By John Briggs as told to Plain Dealer Reporter Marcia Pledger 

The Mistake: I was a marketing manager in corporate America for a long time, working for multi-billion dollar companies with resources at my fingertips. When my wife's small design studio got to the point where she gained a client that could help take the business to the next level, she begged me to join her. With reservations I finally did. But I started off wrong, bringing my corporate mindset to a small business.

Read the entire article and the fix at cleveland.com.

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Blue Star Design and Renaissance Painting are teaming up once again and will be "driving thru" Northeast Ohio to pick donations for their Annual “Drive Thru” Benefit for the Ronald McDonald House of Cleveland on Friday, September 9th, 9 a.m. until 6 p.m.

John Briggs, Vice President of Blue Star Design, and Greg Shelt, owner of Renaissance Painting, will “drive thru” Cleveland neighborhoods collecting donated food and supplies requested by the Ronald McDonald House of Cleveland and deliver them to the House at the end of the day. Blue Star Blue Star will also donate $5 per pick up & deliver all goods directly to the House at the end of the day of pickups.

According to Greg Shelt, the Ronald McDonald House has a special place in his heart, “In the early 90s, my family utilized the generosity and caring atmosphere of the Toledo Ronald McDonald House while my brother was undergoing... treatment for cancer. The Ronald McDonald House provided my family a caring environment and a low cost place to stay near the hospital during this time.”

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Cleveland, OH – May 24, 2011 – Blue Star Design, an inspired idea design company, is pleased to announce first year results for Flier Styler™ , a custom, marketing automation tool used to create fliers that stay on-brand.

Current customers using Flier Styler™ include 24 hospitals and regional health centers, along with a large nonprofit – and all have realized significant time and cost savings in the creation of their internal and public facing fliers for events and announcements. Customers have reported typical cost savings of 75%-80% using Flier Styler™ over traditional flier layout. The app also allows users to post fliers online to any social media site for no additional cost, meaning Flier Styler™ customers can post branded fliers to the web – with event registration buttons - without the cost and effort of building a separate landing page.

“Flier Styler™ ensures we stay on brand without having to micromanage layout and content creation,” said Samantha Stroud, Marketing and Communications Manager at Ronald McDonald House of Cleveland. “Since content is entered directly into the tool by our volunteers and employees, Flier Styler™ reduces the amount of time required to create, edit and approve content for publication. With Flier Styler™, users are guided through the creation process, so content is more likely to be on target and the final product will be consistent with our brand and will look great.”

In the first year since release, Blue Star’s healthcare customers have noted operational efficiencies with Flier Styler™, allowing staff members to create more than 850 on-brand fliers approved by their marketing teams. In one regional health system consisting of nine hospitals, Flier Styler™ has been used to create nearly 400 on-brand fliers during the last six months alone to promote their health, wellness, education and fundraising events.

“We’re thrilled to see how our healthcare customers have embraced Flier Styler™ for outreach to patients, stakeholders, employees and the community,” said Julia Briggs, president and creative leader at Blue Star. “Best of all, it’s saving hospitals and nonprofits tons of time and headaches. They’re telling us they love that anyone within their organizations – nurses, admins, event managers, etc. – can use Flier Styler™ to create fliers that stay on-brand. Users feel like they still have creative control, and now they don’t have to wait for marketing or the creative staff to get the job done. At the same time, marketing doesn’t have to worry about clip art being posted throughout their hospitals or on the web – which, they believe, devalues their brand.”

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Blue Star is an idea design studio. We design, we market, we use technology to move ideas forward. We concept, we create. Our approach is integrated and layered, never linear. Our focus - sharp - on your next prospect, next donation, next sale. Protecting your brand, protecting your client base. We're designers who understand business. We're business people who understand design. Our belief - every idea big or small deserves the respect of great design.

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The new site will help JDBCF get the word out about their upcoming events, like their popular Extreme Golf Challenge coming up on Monday, June 27th at Avon Oaks Country Club.

To find out just how many holes of golf you can play in a single day, please visit the JDBCF site and sign up for the 3rd Annual Extreme Golf Challenge 2011. Or avoid the blisters and support one of the golfers already registered to take on the challenge.

A special thanks to our partner Blackbird Interactive for all of their hard work in getting the site launched. Nice job, team.

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After officially launching the site at their annual meeting, Beth Lucus, Director of Development for UCP, commented, “We have received dozens of compliments already. Thanks to Blue Star Design and Blackbird Interactive for your great collaborative effort in support of the mission of UCP and the clients we serve.”

We, too, would like to thank our partner, Blackbird Interactive, for another successful site launch, and especially thank all the great people at UCP for their hard work during the build.

Please come visit UCP’s new site, read their stories and show your support.

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Cleveland, OH - April 5, 2011 -- Blue Star Design, an inspired idea design company, is celebrating its 12 year anniversary with the launch of a new website and public release of its suite of marketing automation tools. 

The new website features an extensive idea development, design, and marketing automation portfolio, along with social media sharing options to interact directly with Blue Star on their blogs, in Twitter or on their Facebook and LinkedIn pages.  

With the release of its marketing automation suite, Blue Star brings its clients a customized and integrated system to enable any user within an organization to create, obtain approval and seamlessly distribute branded messages – internally or externally – as part of their communications objectives.

“We’re thrilled to see how clients have embraced the automation apps to enhance outreach to their markets, stakeholders, and communities,” said Julia Briggs, president and creative leader at Blue Star. “It’s all about gathering the right content, from the right sources, at the right time, and delivering it to the right audiences under your brand. That’s what these apps are designed to do.”

Each automation tool addresses specific pain points experienced by Blue Star corporate and institutional clients – from automating the process for creating branded fliers and evites to collecting an organization’s intellectual capital for use in case studies.

“Our automation suite provides a level of self-service that not only helps clients to be more productive and efficient, it allows our team to stay focused on their needs, ready to listen, engage and shape their next big idea,” added Ms. Briggs. “I’m happy to say, after 12 years since the start of our company, we have remained true to our vision. Empowering our customers, helping them innovate, helping them get the most from their talented employees, helping them reach their full potential.”

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Blue Star is an idea design studio. We design, we market, we use technology to move ideas forward. We concept, we create. Our approach is integrated and layered, never linear. Our focus - sharp - on your next prospect, next donation, next sale. Protecting your brand, protecting your client base. We're designers who understand business. We're business people who understand design. Our belief - every idea big or small deserves the respect of great design.

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Blue Star teams up with the talented group at Brown Wood Fish to deliver a fantastic new site for the Ronald McDonald House of Cleveland. The site is updated with their new brand, it's easier to use and full of great information and resources for our families, volunteers and friends.

The Ronald McDonald House of Cleveland offers a place to call home at little or no cost so families can access the best health care, regardless of their location.  They allow families to stay together, which can help their children heal faster and cope better.

Check out their new site >

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Seeing is Believing

One of our favorite projects this year has been helping Hillcrest Hospital prepare for the Grand Opening of the Jane and Lee Seidman Tower -- from the tree topping invitation to the event signage to this magazine detailing the new expansion.  Take a minute to flip thru and see it for yourself>  http://bit.ly/SEmag2010

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ooh. ahh.

We have officially launched our new product – Flier Styler – and its Virtual Corkboard this past week. To our delight, it was featured almost immediately in the current issue of CoolCleveland.com.

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How did the new LimeRibbon.com site become “social?"

LimeRibbon.com is a social shopping site that allows users to shop popular online retailers, create personal wish lists (called Ribbons) and share their shopping picks with their Facebook® friends and family.

According to Julia Briggs, CEO of Blue Star Design, when Blue Star Design first met with the Virtual Incubator about the LimeRibbon idea, it was a gift registry site, “Instead of only using social media to drive people to LimeRibbon.com, Blue Star suggested a twist to the LimeRibbon team—why not integrate social media directly into the LimeRibbon platform? By thinking about LimeRibbon in a new way, we were able to create an experience of friends shopping together—socially, on the web.”

John Briggs, Vice President of Blue Star Design, had the idea that the “ribbons” would be a metaphor for the wish lists and explains, “2009 has been an explosive year for social media and social shopping is the next logical progression of this megatrend.”

Blue Star has made a commitment to adding social design solutions to its capabilities. “We recently designed two new software solutions. CaseSnap is in beta for a large enterprise client and another solution is in the works for a hospital.  Both will be brought to market in 2010,” explains Julia Briggs.

A launch party for LimeRibbon.com will take place, December 7th, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., at the Crop Bistro & Bar in Cleveland’s Warehouse District.  On hand for the launch will be members of the new tech startup's leadership team which includes Blue Star Design.

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