Design Rangers Camp Blog

5o9 is a Boulder, Colorado company that develops software enabling the web to be personal, local and mobile. This unique approach allows companies to send and receive personalized content through the web instead of building complex apps for each mobile device.

5o9 tasked us with creating a website that could communicate the complex technology behind their products and turn it into something that everyone could quickly and easily understand.
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I just came across this great article from the “biz ladies” of design*sponge. I have found so many articles by the biz ladies to be inspiring and informative, including: how to form successful biz partnerships, organizing your biz income + expenses, starting a business in tough times, and I actually included this one in a weekly round up blog post from August of 2009 – a very informative article about advertising 101 for small businesses.

To quote the article’s author, Meg Mateo Ilasco, “…an amateur logo design could only hurt your business. Just because you’re an artist, craftsperson, or designer doesn’t make you a skilled graphic designer. Designing a logo takes experience. It’s no easy task to take everything a company stands for and bring it down to a single graphic representation or symbol.”

Meg hits the nail on the head – your logo is everything! The Design Rangers believe it should be clean, have good contrast and be simple. Our professor in college once said “a good logo can be drawn in the sand with a stick”. Think Nike, McDonalds, Mercedes, Apple. The greats ARE clean and simple! Here is a previous blog post that talks briefly about our logo process and what it take to get some pencil marks on a paper to a logo that has impact.

We are passionate about logo design and we love a well designed, thoughtful logo! Here are a few of our favorites: Endurance Army, Property Army, Bottle Rocket, Love Yarn, Women’s Bike Challenge, Lyric Quotes, Beer Garden, and idea couch. What are yours?

Last Spring our good friends, Jessica and Christian Seybold, purchased a little soap and lotion business named Jinny Crickets. Jinny Crickets was founded about 5 years ago in Hays, Kansas. Jessica and Christian wanted to give Jinny Crickets a new name and a new look to better fit their vision for the business. They chose the name Bearski Bath & Body (after their sweet daughter’s nickname and Jessica’s Polish heritage) and then promptly turned to the Design Rangers for the new logo, website, and product label design.

Bearski’s skin-loving products are high-quality, handmade, yet affordable.  Jessica and Christian were looking to give Bearski a hip, cool, and fun personality.  They gave us a lot of great input and ideas – bubbles and lower-case text were kicked around – then… they let us have at it!

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I have decided to quit calling this the “Weekly” Ranger Round-up, simply because I cannot guarantee you that I will get to it every week! I’ll feel a lot less guilty about not getting it done every Friday if I give you the disclaimer – “I cannot guarantee that I will get to it every week.” Oh, and I used to number the Round-up. I think I’ll nix that too. I’m just going to cross my fingers that on the days that you have the time, you’ll check out our blog. Maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised, “Hey, bonus! A Ranger Round-up. Mid-week even. What a surprise!”

I really enjoy writing the blog and doing the link round-up. Does it put food on the table? In most cases, no. So of course I do the work that pays first. My favorite quote, that I believe I made up, is “Life gets in the way of my life.”

Without further a due, the Weekly Ranger Round-up…

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