Our Process

A collaborative, cohesive & streamlined approach.

We believe in the power of social interaction as well as the indispensable need for great design. As organizations use the internet in new and exciting ways, our team will help you to create an innovative platform for outreach.

We were founded as a boutique web and design shop that directly serves the non-profit and small business community in New York City. Our offices are in DUMBO, Brooklyn and we work primarily with organizations that can’t retain an in-house web, communications, or IT department.

We provide full service web design, development, and visual identity solutions, from concept to launch. We will work with you to develop a communications strategy, design a new logo and branding guidelines, organize your content, and develop an intuitive, consistent interface optimized for accessibility and extendability down the road.

We build websites using Content Management Systems which give you control of your content and enable anyone on staff to add and edit content – no coding required.

For more about what we do, please see our services. To contact us about a job, fill out the form on our contact page or give us a call at (347) 788-8465.

We look forward to working with you!

  • Discovery & Research
  • Iterative Design
  • Coding & Development
  • Real World Testing

Executive Summary

Meet the people who work with you

Social Ink was founded six years ago by two friends in New York City as a way to bridge our existing design and development expertise in the worlds of social justice, education and the arts.  Our mission is to combine visual communications and internet technologies to provide a bridge for these types of organizations to extend their outreach. From our start in home offices in Brooklyn to our current headquarters in DUMBO, we have maintained that same commitment to our founding mission.

We pride ourselves in being a local design and development shop, and our clients reflect our commitment to the diverse communities that make up New York City. We purposely maintain a lightweight, nimble profile: as a small-scale studio, we get to work directly with a select group of clients, ensuring a close working relationship between your project leaders and our principals.

Social Ink always works in a collaborative, iterative process. When you contact us about a project, you can be assured that we will work with you every step of the way. This process is part of our collective philosophy – the same ethos we apply to our work internally, at our office, we adapt to our clients.

Our code is always cross-browser and cross-platform compliant and built to be backwards compatible with older systems and extensible toward future development as new mobile devices and touch-screen interfaces emerge. Social Ink is also devoted to best practices when it comes to coding for accessibility, web standards, and providing access for those with disabilities per Federal ADA guidelines.

Yonatan Reinberg

Lead Developer, Co-Founder

With years of web development and research experience in the nonprofit and small-business arena, Yoni has worked with many local & global organizations integrating technology and social life. With an academic background in anthropology, technology and intellectual property, his interest in the intersection of new media, globalization, and social integration guides his commitment to Social Ink.

Yonatan Reinberg

Matthew Pinto

Lead Design, Co-Founder

Matthew specializes in visual identity, graphic and web design, front-end development and branding communication. With a background in museums, universities, and progressive think-tanks, a love for beauty and pragmatism guides his approach to design. Matthew holds a BA from the University of Virginia and an MA in Media Studies from The New School and is a lifelong New Yorker.

Matthew Pinto

Services

Beautiful design and brilliant code, custom made for you.

We offer a full range of services, from jumpstarting your brand through consulting, analysis and visual identity overhaul to full fledged web development and design.

Startup Kits

Get off the ground quickly

From wake-you-up-in-the-night concept to launch, we work with you to develop a comprehensive, intuitive, and sustainable presence, online and however else you like it.

Small Business Startup Bundle

Visual Identity & Branding:
Logo design, visual identity guidelines (type, color), branding consulting.

Web Design:
Web interface design, providing 4-5 templates for different content viewpoints.

Web Development:

  • CMS powered website
  • EMail newsletter
  • Social networking integration
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Nonprofit Refresher Bundle

Visual Identity
Logo design and visual identity guidelines (type, color), sub-branding of programs or initiatives, peripheral print design.

Web Design:
Web interface design, providing 4-5 templates for different content viewpoints.

Web Development:

  • CMS powered website
  • EMail newsletter
  • Social networking integration
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Self-hosted donations (accept credit cards through your website)

The Creative Type (Portfolio)

Visual Identity & Branding:
Logo design, visual identity guidelines (type, color), branding consulting.

Web Design:
Web interface design, providing 3-4 templates for different content viewpoints.

Web Development:

  • Dynamic slideshows
  • Embedded video and other multimedia
  • Easy-update resumé

Startup Starter

Visual Identity & Branding:
Logo design, visual identity guidelines (type, color), branding consulting.

Web Design:
Innovative web interface design and planning

Web Development:

  • CMS powered administrative area
  • Data and reporting
  • Scalability
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

E-Commerce Activator

Visual Identity & Branding:
Logo design, visual identity guidelines (type, color), peripheral print design.

Web Design:
Web interface design, providing 3-4 templates for different content viewpoints.

Web Development:

  • Self-hosted, online payments via credit card
  • Inventory control
  • Slideshows and full bleed images
  • Product options
  • Payment gateway options
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Graphic & Web Design

Logo and Visual Identity

We use a research-based design process to overhaul your visual identity and rebrand your organization. In addition to a new logo, we provide brand guidelines to govern collateral materials, including color palette, typography and layout to ensure consistency and quality. Check out our featured logo and visual identity work.

Web Design & Information Architecture

Our approach to web design extends our logo and branding guideline development. We work with you to optimize your “information architecture”, organizing and prioritizing your content in an intuitive and accessible manner. We begin by analyzing your existing layout and content hierarchy and develop solutions and improvements. We design clean, consistent, and accessible sites aimed at your desired demographic and user base.

Graphic & Multimedia Design

We offer expert design, illustration, and layout services for print and online materials. Whether you need a business card, brochure, or dust-jacket, we craft clean and beautiful layouts with innovative use of color and typography.

We also provide photo retouching, audio production, video post-production, and podcasting integration.

Website Development

Customized Content Management Systems (CMS)

Whether we’ve worked with your team to design a new website or you have designs ready to be implemented, we develop robust, dynamic websites which are built to grow as your organization does.

Social Ink will build your site in a Content Management System (CMS), either as an extension of your current platform or in a new framework, ensuring non-technical staff can easily maintain, edit, and add content to the site, while retaining the look and feel of the new design. To learn more, have a look at our resource, Why Convert to CMS?

After your site launches, a live training session ensures that you are able to take over and manage your site, regardless of your programming or technical background.

Social Ink is devoted to best practices when it comes to coding for accessibility, web standards, and providing access for those with disabilities. For more, please see our statement on accessibility.

E-Commerce

Sell your goods or services without the overhead of a brick and mortar. We can turn your site into an instant payment gateway. Whether you want a full fledged online payment system, need configuration with PayPal, Shopify or Big Cartel, we can extend your current brand to your customer’s online shopping experience. Explore some of our recent e-commerce projects.

PSD, Wireframe & Design Conversion

Do you have a great design that you want to make a reality? We can convert your design to a fully functional, custom-crafted website, replicated and sliced to the pixel. We’ll take your design and put it in your hands with our Content Management System, enhanced with those beautiful animations and interactive features that are a hallmark of every great site.

For the techies out there, we always deliver validated HTML and CSS, with dynamic jQuery and AJAX functionality. Browse some of our past projects converting designs.

Blogs and Custom Plugin Development

From WordPress to Drupal, Movable Type to iON, we can handle the platform you’d like modified or installed, with aplomb. We are especially proud of our commitment to the WordPress community and our growing plugin development shop.

Site Maintenance

Need a sporadic update to your site but can’t afford an in-house webmaster? We can provide on-demand site updates and additions expertly and efficiently.

Branding Identity & Development

Brand Identity

A comprehensive approach to your visual outreach. Style guides will bring together your logomark or logotype, typography pairings, and color palette into a unified set of rules and applications, to be applied to your web or print content. We will recast your organizational identity to make an immediate impression on your audience.

Brand Strategy

We work with your team to identify your organizational vision, mission, and values and then align these goals with the needs and expectations of your primary audience. When we’re finished, we will have identified your value proposition as well as brand attributes that communicate the key characteristics and personality traits of your brand.

Key Messaging

Messaging provides the words that help target audiences understand your brand’s value proposition through the simple articulation of big ideas. We will work with your team to develop the key messages that articulate the brand’s promise for both your organization and your core services, programs, or offerings.

Brand Guidelines

We develop complete identity guidelines which govern the execution of your brand across digital and print touchpoints. By defining logo use, accent colors, layout principles, photo style, and graphic elements, your brand guidelines provide the rules and rationale for the production of new materials throughout the life of your brand.

Organizational Growth & Business Development

Contributions and Donations

Let us help you develop your business savvy. We create search-engine-ready sites and help you bring in money through donations or contributions. Got Stripe, Authorize.net or PayPal? We’ll help you use their word-class interfaces. Don’t have a merchant provider yet? No worries! We’ll help you build everything from the ground up.

Customer and Client Management

We can help make sense of your customers through your pre-existing CRM, such as Salsa, Convio or CiviCRM, or we can build a custom membership ready site designed to fit your unique needs.

Social Media & Interactive Email

Leverage the power of word of mouth and trusted recommendations on twitter and facebook, or send branded, stylized emails to hundreds or thousands of your members with a single click–without the worry of spam or a heavy burden on your server’s bandwidth.

We offer several social media options to weave into your content with facebook and twitter outreach campaigns and custom HTML email newsletter templates and platforms which deliver worry-free email marketing and outreach.