Thanksgiving

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.”
– John F. Kennedy

On this particular Thanksgiving, the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson and President Kennedy particularly resonate with us. As we enter the holiday season, let us each do everything that we possibly can to ensure that next Thanksgiving is even better than this one.

Our very best wishes to all!

Fresh Rocket will make sure that your old phone is responsibly recycled through the PlantMyPhone program. The process ensures that hazardous chemicals like cadmium, lead and mercury don’t wind up in our landfills … and then into our soil and the water we drink and air we breathe. Proceeds from the recycled materials are then used to support the United Nations Environment Programme “Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign.”

Planting Trees Helps Our Planet Fight Climate Change
On average, each tree planted in the humid tropics absorbs 50 pounds of carbon dioxide every year for at least 40 years, amounting to one ton over the course of the tree’s lifetime.

Tree cover also reflects solar radiation back into space and facilitates the evaporation of water into the atmosphere, increasing cloud formation. (Clouds help cool the planet by reflecting incoming solar radiation.)

How PlantMyPhone Trees Are Planted
Award-winning nonprofit organizations specializing in agroforestry projects—which restore depleted lands and boost the agricultural productivity and incomes of indigenous peoples in some of the poorest parts of the world—plant the actual trees.

PlantMyPhone trees are planted in 12 tropical countries: Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Burundi, Senegal, Zambia, India, Philippines and Haiti. Species include Cocoa, Coffee, Banana, Orange, Cedar, Teak, Mahogany, Oak, Acacia, Eucalyptus, Laurel and Leucaena. Academic research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory shows that trees planted in tropical zones are most effective in mitigating climate change.

Do a good deed, get a chance to win $1,000!
How many trees is your old phone worth? It varies on the phone, but a typical Motorola Razr equals EIGHT trees planted! Every phone that is processed through PlantMyPhone is entered in a drawing for a $1,000 sweepstakes. Every month (or every 10,000 phones recycled) one $1,000 winner will be randomly selected.

Email us today and get a free pre-paid mailer to recycle your old phone.

Eucalyptus trees planted in Ethiopia through the U.N. Environment Programme Billion Trees Campaign

On Wednesday, we also released an original video, The Fable of the Third Planet. Written by Joyce, the story is a compelling look at the perils of ignoring the damage we are doing to our planet. It features a voice-over by David K. Jones and wonderful photography from a variety of photographers.
Please take a moment to watch The Fable of the Third Planet and share with others. This story is too important to ignore.

For over 40 years, the government, and the people, of the U.S. have ignored one opportunity after another to change our addiction to oil. The OPEC oil embargo in 1973 was a perfect opportunity to start the change. We ignored it. President Jimmy Carter outlined his oil crisis warning in 1979. We ignored it. The Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 was a clear example of the environmental perils of crude oil. We ignored it. 9-11 bluntly showed how our oil addiction was directly funding those who most wanted to destroy our country. We ignored it.

Today, the Gulf of Mexico is threatened with a truly disastrous situation. WE CANNOT IGNORE IT.

In our professional role as designers, we have taken the “Design Can Change” pledge to think sustainably. The initial approach is fairly simple:

• Learn: Engage in the topic and seek to understand the issue.
• Think: Make a sustainable mindset second nature.
• Act: Put my knowledge to use in my daily work.
• Inform: Share information and build awareness for sustainability.
• Unite: Spark change through collective strength.

Much of what we as individuals and small businesses can do are small things. But collectively, those small things do add up. Sustainability need not be a political issue. Isn’t it just common sense? Doesn’t it make good business sense to use our resources wisely? As parents and grand parents, don’t we want to leave our world in good shape for our descendants?

Click here if you’re a buyer of graphic design services or products and would like to find out more about the “Design Can Change”. To find out more about “Design Can Change”, you can also visit their web site.

Whether you are just starting up or trying to improve an existing business… you are undoubtedly looking for ways to save money and increase profits.  A custom website is one of the most visible vehicles available for high quality, dynamic public relations and branding. Suppliers, vendors, clients, potential employees, and even friends and family are all more likely to research your company online than through any other venue.

When it comes to creating an online business presence it is extremely important to project a professional image. A professional first impression lends credibility. Many people don’t understand the difference between a custom website and using website templates. The difference can be phenomenal!

Customized web site design allows your pages to be unique. In fact, they can be just about anything you want them to be!

There are oodles of benefits to a custom designed website. Here are just a few:

• Unique design.  Your website will be different from anyone else’s.
• It can be designed to be search engine friendly.
• Scalability and adaptability. Your business can expand or change and your site can function accordingly.
• Your website design can and should incorporate your company’s branding. You’ll be able to use your website graphics elsewhere, like your letterhead, brochures and signage to mention a few.
• Custom web design is just that, custom to you and your needs.

Fresh Rocket provides customized design services that are specifically tailored to your needs. You’ll never have to worry about showing up on the web wearing the same outfit as your competition… plus you’ll have the option of changing your shoes to match the seasons!

Elect Scott Ellington for Arkansas 2nd Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney now has a new look.

UPDATE: We’re happy to report that Scott won the election and is now the Prosecuting Attorney for the Arkansas 2nd Judicial District. Congrats, Scott!

The first newsletter – "65 Roses" – for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Why is it called “65 Roses”? Say it out loud …

When Anthony’s older brother, Richard, was four years old, he overhead his mother doing volunteer work on the phone and thought that she was saying “65 roses” instead of Cystic Fibrosis. Since 1965, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has loving used “65 Roses” when discussing the disease with young patients. Anthony and his two brothers were born with Cystic Fibrosis.

Because of CFF’s budget constraints, the newsletter was primarily distributed electronically. In addition to the 8-page newsletter, Fresh Rocket designed an e-mail template that was sent to CFF’s Constant Contact e-mail list. The e-mail had teasers to various articles linking to the complete PDF that is hosted on the local chapter’s web site.

To find out more about Cystic Fibrosis or to find out how you can help, contact the Southwest Florida Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation through their web site or call 813-374-9041. Anthony Weiss can be e-mailed at atwnsw@tampabay.rr.com.

But, is there really any proof that good design can impact your ROI? Yes. Whetherit’s web design, print design, or product design, good design does have a positive ROI.

ESPN Digital Media attributes a 35% increase in site revenues to their January 2009 site redesign. In their case, research had shown that users felt the old design was too cluttered, too busy, and difficult to navigate. Responding to user concerns proved to have an excellent ROI.

According to the book Web Design for ROI, 75% of web users admit that they make judgements about a company’s credibility based on the company’s web site design. Considering how many people’s purchasing decisions include online research (83% of business users), you can’t afford to have a poorly designed site.

Shane Pike tracks specific metrics of his sites and says, “There are few things that will give you a better ROI than giving an ugly site a good facelift.” He points to a $2,000 investment in a site redesign that improved revenues by $100,000.

Sessions College instructor, and designer, Rob Wallace points to research with Northeastern University statisticians that looked at several dozen redesign case studies. In those cases, the return on investment for design was 50 times that of advertising and other branding efforts. These case studies indicate that for more than $400 of incremental profit was generated by every dollar spent in the design process.

At last year’s IDEA Awards (International Design Excellence Award), Claudia Kotchka, the former head of design at Procter & Gamble, said it very succinctly, “Business leaders should care about design because it hits the bottom line. More than anything else, design builds a business.”

Can your company really afford to ignore good design?

That’s exactly what we’re now doing with Fresh Rocket. Thanks to Socialite (a free WordPress plug-in), when we publish a new post on the Fresh Rocket blog, it automatically cross pollinates our Facebook fan page and our Twitter “Tweets”. With a little help from the Facebook to Twitter application, FB posts are also tweeted. And, as the final leg of the trifecta, Facebook Connect updates our Wordpress blog sidebar with any Facebook posts and a random sampling of the FR FB fan photos.

Of course, having the back-end in place doesn’t do much good without having some content that people want to read. Unfortunately, we haven’t found the automatic application for that yet! Give us a call @ 813.961.6543 or e-mail us about crafting a winning social media strategy.