Avert your eyes now if you’re offended by gratuitous plugging 
I’ve been a big fan of Spreadshirt for a long time and have a long-held desire to launch my own T-Shirt shop. If I ever get around to it, I’ll be using Spreadshirt.
Now you can make your own t-shirts with Spreadshirt’s Designer.
All the major search engines actively discourage artificial link-building campaigns. To get a sense of why these campaigns are discouraged, you need to know a little about how they work…
Back-link building systems generally use low quality or “spun” content (many articles combined together in different ways) that is designed to appeal to search engines, not necessarily human beings. This replicated content contains back-links to your site, helping build it’s search ranking.
Search engines discourage this link building, probably for 2 reasons…
1. It produces poor quality, keyword-stuffed content that no human being would ever want to read wants to read. To combat this kind of content, search engine algorhythms are becoming smarter at recognising and downplaying back-links from this low-quality content. Read about Google’s Penguin Update if you want more info.
2. The search engines would really rather you used Pay-Per-Click (their bread and butter income) if you want to increase your search engine rankings
OK, if search engines don’t want you to use artificial link building, are there any consequences for going against their recommendations? Maybe. There has been an unconfirmed rumour going around in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) circles for nearly ten years, that Google can penalize your site for artificial link building. It’s called sandboxing and most SEO experts agree that it exists, though it’s never been confirmed by Google. The general concensus seems to be that it mainly effects new websites and the sandbox period seems to be around 6 months.
Here’s where it gets interesting though… Google cannot seriously or permanently penalize a website for having poor quality back-links because ANYBODY can create back-links to any website! If any of the major search engines started banning or down-ranking websites for these practices, companies would be quick to use it against their competitors.
The ongoing risks then, are that you could pay money for link-building, significantly increase your page-rank, then loose that rank at the next Google algorhythm update.
Designed to resemble the traditional information “i” logo, the Image Canteen logo represents the transfer of information that occurs through websites. It also looks like a spoon in a bowl which is a nod to the word ‘Canteen’. Yellow, orange and red were chosen as they represent excitement and hunger in colour psychology. Finally, the font is Yanone Kaffeesatz a font which suits this logo perfectly.
The Casual Tee logo was designed a few years ago for an internet start-up T-shirt company that planned on selling aggressively political T-shirts. Obviously there’s a play on words here with Casual Tee becoming ‘casualty’. The chalk outline goes right around the dude’s T-shirt which still makes me chuckle after all these years. Maybe it’s just my warped sense of humour?
Aussie Foodbox is a company that supplies boxes of Aussie treats to homesick Aussie ex-pats. The brief was to create a simple, memorable ‘Aussie’ logo for while avoiding stereotypical Aussie colours and symbolism like Kangaroos, Southern Crosses and the like.
The box has been deformed to look like a map of Australia with the bonus of Tasmania forming part of the word ‘Foodbox’. Obviously this was meant as a gesture of love and goodwill to Tasmanians, who are normally left out of such logos due to the fact that they’re not part of Australia. Just joking Tasmanians!
Choosing a web designer can be a daunting task, especially when you live in a rural area like the Sunshine Coast. There are a limited number of local web design companies so it could be tempting to look towards a larger market like Brisbane. Of course, unless you choose a Sunshine Coast local you’re going to struggle to meet for coffee at a Mooloolaba cafe to discuss plans for your next big project.
By buying locally, you’re investing in the Sunshine Coast which is fantastic, but not if you’re getting an inferior product! That won’t be the case at Image Canteen. I have the skills and experience to help you out on your next project.
I’m Karl Carpenter, the principal of Image Canteen. I’ve been a graphic designer and animator since 1987 and a web designer / developer since 1996 so I have the skills and experience to manage any project you can dream up.
I’m passionate about web standards, user interface and website design.
If you want to learn more, check my Linkedin profile.