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

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.

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!

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.

(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!

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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(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.

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.

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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