CarolinaNightlife.com was featured in this month's issue of Charlotte Magazine. The article covered nightlife in the Queen City and how Carolina Nightlife and similar websites turn profit by promoting it. A photo shoot was held for the article at one of the newer bars in downtown Charlotte. My brother Hunter is the one on the floor and I am sitting on the table.
As we promised, here's the logo Asana chose from the six or so options we presented them—and it was our favorite one of the bunch, too. Clay designed this font by hand, so Asana will have their very own personal typeface. We chose the four colors from swatches they gave us from one of the clothing brands they'll be carrying. Now, the architect designing the store, which will be located at the new development Morrison in South Park, will be incorporating the color palette we've chosen into the store design. The next phase for Studiobanks is to create all of the Asana collateral: business cards, letterhead, envelopes, in-store hang tags and product signage.
If you've noticed references to HTML 5 or XHTML 2 pop up around the web and aren't aware of the differences between the two, then be sure to read "HTML5, XHTML2, and the Future of the Web" over at Digital Web Magazine.
The article lays out the pros and cons and the general arguments for each language. As you'll read, there's quite a lot in the pipe as far as updates to the functionality of forms, basic client-side APIs and the structure of markup.
Some additional reading:
The future of HTML, Part 1: WHATWG
The future of HTML, Part 2: XHTML 2.0
The Avett Brothers, hailing from Charlotte (rather Concord/Mt. Pleasant), just released their new album Emotionalism on May 15th. A few of us made it down to their in-store at Manifest this past Tuesday. According to their management, around 700 people passed through the store during the event and 300 copies of the album were sold. All in all, they played 13 songs and mingled with double the attendance of their last in-store there in 2004.
If that wasn't enough, the guys recently performed "Paranoia in Bb Major" on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Videos of the performance have mostly been deleted from YouTube by NBC, but we found one!
So our new neighbor, Meadows Office Furniture, here in the Citispace in Southend development had a grand opening party yesterday. Although there was not an official invitation given to Studiobanks, the guys and I decided to head over and introduce ourselves. Everyone we met was very nice. Clint Barlow, the General Manager of Meadows, came up to us, apologized for any inconvenience the large party tent in the parking lot might have caused us (we did have to tell some clients that were coming in for meetings to use the development’s exit since the main entrance was blocked) and told us to enjoy the party. Since we were kind of party crashing, we didn’t really know what to expect. It became clear quickly that we were quite underdressed for the event. Most attendees were in suits or business casual attire. We, of course, were adhering to the Studiobanks dress code of “whatever you feel like wearing.” It really hit home that we were standing out when the photographer, Wes Bobbitt asked if we were the band! I had planned to go see the documentary Helvetica with the guys, but was having such a good time I ended up (once again) closing down the party with Christy over quite a few cocktails.
We are very excited to announce yet another great project from a client located at the new development Morrison in South Park! First the Winestore, now Asana Activewear.
Asana Activewear is a newly formed company that operates boutique, specialty-apparel retail stores, focused exclusively on yoga-inspired activewear and accessories for men and women.
Not that most of us who deal with web design don't already feel Microsoft to be the leading cause of daily frustration, but those guys continue to come up with new ways to infuriate our industry. If it's not lack of standards support in Internet Explorer 6, it's the completely-avoidable Eolas update last year.
The latest "next generation" product from the folks in Redmond goes by the name of Silverlight. One of the intentions for this proprietary, web-based runtime is takeover a bit of the Flash/Flex market from Adobe. While some healthy competition is good for innovation, Microsoft is just playing follow-the-leader yet again. The name Silverlight even invokes the same feeling as Flash. Moreover, one of the development tools for animation in Silverlight, Expression Blend, was code-named "Sparkle." The scariest thought is that designers or developers might actually have to rely on Microsoft applications for creative work.
We are very excited about our latest project. For me, this is a full circle moment and a great example of how strong client relationships and good old fashion hard work pay off.
One of Studiobanks' very first projects was designing the Rick Crawford website. Our contact there had since worked his way up over the years and is now the business manager for Greg Biffle Incorporated. So, he contacted us to design GregBiffle.com.
With Greg Biffle being a nationally known celebrity, we see this national exposure as an opportunity to highlight our capabilities and creative expertise. With that said, we are going to pull out all the stops to make this site the best site the racing industry has ever seen.
About Greg Biffle
Greg Biffle made NASCAR history in 2002 and came within 35 points of doing it again in 2005 when he finished second in the Chase for the Nextel Cup.
Biffle became the first driver to win championships in both the Craftsman Truck and Busch series before moving full time to Cup in 2003. His lone win that season came in the Pepsi 400 at Daytona, making him one of only a handful of drivers to win a race in each of NASCAR's top three series.
Sooner or later every designer has creative block. It's a fact. First thing to realize is you're not alone. I've never met a designer, not one, that hasn't struggled with creativity. What is unique, however, is how to handle it.
Here is what I have found that works...
Designer Naz Hamid recently posted some screens of the new AIGA.org content management system (CMS) on his website Weight Shift. It's a page-based publishing system, which differentiates it from our own record-based Toolbox CMS. But, I'm not trying to pitch you on our Toolbox.
The lesson here is not to neglect the visual appearance of a CMS. Developers are usually great at what they do, but they are not designers. AIGA realized they were going to be spending a lot of time maintaining AIGA.org's content using that interface. Wisely, they contracted separate design teams to build the front-end and back-end for their newly redesign site and then handed those designs off to development teams. Hamid's informed choices on the layout not only make the site's content and structure easy to update and understand, but it gives AIGA something nice to look at while they do it.
is a small webcentric design firm producing BIG results! We have become known for producing memorable, high quality work that creates buzz. For each project, we bring a fresh creative approach and a keen attention to detail.
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