Design Rangers Camp Blog

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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TGIF Readers and Happy 3-Day Weekend!

Here are a few things that caught our eye this week:

1. Yes, we are procrastinators… but at least we are self-aware. Check out The Now Habit, maybe we can overcome procrastination together. But, we’ll have to put it off until mid-October.
2. On the same note – we came across this site on a great blog we follow. Yes, life is busy and we are still learning to keep it under control. But it’s always nice to know you have lots of company.
3. Well, enough of that – let’s get to the fun stuff! We LOVE logos. We love to look at logos. We love to read about logos. We love to design logos. As designers we do lots of logo research, always wanting to be hip to the newest trends – good or bad. We learned a lot from logo trends of 2009. We are looking forward to 2010!
4. Design Rangers love boy scout merit badges. I wonder if you can just buy the entire set for like 50 bucks? They are all great, but I think this is my favorite!
5. You know that song you love – well, you know how you REALLY love minutes 1:38 – 1:52. These guys feel the same way! It’s about a 30 minute podcast – make sure you hear the first 6 1/2 minutes and the last 1 1/2 minutes (the remaining minutes in the middle are for more mature ears – parents out there with young ones, be warned). This is the spin off site from that podcast – songparts.biz where you can buy you favorite song parts – for cheap! Hear the song part before you buy it if you click on the gray “click to play” bar. Joni Mitchell spazzes out and fake laughs(?) at the end of “Big Yellow Taxi” $.04 - DEAL!
   
6. On a more serious note – our hearts go out to our friends in California. All the talk about the forest fires there reminds us of our good friend, Smokey Bear. What a great guy! (A blog devoted to Smoky and his 65 year campaign coming soon…) Remember, Only YOU can prevent forest fires.

Hope you have a great weekend and as always, Happy Trails!

Happy Friday Dearest Blog Readers,

We want to share with you some great sites/images/information/etc. that we came across this week…

1. Typedia (it’s like wikipedia for fonts) just launched their site. Here is a great blog post about the creation of their logo.
2. A few months ago we wrote a post about how/why to have fun with your brand. This week we found a great site that features some fun & creative business cards. If you ever need a crazy cool business card you know who to call… (shoot us an email if you don’t have a set of Design Ranger cards, we will send some your way!)
3. Our friend and copy writing partner, Tammy, came across this site and thought of us.  Yes, we love it! Also, on the same site a image for our coffee loving friends (you know who you are!).
4. Lastly, every now and then design*sponge will feature a post titled biz ladies. (The post may be called biz ladies but it is just as informative for biz men.) The article features an expert in the field that will offer advice on anything from writing a book to making a strategic business plan. One post we found very informative was advertising 101 for small business owners.
5. Bonus: once you view the biz ladies link you will know why we found this noteworthy.

Well, that wraps up the Ranger Round-up (say that 3 times fast!). Have a great weekend and of course, Happy Trails.