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

(Project Update) Muzak Voice & Music Press Release

Christy 0 Comments

Here's a press release from Muzak regarding the recent launch of their Music and Voice websites. Thought we'd share!

Beginning this week, online visitors to Muzak will be able to access completely redesigned Web sites representing two of the company’s core products – Music and Voice. Both sites are designed to communicate the emotion, energy and creativity infused into the Muzak brand, which now reaches more than 100 million people every day.

Visitors to the Muzak Music Website will enjoy new interactive features designed to enhance their listening experience. Each of the more than 90 music programs includes a complete description and rich audio samples. Listeners to the satellite-broadcast programming who frequently find themselves asking, “Who did that song?” will now enjoy a new feature called “What’s Playing Now”, highlighting the artist and song title. Visually, graphic representations of featured programs recapture the lost beauty of album art.

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Grid Layout on the Web

Robbie 2 Comments

More and more, web designers and developers are coming to the realization that many of the established guidelines set for traditional, print design can be applied to the web.

Typography seems to be getting the most attention these days—for good reason, as the web is mostly text. Richard Rutter did a great service to web typography and transposed Robert Bringhurst’s typography bible, The Elements of Typographic Style, for the web and published it online.

However, defining areas for the placement of type is achieved through layout, which is equally as important. Specifically, grid layout is something every designer should know. Photoshop facilitates the usage of grid layout when designing, but there’s no simple answer for web developers. Thankfully, Teevio has created a Javascript include that works with jQuery to toggle a grid over any design without affecting the existing code. Use it next time you need to markup a site under a strict grid layout.

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5 SEO Tips to Consider While Planning a Website

Michael 0 Comments

Hidden at the end of most website task lists is that pesky little duty of search engine optimization (SEO). Many consider SEO to be a post-production part of a website; a job for the marketing department or search engine marketing (SEM) vendor that is typically handled by the client or copywriter, not the developer. While this may be true to a degree, many of the more advantageous SEO tricks fall solely on the developer to implement before the website even launches.

With that said, I'd like to point out five SEO tips and misconceptions that hold true with nearly every website.

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(Project Update) Muzak Voice & Music Websites Launch

Christy 1 Comments

Muzak is a company that is a lot like us. They understand the importance of branding. While we tell a company's story visually, they do it with music, voice and sound. Check out the two websites we've launched so far for their Music and Voice product lines.

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Our upgrade to Leopard

Banks 2 Comments

We've been waiting for the launch of Apple’s new OS X upgrade, Leopard. Well, it showed up last week and we have now all upgraded. I thought I would detail out some of the features we have found useful along with some of the major issues we have experienced.

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(Project Update) Varji & Varji Website Launched

Christy 1 Comments

Yay! Our latest creative creation, the Varji & Varji website, is live. Take a look and let us know what you think. We were really excited about working with such beautiful high resolution images for this project. And we were able to figure out a clever way to utilize them; literally from corner to corner of the site!

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Deep Linking in Flash

Will 1 Comments

For sometime now I’ve been trying to find a more elegant solution to deep linking within a full screen flash site and I think I’ve found the answer with Asual’s SWFAddress.

Basically, the SWFAddress records a history of all of your swf’s “pages” and (through Javascript and Flash 8’s External Interface functionality) enables your browser’s back, forward and reload buttons to affect your swf – while at the same time allowing your swf to affect the browser’s url and page title. This allows the user to have a much more intuitive navigational experience with your flash site.

Just think: users will have the ability to bookmark sections of your flash site and link back into them whenever they want, or use the browser’s back and forwards buttons to navigate through your swf. This is quite a step up from Robert Penner’s back button fix.

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

Studiobanks 0 Comments

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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Design Un-Plugged: A Panel Discussion with the Women of Charlotte Design

Christy 0 Comments

I was recently asked to participate on a panel for AIGA. First of all, it was such a pleasure to be asked and even better to be apart of a panel along side such talented women in our design community.

Here's how the AIGA event was described:

In this constantly growing city and industry, it is important to bring attention to the challenges and benefits of being a woman in the workplace. You would think that in these modern times, there would not be these issues, but there are still growing concerns and a great deal of interest from other women in the industry.

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Know When to Say No

Banks 5 Comments

This past weekend, our client Eric from Dilworth Billiards asked me to go jump out of an airplane with him. As you can see, I said "yes". It was a ton of fun, but one of the scariest things I have ever done. When I told everyone this morning about my temporary loss of sanity, they all said I should write a post about it. However, since this is our company blog, I thought I would try to relate the event back to design (while also letting everyone know I jumped out of an airplane!).

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