Meet Nick Henderson, Sandstorm’s new Relationship Manager. A friendly guy in person and on the phone, Nick is building relationships with new clients in addition to strengthening our connection with current clients. Nick comes from a long experience working one-on-one with many organizations and associations, and we’re glad to add his skills and personality to our Chicago marketing firm. You can often find him hitting the links (golfing, that is, although at Sandstorm, he can help you to create some links on your user-oriented web site). Being a proud Texan, Nick is a fan of the Dallas Cowboys and The Texas Rangers. (We promise to not hold that against him).

We’re glad to have you working alongside us. Welcome, Nick!

After passing our favorite tapas plates around the table, we exchanged dirty santa gifts. Among the many gifts there was a vintage fondue pot, a pop culture history book, a mustache cookie tray, fancy salt and pepper shakers and a book of Elvis paper cut-outs. And as if the holiday party itself weren’t amazing enough, we didn’t come into the office until 1:00 PM the next day. AND it was pajama day. Do you see why we love the holidays?

Check out the pictures of the holiday party below, and see more on our Facebook!

View all of Sandstorm’s holiday party photos on Facebook. Learn more about our Chicago web design, interactive and marketing firm.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t elves. Maybe a few of the Sandstorm staff came into the office unenviably early to set up the surprise. Either way, our Chicago marketing firm now has quite the magical, merry vibe. There’s a cozy fireplace next to the tree, candy cane poles, a light-up Santa Claus and garland galore. See for yourself in the pictures below:

What can I say, this is our favorite season. From all of us at Sandstorm, Happy Holidays!

See more pictures on Sandstorm’s Facebook page—and don’t forget to like us!

We are excited to welcome Will Biby to Sandstorm Design as our Production Manager! He is the new face of Sandstorm Design, literally. Will’s desk is the reception area, the first thing you see when entering our new office. He comes from a varied and creative administrative background. Will is supporting every facet of our marketing firm, from usability testing to assisting our Drupal development team. His can-do attitude comes from his experience in education and improvisation (He’s currently studying at iO Chicago and The Second City).

We’re so excited to work with you. Welcome, Will!

We are thrilled to welcome Andy Cullen, Senior Web Developer, to Sandstorm Design! The newest addition to our technology and usability team, this Chicagoland native specializes in backend development. Andy speaks a number of languages including PHP, SQL, and ActionScript. And much to our delight, he is also an experienced Drupal 7 developer. Andy is a fan of all things Apple, but his hobbies are far from any computer screen. He mixes up his seasons with outdoorsy activities and sports. Spring brings baseball and football takes over in fall. He’s gone fly fishing in Wyoming, and snowboarding and whitewater rafting in Colorado.

Welcome, Andy. We’re so excited to work with you!

We may have lost our electricity, but we certainly did not lose power as our web design company’s office is still moving full steam ahead! The power outage that hit Chicago with Monday’s storm left our office on Chicago’s north side dark, muggy and ever so quiet without the hum and buzz of the computers. So we packed up and got to work at Sandy’s house, where sandwiches, pop, chips and a very popular pasta salad awaited us.

The whole situation reminded me of a recent post on brand strategy that discussed how your company’s brand should carry over into every aspect of your business. What a great example this makes! We often talk about the “Sandstorm Way” around the office—which refers to ensuring any aspect of a project is up to our professional standards. Because this is at the core of who we are, it’s a key part of our brand. And isn’t this a perfect manifestation of the Sandstorm brand in the culture of the company? Electricity or not, we are still committed to delivering the strategic and creative results we’re known for.

Last Saturday, June 11, 2011, our User Experience Architect Alma Meshes joined more than 6,000 volunteers in the Chicago Cares Serve-a-thon. They came together to spruce up schools for over 18,000 Chicago students by painting classrooms, creating murals, planting flowers, organizing libraries, painting playgrounds and more!

During last year’s Serve-a-thon, Alma and her husband Nick Meshes painted a mural at Mark Sheridan Math & Science Academy (That’s Nick with the mural in the photo above). This year they painted a classroom at the same school. Now painting isn’t exactly user experience design, but Alma is multi-talented!

We’re so proud of Alma for her volunteer efforts to give back to the Chicago community!

We are so excited to welcome Adam Wilbur to our Chicago marketing firm as the Account Services Director. Adam’s experience in account management, leading account teams, marketing strategy, integrated planning and project management make him just the person for the job! On top of his many professional skills, he’s also got quite the hobby list – he DJs, plays drums, volleyball, kickball, and has a slight obsession with softball (if 8 leagues per summer defines “slight obsession”).

We can’t wait to work with you, Adam. Welcome!

This time a month ago, Sandstorm Design was attending the Drupal conference in Chicago. Since then, our team of Drupal 7 developers have been sharing with the rest of the company the key takeaways from the conference.

Over sandwiches and soda, our Technology and Usability Director Michael Hartman talked to the team about new possibilities Drupal 7 features open up and how we can use them to continue to provide exceptional content management solutions. We were inspired enough to keep discussing Drupal long after the last bite had been eaten. In fact, we’re still talking Drupal this and Drupal that. And the conversation isn’t likely to end anytime soon!

Now there’s a few things we need to see from you: Significant B2B and B2C agency experience, digital/interactive expertise, strategic thinking, unsurpassed motivation and drive to learn new things, detailed project management skills, and the ability to write really well. To apply, send your cover letter, salary history and resume to jobs@sandstormdesign.com. Please include “Account Director” in the subject line.

Can someone please slip a note to our neighbors to let them know we are hiring again so we can take over their space?

It has been an amazing week for our development team at DrupalCon Chicago 2011. We absorbed Dries Buytaert’s keynote, mingled with other Drupal 7 developers, danced to a song about Drupal (not kidding!), and attended session after session on topics like theming, design, user experience, implementation and configuration. We had a blast and learned a lot!

We’re so proud that Chicago got to host the Drupal conference this year. And we’re so grateful to all those who made DrupalCon Chicago a success. Most of all, we’re looking forward to the future of Drupal, which is only looking brighter and brighter!

Check out our pictures from DrupalCon Chicago!

Sandstorm Design is so excited to welcome Derek Vander Laan, Senior Designer. Derek is the newest addition to the creative team and comes to us with an extensive range of experience. Besides his most recent design work at McDonald’s, he’s also done marketing, branding, exhibit, retail, packaging, POP, digital, and interactive design. He is a self-proclaimed movie nerd, and can school anybody in what he calls “useless” trivia.

Welcome Derek! We’re so thrilled to work with you!

Meet Drew Jarvis, our newest User Experience Web Developer – We are so thrilled to add Drew to our technology and usability team! Not only does he live by pixel-perfect front-end web design, he also brings years of Drupal expertise, social media intelligence, video editing, and SEO marketing (oh yeah, and 3d modeling – is there anything he can’t do?). When Drew’s not online, he can be found traveling the world, making his own videos, or adding to his LEGO collection.

Welcome Drew. We can’t wait to work with you!

One of the most intriguing findings was from a study by Tractinskya, Cokhavia, Kirschenbauma, and Sharfib (2006) where participants made a split second decision (500 milliseconds) about the attractiveness of a web site. Turns out the average attractiveness ratings stayed about the same when the exposure time was extended to 10 seconds. This means users’ impressions about a web site’s aesthetics are made in less than a second. They don’t really change their mind after more time on the site. We all know how important first impressions are. Which is why aesthetics are extremely critical if you want a user to stay on your web site for, well, more than a second. If you ever need a little help with your web site design, you know who to call.

And the Sandstorm staff is looking forward to another type of growth – we’re hoping to grow some healthier personal habits! I asked around the office for the Sandstormers’ New Year’s Resolutions, and from the results, it looks like we’re a pretty health conscious bunch. Here are the resolutions:

• Surround myself with positive people
• Drop 5% body fat
• Stop eating high fructose corn syrup
• Eat better and be nicer
• Run on the treadmill every week
• Cook more home cooked meals
• Read new books, one classic novel, one work of fiction, and one fluff read
• Eat more organic food and less pizza

So, with salad on our plates, gym shoes on our feet, books in our bags and smiles on our faces, we at Sandstorm Design wish you a very Happy New Year!

It turns out, sleeping in and wearing pajamas is good for business. We were on top of our to-do lists, our brainstorming sessions left the whiteboard overflowing with ideas, and the overall office vibe was relaxed, comfy, and productive. What? Holiday stress? Not at Sandstorm Design.

At Sandstorm, we’re experts at a lot of things – branding, usability, marketing… and general holiday merriment. Yes, at Sandstorm we know how to do the holidays! We gathered Sunday night with our significant others at Cafe Ba Ba Reeba for the annual Sandstorm holiday party. For some of us, including me, it was our first holiday party with Sandstorm, and I’m sure I speak for all of us newcomers when I say it was even more fun than I had anticipated. With sangria in hand (or beer, or margarita), we laughed the night away. Everyone ordered a few tapas, and then the plates just started passing. Fried goat cheese? Yes, please. Spicy potatoes? Yup, right here. Something with mayonnaise? I’ll take it. Something with bacon? Pass that to Zak. We ate, drank, and cracked jokes until our cheeks were sore from laughing so hard.

Then there was the Dirty Santa game. Alma stole Holly’s #1 spot this year, and got to be the first to pick a present, and the last to steal. Even though we had a private room, I’m pretty sure the whole restaurant could hear our Ooooh’s and Aaaah’s as each gift was unwrapped, and our bursts of laughter when someone would steal a coveted gift (like the Christmas Story leg lamp, or the neck massager, or the vampire Abe Lincoln book). And just when you thought you couldn’t eat, drink or laugh any more, they brought the dessert menu. To make the night even better, Sandy made an announcement that the office wouldn’t open until 1:00 PM the next day. Like I said, Sandstorm knows how to do the holidays.

Here at Sandstorm, we all tend to take on the same mood of the day. You’ll know when we’re in our Friday mood because the jokes are more frequent and the laughter is a lot louder. We also get in seasonal moods, enjoying cider in the fall and tea in the winter. And now that the holidays are upon us, we thought it would be fun to deck the halls to accompany our festive mood!

So on this extra wintery Monday morning, the Sandstorm staff arrived to see lights strung, gifts wrapped and stockings stuffed. To add to our already hefty supply of sweets, there are now candy canes, old-fashioned candies, peppermints and lollipops on just about every table. Everywhere you turn there are decorations to remind you of the season. Along with all this snowy weather, we now have a fully decorated office to keep us in the holiday spirit!

Speaking of holidays, I still need to get my Dirty Santa gift for this weekend’s Sandstorm Holiday Party…

Our Sandstorm Design staff couldn’t stop talking about the mystery “Offsite Mandatory Meeting” scheduled for Friday. Concerns included what type of meeting this would be, exactly how far off site we would be going, and what type of clothing we would need (hiking gear, perhaps?).

With the meeting scheduled for 3:00 PM, Sandy called our anxious staff into a conference room at 2:45 PM to reveal that we would not be having a meeting after all. We would, however, be going off site – to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 on opening day! After a few excited updates to Facebook and text messages to jealous family members, we threw on our coats, jumped in the cars, passed out the tickets, claimed a row in the theater, and sat back to enjoy the Friday afternoon show. Sandy sure knows how to keep a smile on our faces! Thanks from all of us!