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

Checkers Unveil a New, Tougher Logo

Banks 3 Comments

In the past, the Checkers have always promoted themselves as something fun to go do. Their old logo was playful and so were their ad campaigns. Last year’s campaign by Greenspoon Advertising featured the cheerful "Chubby" mascot parallel parking a Zamboni Machine on the streets of Charlotte while Mayor Pat McCrory stopped traffic.

Last Friday night, the Checkers unveiled a new, tougher looking logo. A sleeker and more ferocious-looking bear, set against a backdrop of Charlotte's skyline has replaced Chubby in the logo. The new mark coupled with the new “Our Team — Our Town” ad campaign seems to imply that the team is headed in a new marketing direction focused on hockey instead of pure entertainment factor of the games.

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Design Lecture by Muzak Design Team

Banks 0 Comments

You might remember that Studiobanks gave a lecture for AIGA a few months ago. It was a part of their A Lecture by Your Next Door Neighbor series. Well, this month Muzak's in-house design team has been invited to speak. We have been working closely with their team on Muzak's various website projects. It will be interesting for us to hear more about what their offline design process is like. The event is next Thursday. Make it out if you can. You can find details on the AIGA Charlotte site.

About Muzak Design Team:

As the world’s leading provider of business music, Muzak creates experiences that reach more than 100 million people daily. Some of the biggest brands in business, from Aveda to Sur La Table to Boeing, work with Muzak to enhance their brand image in more than 350,000 client locations. Based out of its home office, Muzak’s in-house design group creates everything you can think of—from sales collateral and web sites to environmental design and apparel. The team of three designers and one copywriter create award-winning work to promote sales and the brand.

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Who is Keeping You Down and Holding You Back?

Banks 0 Comments

To help promote this year's ADDY® Awards and Gala Show, we've created a web campaign based on the "Call For Entries" mailer and poster designed by Limerick and Hot Sake. It was made for people in the creative industry to poke fun at their boss, a client or any other worthy foe. People can anonymously log on to the site, provide the person's name, upload their photo and dress them up anyway they see fit. From there, they can print it, email it or post it in the bathroom—it's up to them. Share it with the world, because we are going to print them all out and hang them up at this year's ADDY® Awards and Gala Show on March 6th.

Check it out and then let the rest of the world know who is keeping you down and holding you back!

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CommandShift3

Robbie 0 Comments

CommandShift3 is a new site created by Jelly in New York. In short:

You are presented with the screenshots of two websites side by side. If you click the screenshot of the site you think looks best, the page reloads and you start all over again. It never ends.

Basically, it's Hot or Not for websites.

We've submitted the Studioblog and the Studiobanks website (they just recently added the ability to thumbnail Flash sites) and they've had their fair share of victories. Regardless of the outcome, it's good clean fun.

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Whiskerino

Studiobanks 1 Comments

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.

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WriteMaps Sitemap Application

Will 0 Comments

This morning I stumbled upon a pretty useful online app: WriteMaps.

WriteMaps is a free web-based tool that allows you to create, edit and share sitemaps online. It looks and feels a lot like the genealogy site Geni—which makes a lot of sense since a sitemap is very similar to a family tree (pages having parents, grandparents, siblings, etc.).

All you have to do is sit down and play with it for a few minutes to see how useful of a product this is.

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2007 Holiday Party

Studiobanks 0 Comments

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!

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9-Slice Scaling in Flash

Will 2 Comments

One of the humbling things about working primarily in Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash is that I've been using these applications for years and I'm still stumbling across new features. My latest discovery is Flash 8's 9-slice scaling.

Down at the bottom of the advanced options of the Symbol Properties window is a checkbox labeled "Enable guides for 9-slice scaling." When enabled, a set of guides will be positioned in your symbol and when you scale an instant of this clip asymmetrically in your published SWF – it will maintain a crisp, clean appearance with undistorted corners and edges.

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(Project Update) Dilworth Billiards Website Launch

Christy 6 Comments

In the heart of Dilworth, is a bar: a local bar, a watering hole, a social club. It's a special place where people meet, drink, play pool and have a great time!

Eric, Susan and the gang have become our friends. Dilworth Billiards has become our "satellite office".

Check out the new Dilworth Billiards Website!

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Papervision3D

Will 0 Comments

Up until this year actual 3D in Flash has been nonexistent. If you wanted to achieve some sort of faux 3D effect you’d more than likely have to rely on importing an image sequence or vector animation from some third party application – so needless to say, I was really excited to learn about Papervision3D.

Papervision3D is an open source realtime 3D engine for Flash. Basically, it allows you to texture map and render a low polygon object, which you can then affect with Actionscript and any of the other resources in your Flash movie.

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