Today at creative Friday we played Jenga!! A game which takes both strategy and delicate hands. As designers, we regularly solve puzzles, make moves, and keep focused on the “big picture”. So Jenga was a great way to stretch our organizational & strategical muscles while putting our problem solving skills to the test. Not to mention, it was fun!
Well that was until I pulled the block which knocked over the tower… 
After which, I made a noise that sounded a lot like this.
This was the theme for last week’s creative Friday. Brianne, who has been with the studio since the beginning, is having a baby in just a couple of weeks! So, in celebration of her and her baby boy, we designed onesies. During lunch we stenciled, puff painted, and drew — letting our crafty creativity shine. We designed 4 new outfits and a bib! Brianne’s new baby will be set, that is until he grows too big for his new wardrobe!
Today’s creative lunch was at Caffé Italia!
We enjoyed a caffé combo pizza and texas toothpicks, which were so tasty!! While we ate our starters, we all drew a portrait of ourselves with our left hand (or non-dominate hand) upside-down. This exercise helps flex the right brain muscles, by not allowing you to follow typical drawing patterns. We used Crayon’s and it was actually a lot harder then we had expected!
When I went to draw my mouth as a smile I accidentally drew a frown because it was upside-down! This made my portrait look very sad, so I tried to fix it, but ended up making my face look like the Joker from Batman! Overall though, everyone’s portrait looked quite realistic — Peter with his sideburns, Rashael with her chuck tayolors, and Brianne with her one blue eye and one green eye. haha.
This was a fun activity which allowed us to use the right side of our brains, drive creativity, and step out of our comfort zones. We had a great creative Friday and delicious food!
Your website markets 24/7 for you and is often the first impression of your company. If it’s out-of-date, it reflects poorly on your products, services and business practices…and could even drive visitors straight to your competition.
Keep your website current and it works overtime.
Up-to-date content: Update your site frequently, confirming all your information is correct, relevant and that links still work.
Simple to use: Ensure your site is easy to read and understand. Visitors should be able to navigate effortlessly through your site, finding information quickly. A site hard to navigate is easy to leave!
Tech savvy: Maintain your website to be compatible with current web standards, crucial for usability and searchability. If you want Google — and potential customers — to find your site, you need to use current web technology. Plain and simple.
Works for you: A successful website reflects the quality of your business, fitting your industry and target audiences while standing out from your competitors. With a progressive appearance, it leaves positive impressions and gains customers.
If you’re feeling outdated, give us a call; we’ll help you get up-to-date and get the most out of your website. Getting rid of that leisure suit from the 70’s is still up to you, though. 
Creative Friday! Today Studio66 took a break from our computers, projects and took a moment to explore our creativity. During lunch, six items were placed on the table and we had 10 minutes to explore every possibility in which those items could function. There was no limit placed on our ideas; they could be as practical or outrageous as we could imagine. The items consisted of: a stapler, clay snake, bell, lint roller, paper folder/roller, and a remote. Here were some of our ideas:
Lint Roller: fly trap, ant trail remover, de-shed your dog, clean up crumbs, a bat, or an exfoliation tool.
Stapler: weapon, sewing machine, nut cracker, book holder, G.I. Joe diving board, and paper catapult.
Bell: wind chime, child detector, hair ribbon, or a multi-purpose alarm.
Remote: infrared laser gun, noise maker, chew toy, projection kaleidoscope, or a robot controller.
Paper Folder/Roller: back massage, japanese sand garden smoother, flower press, ant smoosher, derby car, and toilet paper holder.
This was a fun way to get our creative thoughts flowing and to get closer as a group! Share with us your ideas for how these everyday objects could be used for a different function. Let your imaginations run wild!
This month’s bizarre holiday: National Puzzle Day!
Puzzles are a favorite pastime for millions of people, young and old; National Puzzle Day honors puzzles of all size, shape and form. Whether you’re into crosswords, jigsaws, or even a simple word search — doing puzzles is fun! For some, they enjoy the challenge, for others it’s a way to kill time — either way, puzzles keep your mind sharp. Whatever the cause for your interest, spend January 29th doing puzzles…we’ll even get you started.
This month, we have supplied you with a desktop background that is also a word search! Take some time each day and see how many January-themed words you can find. Just don’t draw directly on your monitor, we’re pretty sure the boss wouldn’t like it!
Send us an email and let us know how many words you found!
Each month, Studio66 sends out a new desktop background celebrating quirky and bizarre holidays. It also functions as an easy-to-use calendar!
Click to download the calendar background for your screen size:
Widescreen 1900×1200 | Standard 1600×1200
Studio66 has just completed and launched a power-house of a website. This site rocks flash, php, wordpress and jquery to manage a member database, employment opportunities, sales, event calendar, and about 20 other pages – all controlled through a content management system.
Did we lose you? Sorry. Just know that it’s big and user friendly, complete with form and function.
The details:
• Users can enjoy a slideshow of the beautifully built complex on the home page and peruse an alpha or categorized list of stores then click through for their detailed hours, description and location in the complex.
• Individual stores have login access to add events and sales to the site, even post upcoming employment opportunities
• Complete Control: the administrator has approval over all sales and events, plus access to edit any content on any page with a web-based content management system.
Click here to check out the site for yourself. In the need for a website you have complete control over? Call us today to see how we can help!
On the sixth of October we observe a holiday that celebrates getting your silly on…Mad Hatter Day!
The date of this holiday was inspired by the label found on the hat of the Mad Hatter – a nonsensical Alice in Wonderland character. The label says, “In this style 10/6″ and was in reference to the price of the hat, ten shilling and six pence. However, in our case, it just gives us extra reason to be silly, drink some tea, wear crazy hats, celebrate very, merry unbirthdays and ask crazy riddles…
…why is a raven like a writing-desk?
Download the mad hatter day desktop wallpaper
Widescreen 1900×1200 | Standard 1600×1200
Created in 1955 as a wallpaper cleaner, Play-Doh, the versitle-bendable-plyable substance quickly took on a new playful form. School teachers everywhere were requesting containers for their classrooms, finding it easier for younger fingers to mold than traditional sculpting clay. Although a happy accident for the creators, they quickly caught on and began adding bright colors to market the product as a child’s toy. The rest, is history!
Studio66 pre-celebrated this nostalgic wonder by sculpting some fun of our own. See our creations above and on the calendar download.
This September 16, we invite your inner child to break out some doh — and play away!
p.s. It’s also a helpful stress reliever; just squeeze!
Download the Play-Doh day desktop wallpaper!
Wide Screen 1900×1200 | Standard 1600×1200
As an ever-learning design student, I hear a lot of design and tech lingo thrown around that sometimes I find is all Lorem Ipsum to me. SEO was an acronym and word I hear quite a bit here at Studio66. This word definitely fell under the unknown design lingo category. So, as the curious intern, I decided to go forth and do some research to find out the sitch behind this word. This is some basic info I found and summarized from the article “Beginner’s Guide: What is SEO?” by SEOmoz.org:
SEO stands for “search engine optimization” or “search engine optimizer.” A SEO is the improvement of a web site’s internal and external aspects so that it will get more traffic from search engines, like Google. This ensures that the web site is “optimized” or more effective. Companies who use SEOs can have a specific or general focus.
So why would a website need SEO? Well, a large part of web traffic is by major commercial search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. If a web site cannot be found by these search engines, or if a site’s information cannot be put on their databases, the web site loses the opportunity of being found and used by people who may have had need of the site’s services, products, or information. These search engines are important because they are how the majority of Internet users get around the web.
Search engines are always working towards getting better and more relevant results to users, but even with improvements, they are still limited. This is where SEOs come in. They not only make content available to the search engines, but they also help increase a web site’s rankings so that the content that is found will be placed where searchers will find and see it quicker. With how competitive the web has become, web sites who utilize SEOs will have a higher number of visitors and customers.
I looked further into the article to find out more about SEO and how it works, and as I was reading more, I became curious about the difference and possible relationship between a SEO and a web site redesign, since to me, they seemed to have some sort of connection that I didn’t fully grasp.
I asked Rashael, the creative director here at Studio66, for her personal explanation. She told me that SEOs and web site designs were two different elements, explaining that a web site redesign mainly deals with organization and the aesthetics, such as the look and feel of a site, whereas SEOs dealt with information and words, particularly in the code of a web site. There’s a difference between details: aesthetic versus technical. However, these two different elements work well with each other. Consider this: you may have a beautiful web site design but without adequate SEO, people will rarely view your gorgeous site. On the other hand, if your site good SEO but has an unflattering design, users won’t stay on it long because it’s not pleasant to look at or explore.
Rashael also lent me a copy of Google’s SEO Guide for me to look through, and here are some of the simpler ways I found to help optimize a web site:
The above edits may seem small, but from what I’ve read and researched, these little details go a long way in the SEO process!
Rashael also told me that there are companies specializing in SEOs, and that some graphic design firms, particularly those exclusive in web design, offer some SEO services. At Studio66, basic SEO is offered when doing a web site redesign.
I learned a lot from this three-letter acronym – useful and important info about web design and the internet. SEO has now been added to my growing design and tech vocab, and I hope it will rank high in my brain’s search engine when I think about web design.
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