Website 99designs recently polled 1,500 small business owners, start-ups, entrepreneurs and design decision-makers on graphic design and its importance to their business.

The results make for a decent read. We feel a post is warranted since we also saw recent stories in the WSJ that suggest many businesses are now hungry not for MBAs, but people who are saavy in design and product development. (Story at WSJ.com may be behind a paid content wall.)

The survey results that are easiest to digest involve colors and popularity.

Namely, the survey asked for which colors owners associate with success. Answer: Blue most associated with succes. Fifty-seven percent said blue is their idea of success; the second most cited color is green (35%) followed by white (32%), black (29%) and red (21%). Purple was the color males least often associate with success, while women were least likely to select orange.

Then, on which brands are seen as having best logo and best website, the results are predictable:

• Apple topped the lists for best logo and best website; also on the best logo were Nike, Coca-Cola and FedEx.
• Most disliked logos and websites: Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Pepsi, IBM and Google.
• Best websites: Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Nike.
• Worst websites: Wal-Mart, Yahoo, Facebook, MySpace and Microsoft.

MySpace, really?  Who looks at MySpace?
  

The Port of Quincy has sold 12 acres in its industrial park to Amway, the giant direct-sales company that distributes thousands of household products.

Quincy continues using its data-center cluster as a way to increase its economic profile.

The acting U.S. Commerce Secretary, Rebecca Blank, announced on Wednesday that Quincy has been given a $3 million Economic Development Administration (EDA) grant to build a reverse osmosis treatment plant and related infrastructure that will support the region’s data processing industry.
 
The grant will increase the city’s water capacity and allow for continued expansion of nearby tech businesses who have or might in the future build data centers there.

The grant will help the community treat industrial and domestic wastweater to cool the Quincy data centers. The added capacity will also help area food processing and shipping businesses, according to an EDA press release.

Let's recap the companies using Grant County for affordable energy:  Microsoft, Yahoo, Sabey, Intuit and Dell, so far.

Washington state leaders feel they’re back in the data center game.

Last week Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a bill that could help data centers expand or set up shop in Washington rural counties. The law allows tax breaks for data centers in any county other than Spokane, King, Pierce, Snohomish, Clark and Thurston.

Though Washington is facing massive budget deficits, state leaders were clearly warned that without a bill that cut sales taxes on new data center equipment, the future of expansion by Yahoo, Microsoft and other tech firms was minimal.

From 2006 until 2008, Microsoft, Intuit and Yahoo all built large data centers in Grant County, using the Port of Quincy’s low power rates and redundant fiber connectivity to justify the investment.