Step 1: Contact us via phone or email or the form on our Contact Page and send us information about what graphic design work you need completed.
Step 2: Once we receive your request, someone from Dancing Tornado will contact you to discuss your design needs. It's best if you're prepared with a good description of what you'd like or even some reference for us to view. (See "cost" below for tips.)
Step 3: Dancing Tornado will create a quote based on your graphic design needs and email it to you.
Step 4: Once the quote has been signed off by you, we will actively begin working on your graphic design items. We will provide you with design in a few days (depending on the size of the project and the schedule/deadline) which you will view at your convenience on the web, so you can decide on the direction of the design.
Step 5: Dancing Tornado will make updates to the graphic design items until you are satisfied with the design, within the projected budget.
Step 6: Once you have signed off on the final proof via our FINAL APPROVAL FORM, Dancing Tornado will email your design files directly to a printer or to you. We are also able to provide the files on CD.

Each design project is different and depending on the complexity can take anywhere from one week to several months. Even jobs that are billed by "hours" usually go over several days to finish because of downtime during communications - waiting on emails, etc., rounds of revisions and such. Some clients have very urgent needs. Some decide on a design project and it is something that is not a top priority for them, so it hangs out on their back burner as their schedule permits.

We, like any business, are always juggling projects. What we need from you is a clear sense of timeline - one could say "deadline" - and the appropriate time will be factored into our schedule when we begin work to be sure that your project completes on your timeline.

Some clients are very prepared, others are not. If we're working on a website and you have most of your content planned and written out, all photos, videos or other documents edited and prepared, then your job will probably move more efficiently. Sometimes that is just not possible to do. Each job is different.

Each design project is unique and so will have a different cost. The more complex the design, the more time it will take to complete. We make every effort to give our clients a very accurate estimate once their needs are known.

You can make your job less complex by having good art reference to show us, such as posters or websites that you like (they don't even have to be in your field), color schemes that appeal to you, styles, etc., You can get this just by spending some time surfing the web, paying attention to the art and styles that you see. Keep an open mind; have fun with it! If you can point us towards some reference, then we'll know what your tastes are, and we can work directly towards the style that you desire. This also helps us to get a visual idea of how complex your art may be and will help us to very accurately estimate what it will take for us to accomplish it.

As we develop your design, if we feel your project is going above the original estimate, we will make sure to discuss it with you ahead of time before we complete any work so there are no surprises when you receive an invoice from us.

How might a cost go up? Sometimes a job is nearly completed, and then someone from "the New York office" comes into the project and decides he'd like to "explore a whole new direction..." This naturally would mean more time on the job and adds pressure to the deadline. This would be an unforeseen cost which would have to be added to the project total. If costs change during the job, such as when there are excessive rounds of changes (for example a "photos" page for a website changes from a table of 12 images to a set up of 144 images) or sudden design changes after several rounds into our work mean more time, we'll let you know that the budget has to change. No extra cost will be incurred without client consent. Remember, we're working by the hour on a budget.

A deposit must be paid for any new job to begin, and final payment is due upon completion of work. We do not have any type of delayed payment or monthly payment system.

We accept cash, checks or PAYPAL. Please see our PAYMENTS page for details.

No, in fact we have many clients that are so busy that we have not met with them in person - ever. We have clients in California, Colorado, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia, Washington D.C., Pennsylvania, Ohio, and on... We have found that our method of posting proofs online is an efficient way to streamline a graphic design project. It allows anyone with internet access and your "project key" to view your proofs so that all of you don't even have to be in the same room at the same time. This saves time for everyone. Plus, all meetings naturally are billed hourly. Fewer meetings, fewer hours.

What we call "Design-on-the-Fly" is when a job gets caught in the vortex of time during a day in which a client will look at work and then call or email about revisions, but then need to see them right away - and then more changes/developments and back and forth throughout a day. Doing the revisions, however, can be an unpredictable factor of time in between those rounds of looks. It's not a good idea to try to plug into good design, even revisions, on such a rush. Sometimes it is the nature of deadlines that this is unavoidable. But it is best to try not to let your job get to this point. What if on that day the manpower is just not there to accommodate the urgency because of other work on the docket? Plus, it can get very expensive if it forces us to put all other previously scheduled work "oh hold" while your job gets completed.

Sometimes it is best for everyone, however, to get a job done this way. If so, it's best to schedule this kind of work time so that everyone is on the same page.

This can be avoided by having your materials prepared and the schedule of all the people involved in the decision making process ready to go at an early point - i.e., lists of actors in your play, thank you's, etc... Also, often it comes down to good proofreading. You should be proofreading your job very carefully all throughout the process. When things are getting down to the wire, you don't want to be making major changes against a deadline if at all possible.

Most businesses' and vendors' deadlines take place between Monday and Friday, and so we are always working very hard during those hours to create and complete projects.

Any job that requires hours, including phone or email communications, from Friday after 5 pm through Monday morning will be charged at double the regular rate.

There is nothing more important than proofreading. You should be proofing very carefully through every single round of design that you see. We have many jobs and many specifics to review. We do our best to catch all typographical errors on our part, but then, we don't know exact correct spellings of website URL's, or actors' names, or authors, or medical procedures, or natural health remedies - certainly not telephone numbers, etc... Those can't be found in Spell Check. And - believe it or not - sometimes clients send us text that itself has not yet been proofread which then gets copied and pasted into design.

As you will see on our Final Approval Sign Off form, the client is responsible for all content AND PROOFREADING. This form is a great reminder to check everything one more time so that your job ends perfectly every time. We'll work together on it, but please know that proofreading is tricky, and you should triple check everything. One good method we've learned is to check your text backwards that way taking the words out of context as you read.

Have you looked at our portfolio? We do it all and do it very, very well. Great design leads to very happy people.

Search engines generally use the text within the body of the website. They also use META TAGS and KEYWORD TAGS with are hidden lists you would create for us to include in your html. You'll also write a one or two sentence brief description which would appear under your site name in Google results. Webcrawlers usually take a few to several weeks to find and catalog a new website. There are also paid advertisers that help you get higher Google search results. You can find them by searching on the web. They are expensive. We do not offer that service.

We will maintain your site. Websites are much more complex than most causal web users realize. Often making one small change can lead to cascading changes that make a page look unbalanced or awkward. Blogs are good for those who need to update text content regularly. Those layouts are much simpler. We can include a blog link into your site.

We will maintain your site as far as making basic revisions on an hourly basis. Most clients don't change their content too often, and usually simple text changes can be done in less than an hour. We do have several clients who revise on a regular monthly basis such as calendars or other postings. You can call us or simply email any changes that you'd like to have done at any time.

Changes to art elements or major html elements like changing menu items may necessitate changes across a whole site and could be more involved. But as business changes, sometimes it's inevitable. We would estimate any work such as that for you before we move ahead.

No, Dancing Tornado does not offer printing services, but we will make your design files print-ready and will be happy to work with the printer you select to make sure your design files are printed correctly. Sometimes clients prefer that we choose the printer and supervise the completion of the job. We will do that upon request.

Emailing is a great way to stay in touch and send content or revisions. You can attach photos or text files, or even better, if you have revisions send them in the body of an email, and then we can just copy and paste them without having to open any other software, such as Word to get to it.

Please always remember to be as specific as possible in the SUBJECT LINE of your email. Junk email has gotten out of control, and if your email address is not already in your recipient's address book, it can be difficult to decipher it from dreaded junk email. Creating a job specific Subject Line in your email will make it easier to spot as we sift through the cyberjunk.

Also, TIMING is an important issue. If you send us an email toward the end of a day, like say after 4pm, then it's best to consider it actionable for the following business day. It's unlikely, outside of any design / deadline emergency, that we'd have the work time available that late in the day to add new tasks. This is especially important to consider as the week goes on. Often work schedules slide a bit through the week as things pile up, and Fridays can become very task-loaded. If you've sent an email late on a Friday, then it is best to be considered as a Monday work request unless specified as an urgent rush.

Designing your website includes the planning, organization, interactivity plot, art, layout and buttons for the site. Since each site has different amounts of content and interactivity demands, we have to discuss your particular needs on an individual basis so that a cost can be estimated for you.

There are NO monthly fees. Updates to the site are billed at an hourly rate.

*A Note On Pricing: Some companies offer low monthly pricing for instant websites with no design cost at all. That's because there is no professional designer on staff. What they offer are generic "cookie-cutter" sites, and they drop your information into pre-existing boxes, then you struggle to make changes down the road. Consumers today know the difference when they see it. Visually, it's the difference between a beautiful ad in a magazine and a classified ad in the newspaper. The web is an intensely visual medium. With all of the global advantages that the web offers, why would you present anything less than the very best?