Web Design / Graphic Design / Home Decor

One of our board members, AandAVI is a talented web/graphic designer. But, really,with the web based systems like Wix and several others, anyone can design a smart looking website if they work at it.

Debbie Sun has a high end design shop for graphic fabric designs on Company St. I believe. She just finished the Caravelle Hotel redesign. It looks fabulous. She is also an architect. I worked with her in the 90's.

http://hotelcaravelle.com/? This is exactly what I was referring to. I would not hire the person who did this. Just my opinion.

That site could definitely benefit from some more graphics and pizzazz. The structure of the site is fine but it could be much more lively.

I'll second AandAVI.
Wasn't impressed with interior design work at Carvelle, either.

I design and develop. My style is very minimalistic though and not everyone likes that. I just finished a custom wordpress theme for a high school friend of mine http://fethecat.com/. My port will be up shortly and I work full-time as a web dev on island.

One of our board members, AandAVI is a talented web/graphic designer. But, really,with the web based systems like Wix and several others, anyone can design a smart looking website if they work at it.

None of those out of the box systems work when it comes to clean semantic code. A human will always win over a program when it comes to writing code. There's just too many small nuances that the program will never be able to address.

http://hotelcaravelle.com/? This is exactly what I was referring to. I would not hire the person who did this. Just my opinion.

Is it just my computer or is every pic on that web site facing up? It's giving me a stiff neck just looking at it.

It's like, "where's the rest of the picture?"
Not visually appealing, IMO.

Thanks for the shout outs everyone!

Are you looking to hire a designer or become one here?

I am a designer. I've been doing design since graduating the Art Institute in 2000. MAN I don't feel that old - weird! I have been a WIX professional designer for 5 years now and I am in their portfolio of designers so I do a lot of work with WIX customers. Previously I did traditional coded and dreamweaver sites from 2000-2010-ish but the problem is that the client wants a small change they have to hire the designer again. We cant work for free, even if its just a "quick change". I found that not a lot of people understood that even a "quick" five minute change times a dozen or so clients at a time is a lot of free work... and well... mama's gotta pay that WAPA bill 😉 I worked for a couple fortune 500s including DR Horton in Arizona as art director for all the marketing, magazine spreads and billboards for a couple years. Hated that job LOL. No creative freedom- suits - heels - traffic/commuting all week - no thanks but it was cool to drive around and see my work everywhere in the city. I did the logo for St. Croix Island life so I still get to see my work all over the island. I do love what I do but now I design on the beach. 😀

I design exclusively on the WIX platform at this point. You can create a free account give it a whirl with their free templates. Its a what you see is what you get editor and its pretty easy but what isn't easy is designing for yourself. This is why I'm still in business lol. I also am an Adobe Certified Associate in Photoshop and Illustrator. The best part about WIX is that once I've designed a totally custom site (I don't use templates) then its transferred into your WIX account and you have full control. Need to change a price or a photo? No problem! You can make your own changes in seconds but I am always available for more complicated things. Also if you're in STX I give a 30 min "how to" session once the site is a wrap to show you how to do the simple things and manage your google analytics and SEO. I also offer this to STT and STJ since I pop over there pretty regularly. I offer photo packages with my sites as well - I did the Virgin Islands Coffee Roasters photos that are hanging in the STT airport and will have some photos in St. Croix This Week - April and May. It will be interesting to see which they choose.

WIX isn't perfect and I wish I could combine wordpress with WIX - then it would be the perfect platform but after so may years of traditional sites I feel that my clients really benefit from using WIX over any other platform simply for the ease of editing with no maintenance fees from a designer. Theres a few others that are similar but they don't have the bells and whistles WIX does. For instance I can get a website with a storefront up in two days provided I have all the content. Not many other platforms... or designers for that matter can do that in such a short time frame. I am very fast.

Cre: I like that design a lot. I too like modern clean lines. Even my house is mid century minimalist. I love clean sites. Of course every client is different and some want fun unique sites, which is why I love my business. Never the same thing. This week a client in Spain (clothing), one in Australia (craft beer) and just finished the 2016 Coconut Cup website for Freedom City Surf - they wanted something crazy fun and colorful. The one that they had last year was "too boring" and "too corporate"so I made it fun and animated. Its anything but boring. Also wrapped up for the new dive shop, Adventure in Diving STX in Fsted last week - made them a new logo too. Great people.

My site is www.adrianpoe.com

Thanks again everyone for the shout out.

cre and A&A, I like your style! I too prefer a very minimalistic approach in design. Many moons ago, when the business I worked for, needed a better website, we hired someone to do it and payed 10k. It was awful. I bought dreamweaver, a couple of Dummy books, and just did it myself. I won't say it was real pretty, but it was super functional and we had great ranking. So many of the local business here have websites that make me cringe. As beautiful as our surroundings are, I just don't think that you should use a picture as a background. Too distracting, makes the content hard to read. And I have so rarely even seen a photo that does the real thing much justice anyhow. When I go to a website, I'm there for info, and if it's hard to see the info, then I move on.
Same goes for design. I did a rack card for a friend who has a charter boat business. He was resistant to not using a photograph for a background on his card. I took him to a booking booth, put my design up on the rack in a random spot, told him to step back and see where his eye was now drawn. Did the trick to convince him. I think most people just put too much crap in their print promotion. Just like they put too much crap on their websites.
I hope you guys are both killing it.

Try Lannen Designs. Chris did a great website for us

Jumbie what's the link?

http://www.lannendesigns.com/

No, for the website that he did for them.

It's a she.
Had a website designed by her many years ago and no longer use as had to go thru her to make any/all changes. Don't know if that's how she still works it

(tu)

Good to know - I would be interested in seeing the design jumbie just had done.
I agree there are WAY too many bad websites - and lack of information in general for local businesses.

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Do you have a USVI business license that allows you to conduct your business here?

Do you have a USVI business license that allows you to conduct your business here?

Can't Bailjy operate as a sole proprietor?

Can sole proprietors qualify for VI business licenses?

I checked DLCA website and, from my reading, you must be incorporated to get a business license.

http://dlca.vi.gov/businesslicense/steps.htm

Thanks for any clarification.

You do not need to incorporate to get a business license. The office that registers corporations also checks your business name and issues a certificate that confirms your biz name is not used by another biz.

Anybody doing biz in territory is supposed to be licensed.

It's all explained on the web sites- Lt Governor's office to register business name, DLCA for the license, VI BIR to pay your taxes.

Stay away from Wix. Google removed every single Wix site from their index. They are slowly, and I mean SLOWLY, adding them back in.

Also with Wix you are wedded to that site forever. There;'s no options to just switch to a new design/theme. You have to start from scratch.

Stay away from Wix. Google removed every single Wix site from their index. They are slowly, and I mean SLOWLY, adding them back in.

Also with Wix you are wedded to that site forever. There;'s no options to just switch to a new design/theme. You have to start from scratch.

That happened last Fall sometime. Are you saying it's not fixed yet?

I don't know much about Wix. Just enough to know I could go cheaper, with more options and flexibility, by not using them. And that many Wix sites I've visited, including Wix.com itself, seem to take forever to load.