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

(Project Update) 2020 Vision Plan Community Workshop Report

Christy 0 Comments

Studiobanks has had the great opportunity to partner with wonderful clients such as Charlotte Center City Partners who truly have their finger on the pulse of our great city. It was refreshing to participate in the 2020 Vision planning workshop last week and see so many members of the community proactively participate and contribute to the continued growth of Charlotte. CCCP did a fantastic job of utilizing social media to make this workshop a success.

More than 400 people gathered on Wednesday, October 21 in person and through a live webcast to share their vision for Charlotte’s 2020 Center City Vision Plan.

It was the first public step in the year-long process to create a year-year blueprint for the growth and development in the study area of Uptown, South End and and other close-in neighborhoods just beyond the I-277 loop.

Charlotte Center City Partners, in collaboration with the City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, is working with MIG, INC. to create the public process and the final plan. 300 attended the workshop at the Charlotte Convention Center. Another 100 joined in on-line for a “virtual” workshop on CLT Blog.

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(Project Update) Can I get an Amen!

Alexis 0 Comments

In the spirit of giving, earlier this fall we donated our services to create a new website for Banks’ family church, Central Steele Creek Presbyterian. The church, founded in 1793, has a rich history of serving its community through missions, worship and meaningful year-round programs.

We provided the ministry with a useful online tool to enhance and grow its connectivity with existing and new church members. The website features a look into the church's history, a calendar of events, volunteer opportunities and much more. We hope it supports Central Steele Creek's mission to continue making a difference!

Muzak's Brainery

Mike 0 Comments

This year celebrates Muzak's 75th anniversary in business. They decided to hold a conference to have a focused discussion on the art, science and sound of music branding. The discussion explored the transformation of music, the music industry, and music branding—from legal to cultural considerations, media consumption to retail behavior.

From a designer's perspective, it was very eye opening to realize how important music relates to the target audience and how it really helps to reinforce the message, style, and emotions created within a brand. I had never really put stock in what types of music the target audience of my brand would listen to or even create. But looking back, I now realize that most of the information I was receiving about a target audience was directly influenced by the types of music that is both listened to and created within different demographics. Music is a unifying theme in all circles and can even break bounds and connect very different groups of people by evoking emotion and creating memories.

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get out of the kitchen and come out for some "pitchin!"

Christy 0 Comments

Our client, Andrew Roby, is hosting the 2nd Annual Pitchin Corn for a Cure Cornhole Tournament benefiting the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Studiobanks will have a team there too so come on out and join us!

Saturday, October 17th
12:00 - 6:00 PM

The Village Tavern Restaurant Terrace - SouthPark (map)

Do you think you have the skills to be the champion of the best backyard game of modern times? Are you ready to have a blast while supporting a wonderful cause? If the answer is yes to either of these questions, you are hereby authorized to park the lawnmower, DVR the football game and take a rain check on household chores on Saturday, October 17th! Event Details

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Drifting Creatives Pay us a Visit

Alexis 0 Comments

This week, Drifting Creatives duo Gavin and Martin made a pit stop at our studio to check out our work and interview Banks. These recent Texas A&M grads are a traveling design firm, road tripping their way across the country in pursuit of design inspiration (as well as design work) to help pay their way. Before arriving in each city, they use Twitter to reach out to design firms to schedule a visit, and to reach out to local chapters of industry organizations like AIGA to see if they can crash at a fellow designer's house. Once the party's over they'll return to Aggieland to open their own design shop.

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Google = "nokeywords"

Chris 6 Comments

The suspicions of many developers and SEO operatives have been confirmed: Google doesn't care about our Keywords.

Well, at least not keywords housed in meta tags. According to the official Google Webmaster blog in a post released on Monday, Matt Cutts explains Google's position on the usage of meta tags, focusing especially on keywords.

Q: Does Google ever use the "keywords" meta tag in its web search ranking?

A: In a word, no...

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Google's Solution to Internet Explorer

Mike 1 Comments

Internet Explorer is a major headache when it comes to development, but not much can be done because people are stuck using it for reasons such as their work not letting them upgrade. So, Google has created a solution that allows IE users to install a browser plugin into their version of IE called Chrome Frame that gives them the Google Chrome web browsing experience.

Google claims its goals are noble. Talking to Group Product Manager Mike Smith and Software Engineer Alex Russell, they tell us that they simply want to make a more seamless web experience for both web users and developers. That said, they are only targeting one browser, IE, right now.

Read the Full Article

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(Press Release) CarolinaNightlife.com Gets Face Lift

Studiobanks 1 Comments

Our party-promoting client, Carolina Nightlife serves the Carolinas as the premier online resource guide to the local nightlife scene. Thousands of loyal followers regularly browse the site to view upcoming events and peruse the plethora of entertaining photo albums.

But just like trendy dance moves, websites date over time, so our team recently revamped the 4-year-old version of the site. We combined top design and development practices with select features to maximize both usability and profitability of the site.

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LiveSurface Layered Image Templates

Mike 0 Comments

I came across this really cool resource today called LiveSurface. It is like a stock photography site but for product, environmental, and packaging mock ups in both isolated and real life situations. While the price per image seems kind of high ($29 per image) you not only get the image but also a photoshop file with the usable area pre-masked, lighting effects added, and perspective applied automatically. They also have tutorials to give you step-by-step instructions on how to do various effects within the templates. Let me know if you guys ever use this resource. I'm curious as to how well it works.

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Outlook's Broken. Let's Fix It.

Michael 3 Comments

Of the many pangs of being a web developer, one that rises to the tip-top in terms of pain-in-the-assness is backwards compatibility. Whether it means discarding cool features, scaling back designs or even creating a separate site altogether, the steps we take to ensure backwards compatibility for browsers and email clients not only hinder our creative potential, but also costs considerable amounts of time and, therefore, money.

In their latest victory over progression, Microsoft have declared war on advancements in email design. FixOutlook.org has taken a stand and is encouraging people like me and you to let Microsoft know that we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore. From their site:

Microsoft have just confirmed they plan on using the crippled Word rendering engine to display HTML emails in Outlook 2010.

This means for the next 5 years your email designs will need tables for layout, have no support for CSS like float and position and no background images. Not to mention the long list of bugs and quirks that break the simplest of layouts.

Outlook 2010 is still in beta and Microsoft have confirmed they want to hear your feedback on this decision. It's time for the email marketing and design community to rally together and encourage Microsoft to embrace web standards before it's too late.

They have launched an aggressive Twitter Campaign and an impressive site to go along with it. Join the cause, fight the power, Viva La Resistance!

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