Studioblog (n): a blog by Studiobanks about design, marketing, internet, business, Charlotte and more.

Florida Amendment 5 Removed From Ballot

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From AAF Charlotte:

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that Amendment 5 must be removed from the ballot. Amendment 5 could have opened the door to a tax on advertising services. The proposed constitutional amendment would have cut the property tax by an average of 25 percent—an estimated $9 billion in 2011. The property tax is the main source of education funding in Florida. The amendment would have required the legislature to maintain same level of education funding. While it did not mandate where the new revenues would come from, it specifies that the legislature could have raised the six cent sales tax by one cent and eliminated existing sales tax exemptions, including advertising.

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Who’s that with Banks? See Below

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That's Jeff Elder, ‘The Insider.’ He is always looking for gossip about Charlotte's business community for his column in the Charlotte Observer. We recently met to discuss some of the happenings at Studiobanks, as well as some of the exciting things he will be studying during his upcoming fellowship at Standford. Here is an excerpt from his column in today's paper.

Speaking of social networking, there's an interactive experiment on the way – a look at the future of the city, especially regarding race relations. Studiobanks, the edgy SouthEnd interactive firm, is building the new Crossroads Charlotte site, and Foundation for the Carolinas and others are behind it. You'll be able to go online, connect with people, and share your experiences. The goal is to bring separate communities closer together.

Things are booming for Studiobanks CEO Banks Wilson. The UNCC grad is returning to his alma mater this fall to teach a course on animation and interactivity. And the company is taking on new projects, like Find Your Center, the events site for Center City Partners. He credits his creative people, such as new hire Alexis Acosta and masterful operations manager Christy Vannetta. Look for another big announcement from the company soon.

Now Hiring: Designer and Developer

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Interactive Art Director
We are currently looking for a talented interactive art director with rock star design skills and proven experience designing both CSS and Flash based website layouts.

Junior Interactive Developer
We are also currently looking to hire a junior interactive developer with a far above average grasp of PHP, Flash, ActionScript (AS2/AS3), MySQL, JavaScript, AJAX, XML, HTML, XHTML and CSS and a solid understanding of standards and usability.

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(Project Update) Private Beta Launch - Get Your Invite!

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Today, we are happy to launch the private beta of CityBlackBook.com - a city-based, best-of lifestyle guide. Our hope is that people will use it to find and share places they've discovered in their city. Unlike other editor’s choice guides, CityBlackBook is an easy-to-use city-based guide without the excess found elsewhere. We plan to empower our user base by letting them decide whether a business is or isn’t included on the guide. While the moderators will monitor and edit basic content (i.e., grammar, image quality, etc.), the crux of the content for the guide will be generated solely by users.

We are launching the site in Charlotte - our home city - with plans to expand to other cities. For now, we are inviting 50 Charlotte area users to take part in our private beta. If you are interested in helping beta test, request an invite at CityBlackBook.com.

CityBlackBook.com: Coming Soon!

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Five years ago, we noticed a website in Charlotte that was creating a lot of buzz with its online nightlife resource guide. However, the website was horribly designed and even harder to use. We decided that there was an opportunity there to create something along the same lines, but with a much improved user experience. Now, five years later, CarolinaNightlife.com has become a household name amongst the city’s party goers.

We are happy to announce today that we are at it again. On May 21st, we will launch the beta version of our latest internal project, CityBlackBook.com, for public use. The idea was born from the distaste for other large city-based resource guides like CitySearch.com, CityGuide.com and YellowPages.com. About a year ago, we decided we would build a lean, easy-to-use, clean-and-simple city-based resource guide that wasn’t so bloated. Basically, we wanted a guide that would be actually useful.

In the coming weeks, we will release sneak peeks about what we have going on and what will make this resource guide unique. So, bookmark the City Black Book Blog to keep up with the forthcoming launch.

New Studiobanks T-Shirts are Here!

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At last, our new t-shirts have arrived! We will be giving them to our clients, but have also decided to sell them to anyone else who might want one here on our blog.

The shirt features a design we hired Bloo Empire's Keeley Carrigan to create for us. The design depicts a large Studiobanks robot bashing in a computer monitor with elements of the internet flying out. Along with the rest of the internet, our various Toolbox packages and a bird (since we often code name our redesign projects after birds) pop out.

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Studiobanks Receives 7 ADDY Awards

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The ADDYs are the advertising industry's largest and most representative competition, recognizing and rewarding creative excellence. This year more than 50 Charlotte-area companies submitted over 375 entries of work to the Charlotte ADDY competition. Only 135, or roughly 35%, of those entries were honored with an ADDY Award. We are happy to announce Studiobanks received 7 of those ADDYs. We snagged 5 of the 12 ADDYs bestowed on website development. Studiobanks was the only shop to win a Gold ADDY for web development.

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Whiskerino

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Studiobanks team members Banks, Robbie and Will have been growing and showing for two months in the biennial Whiskerino:

The Greatest Facial Hair Growing Competition to Hit The Internet.

The contest is curated by Michael of Yewknee.com. This is the third time the contest has been held and second time Studiobanks has competed. You might remember Ben’s mammoth beard during our acceptance speech at the 2006 Addy Awards Show.

For more on the contest, visit Whiskerino.org. Read the Manifesto where we cry out with one voice:

"I WILL HAVE A BEARD! I WILL BE A MAN! I WILL NOT CONFORM TO YOUR RULES!"

We have two more months of the contest. Keep tabs on Banks, Robbie and Will’s growth along with our friends Ben, Joey, Byron, Mizey and Jeremy.

2007 Holiday Party

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2007 has been another wonderful year for the Studiobanks Team. We have added some great new clients to our family and have been able to produce some really cool new projects. In the past, we have held our company holiday party privately, but this year we bucked the tradition and invited clients, friends and family to show our thanks for their support this past year!

The party was held at Dilworth Billiards, a private club that is about a block away from the studio. Those who came enjoyed some free food, played some pool and met some of our other friends. Special thanks to clients Urbana, Varji & Varji, Asana Activewear and Dilworth Billiards for donating door prizes and everyone else who was able to make it out. We all had a great time and most likely have started a new Studiobanks tradition!

It you missed the party, check out the photos!

(Press Release) Charlotte Ad Club Unveils New Name & Web Site Design

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The Charlotte Ad Club launched today its new name—AAF Charlotte—and redesigned website, aafcharlotte.com. The new AAF Charlotte website launch coincides with the beginning of the organization's new season and marks the name change from Charlotte Ad Club to AAF Charlotte.

Created by Web design firm Studiobanks of Charlotte, NC, the new site better organizes the group's content with added features, including member profiles, company pages and a vendor search. The site serves as an advertising resource for the Charlotte region, as well as a way to keep up with AAF Charlotte news and events. The overall enhanced design promotes AAF Charlotte's role as an organization that unifies the diverse voices of the local advertising community. For those who work in an industry that deals directly or indirectly with advertising, AAF Charlotte is the area's go-to resource.

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