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Hello! Welcome to our “Virtual Studio”

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Our concept for this web site is to create a “virtual design studio,” where you are invited to stop in, look over our shoulders as we work or to poke about our spaces to view images of some of our past (50+ years) and current creative efforts and share in our “conversations” and other impromptu diversions.

To find your way around our web site, look at the Sidebar box uppermost at the left-hand side of this page. It is our site’s table of contents — clicking on any one of those page titles  will take you directly to that page. If you like to look at pictures, you’ll find over 150 on our Images Pages.

♣♣ We’ve  added new photos to our Images Pages section, especially in the Botanicals and the Sea and Shore pages. The new photos include some we took during our April visit to the San Francisco Bay area. What are “Belted Galloways?” Check out this link as well as our Creatures page where you’ll also meet our appealing friend, Fiona.

♣♣ On our new Whys and Wherefores Page, we’ll occasionally display a photo from our Images Pages, and share with you a little background about the photo  – whatever possessed us to take the photo — what sort of graphic success (or disappointment) it represents (in our humble opinion) — or some thrilling anecdote connected with the photo.

♣♣ Our Links Page,  lists a few of the reference books we use in our desktop publishing and some design work guide us in writing and editing our own texts as well as that of our customers.  (We do ask customers’ agreement before changing any of their desktop publishing material!).
Also on our Links Page, you’ll also find that Wikipedia article about the very wide range of different things designers think about and do in their work.

♣♣ Our Posts Page is actually a blog page where we post (write) content on a variety of design-related topics, maybe add an image. While we were inviting comments, unfortunately we were deluged with hundreds of spams, mostly for drug products, so we have been forced to block comments (but you can email us, of course).

We do offer design and desktop publishing services  (see Our Services Page) but we also offer small, frameable prints of images selected from  files of photos we’ve taken for various projects (see Images pages). This past spring, we framed two 10″ x 13″ prints of our photos of the Memorial Bridge in Portsmouth; they were included in a silent auction earning $200 for a local non-profit group (see Whys and Wherefores page). The same bridge is about to be dismantled beginning about February 6, 2012, and replaced with a modern, $91 million vertical lift-span bridge.

You may purchase fine color prints of some of our original photos of the historic 1923 bridge which you can now view (click on Images: Remembering Memorial Bridge in the sidebar to the left). We’re offering three sizes of prints on top-grade paper, rolled in a mailing tube (or shipped flat) so that purchasers can do their own framing. We offer prints from the other images in our collection, on the same basis.

We are also working to install “shopping cart” service and payment via Paypal (also enabling major credit cards).

For the time being, we have suspended sales of our note cards until we can devise a simpler set of purchasing options. When and if we resume card sales, we will also continue to offer the option of printing your own greeting (or special message) on the inside or back of note cards. Look for details under the Extras heading on our Information: Note Cards Page.

We hope you will be a frequent visitor.

Al and Carol
(January 27, 2012)

Allen D. Hawthorne / Carol A. Hawthorne
Design and Desktop Publishing
420 F.W. Hartford Drive, Portsmouth, NH 03801
(603) 431-3977  Fax (603) 436-4454
E-mail: ahawth@aol.com