Swope Design

In August 2008 I got the opportunity to design yet another business card for the Hercules Tire family of retail tire stores. This design request was for King Tires of Muskogee, Oklahoma. Relying on the designs of the previous business cards for Hercules Tire Sales and Shamrock Tire & Automotive Service, I comped several color variations for King Tires' business cards. Of course, I also developed a logotype for King Tires at the same time I designed their business cards. My favorite color scheme used maroon, green, cream and black. It is a sophisticated color palette compared to the palettes used on the other cards, and since Hercules Tire Sales is owned and managed by old school tire dealers, I was completely surprised to hear that the palette chosen was also my preferred palette. The result could be the beginning of a new identity for King Tires, should Hercules Tire Sales choose to pursue it. The new card suggests that King Tires is more than the average independent tire store; it is more sophisticated, more advanced, more knowledgable, more trustworthy, more attuned to today's automobiles and customer service. King Tires' business cards help it stand out among the average independent tire dealers, and, I believe, even the chain and big box tire retail locations, too.

The business cards I designed for Shamrock Tire & Automotive Service have been so popular that Tire Dealer's Warehouse, owned by Hercules Tire Sales, the same company which also owns Shamrock Tire, requested their own similar business cards. For this project, I kept the same general layout and text treatments to keep the cards within the same family so that, at a glance, it is clear the companies are related. I recreated the existing Tire Dealer's Warehouse logo in use on all the company's invoices, truck and website and changed the dominant color to blue. I chose blue for these cards because their warehouse is painted white and blue, and blue immediately distinguishes these cards from those for Shamrock Tire. These new Tire Dealer's Warehouse business cards have been as popular as the Shamrock business cards.

On November 1, 2007 I left U-Save Tire and went to work for Shamrock Tire as Store Manager. Part of my new responsibilities include increasing sales, and since I needed business cards anyway, I designed a card for Shamrock Tire. I also created a logotype along with the card. Since the business name is Shamrock Tire, I elected to use a green and yellow color scheme for the cards, but chose not to use the obvious to create a logo. Instead, I elected to create a logotype which hearkens back to the days of full service filling stations and personal responsibility. Shamrock Tire has been in business more than 75 years, since the 1930s, and the General Manager and I firmly believe that one primary element that differentiates businesses today is commitment to customer service. An integral part of customer service is a personal relationship with customers. For this reason, a handwritten text treatment is used for the name and address information on the card. While Shamrock has a long history, it nevertheless offers the latest tires and modern mounting and balancing equipment. To reflect this commitment to modern tire technologies, I also elected to boldy display the most popular tires sold at the store, one per card, and cardholders could choose which tire they wished to feature on their cards. The result is a business card that reflects a long history and commitment to service and personal attention to customers, as well as knowledge of today's modern tire industry. These business cards have been popular with recipients and customers alike.

The Mulvane City Map is full color both sides, and unfolds from 4" x 9" (the size of many maps, and easily mailed in standard #10 business envelopes) to 20" x 27" (just large enough to be useful in every vehicle but not too large). The Mulvane map features a coded directory for contributing businesses and organizations, and a similar coded directory for useful school, city, emergency and public offices and locations. The directory features phone numbers and map coordinates to more easily find locations in the directories, making the full color Mulvane Street Map a perfect addition to every vehicle. The map also shows features not found on most other typical community maps, including pedestrian crossings, school zones, speed limits into and out of town, railroad crossings, sports fields, and distances to nearby communities and New York City, Washington, D.C., Roswell and Las Vegas! If that is not enough, the brochure portion of the map contains a brief history of Mulvane from its founding to 1918 and features historic photographs provided courtesy of the Mulvane Historical Society. One highlight of the map is that we were able to handle and scan an original July 30, 1903 inaugural edition of The Mulvane News! The brochure also contains information on noteworthy community organizations including the Optimist Club, the American Legion, Friends of the Mulvane Library, The Tree Board, the Garden Club, the Mulvane Recreation Commission, and others. Really, you'll be hard pressed to find a better map of any similar community anywhere! Of that we're certain! The Mulvane City Map is distributed by supporting businesses, mailed out by the Mulvane Chamber of Commerce to requests for more information, handed out by the City of Mulvane at the city offices (the City Administrator reports that they get 3-4 requests for maps every day), and has been distributed to Kansas Visitors Information locations administered by the state Kansas Tourism organization. Get your Mulvane City Street Map from your favorite local Mulvane business!

My friend Craig Sooter founded Harvey County News in the summer of 2007. My role in this new venture was to create a newspaper template and business cards. We needed a professional printed appearance, but wanted to clearly reflect the Kansas flavor of the publication and staff. Of course, no other item says "Kansas" like the sunflower! So I selected a stock photo of a sunflower that I could use on the full color cards in such a way to be unique. I also elected to make the newspaper's logo a personal logo, since the weekly tabloid's focus was to be on the positive people news available in multiple communities in Harvey County. Unlike other papers, the HCN quickly set a personal tone with readers, writing about the people, businesses and issues that mattered to the people in these communities. The business cards received comments everywhere they were presented. I think you'll agree that the cards are nothing like those at other newspapers.

The First United Methodist Church of Halstead, Kansas, recently published a full color photographic directory for its members. Designed by Swope Design for Imagineer Productions, the directory features color photography by Imagineer Productions, measures 5.5" x 8.5", contains 4 tabbed sections and approximately 48 pages, and is wire bound. A great coffee table directory! This is the first directory the church has published in 7 years, so they had high expectations. For cost effectiveness, the directory was published on a digitial printer, 2-up, to be easily cut and collated, further reducing costs and turnaround. The directory was distributed during Easter services on April 8th to an excited and thankful congregation -- due to the Holiday, of course! Together with their new website, built and maintained with SiteBuilder, the First United Methodist Church of Halstead promises to have a banner year in 2007.

The Tire Industry Association offers training, certificates and certifications for all things related to tires, including tire basics, tire installation, wheel torquing, and tire pressure monitoring systems. There are only several dozen TIA certified advanced instructors in the nation. Stan Swope is one of them. His certification allows him to provide all the courses offered by TIA and to certify instructors. Though most people do not know what kind of detail and knowledge is required to properly and safely install and repair tires, Stan believes training to be one of the most valuable assets to any business selling and installing tires, as he has seen this first hand in his own business, U-Save Tire. With the proper training, tire stores take preventative, proactive steps to maximize safety for installers and drivers alike, and greatly reduce or eliminate costly mistakes and returns, all of which affect a business' bottom line. For Stan's needs, we were able to use the TIA logo and borrowed the red from its color palette. But that wasn't enough. We wanted to make it clear at a glance what the training involved, so we added a tire in motion as a graphic to demonstrate that the training he provides matters most when wheels are in motion on our city streets and nation's highways. We also employed a standard Helvetica typeface used in many logos and corporate identities and in markings on the sidewalls of tires. The result is an attractive card that demands attention.

ColaCollectables.com e-Commerce Web Site Design & Hosting - An osCommerce-powered site, ColaCollectables.com sells popular branded novelties and gifts such as Coca-Cola, John Deere, NASCAR, Ford, Mustang, Chevrolet, Camaro, Corvette, Looney Tunes and other pop culture brands. The most popular gifts on the site are kitchenware, watches and neon clocks. The site is designed to load quickly for visitors, so design incorporates few graphic embellishments which increase download time. osCommerce, the open-source solution on which ColaCollectables.com is based, employs PHP, a SQL database, and CSS stylesheets. Orders are processed in osCommerce and payment is collected thru PayPal, the world's largest online processor, owned by eBay. ColaCollectables.com is hosted and operated by Swope Design. Visit ColaCollectables.com >

As we've said, Craig Sooter, principal of Imagineer Productions, has a vision about serving and promoting Halstead as a community. This direct mail piece is another result of that vision. Designed to encourage out of town visitors and Halstead residents to shop Halstead more frequently, this direct mailer folds down to 5.5" x 8.5" and features a novelty magazine cover to draw readers into opening the piece to see a map of downtown Halstead, large 2" x 2" photo ads of Halstead businesses, and a centerfold which features some text to entice visitors into visiting picturesque Halstead and a top ten list of reasons to shop and visit Halstead. Despite its small footprint, Halstead has a huge heart and there are many good reasons to visit. We visit 2-3 times per year ourselves! Compare this mailer to similar flyers printed by companies based as far away as Florida, coming through Kansas once a year to sell ad space that draws visitors AWAY from smaller communities to larger communities such as Wichita, Hutchinson, Topeka, Newton, etc.. If you're a business advertising in such flyers, consider that your ad dollars help send visitors AWAY from your community and your businesses to other communities and other businesses. If you'd like a direct mailer with a novelty magazine cover like that distributed in Halstead, contact Imagineer Productions.

We design and manage the printing of this unique Community Calendar every August for Imagineer Productions and the small Kansas community of Halstead, just in time for Halstead's Annual Old Settlers Celebration. Like the HalsteadKansas.com web site, this calendar is one of a kind, as far as we know. Craig Sooter, principal of Imagineer Productions, has a vision about serving and promoting Halstead as a community. The Halstead Community Calendar -- a full 12" x 18" in size, glorious full color, and wire bound -- features photographs taken by Craig Sooter and select historical b/w photographs throughout. Individuals are also welcome to submit photos to appear in the calendar, too. The Halstead Community Calendar also features annual community schedules for the August-July year as well, including USD 440 administrative schedule, Halstead High School sports schedule, civic schedules, and the Halstead Chamber of Commerce schedule. So, in just this one calendar, everyone knows what's going on in the "biggest little city in Kansas" at any day of the year! Of course, standard U.S. holidays appear in the calendar, and you will also learn when the first man stepped foot on the moon, when the Internet was invented, when the first baseball or basketball games were played, and many more such fun and educational historical dates. Last but not least, the Halstead Community Calendar also offers more than $500 worth of coupons for food and services in Halstead. The Halstead Community Calendar is sold by the HHS football team as a fund raiser every July/August. So watch for it!

The menu and web site for Shakey's Motorsports Family Restaurant in Halstead, Kansas, was a dream project! No designer could resist the opportunity to design a menu the way he/she thinks it should be designed. We took advantage of this opportunity to use some royalty-free stock photography, a photo I took myself in Halstead during an antique midget car exhibition in 2001, and photography by Imagineer Productions. A portion of the menu will likely be co-oped by Riffels Coffee (Wichita, KS), so we used the Riffels Coffee logo at a size larger than others on the menu. The Shakey's Menu and Web Site feature checkered graphics, bright colors, and exciting motorsports photos, including a rare photo of Jim Roper, the Halstead native who took first place in NASCAR's first sanctioned race in 1949. The menu is full color, laminated for protection, and measures 11x17 when open and 8.5x11 when closed. The menu has been popular with hungry customers since it was introduced.

Swope Design designed, hosts and maintains the new web site for Kansas Learning Center for Health. Since 1965, the Kansas Learning Center for Health has offered health education programs for Kansas kindergarten through 12th grade students, and adheres to the Kansas State Science and Health Standards and emphasizes tobacco and drug free living and other healthy lifestyle choices. The Learning Center's classes engage students with multimedia exhibits and activities which enable everyone to explore the wonders of the human body. The Learning Center is home to Valeda, too. Valeda, the transparent talking woman, has been sharing her story with thousands of students since the Learning Center opened. The Learning Center's new web site uses the colors and design features of their latest brochure to create a web site that's easy to navigate so visitors can quickly learn more about the center's programs and benefits. Features include an online e-mail reservation form and a PHP-based calendar system whose design matches that of the general site. As a finishing touch, we also created a favicon for browsers which support them. Visit the Kansas Learning Center for Health web site >

Shakey's Family Motorsports Restaurant in Halstead, Kansas, serves a standard American menu. What sets them apart is the restaurant's exciting motorsports theme. Shakey's seeks to be a destination as well as a restaurant. A bright, bold, full color 2-sided business card is part of Shakey's identity. This business card employs the Shakey's logo and borrows design elements from Shakey's menu, specifically lots of yellow, bold sans serif type, checkered flag and NASCAR background. These elements are carried over onto the back, where the bulk of Shakey's menu is printed in a friendly script typeface so customers can call orders in for carry-out. Shakey's business card is designed to be memorable enough that customers keep them and use them, especially when they are hungry. Shakey's business cards have proven to be very popular with patrons, and have also been made into magnets (without the menu, of course). Shakey's business cards were designed under contract for Imagineer Productions.

My service to U-Save Tire, LLC dates back to 2004, when I left Koch Creative Services to purchase the business. Though the owner got cold feet and backed out of the sale, he hired me to help him grow and manage the business (that's what brothers are for, after all). One of the first things that I did for U-Save Tire was create an identity equal to the business we wanted to be. This identity included business cards. These business cards incorporate yellow and black, the company's chosen colors, and answers questions that we were being asked at the time by customers coming into the store. Do you sell used tires? Do you sell new tires? Passenger car tires? Light truck tires? Low profile tires? The answers are set as bullet points in two columns. We also answer the question every customer should ask of every business: What makes your business better than others like it? In our case, we stock more used tires than any other retail used tire store we know about. We also inspect our tires as we place them into storage and restock our shelves, and pressure test every tire by completely submerging it under water before it leaves our store. Due to our inspection and pressure testing practices, we also offer a 30-day limited warranty on all our used tires, too, which further sets us apart in the industry. On the card we also include our simple logotype, a quality photograph of our product and our contact information, including FAX number and web site address. We have since made this card into a magnet, too, which has been very popular with our customers.

Allemand Realty Web Site Design – This site's design was a collaboration with another small freelance web designer in Wichita called Wichita Web Works. This site uses an existing logo and borrows and expands from the logo's color palette to create an appealing color scheme and layout throughout the entire site. Site was designed to display residential properties immediately on the home page, with links to other types of properties for sale visible in the window above the fold. Full color stock photographs were used to differentiate each page or section from the others throughout the site. CSS stylesheets control more than half the appearance of the site, including page headlines, fonts, borders, navigation buttons, etc. Shown here is the home page listing residential properties. Among the features of this site is a custom PHP Mortgage Calculator. Site is no longer available.