What’s on that list you might ask? Well, I’ve been diligently working on the new R&R brand and balancing the de-cluttering of a new house, Scarlett’s enthusiastically pursuing new business and is tackling her first ever half marathon and we’re both making a concerted effort to step up our entrepreneurial prowess.

To hold up my end of the deal, in December I joined a group called Entrepreneurship Organization Accelerator. They may not have a creative name (!) but it is one sharp group of people with great ideas and solid business acumen. The organization offers monthly accountability meetings with a tight nit group of fellow entrepreneurs and quarterly daylong seminars.

My first seminar was just last week and I enjoyed a solid 8+ hours with my entrepreneurial peers discussing one of the biggest variables of small business…PEOPLE. We discussed communication tools to create better correspondence, learned about ROWE (Rewards-only work experience) and heard from a number of once small (now large) business owners about the growth of their companies and how they manage their, you guessed it, people.

While we may not have 100s of employees under our wings, we do work with a broad scope of clients, vendors, partners and friends, which make up our robust, remote work environment. We appreciate you all and hope that through events like our Accelerator People day that our professional relationships become even stronger. Here’s to a happy and healthy start to 2012!

What’s that saying about death and taxes? Oh yeah, they’re both inevitable. Well, it appears that the taxes part is upon us, and not just the kind that we need to file.  This past Friday, we launched a website for Garris and Company, a Certified Public Accounting firm in Charlottesville, VA.

Garris and Company has been successfully assisting companies and individuals with their accounting needs for the past 28 years. In so doing, they’ve had the opportunity to grow their network outside of the Charlottesville area and are looking to expand their reach even further in the coming years. As we all know, finding a good accountant is not an easy task and it often involves word-of-mouth recommendations and/or an in-depth Google search.  Garris and Company, understanding the importance of both, came to us for assistance in creating a website that would bode well in a Google search and pass the word-of-mouth challenge with flying colors. We of course, were happy to offer our services in the design and development portion, but are leaving the word-of-mouth part up to their extremely satisfied clients.

The website, garriscompany.com, is instantly inviting with a modern and active home page. The initial slideshow offers visitors the chance to easily learn more about the services offered, while a Recent Blog RSS feed appears on the left hand side of the page and will populate anytime a new blog is added. Easy, one-click buttons assist visitors in requesting quotes, sharing files and uncovering Garris and Company on a variety of social media sites.

Beyond the home page, the site is chock full of useful information that helps visitors not only understand their accounting needs, but personally connect with a CPA or bookkeeper of their choice. Visitors can choose to email an employee directly for assistance or use any one of the resource links provided to make financial matters less stressful. As you browse the site, beyond the clean, welcoming aesthetic, you’ll notice that there is a plethora of facts and information, written in terms that non-accountants can understand. It is this knowledge sharing and core belief of educating their clients that has made Garris and Company one of the first firms to be discussed among peers and what will also increase its presence on the web.

Taxes are inevitable, so take our word and visit garriscompany.com.

We are a little infatuated with the number 12. Perhaps it has something to do with the time of year, there are 12 days of Christmas, we count down to 12am on 31st day of the 12 month and we just rang in the 12th year of the 21st century. So in honor of the hot little number, we’ve decided to share with you our 12 predictions for 2012. Don’t worry they have nothing to do with the Mayan, Mesoamerican Long Count calendar.

1. Rhyme & Reason Design’s website will launch anew – iPhones and iPads rejoice.
2. Facebook, King of the Social Media mountain, goes public – a plethora of status updates ensue.
3. Google’s search optimization algorithm forces users to visit the ghost town that is Google+
4. The 2012 United States Presidential Election becomes a breeding ground for viral videos, SNL parodies, rogue tweets and many more pop cultural gaffes
5. Pinterest increases the craftiness of females around the globe
6. Rhyme & Reason Design wins several new clients, enabling us to hire new employees thus kick-starting the cycle of growth
7. Big Nerd Ranch is first to trend #(an)droiding, BigDroidRanch becomes a cult following
8. Moffitt Cancer Center will unveil a robust digital presence bringing them closer to their patients and closer to a cure
9. Alpha Sigma Alpha will celebrate their 47th biennial national convention with a return to their founding state of Virginia – ladybugs will be everywhere
10. Cookbook Create socializes the cookbook, Garris and Company mitigates the fear of tax season and Taste of Florida mixes up a good time, in other words Rhyme & Reason Design’s clients hit it big in 2012
11. Steve Jobs left a legacy; perhaps it’s the iPhone 5
12. Rhyme & Reason Design will celebrate it’s fourth birthday with new clients, current clients, friends, family and maybe even some bubbly.

The stores were all out of Turtle Doves and Leaping Lords this year. So here at Rhyme & Reason Design, we chose to craft our own 12 days of sharing that we are certain will be more useful then seven Swimming Swans.

Twelve email newsletters

Eleven Twitter tweets

Ten convention banners

Nine cups of coffee

Eight page brochures

Seven campaign strategies

Six lines of copy

FIVE WEBSITE PAGES

Four months of programming

Three design directions

Two Facebook fans

& A lovely logo mark

Wishing each and every one of our amazing clients, fans, friends and family a very Happy Holiday Season & A Creative New Year!

Highgroove studios is a software development company that focuses on building a lean, agile and elegant back-end application. We met them a while back at Ignition Alley (the co-working space we can often be found toiling away at in Atlanta) and have since had the opportunity to work with them on the inlaw|.me project. Although we can’t talk about the project (it’s not yet in Beta), we can certainly talk about HighGroove’s sweet digs. Their office space comes complete with a espresso machine that would make Starbucks envious, a vast array of organic goodies to snack on and work stations decked out with a multitude of Apple gadgets – it was love at first sight. Outside of their material possessions, they have an impressive manifesto that they strive to follow and which makes them a pleasure to work with. In essence, I am sure you will hear us talk about them many times over in the years to come.

Spreading the holiday cheer at Big Nerd Ranch

Big Nerd Ranch is our super cool client that is dedicated to broadening the intellectual canvas of the world through teaching, consulting and application development. Now, these may be some of the smartest people I have ever met, but they also are the least likely to take themselves too seriously and the most likely to jump on a good time. Therefore, in true Nerd spirit they gathered the office (and a few lucky business associates) together for a Tacky Sweater party. Let me tell you, or you can see for yourself here, there was no holding back on the tacky, the festive and the gender-bending sweater display.

Alright, so it may sound like I did more playing than working on my visit, but I promise you’ll see the fruits of our labors in the next few weeks. Oh, and I forgot to mention, Karen had me put in some sweat equity at the Atlanta Beltline’s 10k, she came in second in her age group, as for me, we won’t talk about that

Karen making 6.2 miles look easy

As any good social media consumer knows, the month of November is filled with trends about why people are thankful. This year, Facebook encouraged people to write down one thing that they are thankful for per day, so by the end of the month the user would have 30 things to be thankful for. Not a bad plan. Here at Rhyme & Reason Design, we didn’t follow the trend, not that we aren’t thankful for a plethora of people, places and things more because time got away from us. Therefore, we want to make it up by listing out the 30 things we are thankful for right here in this blog.

Day 1: We are thankful for our amazing clients, without whom we wouldn’t have any Rhyme or any Reason.

Day 2: We are thankful for the unconditional love and support our families have bestowed upon us since we opened our virtual doors. Their words of encouragement both written on Facebook and said in person have buoyed us through every up and down.

Day 3: We are thankful for our friends who never complain about the multitude of “likes” we request, e-newsletters we fill their inboxes with or tweets we force upon them. Their good natures and willingness to meet us for a drink at the end of a long day have brought smiles to our faces many times over.

Day 4: We are thankful for our iPhones and Macbooks, their technological prowess allows us to communicate in every way shape and form, 24/7.

Day 5: We are thankful for our hobbies, whether lacing up our shoes to breath in fresh air on a run or saddling up to go for a ride, our health and sanity are better for them.

Day 6: We are thankful for caffeine. Particularly the kind that involves chocolate or coffee, because really no day is complete without either.

Day 7: We are thankful for our vendors. Those that make our designs shine on paper and those that bring our websites to life through code.

Day 8: We are thankful to Denmark {the agency} for not only introducing us, but providing us with a strong foundation on which to grow.

Day 9: We are thankful for Harry Potter, Twilight, Fast Company, Glamour Magazine, Mashable and Smartbriefs for providing us with hours of entertainment; the educational kind and the not-so-much.

Day 10: We are thankful to our kick-butt intern Virginia, who not only uploaded ridiculous amounts of content for us this summer, but enjoyed it so much that we were able to convince her to help us out each week throughout the year!

Day 11: We are thankful for wordpress and joomla, because who doesn’t love content management systems!

Day 12: We are thankful for Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Linkedin for keeping us connected, because how else would we find out that our brother’s best friend’s sister got married or that Tebow was trending?

Day 13: We are thankful for networking events that allow us to connect with a variety of people who can enrich our knowledge base.

Day 14: We are thankful for every client, every friend and every acquaintance who has mentioned our name or our work to others – essentially becoming a brand ambassador for Rhyme & Reason.

Day 15: We are thankful for vacations where wi fi does not exist, because sometimes being constantly on can become overwhelming.

Day 16: We are thankful for the opportunity to not only open a business at the beginning of the economic crisis, but to stay in business throughout.

Day 17: We are thankful for globalization because the world really is our oyster. But, we are also thankful for localization because buying local keeps small businesses in business.

Day 18: We are thankful for the professors, the teachers and the instructors who cultivated our minds and assisted us in finding our career paths.

Day 19: We are thankful for our failures. Without the roadblocks we would never have the chance to learn and better ourselves.

Day 20: We are thankful for our business partnerships. As a small business, we can’t do it all, so having reliable business relationships enables us to provide the best possible product and service.

Day 21: We are thankful for Google analytics, Google Alerts,  Google Blog Search, SocialMentions, Facebook Insights and the dozens of other tools out there that allow us to monitor how our business and our client’s businesses are doing in the digital world.

Day 22: We are thankful for the University of Florida, for providing us with a great education, several diplomas, a love of all things orange and blue and unhealthy obsession with college football.

Day 23: We are thankful for free wi fi in airports, because how else are you supposed to get work done when you travel.

Day 24: We are thankful for our laptop bags and our Otterboxes because it is necessary to protect our must precious possessions with 17 layers of rubber, plastic and padding.

Day 25: We are thankful for Ignition Alley, Panera and the numerous coffee shops around Orlando and Atlanta that allow us to set up shop for a day, a week or even a year.

Day 26: We are thankful for holidays that allow us to spend quality time with the people we love (and thank them for all that they do).

Day 27: We are thankful for the 268 followers we have on Twitter and the 411 fans we have on Facebook, because at least we aren’t talking to ourselves:)

Day 28: We are thankful for the organizations that we have worked with (and those that we haven’t) that are working to make the world a better place.

Day 29: We are thankful to love what we do and have the chance to share it with the world.

Day 30: We are thankful for all of you who read through this entire list. Have a happy and healthy Thanksgiving!

Assisting Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority in establishing an aesthetic that will carry them through the next generation of sisters has been a truly tremendous experience. We immersed ourselves in their history, took part in their present and helped carve a path for their future. In so doing, we designed a great deal of materials for the organization starting with a logo mark and growing to a full suite of materials. Many of you have already clicked through the website, liked them on Facebook and even followed their tweets, but the latest design only just recently hit the “newsstands”.

The Fall 2011 edition of the Phoenix landed in physical mailboxes across the U.S. last week and since then we’ve been flipping through the pages, checking out our handiwork. Not only did we design the new layout of the magazine, but the featured article, “A Brand New Beginning” was designed and written by members of the Rhyme & Reason team. The article itself looks as if it jumped straight off the pages of the website into a printed format, while the copy describes the re-branding process, from start to finish, offering greater insight into each phase of the re-design.

Looking beyond the featured article, you will notice that elements of the new brand are carefully interspersed to create a design that seamlessly integrates into the new aesthetic. The badge emblem, a vital component of the new brand, adds subtle graphic details throughout the pages of the Phoenix, while other design elements have been incorporated into this edition, such as the swirls to create differentiation between pages as well as a bit of youthful whimsy.

Small design additions are nice to see, but what the sisterhood really wanted was a shift towards a more sophisticated and modern piece, with stories that beg to be read. To create such a magazine, we added more white space to allow the words to become the center of attention, design pages specifically to house larger photos and worked with the font sizes and typefaces to make the headlines really pop. As for the stories, the sisterhood is doing a great job of making them happen!

Still want to know more about the Fall 2011 Phoenix, but can’t get your fingers on the actual magazine? Check out the digital version, it’s the same as the printed piece.

Kevin Bacon associations aside, our work has made a few appearances at Apple Headquarters. In fact, this past Monday, Big Nerd Ranch’s Director of Corporate Training gave a big presentation to the Apple Enterprise team. The presentation, although kind of a big deal, was not a definite go until a mere seven days prior, which meant we not only had to come up with an idea that could be produced in time, but it also had to be smart enough to impress the epi-center of Nerds. No big deal.

Luckily, we didn’t have time to think about the fact that our work would be seen, and possibly judged, by Apple folks; we had a project to design, print and program. The initial idea was to create an easily accessible, digital brochure. However, the light bulb went on when we heard that the Nerds were planning to pass out their newly released book, Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide at the presentation. What better way to utilize the book as a vehicle to drive the audience to the digital brochure, than with a bookmark complete with a custom QR code. It proved to be an excellent way to create a tangible leave-behind that provided a gateway to a specialized online presence.

With the bookmark idea a go, we laid out a design that would seamlessly match the Big Nerd Ranch aesthetic. Incorporating the QR code was easy, once we gave up on the idea of fitting a square QR codes into a rounded cowboy hat logo.

Once the bookmark was signed, sealed and delivered to the printer, our next order of business was to create the complementary landing page that was to link to the QR code; a pretty vital component. The one-page site didn’t need to sing and dance, but it did need to perform. In essence, the site had to act as the introductory hand-shake of the Big Nerd Ranch, and what better way to do that then mirror the look and feel of the current Big Nerd Ranch website and then sprinkle in bite-sized information about the products and services they offer.

By Sunday afternoon, the day before the big event, the bookmarks were traveling across the country, the programmers were inputting the last lines of code and we finally had a chance to sit back and ponder how cool we now are by association. Just kidding, we actually were thinking, ‘Oh man, I hope they don’t think we could have left more white space!”

To be honest, just having the opportunity to work with Big Nerd Ranch and our other amazing clients, means that we are pretty cool, associations or not.

In early September, we had the privilege of again partnering with Alpha Sigma Alpha Sorority on a design project: their annual report. Most designers probably cringe at the phrase, but I have to admit, I LOVE them. Charts, graphs, tables; they all offer a plethora of details that need to be organized and styled into clear and concise, visual information. Infographics, as they’re popularly called, can range from simple to complex and can illustrate a variety of information.

Aside from the design aspects, I also find them incredibly inspiring. It’s always amazing to see the progress an organization or company can make over the course of 12 months. In Alpha Sigma Alpha’s case, they donated more than $163,000 and 100,000 hours to charity, increased their membership and had their highest retention rate ever (94%!). Not to mention, they completed a thorough rebranding including their logo, website and all their print materials. We may have played a small part in that last item!

As far as the Greek community is concerned, I’m going to have to wait 12 whole months to get my hands on another annual report. But for those of you who are quickly approaching the end of your financial year, keep us in mind. Did I mention that we love annual reports?

Having had cancer personally affect my family, I have always been a big proponent of cancer support, awareness and fundraising initiatives. However, now that Rhyme & Reason is working closely with Moffitt Cancer Center, I have even more of a reason to wear my pink proudly. In fact, two Monday’s ago, I had the opportunity to spend my evening with 300 men, women and children who either work for Moffitt Cancer Center or have been affected by breast cancer. While in Tampa for a design meeting with the Moffitt marketing team, they asked if I would like to attend the Tampa Bay Bucs vs. Indianapolis Colts, Monday Night Football game and pre-game tailgate to show my support for breast cancer. I immediately obliged and found myself clothed in a pink Buccaneers t-shirt surrounded by patients, survivors, families, doctors and friends. Although I was aware that it was a Monday Night Football televised event and that Moffitt Cancer Center had created a partnership with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, I did not realize that our group would be one of many proudly displaying the color of the month. Players on the field caught footballs in pink gloves and ran plays in pink cleats, cheerleaders danced in pink uniforms and shook pink pompoms, stadium employees pinned pink ribbons to their lapels and fans from all over could be seen with a hint of pink. I have to say, I’ve never loved the color pink more.

The Monday Night Football game won’t be the last thing I do this month to show my support for breast cancer awareness. There are plenty of things to do, from simply buying a pink ribbon bagel at your local Panera to changing your Facebook profile picture pink to clocking miles for the “For a Cure” 3 day walk or donating time or money to your local cancer hospital. Keep in mind that even if pink isn’t your thing, creating awareness about cancer of any variety is something we should all be doing, no matter the month or the color.