websites are built to be viewed only on computer screens, but users on-the-go know that the mobile web is different. A successful mobilized website targets a user’s specific mobile needs, making the best possible use of technology and creating a satisfying user experience. Many mobilized sites, however, are designed so sparingly as to appear merely functional.

“Essential information doesn’t have to look boring,” said BBM&D President Barbara Brown. “BBM&D’s mobilized web design applies a fine-art sensibility to the bare-bones designs of conventional mobile-friendly sites. We can help companies keep their branding approach consistent and their mobile customers happy.”

BBM&D Strategic Branding is a full service agency that helps position successful companies into higher levels of profitability and visibility. BBM&D has worked with such diverse clients as Saturn, Kinkos, Brown Jordan Outdoor Furniture, Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. Their award-winning designs can be seen at bbmd-inc.com.