There are certain basic services an adult Web site needs in order to run, like hosting, content and credit card processing. A starting webmaster, whose limited budget is spent on essential services, can’t always afford the of high-end graphic design. Most webmasters do the design work themselves. Without serious capital, an adult webmaster won’t gain much by approaching a professional design firm, right? Well, almost.
Blue Design Studios is an exception. A graphic design company, Blue Design Studios’ Web site has become both a marketing tool and a valuable collection of free services for designers and webmasters. With its growing collection of Adobe Photoshop tutorials and free graphics, it resembles a webmaster resource site.
"I have always felt like I should be helping other people who are starting out in the industry," says Andrew, the company’s head graphics designer. "The whole thing stems from the fact that I’ve been there, and when I first started I would have loved to have some great resources and tutorials at my fingertips."
Blue Design Studios has been around less than a year, but is already experiencing plenty of success. Entering the adult side of the design business was easy – Blue Design’s parent company has been running adult Web sites since 1996.
"It was always on our agenda to start providing webmasters with great designs at very affordable prices," he says. "It was hard to find clients initially, because we were new, but we began getting some pretty good contracts through a few of the larger resource sites and it pretty much snowballed from there."
In the short time since its inception, Blue Design Studios has grown to occupy a significant presence in the adult graphic design community. "We now have six other designers working within the company," says Andrew, "and adding to our expanding portfolio."
The Blue Design Studios site has an entire page devoted to an extensive and growing collection of more than fifty tutorials written by Andrew and the company’s other graphic designers. Most of the tutorials involve tips and tricks for using Adobe Photoshop. But there is a collection of more general tutorials, including tips on using Macromedia’s Dreamweaver, and other site-design advice.
For the truly graphically inept—or those who can’t afford the expensive graphics software—the site’s free services also include a collection of downloadable graphics. "After a couple of months of business," he says, "I also noticed a real lack of free images such as backgrounds, nav buttons and templates on the Net."
And while it might seem self-defeating to provide surfers with instructions on how to gain the very expertise that you’re selling, Blue Design Studios certainly hasn’t suffered for it. "We have some pretty big clients that include CENCash, MaxCash, ARS, and ConversionCash," says Andrew, "and they are all extremely happy with the banners we’ve provided, basically because they have great designs and they convert."
While Blue Design Studios provides a full range of services, including site design, button design, full page ads, consoles and AVS gold sites, Andrew says it’s the banners that Blue Design Studios is best known for. "Having so many designers allows us to produce upwards of 50 banners a day. We do many large volume orders in a short space of time compared to smaller one-person design firms that would take much longer."
Andrew’s concept of sharing information online came from his interest in the adult webmaster message boards. He considered the contribution of his advice a promising way to generate interest in his own site. "From the start, I always meant for my site to be a center of activity for all budding adult webmasters and designers," he says.
The company has maintained its practice of posting tutorials, with their work regularly appearing on resource sites like Netpond, Porn Resource, Free Adult Graphics and YNOT News.
"Webmasters and designers email me," he says, "and thank me for a particular resource they’ve found on our site and made good use of." Undoubtedly, Blue Design Studios is about more than just selling its services and making a dollar. It contributes to and educates people within the adult Internet community.
