This should be a no-brainer, own your domain name! We’ve recently been involved with projects with clients who let other designers or webhost providers register their domain name “as a courtesy to them”. Great – what happens when you want to switch providers or the designer who used to do your work goes out of business, leaves town, or just won’t return your call? You let someone else have control of your intellectual property and now you are going to have a hard time getting it back.

On one of our projects the client had to secure a new domain name – which sucks for them because all of their collateral material, (cards, letterhead, brochures, etc.) were branded with the old domain name. Luckily the site is down because the server is gone but what if it wasn’t? You would have your customers going to your old site, with outdated info and not much you could do about it.

So the key lesson here is register your own domain name – you own it, you control it. If you need to change webhost providers it’s a simple case of updating the nameservers. It doesn’t take a lot of time to register a domain, the expense is relatively small (especially if you register for multiple years) and it might save you a big headache down the road. Any questions feel free to contact us!

My apologies (I’m sorry!) to all Tweeters out there, especially my followers, for my repetitive Nigerian bank scam tweet. I’m sure it was funny the first few hundred times you saw it. :-0 See, I was trying out a tweeting software to schedule tweets and added that one. Instead of selecting “Publish Once”, I somehow selected “Publish Every 15 Minutes”. Yikes! Wasn’t even aware of it until my brother sent me a “Dude, you are SO annoying!” email. Feel like a newb, I suck – I know – but hey, no excuses. I screwed up and I’m fessing up – and asking for your forgiveness.

I’d like to thank those of you (especially tacullum) who had my back and replied that I was going for a scam. Now I know why he kept sending that to me, cause he kept seeing my freakin’ tweet every 15 minutes! Dude is cool though, cause he cared enough to tweet and that’s why I love Twitter – you get to meet nice people.

Oh, and if you don’t know what the Nigerian Bank scam is, check your junk mail or click here. And for heaven’s sake, don’t you dare fall for the scam. Tweep out.

Graphic Zen’s featured logo for September is: EuroSpa. EuroSpa is a day spa and therapeutic massage company located in Meridian, Idaho. The owner of EuroSpa wanted to use colors she liked in the new logo, mainly purples, pinks and some blue. We worked on a couple of variations to this logo until the client said that we had captured the perfect look. They also provide a great massage experience!

Okay, I must admit that I rarely pay attention to the drugs being marketed on television. The supposed cure for an ailment usually comes with a litany of side effects, many that seem worse than the original “problem”. I would love to design a logo and help craft a name for some of these drugs, as the manufacturers seem to shell out boatloads of money on such projects. I would have loved to have been in the meeting for this product:

See, I was half-watching TV when the ad for this product came on and I heard “..blah, blah, blah, ass effects.” Excuse me? Ass-what?

For the treatment of acid reflux disease, Aciphex (yes, it’s pronounced “ass-effex” but sounds like “ass-effects” to me), brings to mind a whole buffet of side effects. None too pretty either. For those that suffer from this, I sympathize – I really do. It’s still funny though.

Just finished the “Safe At University” site – located at: www.safeatuniversity.com. This is a site dedicated to student safety while attending college or university. The guide is filled with tips for parents and students on dealing with various campus and off campus safety situations. Please visit!