We will be opening our doors for the public to come see our studio and meet our great team.

Thursday, November 19, 2009 from 5:00pm to 7:00pm

111 Church Street, Belfast, ME 04915

Guests will be entered into a drawing for a custom eNEWS promotional package ($275.00 value). Enter the drawing for a chance to win!

Chamber of Commerce

Pica Design will participate in a panel discussion at CMCA to demonstrate Websites (that work!) for Artists at the CMCA Event: Making Connections: Monthly Marketing Series for Artists this Thursday. Join us from 7:00 – 8:30 PM for Websites, Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, e-marketing, organizational websites for artists, and more. Contact CMCA for registration or questions: 207-236-2875 x303.

Google Voice was originally called Grand Central, a company founded in 2005 which Google bought in 2007 for 97 million. Even years ago it was a promising business opportunity, and it remains a great service.

But what does Google Voice actually do? Well, it’s essentially a new phone number that allows a number of features that most phone services don’t offer.

The Google Voice Inbox (Credit: Google)

First, it offers a unified number that you’ll never lose when you move, get a new cell phone, or change phone service. This number can ring any other number of phones that you own, for example, when somebody calls my Google Voice number, both my cell phone and my home phone ring, which means I almost never miss a call.

Google Voice also features a robust voicemail system. When somebody leaves a voicemail on your Google Voice account, it notifies you via text message and even email, transcribing the voicemail into text and delivering it to your inbox.

Finally, there are a host of other features  Google Voice offers. You can send and receive text messages for free online, screen calls, set different voicemail greetings to different contacts and groups, and more.

Google Voice is free, and a great service. I have been using it since 2008 and its unification makes life easier, which everybody deserves. I urge everyone to pick up a number and at least try it out.

Here is a short clip from the question and answer session at our recent seminar at Unity Center for the Performing Arts.

To begin, we covered how websites work (hosts, files, domain names, links, browsers), searching the web, and ways people use the web. We demonstrated the anatomy of a basic website, steps for building a website, and then delved into functionality and content management systems (CMS). We touched on elements of design, testing, maintenance, pre-launch marketing, and launch marketing. And, as we concluded, we talked about social networking. Once we started talking about Facebook and Twitter, we could have gone on and on…

With the support of UniTel and Unity College, we passed on some of the knowledge we have been gathering over the few years. We are already looking forward to our next seminar (we’re hoping to conduct one in the fall). If you think of topics that would appeal and enlighten either business owners or individuals, please comment here. And, as always, thank you for listening!

Join us for a nuts-and-bolts presentation on the benefits of websites for businesses. This is a great opportunity to ask questions about websites, network with other business owners and learn more about putting the Web to work for your business.

Event Details:

Thursday, June 25th

4:00 – 5:30 PM

Unity College Center for the Performing Arts

42 Depot Street, Unity, Maine

For registration and event information, call Julie Downer at UniTel: 948-3959;

or email jdowner@uninets.net

Sponsored by Pica Design, LLC, UniTel and Unity College in Maine

We’ve accepted the challenge to make a 3-foot ‘O’ that will appear in the word ‘SHOW’ at the 2009 AIGA BoNE Show in Boston at Massachusetts College of Art in June. (By the way, BoNE stands for ‘Best of New England’, and it is the name of a regional design competition hosted by the Boston Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, or AIGA). The 3-foot-high, 43-foot-long Exhibition marquee of dimensional letters will spell out, ‘AIGA B(oNE) SHOW’ and will feature found or re-purposed materials. Each letter will be on display for the duration of the exhibition and will be up for auction at the Opening Reception on June 11 to raise money for AIGA Boston.

We have some ideas on materials we would like to use for our environmentally friendly letter O…do you? If you have a suggestion on materials, please leave a comment here (keep in mind the final O must be 25 pounds max).

O, what fun.

AIGA B(oNE) SHOW
Opening Reception: Jun 11
Exhibition: June 12 – July 8
Location: Bakalar Gallery, 621 Huntington Ave., Boston
www.boneshow.org

Thanks to Brandon Bird, AIGA BoNE SHOW Director
for sending us the Call for Characters!