What is a square squared?

A long, long time ago (2002) in an apartment far, far away, we were deciding on the name of our newly formed company. We wanted a creative name that would allude to the bold, creative thinking we put into all our projects. The cliché at the time was "think outside the box" it was (and still is) an overused term and thus ironic in usage.

So what is OUTSIDE the box? My father, Chairman of The FENG has a famous editorial about "In the Box Thinking", that is, how you fill it in and the care you take to maximize the information in the box is what will win the day for you.

At Square Squared, we like to take a step back and look at the box itself. What is this box? Why do we need it? We came to realize that "the box" is forever changing over time. Enter the fourth dimension, time. So how do we get a four-dimensional box?

Disclaimer: We are not professional mathematicians

If you square a line (X), you get a square ( X * X = X²)

BUT when you square a square (X² * X² = X⁴ ) you get a FOUR-dimensional shape called a Tesseract. As eloquently stated on Wikipedia, "In geometry, the tesseract is the four-dimensional analog of the cube; the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square."

By NerdBoy1392 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Square Squared means that we are not just thinking outside the box, but rather BEYOND the box. We understand that the box is forever changing, shifting, and moving. We know that there may be more to “the box” than meets the eye.

For a fresh look at your customer engagement and new thinking about how to approach your communication, contact us.

Free Stock Photos

Here is a short list of places you can go to get quality images for free that you can use on your website and other marketing materials. These images are great for populating your blog, and making your emails have a sense of style and relevance.

Unsplash – https://unsplash.com/
Pexels – https://www.pexels.com/
Pixabay – https://pixabay.com/
The Noun Project – https://thenounproject.com/

If you want to put a little money into your images, we like these services. For a small fee you get a huge value.

Adobe Stock – https://stock.adobe.com
Envato Elements – elements.envato.com

Optimized Code & Scripting

The majority of our websites are be coded using the open source programing and scripting languages of HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP. It will be driven by the WordPress content management system and a mySQL database.
Programming your website in a way that allows search engine spiders to access, categorize, and index the content on your site ensures all of our SEO tactics are as effective as possible. As an SEO best practice, we make sure your code is as error-free as possible and we follow guidelines for semantically correct markup. Clean, semantically correct code not only allows your site to load faster in major browsers, but also allows for faster indexing by the search engines such as Google, Yahoo! Bing and others.

Properly coding a website without ‘code bloat’ is an important step in an efficiently and effectively programmed website. Code bloat occurs when the amount of code on a page greatly exceeds the amount of human readable text on the page. Excessive code can get in the way of search engine spiders indexing your content, especially if your content is placed deep within your code structure, or buried inside tables, images or flash files. It’s harder – and sometimes even impossible – for search engine spiders to crawl the content of the page and determine its relevancy of the page if there is extraneous code in the way, or if there is little or no machine readable text at all. Furthermore, code bloat can create longer than normal download time, which can impact how search engines rank your site, and cause visitors to navigate away from your web page.

By correctly using semantic coding, style sheets and scripts, we can ensure that the content on your web pages is highly accessible to human and machine readers alike by:

Optimizing code
Making all content machine readable
Correctly tagging page elements
Creating a unique keyword-based URL for all pages

If you want a website and you need it tonight...Square Squared

"If you want a website and you need it tonight...Square Squared." Those are the famous first lines of our company theme song. Not all companies have a theme song, but we are fun, innovative and creative team, and we thought, "Hey, why not make a theme song and music video to promote our brand?"

So, we wrote a song, performed it and recorded it along with produced a music video for you tube. It's a fun and different way to help get the message out.

Below are the complete set of lyrics, and a link for the video. Enjoy! Give us a call if you need a creative way to get your message out there, either through a website, video, or if you want to brainstorm for something else that will fit your company and brand best.

If you want a website and you need it tonight...Square Squared.
If your site that was done, was by your neighbor's son…call Square Squared.
Get it right. Get it right. Get it right...Square Squared

If your logo and brand were drawn with a crayon... Square Squared
If your graphics just suck or your marketing's muck...Square Squared.
Get it right. Get it right. Get it right...Square Squared

Fair’s fair, call Square Squared
for digital graphics and website care.
Call us 24/7 and we might be there
burnin’ the midnight oil in our underwear
and say, “Have no fear, we’ll take care of that snare,
and get you up and running before daylight’s here.”

If your logo and brochures are just a mess,
Lynn will come to your office in a Pucci dress
and say, “We’ll take care of these items, but I must confess
there’s a little bit of money that you must invest –
and in no time flat you’ll be a lot less stressed
makin’ tons of loot with a look that’s fresh.”

But that’s not all that we can help you do
Social media, videos and outdoor too,
wrap your truck in art
make your store front smart
get your business card lookin’ oh so sharp
We’re never mean, we’re green, check out our new routine
and you’ll always love working’ with the Square Squared Team.

If you need an ad to be proud and stand out from the crowd...Square Squared
If your look needs repair, some umph and some flair...Square Squared
Get it right. Get it right. Get it right...Square Squared

QR Code it

What can a QR Code do?

A lot of people don't know this, but QR Codes are actually old technology. The QR code system was invented in 1994 by Toyota's subsidiary, Denso Wave. Its purpose was to track vehicles during manufacture; it was designed to allow high-speed component scanning. With the advent of the smart phone and the capability of such devices to easily read and process these barcodes anywhere, at any time, their potential and use began to blossom.

A QR code is literally a bridge to connect the "real world" with the "digital world." You can't put "Click here" on a t-shirt or printed brochure, but a QR code gives you virtually the same benefit. "Scan here" and visit the online destination of my choosing. Basically, anywhere a website button could take you, a QR code can bring you to the same place.

We often generate QR Codes for our clients to place on cards, ads, stickers, or T-Shirts. It can store text, a URL, contact information, phone numbers, SMS whatever. I have used them to link directly to websites, Facebook pages, and even PayPal payment screens.

The possibilities are endless.

The best place I have found to go to generate your code, simple, easy, and free is: https://www.the-qrcode-generator.com/

Good luck, and happy scanning!

Staying Visible

The best way to make sure your website stays visible on the internet is to keep your website fresh with valid, relevant content. In addition, it is important that you submit your website to the major search engines and internet directories, including:

Google™
Google Places™
Google Mobile™
Bing™
Yahoo!®
Twitter®
Facebook®
CitySearch®
Foursquare™
YP.com
GPS navigation
MerchantCircle®

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If you need help getting your site on any or all of these internet directories, please let us know. We can help.

What's a holonym?

A holonym is a word that names the whole of which a given word is a part.

Shirt is a holonyn for sleeve; Hat is a holonym for brim. Car is a holonym for chassis. Hummus is a holonym for itself.

Why? Because the word "Hummus" is Arabic. It translates to chickpea, or garbanzo in English. In English, hummus is a (delicious) paste made from chickpeas and other ingredients, it is the whole and it is the parts. A lone holonym.

The Importance of a Good Gravatar

Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on social media sites, blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?

Many sites today access the Gravatar system, so when you comment on a forum, or post on a friend's blog, the icon next to your comment is the image that you want it to be, not just a generic icon. You can help shape a more customized, personalized web experience for yourself and others.

If you don't have one already, go to Gravatar.com to set up your account today. It is a simple process and your Gravatar is linked to an email address. You Gravatar account can handle multiple images and email addresses. It as a central place to facilitate your consistent visual brand identity on the web.

If you set up a Gravatar a while back and haven't checked on it in a while, be sure to log in to your account and update your photo. According to their recent blog post: "If you’re using a low-resolution image of yourself that you cropped from a friend’s Facebook photo two years ago, then it’s time for an update." They are now set up to handle images up to 2048px! The last thing you want is for your avatar image to look pixelated like it was taken from an 8-bit Super Mario Bros game.

It is also a good idea - when trying to present a professional appearance - to use a professional photo. It is not that expensive to have a nice portrait taken of you, and it will look much more professional than a cellphone snapshot. Let me know if you need help getting that image to look perfect or contact your favorite photographer.

Good luck and I hope to see you and your Gravatar soon!

Evolution of Brand

Here is a great visual comparison by Stock Logos of some of the world's top brands' original logo vs. their current logo. Many of the companies logos have evolved to be similar to their original brand, and some have decided to change direction completely. What is missing from this chart are the intermediate logos which in many cases show how the logos didn't jump to seemingly unrelated ideas, but actually evolved over time to become what they are today.

Two examples of this would be the Shell logo

...and the Mazda logo

True Colors: What Your Brand Colors Say About Your Business Infographic

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