The Osher Collaborative for Integrative Medicine comprises a highly regarded, international group of six academic programs dedicated to the study, teaching, and practice of integrative medicine funded by The Bernard Osher Foundation. The six programs possess both unique and shared strengths in the areas of research, education, and clinical care.
With their new website, the Collaborative has an unprecedented opportunity to advance the field of integrative medicine through the sharing of knowledge, resources, and best practices across sites.
What the Osher Collaborative is doing right with their new design
A versatile new logo that instantly communicates the strength of the network
Provides an image of collaboration and connection
Blue and green colors reflect health and wellness
Translates a very text-heavy identity into a powerful mark
Custom icons and quicklinks allow the user to address top actions and find top destinations with zero scrolling and minimal clicks
Seamless incorporation of stats and partner identities strengthen the perception of the brand and inform visitors of their reach
Clear Information architecture and design strategy allow visitors to educate themselves about integrative medicine and find care
The Monterey airport is the gateway to one of the most
sought-after vacation destinations in California. Focused on
convenience and customer service, the Monterey airport serves a
wide variety of travelers including tourists, military
personnel, business people, private aviators and members of the
community.
With their gorgeous new website, the Monterey airport makes
existing travelers lives easier, entices new travelers to choose
to use their services, draws in new airlines/routes and enhances
the overall bond with the community.
What we love about Monterey Airport’s redesign
The new website perfectly reflects their commitment to
customer service - From parking lot to terminal,
we worked together to ease every bit of the experience for the
traveler.
From day one, Monterey was committed to pushing the
envelope with design – Ambient video, social media
integration, flight status integration, and modern slide out
navigation provide the visitor with a modern, cutting-edge
experience that fits seamlessly with their new brand.
Striking imagery – The Monterey airport team
immediately recognized the power imagery has to affect a
visitor’s experience and perception of their brand. With this
in mind, the airport engaged the community and found a wealth
of photography and video footage that adds to the user
experience at every level.
Last month we held our first analytics webinar, covering a
variety of topics designed to empower you to better understand
your website’s performance, speak more confidently about it with
your peers and ultimately make smarter decisions about your
content. Today, we’re happy to share the recording and slides for
anyone who couldn’t attend or would like to review.
We’ll be holding a follow up “advanced” webinar in the near
future, going over things like custom dashboards and automated
reporting, so feel free to reach out to me if you have subject
ideas!
In May Mac Clemmens joined Steve McMahon, a
broadband expert and longtime board member of the Davis Community
Network, to talk about two internet subjects in the news –
net neutrality, the rules of which the Federal Communications
Commission
recently began to repeal, and the status of the civic effort
to build a municipal fiber-optic network in Davis. The
conversation was held at KDRT (95.7) in Davis, and the recording
is available online.
Do you ever wonder what we’re up to behind the scenes? Do you
wonder if your ideas for improvements are being implemented? In
case you missed them in the monthly update emails, we’ve compiled
a list of what you—our clients—told us were some of the most
useful features and updates added to your site last year.
We’ve been doing a lot of traveling recently, and last week was
our engineers’ turn. Jason and I attended all three days of
sessions at DrupalCon 2017, and we returned to Sacramento with
tons of new ideas. Seeing how other agencies solve the same
problems we face is inspiring and validating. Being in touch with
what’s happening in the Drupal community and what the large
players are up to is critical to ensuring the work we do for our
clients is future-proof.
Last month, I was extremely honored that Digital Deployment was
selected as a Small Business Development Center success story and
recognized by two members of Congress: Rep. Doris Matsui and Rep.
Ami Bera.
This was all made possible thanks to you—our clients, who have
been with us the entire way. You’ve allowed us to thrive in our
hometown, remain rooted in our values, and yet reach across the
country and rise to the challenge of building great sites for
outstanding organizations. Thank you!
Most of us aren’t graphic designers or art directors, but in
order to create engaging content for our readers, we often find
ourselves taking on these roles in one form or another. The
trouble is that unless you do this type of work daily, it can be
really hard to keep up with changing specs, updated best
practices and even just knowing which colors or fonts to pair in
your infographic.
Launched in May of 2011, The Campaign for the Future of
Higher Education (CFHE) fights to guarantee that affordable
quality higher education is accessible to all sectors of our
society in the coming decades. Recently, we got the opportunity
to team up with build a responsive website that would help
them achieve this important mission. We love the result.
What CFHE is doing right with their new
design:
The dynamic, full-page carousel immediately draws users
to engage in key issues.
The vibrant, selection of accent colors guides visitors
down the page and invites them to stay informed about upcoming
news and events.
The voices of higher ed helps those interested connect
with the campaign by introducing visitors to the people
behind the initiative.
The simplified information architecture helps readers find
important content with ease.
The new responsive design ensures that the site is accessible
and looks amazing on any device.
We are grateful to work with such amazing clients who are
furthering these important causes. If you know of an organization
that could benefit from similar help, Let
us know.
Just as buildings need to have wheelchair ramps, modern
websites must comply with various accessibility and web
standards. The U.S. Access Board has just published a final
ruling that takes effect January 18, 2018, and has revised
Section 508 (the part of federal law that defines web
accessibility standards) to include WCAG 2.0 (a modern,
independent standard for websites.)
Stock photos have developed a reputation of looking contrived and
cheesy, and/or being terribly expensive. Fortunately, if you’re
looking to snazz up some your content with photography but don’t
have a budget for professional photos, you’re in luck. We have
three sites that we recommend you check out: unsplash.com, pixabay.com, and pexels.com.
This week we had the opportunity to attend the AMA conference for
higher education in Orlando, Florida. As the premier conference
for higher education marketing in the country, it was the perfect
chance to meet with our clients and partners who are distributed
across the country, as well as make new contacts and
tune into emerging industry trends.
While there, we were very excited to showcase the prototype of
our new campaign landing page platform and have conversations
that help us understand how others in higher ed could
benefit from what we have to offer.
We look forward to sharing more about this new offering, and
the other trends we learned about, in upcoming blogs and
newsletters. :)
One of the things that makes Digital Deployment one of
Sacramento’s Best Places to Work is our focus on culture and team
connectedness. We support this with weekly teamwide
check-ins, bi-weekly team lunches, and monthly connectedness
activities. Each month a different team member is
responsible for planning a non-work related activity where we can
hang out and be merry. We’ve tackled the Escape Room (we
escaped!), gone kayaking, and more.
Last month we strapped on some smelly rented ice skates and did a
few laps around Downtown Sacramento’s Ice Rink, then went next
door for some great food. While some of us were more coordinated
that others, we all had a fantastic time!
Second only to creating great content is finding a way to make sure it reaches your audience. So today, for our “Low hanging fruit” article, we’re focusing on a very cool tool – Bundle and Blast.
So, what makes Bundle and Blast so cool?
Bundle and Blast is one of the most powerful time saving tools of your site. It gives you the ability to “bundle” existing content from your website and “blast” it to a group of email recipients with a few clicks via an integration with your own MailChimp account. (We used Bundle & Blast to send you this message!)
Keep your audience informed - Most visitors don’t visit your site every day, and they sure don’t know when you’ve crafted that article, announcement, or event notification that they need to know about. Bundle and Blast is your opportunity to quickly and easily share the good word.
One of my favorite things about working here are all the characters I get to work with. Around Halloween it gets even better!
Results from this year’s costume contest showed Cousin Eddie (from Christmas Vacation, in case you didn’t remember!) in first place, our There Referee second, and our resident Mad Scientist third.
We’ve always loved the Education Writers Association’s website,
but today we love it just that much more…because we’ve taken it
responsive. Now readers can enjoy their gorgeous, tiled design
from whatever device is at their fingertips. And while we were at
it, we added some updated social sharing capability and promotion
tools for their featured content. With the twitter following they
have (over 26K!), we can’t wait to see how readers take to their
new mobile-friendly platform.
Ready to invest in taking your site responsive? Let us know.
The Hospital Quality Institute, a long time client, just
completed a “rethink” to update their website to better reflect
the importance and effectiveness of what they do. Our
discovery process culminated in a stunning design, improved
information architecture and strategy that quickly leads
visitors to the content they’re looking for. Colorful
iconography helps visitors filter homepage content by type,
which allows them to achieve a curated experience on any device.
We’re excited to see how the updates in both strategy and design
will affect their mission.
Rocklin is a preferred location to live, work, visit, and grow
business because of its convenient location, high quality of
life, excellent schools, abundant recreational opportunities, and
the highest commitment to public safety.
Last month we helped the United Way Capital Region kick off their
new Square One project with a freshly redesigned website and we
are super inspired. From their bold color palette and fun imagery
to their engaging messaging, they do an incredible job of
bringing the community together for all the right reasons.
Back in the day of Microsoft publisher, clip art was all the
rage. Fortunately, those days have passed and we have some much
better tools to help get our ideas across.
Today, we’d like to introduce you to Unsplash.com. Unsplash is a gorgeous
collection of royalty-free photography that uses a creative
commons zero license to provide great, free images for websites
like yours. “Blogs, art, book covers, tshirts, and more — paid or
unpaid — they’re all allowed under the license.”
Last month we launched the new Sacramento SPCA website, and we seriously can’t stop looking at it. The local SPCA does amazing work for both our furry friends and our community, and with this new website they are truly able to shine a light on it.
We’re delighted to be working with the Sacramento City Unified
School District and Yolo County Children’s Alliance to
redesign their websites. Stay tuned for their launches in the
coming months.
Digital Deployment is happy to announce a new, more robust search
offering that provides features beyond the standard search on our
sites. DD Solr Search can search inside of file attachments like
PDFs, Word and Excel documents. Search results can
be customized to make the content you deem most important
float to the surface. It also features “Did you mean?”
functionality to help with spelling mistakes, autocomplete, and
advanced sorting capabilities which allow us to
take into account content age, archival status, body text inside
links, body text inside heading tags, and other factors
when returning search results.
We’re delighted to be working with Long Beach City College and
the New York City Employees’ Retirement System to redesign their
websites! Stay tuned for their launches in the coming months.
We often get the question, “How do I get my website to the
top of Google?”, and while our specific suggestions vary by
client, the process itself is very consistent.
With that in mind, here’s a quick guide to setting
targets and boosting your site’s organic search results.
Clarify your audience
Get clear on who you want to reach, and why, and with what
content
Streamline™, Digital Deployment’s special business unit dedicated
to serving local government by providing them with low-cost,
easy-to-use tools to be compliant, has released a free tool to
help California local government comply with SB 272.
Digital Deployment CEO Mac Clemmens and 3Fold Communication’s
Gordon Fowler appeared on Studio Sacramento with host Scott
Syphax to discuss how the Millennial generation approaches
the rules of career and success as entrepreneurs.
Since we last updated your site, the FCC voted to uphold “Net Neutrality” by reclassifying the internet as a utility. This creates a statutory backing for the time-honored principle of ensuring that all internet traffic is treated equally—ensuring that no “sponsored” sites or internet-service-provider-endorsed sites would load faster while other sites would load more slowly. This means that Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T will not get to build new “premium lanes” on the internet and then charge site operators to use them. In our view, this is good news for you.
We love food here at Digital Deployment. We like to offer
nutritious and fresh options for lunch and snacks to keep
everybody happy and healthy.
Preparing green and healthy smoothies every once in a while helps
us get a ton of nutrients in just a few gulps.
Because of our love for smoothies, we planned a week of full of
them for January 20-23 (Monday was MLK day) that incorporated
different varieties of smoothies.
Jeff Maher at ABC News10/KXTV interviews CEO Mac Clemmens to help
viewers better understand the implications of sustaining network
neutrality, along with the importance of today’s protest.
We are grateful to ABC News10 for this awesome coverage of such
a complex issue! —Mac Clemmens
You may have heard about the “internet slowdown” that is
happening tomorrow. While the term “slowdown” isn’t accurate
because the internet will be running at full speed, many
prominent sites like Netflix, Vimeo, Etsy, and more will be
displaying a symbolic “loading” symbol to protest recent actions
by the FCC to eliminate network neutrality.
One of my favorite things about working for Digital Deployment is
being able to assist all of our clients as Customer Support
Manager. Answering questions and guiding people in the right
direction is very rewarding.
We are now even more connected to what’s happening within our
community of clients! We’ve built a mission control-style
status dashboard with a little computer called a Raspberry Pi,
and we’re planning to expand to several big monitors mounted on a
wall in our office.
We’re now able to track many things happening on your site, right
as they are happening; things like page views, number of posts
edited, searches performed, webforms submitted, and more. This
data helps us understand how to better serve you and your
community.
The Sacramento Business Journal recently name Digital Deployment
as the ‘Healthiest Employer’ for companies sized 10-99 people.
Digital Deployment has made workplace wellness and maximizing
what it calls “Happy Shiny
People” a top priority in its quest to recruit, retain, and
empower the very best talent.
Sacramento, CA. — Digital Deployment, Inc. has hired Rocky
Martin as Business Development Manager. Rocky is responsible for
creating new business relationships for the Sacramento-based
website development company, recently nominated for a “Best
Places to Work” award by the Sacramento Business Journal. Rocky
is an accomplished relationship builder with a strong commitment
to helping clients succeed, most recently serving as a sales
representative for Paychex, Inc. During his five years with the
company Rocky successfully developed hundreds of new
relationships with clients in a variety of industries, regularly
exceeding sales revenue goals.
When Digital Deployment came together and clarified its mission two years ago, it prioritized “Happy Shiny People” as our main focus. We recognize that health and well-being is essential for any other kind of productivity. To us, Happy, Shiny People are like food, water, and shelter in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: without them, little else matters. When present, people and companies naturally ascend to self-actualization and high performance.
The Sacramento Business Journal named Digital Deployment the Best
Place to Work in Sacramento, for companies under 25 employees.
Digital Deployment staff joined other prominent businesses at the
DoubleTree hotel to be recognized. Over 400 people attended
the event.
“It’s an honor to be recognized alongside all of these great
companies,” said CEO Mac Clemmens. “We’ve worked hard on
this.”
We’re all really excited to announce the engagement of a new
client, the Education Writers Association. Located in
Washington, DC, the Education Writers Association (EWA) is
“dedicated to improving the quality and quantity of education
coverage to create a better-informed society. As the national
professional organization of members of the media who specialize
in education, EWA has worked for more than 60 years to help
journalists get the story right. Today, EWA has more than 2,500
members benefiting from its high-quality training, information,
and customized support.”
Krista Noonan, Director of Communications for CalSTRS, delivers
an address to the CalSTRS board regarding the new website for
California’s 862,000 teachers. She reviews many of the site’s
most important features and acknowledges Digital Deployment right
at the end. Thanks, Krista!
ALLDATA LLC, the leader in OEM automotive repair information and
solutions for professional service and collision repair shops,
has launched an updated online presence, the focal point being
the latest generation of its corporate website, www.alldata.com.
Digital Deployment worked with ALLDATA staff at all levels to
champion the redesign process for alldata.com, ALLDATA Europe, support.alldata.com, and other
key strategic properties.
We are all so proud and excited to announce the launch of the St.
Ignatius Parish School website!
This local Sacramento Roman Catholic Elementary School began
working with us in January of this year. FUEL Creative Group played a
huge role in the appearance of the site, designing the look and
feel. We are so happy to present a fresh, new website!
After attending the TEDx Sacramento
morning salon a couple weeks ago, it’s safe to say we’re
hooked. We heard there was an evening salon coming up and we were
all excited to attend.
The evening salon last night had a very inspiring theme – “From
Struggle to Strength.” We had the opportunity to view three
videos, listen to a fantastic band, and (the best part) watch
LIVE TEDx talks!
Last Friday we held an all day retreat where each member took on
a segment, and presented something that really matters to them
about the culture here at Digital Deployment.
So much nicer than hearing me, Mac and Clint speak all day long!
:)
What was present throughout was this clear understanding that
everyone here is a leader, and that each one of us has the
ability to take a stand for something that matters, to make
things happen and affect the way we do business.
I recently have become increasingly addicted to healthy, green
smoothies and have always been very curious about the exact
health benefits I’m getting in each one. Well, I had an
opportunity to do a little research on the benefits of certain
ingredients I was using when we found out that a member of our
team was diagnosed with cancer recently. Shortly after we heard
the news, there was a request for smoothie recipes that would
help fight cancer.
Two bills introduced in congress — the Stop Online Piracy Act
(SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) — attempt to stop the
illegal copying of movies, music and other forms of digital
intellectual property.
Fighting online piracy is important. The Senate and the House
have good intentions by going after pirates, but these two pieces
of legislation are simply the wrong way to do it.
Ever wanted to create your own doodle on the Google
homepage? Three local companies — Digital Deployment, Fuel
Creative Group and JM Design — teamed up to create two web-based
kiosks enabling you to do just that. They’re located in the
Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York
City.
One of my favorite things about working here are all the characters I get to work with. Around Halloween it gets even better! 
