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Become a fan of Zandergraphics Studio on Facebook and you will be eligible for additional discounts on Zandergraphics services. When the Zandergraphics fan page hits 1000 fans, which we estimate will be within the next week or two, we will be announcing a number of special promotions and discounts, including several freebies. All Facebook fans will receive special discounts, but those who were among our first 1000 fans will be eligible for extra savings.

Get on over to www.facebook.com/zandergraphics and become a fan today. Our Facebook fan feed is an excellent source of tips and news related to our studio as well as web-related topics, technology news, and other carefully selected items of interest.

Change is good. It's not always easy, but that's the point, right? While the previous incarnation of the Zandergraphics website was running, we made quite a few notes on ideas for change. The new site takes a step away from stock images and moves further toward specific information about services and exactly what we do and what we stand for here. We are moving more into the era of socila websites by incorporating social bookmaking as well as automatic posting to Twitter. Auto posting to Facebook is in the works as well. For now, all automatic posts are restricted to the Announcements section, though we have plans to expand it to include the blogs as well as photo galleries and portfolios once they have been formatted.

Another new feature is the improved contact form, which is equipped to help you get your project started or request specific information easily online. Eventually we plan to add a more complete onlne project planning application as well as a project cost calculator that will be able to provide approximate project quotes online.

We have great plans for the new website and hope to build a real working example of the types of projects that we really feel we excel at. The photo slideshow at the top of the page is populated completely by original Zandergraphics photos and plans are in motion to install some pretty cool photo galleries to show off our ever-expanding portfolio of images.

The new site has incorporated a lot of new and more detailed information about what we do and about the concepts of design and marketing that play such a vital role in all of our projects. Continuing on this path, we will be working to expand the resources on this site even further to include a glossary for definitions of terms, technical and web-related blog posts, and much more.

More interactive forms have been planned as well as a custom application to help deliver project estimates online. And all of this will be broadcast through this Announcements module to the front of our website, and on to Twitter, Facebook, and others.

The newest incarnation of the Zandergraphics website has been launched and will continue its evolution over the coming months. What started out as a facelift to the old site, quickly grew to encompass mobile compatibility, more comprehensive pricing and features information, and eventually morphed into an entirely new design.

This new site and new design is intended to demonstrate the power and versatility of our new standard template base, which has officially become our standard starting point for all projects. We have incorporated many powerful new features, increased social networking capabilities, and much more.

From Green Beginnings...
In the summer of 2008, Zandergraphics made a decision to re-evaluate our server hosts in an attempt to choose a more environmentally-friendly web server.  After a month or two of researching the options, we found a reputable, reliable, and feature-rich provider that operates highly energy-efficient hosting servers at a very reasonable rate.  Six months later, they announced that they had had invested in renewable energy for the operation of their servers.  It was then that we knew for sure that we had made the right choice...

Reducing Our Impact...
The Information Technology industry has an enormous impact on the environment, consuming between 3 and 4 percent of all electricity (and the associated carbon emissions) used in the world for running data centers and web servers. There are many steps that can be taken to lessen this impact, however, not all of the "green" hosting options out there are quite as friendly as they claim to be or as they can be. Many green hosts only offset the electricity used to power their servers, however, Zandergraphics servers are both powered and cooled with renewable energy.

Servers generate a lot of heat and for every watt of electricity that a server uses, it typically requires 1-2 watts of electricity to cool it. This means that those hosts who only use renewable energy to power their servers are really only using renewables for half of the servers energy needs. The company that maintains and operates all of Zandergraphics' servers has purchased Green-e certified Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) for nearly one and a half times the amount of electricity used to power and cool their servers. This represents the most environmentally-friendly hosting available anywhere.  They are not only replacing the energy that they consume with renewables but are actually adding extra energy to the grid.

What is an REC?
Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) are tradeable credits representing all the environmental benefits of 1 megawatt hour of renewable energy. So when a company purchases RECs, it’s basically paying a windfarm to generate renewable energy on their behalf. The company doesn’t own the windfarm, but for every REC purchased by them, that windfarm generates 1 megawatt of wind power and puts it into the grid. Then, when the company draws power from the grid, it can then claim credit for that wind power generated on its behalf.

RECs aren’t the only energy offsetting option. Other options include Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) and Voluntary/Verified Emission Reductions (VERs). What makes RECs the most reponsible coice is that each REC represents 1 additional megawatt of North American wind power, whereas each CER or VER represents one metric ton of reduced or avoided carbon dioxide emissions. CERs and VERs can be generated from a whole range of projects (fuel switching, forestry, changes in industrial processes, etc.), but RECs can only be created by the production of renewable energy.

RECs enable Zandergraphics and our associates to obtain renewable energy right from the source and support the development of clean power, rather than simply paying another company to not pollute.

It is with great pride that we announce the further "greening" of our hosting servers.  And we won't stop there.  We will continue, as we have in the past, to reduce, reuse, and recycle wherever possible and to continue to increase our support for renewable enery and reduced carbon emissions.

Together we WILL make a difference.

The Dust Finally Settles...March 11, 2009
So, the new studio has been remodeled from head to toe and everything is falling into place.  The new space is MUCH brighter than the old one was, both in colorful design and general atmosphere.  And we finally got things settled enough to take some presentable photos...