About Rasa Design Studio

Rasa Design Studio was started in 1997 by Sean Rice as a solo freelance design service through Aquent.com. Specializing in Intra- and Extra-net services for the larger corporations in and around Boston, Rasa Design Studio quickly established itself as a Flash GUI expert back when Flash was still considered an animation application. After the Tech Bubble Crash, Rasa Design Studio turned its focus toward small- and medium-sized businesses and started designing eCommerce sites built around the Open Source concept.

The rise of PayPal and Google forever changed the eCommerce landscape of the Internet. The former paved the way for online payments by people who did not necessarily have credit cards. This helped achieve the critical mass of people needed to change the Internet from a 'business brochure' environment to an eCommerce environment. Google changed the orientation of the Internet away from the classic 'HTML' web site to something more responsive to the new needs of visitors and customers. Rasa Design Studio responded to these changes with a focus on a marketing-oriented design process, rethinking 'design' as the primary first step to 'web design'. The goal became not merely creating web sites that 'looked good.' The goal of Rasa Design Studio became that of 'attracting visitors through search' and 'converting them into paying customers.'

osCommerce became the first target of the new religion. By itself, Rasa Design Studio realized that web site owners would have a powerful application for displaying, managing and processing products and orders, but a very weak system for marketing. Other applications were better for SEO, but lacked the sheer, brute strength of osCommerce and the community support. The Rasa Design Studio rewrite of osCommerce to produce Tableless XHTML / CSS output was the catalyst for a series of innovations culminating in the "Seven Stone Commerce" project, currently in its alpha phase of development.

Seven Stone represents over five years of research and development, not just in Web 2.0 Programming and design, but also Marketing, SEO, Promotion and Customer Service Management (CRM). The goal is to build an application framework that allows designers and programmers to rapidly deploy Web 2.0 eCommerce and CRM in a flexible way that meets the needs of the client and doesn't force the client into the limitations of the application.

Core Rasa Design Studio Members:

Sean Rice, Partner: Sean Rice received his BA in Philosophy and BFA in Graphic Design from the University of Florida. Graduating Summa Cum Laude with a 3.99 GPA in 1997, he hit the ground with two of the most useless degrees the university had to offer and was surprised when nobody wanted to see his transcript. His experience owning a photography studio in the last two years of college meant that he at least had somewhat of a portfolio when he moved to Boston and joined Aquent Partners.

Mr. Rice spent the next few years in dress shirt and tie, mastering the art of getting the 'creatives' and the 'suits' to actually talk to each other across large oaken tables before realizing that working for a lot of small businesses was a lot smarter than working for one corporation. He isn't interested merely in Design for Small Business, but rather the businesses, themselves and sees design as only one small component to success on the web.

His decision to move from Massachusetts to Washington, DC provided Rasa Design Studio with the infrastructure and population needed to grow the business as a 'business' and not just a 'freelance operation.'

He loves his job and the left-brain right-brain aspects of the profession which pushes him every day toward new solutions to creative and structural problems.

Stephanie Grant, Partner: The newest addition to Rasa Design Studio, Stephanie Grant brings a great deal of talent to our clients in the areas of writing and Search Engine Content development.  Best known for her short stories and poetry which have appeared in newspapers, magazines, and anthologies, she is also well versed in essay, editorial, and speech writing.

Majoring in both German and English at Georgetown University, Ms. Grant is responsible for copywriting, editing, and language conversion at Rasa Design Studio. Her training in Search Engine Optimized content allows Rasa Design Studio to greatly expand its services in the area of post-launch content development. Recently, Ms. Grant has been experimenting with Social Networking at iggli.com and her blog, Van den Budenmayer consistently ranks in the Top 10 hottest blogs with an eclectic mix of music-related articles.