The Intern Diaries… first post!

June 16th, 2009

Hello! I’m Liz, the summer intern here Studio66. This week is actually my second week of working here, and I’m already excited (and somewhat intimidated) of the projects I will take a part of.

My choice to intern at Studio66 this summer was partially at the suggestion of a professor, but it was also from what I read and saw on the studio’s website. Studio66 just seemed like a firm who liked to have fun but also cared about design and the clients they worked with. And just from these 2 weeks working with these fine folks, I can see this, which is great and reassuring.

From this internship I hope to gain experience in the graphic design industry, especially the business side of it. I also hope to keep my creative juices fresh and flowing through the projects I get to work on, even if I only have a small part in it. I would also like to gain more knowledge in web design and all its fun technicalities since that is an area of design I am less comfortable with, and an area that Studio66 has a lot of experience in.

I’ve had a good two weeks here. It can get pretty crazy-busy here, but the overall, the environment is chill and light-hearted. I will never forget the first day of working here. I got to sit down with Rashael, Peter, and Brianne in one of their weekly Monday meetings in which project updates and brainstorming occurred over bowls of Lucky Charms cereal. Some brilliant ideas were discussed, as were some funny tangents. It was nice to see and know that even with their piles of projects, there was still time to relax the mind and enjoy the randomness that is life.

Well, I’m off to continue working on my next project, which involves one of my favorite areas of design: packaging! Yay for crazy folds

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Blog More!

June 12th, 2009

Lets be honest, we’ve been slacking on our blogging. You know it. We know it. So here’s the fix: we are starting three new blog series!

Project Spotlight
After we complete a project, we’ll write up a little background on the client, parameters, creative direction and showcase the solution. This will give a sneak peek into how we work with our clients to arrive at a final design, fitting to their needs. We welcome your comments and feedback!

Intern Diaries
There’s a new addition to the 66crew — our oragami-folding, blackberry-eating, summer intern! She will be blogging about her experience as a Studio66 intern, what she is enjoys about design and what she is learning. It will be great to have her perspective.

Ask66
We often tell our clients, “there are no stupid questions.” And we mean it! We spent collectively over ten years in design school, have read countless books, surfed thousands of websites to gain our design and programming knowledge. Want to know what-the-heck SEO means? What makes a good logo? Why its not okay to have your whole website in comic-sans? We’ll be happy to share our knowledge with you! Please email us or leave a comment with your question and we’ll do our best to answer it.

We’ll also continue blogging about our Creative Fridays and Monthly Desktop Wallpapers, so keep checkin’ back to see what’s buzzin’ at Studio66!

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Take your dog to work day!

June 3rd, 2009

They say every dog has its day; well, that day has arrived. Friday, June 26th is Take Your Dog To Work Day. Studio66 are big canine fans and will be bringing our companions to work. Come by and meet Allie and Ashes or introduce your pet to us!

This day was created to celebrate man’s best friend and to encourage their adoptions from humane societies and animal shelters. So grab a leash, Fido’s favorite bone and get ready for the office. It might be a good idea to get the go-ahead from your boss first. Learn more about Take Your Dog to Work Day and how you can participate. www.takeyourdog.com

Desktop Calendar Background
Each month, Studio66 sends out a new desktop background celebrating quirky and bizarre holidays. It also functions as an easy-to-use calendar! So get ready to learn a fun fact, redefine functional, and celebrate the unusual.

Click here to download the desktop calendar background!

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PINC 2009

May 11th, 2009

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Studio66 attended the Printing Industries of Northern California (PINC 2009) show in San Francisco. This year’s theme was green. Being a certified green business, it’s important to us to keep current on recycled papers and environmentally friendly printing techniques. We were able to speak to several exhibitors, gather paper samples, and expand our knowledge on FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and other green certifications.

Another highlight — the new digital printing capabilities. As designers, we will always have a soft spot for traditional printing, however many of our clients aren’t printing the volume to make off-set cost efficient. That’s when digital steps in. Recent technology is allowing digital to mimic some of traditional printing’s great finishing techniques. Kodak boasted dimensional printing that feels like thermography/embossing. Cannon presented a machine with clear toner techniques that look like spot varnishes and AQ’s. Way Cool!

Finally — a favorite of mine — the specialty papers were on display. Synthetic paper, made out of plastics, are super smooth and extremely wear resistant. Peter was quite surprised when he couldn’t tear through it. Neenah’s linens and classics are such well crafted beautiful papers. In addition, they have sparkly papers I am just looking for an excuse to use!

Those are the highlights from this year’s show. If you ever have questions on specialty paper or green printing techniques for your project, don’t hesitate to ask — we love sharing our knowledge!

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Reno-Tahoe Wordcamp

April 28th, 2009

rt_wordcamp_attendee While most people used this last Saturday to sleep in, I took the opportunity to wake up at 6am, and make a trip to Reno. After several of my favorite albums and a few thousand feet elevation climb, I arrived at the Reno-Tahoe Wordcamp. For those who don’t know, Wordcamp is a place for web designers, developers, and other techies to talk about WordPress, the popular Content Management System. A fun time was had by all, and here a few of the highlights.

Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress gave the keynote titled “4 Things You Should Get Hip To”. They included the recently acquired WP.com, P2 – a mashup of twitter and instant messaging, WordPress.tv – a collection of videos for everything WordPress, and BuddyPress – a suite of plugins dubbed the “funny uncle” of WordPress. His presentation was entertaining, and he is everything you would expect form a silicon-valley start up wizard: laid-back, slightly awkward, and razor sharp.

Next up were presentations on using custom WordPress fields, and creating WordPress plugins. Although neither was new to me, I was able to glean a few useful tricks I plan to use soon. Who knew there was a function to check for redundant Javascript files before adding your own? For any who don’t know, that’s just slick.

Next up was… Lunch. The boxed lunch with a pesto chicken sandwich was surprisingly good. Mmmmmm.

Following lunch was a superb presentation given by Joseph Scott on performance and optimization. It basically went through every step of the web server chain, including Apache, PHP, MySQL, and WordPress, giving ways to easily speed up each one. What struck me was how simple and ridiculously effective all of his tips were. Two of which: PHP caching, and Apache page compression took me less than an hour to implement, and sped up my web server by double!

Next up was an intro to creating themes given by Chelsea Otakan. Following her presentation was thoughts on using WordPress as a CMS given by Ed Adkins. Ed’s presentation was a crowd-pleaser, and kept the audience in stitches with a combination of creative slides, tongue-in-cheek opinions, inappropriate sample websites, and reflections on special clients.

Last up was a slideshow from Glen Weatherson titled “WordPress and House Arrest”. It turns out good web software can keep you sane when stuck inside a 1 bedroom studio apartment for 5 months. His webcam videos stemming from boredom kept us alternating between laughing hysterically, and cringing from pain.

All in all, it certainly was worth the 5 hours of driving, and I can’t wait to do it next month in San Francisco!

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Sock Puppet Creative Friday

April 17th, 2009

Edward puppet This week we had creative Friday — on a Thursday. It was our intern Michelle’s last day, so we brought the fun a day early. The theme? Sock Puppets! We got out our “crafty” tin, purchased some white socks and let our imaginations run wild. It was a delight watching the white socks transform into unique characters. We all felt like kids again — buttons became necklaces and noses, yarn became hair, jewels became eyes and pipe cleaners became leaves. It was a great lesson in looking at everyday objects in a new way!

Enjoy our puppets and see if you can tell who created each puppet!

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At Studio66 we feel the same old routines equal day old ideas. So on Fridays between 3:30 – 5:00 we mix it up with Creative Fridays. This keeps us trying new things, finding inspiration and most importantly playing together as a team.

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FORE!

April 2nd, 2009

Birds are chirping, flowers blooming, and the bees a’buzzin — Spring is here and everyone is heading outside to enjoy it. So, if you have the urge to put on your favorite argyle socks and head out to the greens, we celebrate you — and National Golfers Day.

Golf, as we know it today, is credited to Scottish shephards of the 12th century. To pass the time (and probably the boredom) they hit stones into rabbit holes; thus beginning a trend that spread through Europe first, then the world.

Whether you enjoy a challenging game of 18 holes, or a round of competitive golf — miniature style — get out on April 10th and swing away!

Click here to download the desktop calendar background!

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Studio66 gets the gold!

March 31st, 2009

On March 19, 2009, the ADDY awards celebrated marketing, design, and PR professionals in the Sacramento Region. This year we came away with gold and silver awards!!

We took home the gold award for Mixed-Media, Local Consumer: Scotts Valley Target Campaign. The community outreach campaign in Scotts Valley gauged community interest in building a Target store. The campaign included branding, newspaper ads, direct mail, outreach letters with variable data, and a website complete with petition and database of supporters. Graphics portrayed the Target logo as leaves on the iconic Scotts Valley redwoods; all materials were printed on 100% Post Consumer Recycled paper. Credits: Rashael Parker, Designer; Peter Anselmo, Web Software Developer.

Winning a silver award for Self-Promotion, Direct: Backends. The tongue-in-cheek campaign, featuring a zebra’s “backend”, highlights our ability to build back-end database features into custom websites, without all the pain in the you-know-what. Credits: Rashael Parker, Designer; Brianne Leymaster, Designer.

We are proud to see the studio continuing its reputation for award winning design and creativity. We’d like to extend a big thank you to John Dewes and the rest of the Target, Corporation team, who gave us creative freedom and the trust to try something unexpected.

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“Iconic” Creative Friday

March 27th, 2009

Icons were the theme this creative Friday! We wrote down objects onto slips of paper and entered them into a cup. We drew a slip out and had to each draw different visual representations (icons) of that object. This is a great exercise to brainstorm how many different ways an idea or object can be visually communicated.

This is an important step in the creative process of designing a logo. It is not uncommon for a designer to sketch out a hundred or more visual representations of something before arriving to a solution. The more we sketch, the broader and more unique the ideas become.

However, for our creative friday task, we kept it simple with just ten. Here are a few photos sharing our “iconic” creative friday.

Here at Studio66, we feel same old routines equal day old ideas. So on Fridays between 3:30 – 5:00 we mix it up with Creative Fridays. This keeps us trying new things, finding inspiration and most importantly playing together as a team.

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Businesses Giving Back

March 25th, 2009

We have again partnered with HSP Painting Company and several other businesses, in the HSP Charity Alliance. This annual event is the collaboration of several businesses combining money, time, resources and labor to award a Reno/Sparks Charity $10,000 in painting and remodeling services.

Charities are nominated by the Reno/Sparks Chamber of Commerce, finalists are selected who demonstrate the most need for these services and then the public is asked to help by going online to vote at HSPpainting.com/vote. Polls close on May 25th and the charity with the most community support will be announced on May 27th.

This years charity finalists are: Children’s Cabinet, Northern Nevada HOPE, RSVP and STEP2.

This event would not be possible without the hard work of HSP Painting and fellow sponsors Sherwin Williams, A&H Insurance, Bj’s Restaurant/Brewhouse, Clear Channel, Dave Pearce Construction, Dick’s Fuller Paints, Steve Bus and Truckee Meadow Construction.

It has been a joy creating and designing all the branding elements for the HSP Charity Alliance. We also worked with HSP Painting on how best to promote and market the event; resulting in record website hits for the company. In addition to the programming of the charity online poll and email marketing blasts.

It is vital now more than ever, to rally together, support and promote other businesses and non-profit organizations. We are proud to be able to contribute to the HSP Charity Alliance this year.

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