My name is Mark Castro-Garcia, and I have been an artworker for nearly 14 years (since August 2000) and freelance for over 4 years (since May 2010).
I have a print background and started out in repro. As things have started to gear towards digital, I discovered the term "integrated" in 2011 and set out to accrue more digital experience, while still keeping a hand in all things print. The best example of this was 8 months I spent at Coutts & Co (2012-13); while there was printed collateral going on, there was also a lot of emailers, and graphics for cash machines, apps, iPads and screens for presentations/exhibitions.
In 2013, I finally started to land roles which were purely digital-only; working on the UI for the Nokia/Windows 1520 "phablet" phone, social media desktop and mobile graphics for Allianz, responsive website assets for Honda (while at DigitasLBi for 5 months). Elsewhere, I also turned my hand to plasma screens and touchscreens, web banners and iPhone adverts for Papa John’s, web banners for Virgin Media, and emailers for Crayola, Leap Frog and Papa John’s.
The trend is continuing into 2014 – at Stack, Vodafone and Amazon back-to-back – working on emailers for Peugeot, UX graphics for a Vodafone app, and eCommerce web assets for Amazon.
Showing posts with label mobile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mobile. Show all posts
Monday, 30 June 2014
Tuesday, 1 October 2013
Coming full circle and back on top!
My name is Mark Castro-Garcia, and I'm an integrated freelance artworker. I'd managed to keep my website in the top ten Google ranking all year, if you did a search for freelance artworker. This was from early January, right through to August/September...
Then suddenly, it dropped out of the top ten, and for a period, it was back at number 21. I remembered reading something about a new Google algorithm, that takes mobile phone website optimisation into account. My site was hardly web-optimised, let alone mobile-optimised!
I began to grow weary of my experiment, and started to wonder why I was bothering any more. I'm not a designer or a website coder, and I have never have the free time I need to make my site look and feel the way I'd like. My domain came up for renewal, and for over a week, I contemplated not renewing it...
However, three things happened today which changed my mind...one: I own and run a business called Yewhew Limited, so it makes sense to own the yewhew.com domain. Two: I googled "free mobile friendly website template" and discovered dudamobile.com. The great thing about their site is that they convert your site, optimise it for mobile, allow you to edit it, and give you a redirect as well – all for free!
Not only is my site now mobile-optimised, it actually looks good on a mobile! It looks designed! It's basic, it's functional, but it's actually aesthetically-pleasing now (for once!)
It not only makes it mobile-friendly, it also optimises it for iPhone, Android, Windows and Blackberry :)
And the third and final thing that convinced me to keep my domain, was that I checked my "dormant" email address, thefreelanceartworker@gmail.com, which I'd created back in March just to see if it helped the SEO of my site – and lo and behold – I actually had two legitimate offers of work from two complete strangers...and they sought me out via my site (which I don't publicise, other than writing this blog) and via the email address which only ever appears on there!
The great thing about the work is that one of the offers is for an annual report, which I love doing, and the other sounded like it was getting into the integrated/mobile/digital side of artworking, which I am also loving!
Just to top things off, I got the mobile version of my site right first time – dudamobile is so intuative – and the redirect code was also a doddle to drop in and upload. So now, if you access http://yewhew.com/freelance-artworker/ via a mobile, it automatically sends you to http://mobile.dudamobile.com/site/yewhew_2 :)
And I checked "freelance artworker" on Google...I was back on top via Safari and Firefox, and number 2 via Chrome :)
Maybe my blogging about it will strengthen it even more and push me up to number 1 all round again?!
Then suddenly, it dropped out of the top ten, and for a period, it was back at number 21. I remembered reading something about a new Google algorithm, that takes mobile phone website optimisation into account. My site was hardly web-optimised, let alone mobile-optimised!
I began to grow weary of my experiment, and started to wonder why I was bothering any more. I'm not a designer or a website coder, and I have never have the free time I need to make my site look and feel the way I'd like. My domain came up for renewal, and for over a week, I contemplated not renewing it...
However, three things happened today which changed my mind...one: I own and run a business called Yewhew Limited, so it makes sense to own the yewhew.com domain. Two: I googled "free mobile friendly website template" and discovered dudamobile.com. The great thing about their site is that they convert your site, optimise it for mobile, allow you to edit it, and give you a redirect as well – all for free!
Not only is my site now mobile-optimised, it actually looks good on a mobile! It looks designed! It's basic, it's functional, but it's actually aesthetically-pleasing now (for once!)
It not only makes it mobile-friendly, it also optimises it for iPhone, Android, Windows and Blackberry :)
And the third and final thing that convinced me to keep my domain, was that I checked my "dormant" email address, thefreelanceartworker@gmail.com, which I'd created back in March just to see if it helped the SEO of my site – and lo and behold – I actually had two legitimate offers of work from two complete strangers...and they sought me out via my site (which I don't publicise, other than writing this blog) and via the email address which only ever appears on there!
The great thing about the work is that one of the offers is for an annual report, which I love doing, and the other sounded like it was getting into the integrated/mobile/digital side of artworking, which I am also loving!
Just to top things off, I got the mobile version of my site right first time – dudamobile is so intuative – and the redirect code was also a doddle to drop in and upload. So now, if you access http://yewhew.com/freelance-artworker/ via a mobile, it automatically sends you to http://mobile.dudamobile.com/site/yewhew_2 :)
And I checked "freelance artworker" on Google...I was back on top via Safari and Firefox, and number 2 via Chrome :)
Maybe my blogging about it will strengthen it even more and push me up to number 1 all round again?!
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