About

Welcome to my blog.  I wear a lot of hats.  I’ve been working as a freelance web designer since I left Augustana College as Symbiotic Design.  I fancy myself as an artist.  I design logos, graphics, websites, fonts and ads.  I draw with pencils, charcoal, pen & ink.  I also do computer illustrations and digital cartoons.  I sell domain names, web hosting (Linux or Windows), virtual servers (Linux or Windows), dedicated servers (Linux or Windows), SSL certificates, e-commerce software, and do-it-yourself traffic generation tools at Domain Hostmaster.  I have even acquired some premium domain names as a Domainer.  While premium domain name speculation is usually based on traffic and/or branding efforts, I seem to do OK.  I do of course, develop a few of my own domain names, and some actually generate nice small supplemental income streams for My efforts through PPC advertising.  I’ve developed many logos for many of my own domain name brands, as well as designed logos for others.  In many respects I am also quite a branding expert and business identity architect.  I also do search optimization, website presence promotion, online marketing and advertising.  I’m also a real social networking and medias geek.

I’ve been working a “part-time” position at Kohl’s for the past couple of years trying to get my foot in the door for a permanent full-time graphic design position.  I put the “part-time” in quotes because it’s wrong.  Under the company policy I am a part-timer, but I have and often do work full-time hours.  The truth is that I am usually working full-time hours when retail business is in season, and cut down to almost no hours without a moment’s notice when it is not.  So I am not real happy with the retail industry because they just don’t take care of their employees and if you hurt yourself at work their insurance company treats you terribly.

In the meantime, I create logos and websites as a freelancer in my spare time.  I also enjoy creating fonts.  You can see my entire collection of freeware TTF PC fonts at my Font-Journal.com website by searching my name, Doug Peters.  I also try to keep up a small portfolio of my work at Doug-Peters.com.

I had been employed full time by Syd’s Eastside Auto Salvage, Inc. in Yankton, South Dakota, as the webmaster and online marketing director on a very flexible schedule that allowed me to continue My work for my clientel as their graphic and web designer for a couple and a half years.  But I was laid-off.  Times were getting rough and the economy was bad, which is why I took that position in the first place.

When I freelance, I usually do it as Symbiotic Design.  This allows Me some flexibility with my employer so that I can clear hours and availability, if need be, to accomplish a large project, should one arise.  This gives me the fortunate ability to concentrate on my client’s projects and design concerns without distraction from My full time hours as a part-time employee, if need be.

I pride Myself in the quality of work I do and in the finished product that I deliver.  If ever you are not satisfied with any of My delivered design, illustration, or artwork I will always try to address your concerns or refund your commission.  That guarantee comes with a double-edged sword, though.  If you do not listen to Me, an art educated, design sensitive realistic idealist, you may choose the worst design I offer.  Therefore, I now only take on clients that believe in Me, understand My work, and have faith in My skills.

However, please also remember that I also hire developers to tackle specific programming tasks as may be required per job according to functionality.  Therefore any development work (programming) requirements are not refundable.  Luckily, as a designer, I also have many scripts and open source applications from which I can draw, utilize and customize for My clients.

As a graphic designer, I excel in a few Adobe products such as Photoshop, Illustrator & Dreamweaver.  I also have experience in Premiere and Director and other videographic technologies through my work at the University of Sioux Falls.  I am also teaching myself Flash to compliment and animate My experience with Adobe Illustrator.

If there is anything I can do for you, please know that I would love to discuss it with you.

Thanks for stopping in! –Doug Peters

aka: “Domainating” on WordPress, Twitter, Flicker and YouTube.
“Douglas Peters” on Facebook.