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What is a VIP Day, and Why You Will Love It!

Graphic Design VIP Days are a unique opportunity for businesses and entrepreneurs to work one-on-one with a professional graphic designer to create custom designs that will help them elevate their brand and stand out in a crowded market. Every business owner knows that the to-do list never ends. There are endless ideas about how to improve your website, your graphics, your social media presence, your products or packages, and your marketing. Yet, there’s so much to do and so little time. With VIP Days, you can get everything done in one day. If you’re on the fence, this in-depth guide about the pros and cons of our graphic design VIP day will help you decide whether to take the leap.

The Benefits of Graphic Design VIP Days

If you don’t have extra time to juggle all the business demands, chances are you’ve hired help. By outsourcing and delegating work, you free your schedule up for the things that truly matter. However, a VIP Day is the perfect format to accomplish your goals if you’ve been frustrated by communicating back and forth through emails over weeks or months. And here’s why:

VIPs Get Personalized Attention

One of the most significant advantages of a graphic design VIP Day is the personalized attention you will receive from a professional designer. During a VIP Day, you will have the designer’s undivided attention for 6-hours and can work together to create designs tailored to your specific needs and preferences. By booking a full day with a designer, you discuss your goals together during a PreVIP call and develop projects in real-time on the VIP Day, so you can provide feedback and see results immediately. This collaboration creates the synergy needed to stand out in a crowded market and create a unique and recognizable brand. Clients do need to be available during the 6 hours to give feedback and approvals.

VIPs Get Custom Designs

If you’re working with a professional designer, you want graphics to be unique and one-of-a-kind. By working directly with a designer during your VIP Day, they will be able to create custom designs that align with your brand identity and messaging. Soapbox Studio has the expertise and skills to create visually striking designs that will help differentiate your business from the competition. Working in real-time will make your vision a reality right in front of your eyes. Your graphics will go from bland and generic to branded and beautiful! By the end of your 6-hour session, your business will have custom graphics that convey a strong visual identity and establish you as a leader in your industry. You will leave our VIP Day with graphics that make you look as professional as you are!

VIPs Benefit from Focused Productivity

A graphic design VIP Day utilizes your time efficiently and increases productivity. By working one-on-one with a designer, you can ensure that your design projects are completed on time and that you can meet your deadlines. This assurance will enable you to make plans and schedule content, knowing you won’t need to wait any longer. Our graphic design VIP Day can be a great way to jump-start a project or get back on track if you have fallen behind.

VIPs Benefit from Ultra-Focused Design Work

When you book a VIP Day 6-hour session with Soapbox Studio, you benefit by unlocking their undivided attention on your business. Because Soapbox will solely focus on your business for the day, they will produce maximum results for you and your business. Studies show that when we bounce between tasks, our productivity is minimized, and it takes longer to re-focus, which wastes time. Booking a VIP Day allows both Soapbox and you to focus on one client for the day, which translates into efficient, well-executed designs that look great and are completed at an accelerated rate. Soapbox designers love VIP Days because it’s like tapping into a superpower and getting into the grove of the client’s business and brand. Likewise, clients love the brilliant brainstorming and design work that comes from an ultra-focused time with design professionals.

The Benefits of Creating a Plan for your Graphic Design VIP Day

While we don’t think our VIP Days come with many cons, it’s essential to recognize the limitations one day holds. For example, booking a whole day to work with a designer may not be enough time, and you may need to secure multiple days for larger projects. So, if you’re trying to identify how to utilize a VIP Day most effectively, here’s how to make a strategic plan:

Build Your VIP Day into Your Budget

When you become one of our VIPs, you pay to have individualized and uninterrupted time with a designer. Only a few graphic designers offer this personal touch, but it is an investment. Creating a great plan to utilize your VIP Day starts with building it into your business budget. The price of individualized attention will pay off in the long run because it will save you the hassle of emailing back and forth with every project on your graphic design to-do list. Your business will grow when your graphics have a special touch, personalized attention, and custom design work to help you establish credibility. Every successful business owner knows you have to spend money to make money, and looking professional is a top priority for businesses that want to thrive!

Create a Strategic Graphic Design To-Do List That Will Fit into One Day

To ensure your VIP Day is the most efficient it can be, you need to think strategically about what projects our designers can complete in the 6-hour time frame. Your projects will be met most effectively if the scope of your VIP Day is realistic. If you need ideas of everything our designers can accomplish in a day, here are some examples:

  • A simple website with 3-5 pages (complex or extra pages, themes we are not familiar with, or additional formatting may require additional time)
  • 3 logos and 2 covers
  • 1 logo, branding guide, and template for a product cover
  • Sales page refresh in LeadPages, including 1 hero image
  • 20-page workbook template and custom cover
  • Various title cards for courses, videos, intro outro with music (depending on how many)

Set Aside Time in Your Schedule for your VIP Day

While our designers are doing all the work, the benefit of booking a VIP Day is that you can give feedback in real-time. To accomplish this, the VIP Day should be scheduled when you won’t have other commitments or meetings. When you book your VIP Day and the PreVIP call, find the time in your calendar to block out that you won’t have additional distractions. By protecting this time, you can give your projects the mental energy they deserve, so you get graphics that look as professional as you are.

Why You Should Book a Graphic Design VIP Day

If you need a little VIP treatment to catalyze your business into a more tremendous success, our VIP Days will be a massive asset to you. Graphic design VIP Days can be a valuable investment for companies that want to create custom designs in a tight timeframe so your business can stand out and look professional. If you’re tired of the constant back and forth in a traditional model and don’t have months to spend tweaking revisions, this option is a great way to accomplish every task on your graphic design to-do list in a single day. In just one afternoon, you’ll have professional, ready-to-use graphics. If your business needs this, contact Soapbox Studio to book your VIP Day now. Our calendar is booking up fast. Claim your spot and enjoy the VIP Day treatment!

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Our Favorite WordPress Theme

Ahh… WordPress Themes.

Were you so inclined, you could spend literal days searching out the perfect WordPress theme to fit every nook and cranny of any given industry. Trust us, we’ve done it. And in the end, it was semi-pointless endeavor that resulted in frustration, confusion, and most importantly, lost time & money.

Now we want to preface this post by saying that everyone’s needs are different, so this is by no means a “one-size-fits-all” situation, and you should really try to look at the big picture and consider your website’s goals before landing on any one particular theme. But… here are a few things we’ve learned along the way when it comes to finding a reliable, flexible and well-built theme.

Don’t Be Fooled by “Pretty” Site Theme Samples

This is one concept we can’t stress enough! A number of years back, it was very common for people to seek out themes that played to their specific audience. Own a car wash? Gotta start off by finding a theme that’s designed specifically for car washes! Starting a wellness blog? Better find a theme that’s full of attractive fonts, pleasing color schemes, and Instagram-worthy lifestyle photos!

We can tell you from experience this is NOT the best approach.

While it’s tempting to search out a theme that appears close to what you want for the final product, it’s not the most important consideration. Oftentimes, these themes are built with a clunky foundation, making the install process challenging to a newcomer (or at times a seasoned professional!); or worse yet, poorly designed, where the user interface is an afterthought (making general maintenance or customization challenging).

Sadly, there’s no quick and easy way to determine a nice theme from a poorly-made one (every theme has a unique learning curve depending on how it was built). But it’s best not to be swayed by “pretty” or convenient theme samples. Take time to consider the site layout options, special features (and how they might apply to you), and most importantly, the user-interface.

There are a lot of nice, flexible options out there that make site development and maintenance a breeze… themes like Avada or Betheme, or themes that utilize  content/page builders like Elementor or Divi. With these well-built UI/maintenance tools, you can create a beautiful, professional looking site and be able to maintain it with relative ease.

Good Documentation and Support Are Key

Let’s be honest… learning WordPress (and any given theme) can be difficult, time-intensive and frustrating at times. Good theme developers are known for several reasons… namely, they are reliable and spend the time with their documentation and theme support. As mentioned previously, we learned the hard way that choosing themes based on esthetics is not the best approach. We worked with several themes that had poor documentation, little or no customer support, and left us with more challenging and expensive fixes that needed to be made in order to get the proper end result.

Tech support from a developer is absolutely worth researching when investing in a particular theme. If you have a Dev that’s willing to help answer questions, has an easily searchable forum, and/or can even offer to fix minor problems, it should really increase their consideration… especially if they’ve been around for awhile.

Again, it can be tough to get a read on solid developers from the rest, but looking at popular themes on themeforest.net is a great place to start.

Do You Really Need All the Bells and Whistles?

Another good question to ask yourself is… “do I really need all these fancy features?”

Website technology is advancing quickly, and with it comes an ever-changing array of options… Advanced Sliders, Content Animation, Header Builders, Next Gen Blocks, Visual Editors, etc. Plenty of themes out there (especially the well built ones) offer a plethora of features… most of which you may never touch (and many of which just add to the site bulk and steepen the learning curve).

The best advice we can give here? Quality over quantity.

Try not to be swayed by having every special feature available, but instead focus on ones that have good user reviews (especially from beginners), good documentation, and seem to fit your overall site needs. Good developers are always refining their themes and will release new and improved features as they are tried and tested. Don’t worry about those fancy content animations, unless they are a crucial component that your site needs to function properly or convey your message.

So Which Theme Do You Recommend?

We get asked this a lot, but as mentioned earlier… there’s no right answer. The theme that’s best is the one that works for your specific needs and site goals. But… for our time and money, the best theme we’ve come across is Kriesi’s Enfold.

We’ll be the first to admit, we may be stuck in our ways, but Enfold has been our go-to theme for years now. Here’s a few reason why:

– It may not have some of the newer features that other (more popular) themes do, but that’s okay…

Chances are you (or your customers) don’t want to spend time learning features probably don’t need or won’t use.

– Kriesi has great documentation and support.

We can’t tell you how many times we’ve run into an issue that we’ve been able to easily solve with a quick search of their support forums. Failing that, their staff is happy to answer questions or even offer low-level fixes to problems we’ve run into… usually within a day’s time or less.

– Enfold has a variety of demo site samples that are a great launchpad.

While we don’t use this feature often, it’s definitely helpful for a beginner as a starting point. A one-click install of demo material will give you a leg up on creating a nice, professional looking site (again, don’t worry if a demo is designed for a different industry or with a different color scheme, etc… all of those components are easily customizable, and shouldn’t hinder you from considering what the layout and page formatting can do for you).

– Enfold’s Advanced Layout Editor is well-built and easy to use.

Besides their excellent support, this may be Enfold’s biggest strength. While not as fancy or flexible as some of the others, Enfold’s Layout UI is user-friendly, and hands-down the best we’ve come across for building pages and managing site content. Page Builders like Divi and Elementor are great and can do virtually anything you’d like, but there’s definitely a “less is more” approach that makes Enfold a much easier and more straight-forward option (especially when it comes to problem-solving… which is ~95% of your time when building out a site LOL).

While it may not be the answer to everyone’s site development woes, Enfold is a great choice for beginners and advanced users alike. It’s flexible, well-built, well-documented, reliable, and should allow for most customization you would need. Just take the time to review their samples and consider how the layouts, functionality and special features would apply to your project.

Good luck, and if you have any questions or need a hand, you can always feel free to drop us a line.