Design Rangers Camp Blog

Those of you that read our blog with any frequency or are fans of Design Rangers on Facebook know that I frequently post links from Design*Sponge. I pretty much love every thing they post, but here are a few favorites that have popped up this week.

1. These twig push pins are super cute and it’s a great way to re-use twigs and branches that have fallen off of your neighborhood trees. Seems like a must have in the new Design Ranger office!
2. I’m pretty much convinced that everything cool in this world comes from Brooklyn. My dad was from Brooklyn – which I believe makes me 1/2 cool. Our completely awesome friends Tammy and Ehren are from Brooklyn – when ever they come to visit they always bring us awesome gifts from some fantastic little shop in Brooklyn. Okay – they main point is… I love this letterpress bear card, it has die-cut arms so the bear can hold a little something, too! And yes, you guessed it. Brooklyn made.

On a much more serious note – did you know there are 884 million without access to safe drinking water? A very sad WOW came out of my mouth when I came across that fact on www.waterforpeople.org’s home page. Water For People is a “Denver-based international development organization supports sustainable safe drinking water and sanitation projects in developing countries”. The organization worked with Duffy & Partners to launch their new re-branding campaign, Joe Duffy is an amazing designer that I have always admired and he has done it again with the Water For People brand. A happy WOW this time.

If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter you probably already know that on February 27th the Design Rangers, along with Jessica Seybold (co-owner of bearski bath & body) attended the Pikes Peak Advertising Federation’s 2009 Addy Awards.

WOW! What a night. Not only did we receive a gold Addy for the bearski bath & body logo, Design Rangers also won the Best of Print category! We are so happy that Jessica was there with us – she loves that logo as much as we do! We have to admit, it was a bit of an Oscar moment… “did they actually just say our name. what? really? collect yourself. stand up. walk. speak.”

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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?