Design Services
Design is my bread and butter. I graduated from the Design School of Southern Africa in 2001 and have been building websites and providing digital and graphic design services ever since.
This particular website is dedicated to my illustration work. I co-founded Coza Web Design, which has its own website in 2006 and that has all the details on the design services I offer, so I’m not going to go into too much detail here, other than a quick overview:
Web Design
In 2006, I co-founded Coza Web Design, which is a boutique agency that crafts unique websites which are hand-coded to prevent validation errors and code-bloat.
I personally design unique layouts for each customer, and hand-code them as HTML websites or WordPress themes (like the one you’re looking at) from scratch. Most web designers don’t do this – they just work off other people’s templates. I do this because I don’t like clean, fast code and I want absolute control over every design decision.
I design responsive websites (meaning they dynamically changes shape according to the device they’re viewed on). They’re search engine friendly, and thanks to a UX design course I took in the mid twenty teens, they’re user-friendly too.
Graphic Design
I also provide all the usual graphic design services, like branding and marketing material, but also more niche services like book cover design. Either fully illustrated, like you see on this website, or graphically designed (typical of non-fiction genre).
You know as well as I do that “don’t judge a book by its cover” is literally and figuratively ignored by everyone. As a writer myself, I understand what’s important when it comes to designing book covers that are judged positively by the target demographic. I can’t do anything about Amazon’s horrendous algorithm, but at least if your book does get shown in the search results, the cover will draw in, and please your target market.
Digital Design
The majority of design work doesn’t get printed now days. It stays and serves its purpose online. Banner adverts, Email newsletter design, MS Word invoices, and more.
Now days I find myself designing far more things like social media adverts and YouTube thumbnails, than things like magazine adverts and packaging. I can tell you that This is a growing portion of my workload.
The latest in this category is Twitch graphics. The streaming industry is growing fast and streamers are finding themselves in need of overlays, emotes and more. There’s a lot of free resources out there, but many streamers want something a bit more refined, so I expect increasing demand in this area. Because my clients here tend to be less of the South African market, and rather spread out world wide, I have a put together a pricelist in dollars with the commonly requested design services.