A superbly designed web service -- WackyButtons.com

Yesterday I blogged about my designs for our science fair buttons, and how we get our buttons made from WackyButtons.com.  I discovered Wacky Buttons via a Google search last year, and am quite impressed with their service and product.  I don't know anybody who works there, and I have no affiliation with them.  I don't know if it's one person sitting at home in front of a button press making buttons one at a time, or whether it's a large operation with a factory full of people and machines.  (I suspect something in between.)  I just think they've taken a simple concept and executed on it really nicely.  I wish more businesses would strive to have the kind of attention to detail that they do.  Here's what I value about their website, service, and product:

• Cute logo.
• Buttons is all they do.  Their website isn't crammed with a hundred different products, making it hard for me to find what I want.  The whole site is about buttons, and if buttons are what I'm looking for at this particular moment, then I can stayed focused on my goal.
• Price calculator.  Before I'm even close to being ready to place my order or knowing what design I want, I can easily calculate exactly what my total cost would be, including shipping.  I can play with different quantities and button sizes to figure out what will work best.  And they do all this without asking for any personal information, other than my zipcode for the shipping calculation.  I love that.
• Custom designs.  Submitting my own custom button design is incredibly easy.  I don't have to get on the phone with someone and have them explain to me how to do it.  All the information is right there on the site, including templates and file formats and everything.  When my design is ready, I just upload the artwork.  In less than a day, I get an email back saying my design is approved, at which point I can order my buttons.
• Fast turnaround time.  To give you an idea ...  for the science fair, I uploaded my custom design Monday at 10pm.  It was approved Tuesday at 6am.  I placed my order Tuesday at 9am.  On Wednesday (today) at 8am, my order was being processed, and at 12:06pm, it was done.  They shipped it out, and gave me a tracking number.  I expect to receive my buttons early next week.  Simply incredible.  That's one week from start to finish, and the only reason it took even that long is because I'm on the west coast.
• Simple pricing. Not only are their prices very good, they are also very simple.  They don't complicate things by tacking on fees for custom designs, fees for low quantity orders, having different pricing depending on the colors used, or anything like that.  If you know the quantity and the button size, you can easily figure out the price by looking it up in a table or using the price calculator.
• Realistic preview.  I love this feature.  When my custom design gets approved, they actually show me a realistic image of what my button will look like using my custom design.  How they do this, I have no clue.  For example, I uploaded the following image:

When it was approved, and I was ready to order, they showed me this preview, before they had manufactured a single button:

It looks like a real button!  How cool is that!

I love that these guys are so passionate about buttons that they've put in a great deal of effort into making the web-based button buying process smooth, painless, and fun.  Thanks Wacky Buttons!  You guys rock.

--Rajeev

Designs for science fair buttons

I've always been envious of graphic designers; their talents seem out-of-reach to me.  I have many skills of which I'm proud, but art and graphic design are not among them.  Is it just one of those left-brain-right-brain things, and my brain is not wired for art?  Or is it just that I haven't devoted sufficient time and effort to practice the skill?  I'm not sure, but I am hoping it's something I can get better at with time.  One nice thing about being the volunteer coordinator for the school science fair is that it gives me a chance to practice and improve my design skills in a low-risk environment.  (Low-risk because I doubt anyone would dare complain if my artwork wasn't up to their standards!)

At Cascade Ridge Elementary we give out buttons for all science fair participants, volunteers, and teachers to wear on the day of the science fair.  And rather than just buying a bunch of generic science fair buttons, I thought it would be more fun to get custom buttons made with our school's name and my own design.  For example, last year (2009), I created the following design for our buttons:

If you recognize the telescope, that's because I stole it from the clipart library in Microsoft Word.  Now, you might think that since I'm using pre-drawn clipart, there isn't much left to actually design.  But remember, this stuff doesn't come naturally to me.  So I agonized for hours over the background color, the font, the font color, the text, and the placement of the text.  Even the process of getting the design from my head into Photoshop Elements was a challenge, mostly because I find Photoshop to be complicated and confusing.  But in the end, I was pleased with the result.

For this year's science fair (2010), our logo is a magnet, and I couldn't find the exact right clipart or stock illustration for what I had in mind.  So I actually drew the magnet myself using a vector graphics tool called Microsoft Expression Design, which I find to be intuitive and easy to use.  My final button design looks like this:

It's not a masterpiece, but I kind of like its simplicity, and I hope the kids will like it too.  I just noticed that I've used a black background two years in a row ... there's something about black that makes it look classy to me.  I ordered our buttons today, so we'll see what they look like in about week when they arrive.

I buy our buttons from a company called WackyButtons.com, which is a simply outstanding service.  Stay tuned for a future blog post where I list all the things I love about them.

Leave me a comment on this blog if you have any thoughts or feedback.  And don't forget to get your own science fair website for your school at oursciencefair.com.

--Rajeev