Th3 Wood || Yes the 3 should be backwards…

We just wrapped up the design phase for a new project we’ve been working on for the last few months. It’s called Riding Resource, and it’s a response to the equestrian community’s need for a better search engine. Our friends in Atlanta, Erik and Ainsley, got it started, and we designed a new logo and website/application for them. In addition, we’re helping them out with promoting the site with social media. We’re big fans of the social web, and while our efforts with Obama Baton were not quite as successful as we’d hoped, the lessons we took from that project are paying off big-time for Riding Resource. Already, they’ve built an active community around their idea, using a few tips and tricks from our bag.

The big payoff will be at the beta and gold releases of their site, in December and January. We’re excited to see how it all works out.

Over the last few weeks, thanks to our site being on NOTCOT, we’ve made some new friends. Primary among them is thirtysevenclick, a group of guys out in San Diego that make videos, websites and other cool things. Sounds a little like us? Yeah, but they’re the video yin to our web marketing yang. They contacted us for help promoting a new short film by some of the guys in Fall Out Boy & Yellowcard. The film will be called Moustachette, and we’ll be posting pretty frequently about our progress on this front.

We’re stoked. Nice to meet you, fellas.

Our new site design has appeared on NOTCOT.ORG. It has been a long time coming to get Hustlewood up and running. Now that it’s launched, it’s great to know that the people we have helped out are liking more then our site but our ideas. Thanks AdamParkerSmith for the showing us some love.

Hello Facebook.

Be a fan: click here to go to Hustlewood on Facebook.

Just this past week, Pepsi Co. introduced its new logo and package designs for a variety of products. As much as I love downing any number of these Pepsi products at 3 AM while working on some design project, I am now having second thoughts.

Think about it…At 3 AM, a lot of things are racing through your caffeine-coma mindset and your design can be influenced by any number of small design details ranging from that Facebook ad, last year’s Communication Arts Annual or that newly designed Pepsi can sitting on your desk.

In the 8:30 AM internal review, you wonder why your favorite Creative Director is looking at you funny; she rarely questions your design choices. Then you remember… you had a Pespi last night. Actually… more like a 6 pack of that caffeinated goodness. Then you recall analyzing the can with that “fresh” new look which causes you to question your design decisions.

All of a sudden, your mouse starts clicking and you’re saving over that great design. You are now stuck with a random European-style design that makes no marketing sense. And your worst nightmare came true.

Of course the Account Team loves the “fresh look”, but your favorite Creative Director is scratching her head. Thanks, Pepsi, for these unoriginal inspirations that will cause lots of designers to go against everything they have ever been taught.

I look forward to seeing these designs in millions of vending machines, the endless soda grocery aisle and all over the ad world.

via Brand New

Top’o'the mid-morning to y’all. Early Friday AM a few weeks ago, we launched a site for our favorite bar in the West Loop, The Beer Bistro. The Beer Bistro is one of the mainstays of Madison Street (just on the other, more chill side of the expressway) and offers an incredible selection of beers, most of which we’ve sampled. So about a year ago, we badgered the owner, Bob, into letting us re-do his site (which you can see here) and he finally obliged.

The home page, above, features a compressed view of the bar, as photographed by Quincy. Armand got it all working in Flash and whipped together some sweet, largely table-less markup, I wrote some copy and made some final dev tweaks, and now we’re live.

About Page… nothing super special here except for the cool gMap wrapper.

Galleries page, powered by Flickr of course.

And a page for their sweet gear, enabled by everyone’s favorite, Flash.

Hope you like. We’ll be rolling out some improvements over the coming weeks/months.

Ahh, so the Obama Baton. As you might know, we went from a 160-line chat to a wireframe, to a live site in under 10 days. I won’t get into the how, but instead into the why.

Seth reached out to me about two weeks ago with an idea: running the NYC marathon with a blue baton to represent his support for Obama. The blue baton (and the act of passing it along to other runners) would be a symbol of the way Obama brings people together.

Seth’s question: what should be done about it online?

The answer? Talk it up. Get people to support. Get people to download the baton image and slap it on their blogs. Get people to buy a button and wear it on their book bags, jerseys, race numbers, and shorts. Get people to watch out for the baton as it goes by on race day.

So now, fair reader, what can you do?

1. Follow us on twitter, where you can find out when and where the baton will be running every day.
2. Check us out on Flickr
3. Buy a button and wear it around to show your support for us, and for the idea that we are stronger when we stick together and run toward a common goal
4. Help us out by commenting on our site
5. Join the Chicago team, even if you’re not running
6. Join the NYC team, again… even if you’re not running
7. Blog about it!

Thanks, y’all, for reading and offering support.

Quincy’s got a brand new blog.

We just wrapped up work on RapidFire. We’ll be adding a bit of action to the homepage soon, but as you can see, it’s a simple, easy-to-navigate marketing site. We also did the name, logo and brand positioning.

RapidFire Systems makes software for the military and for commercial clients. Word has it they like what we’ve done for them.

What do you think?

Here’s a logo we’ve done for our friend at exitcreative. He has started a new venture making custom ping pong paddles. We’re also designing his site. Best of luck!