Free Animated Christmas Gifs

This past month, we, at arangostudio have been furiously working on completing projects for many of our great clients as well as tying loose ends before the year comes to a close which is why you haven't heard from us in a while.



In keeping with the Holiday spirit and in an effort to bring a little bit of cheer in a time of sorrow and grief, we thought we would share with you some free Christmas Gifs that you can send to friends, family and co-workers. Just make sure you choose wisely! (Some may be little raunchy to send your grandmother or boss).

These gifs are part of http://christmasgifs.org which is described as a "festive showcase of animated gifs created by an international group of illustrators, animators and directors; a project curated by Ryan Todd and built by Enjoythis."

Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

We thought this TED Talk was very appropriate for today and wanted to share.

"Today's TED Talk is an encore favorite: Time-lapse photos of nature's beauty become a meditation on gratitude. A talk to share!" via TED.com

 

And here is another one!

Last week we showed you Arby's new logo. This week we wanted to share another re-design for a yet another fast food chain, this time it belongs to Wendy's, known for their old fashioned hamburgers. This is the first time the logo has been redesigned since 1983.

New Logo

 
Old Logo

What do you think? Is it an improvement? Love it or hate it? Let us know.

Logo Re-Design for Fast Food Chains - Arby's

It looks like several fast food joints are updating their logos these days. A few weeks ago, Arby's launched its new logo causing mostly reactions of dismay.

New Logo

“The most significant elements, the lowercase font and the apostrophe slicer icon, are details that communicate our point of differentiation, that we freshly slice meats daily in our restaurants.” - Russ Klein, Arby’s chief marketing officer.

Old Logo


Here are some of the comments made by several design professionals, courtesy of Bloomberg Businessweek.

Kyle Lin: Overall, I think it’s a vast improvement from the “before” logo. It has youthful, casual appeal. I like how they brought in modernized aspects of their older branding in updated ways. The new apostrophe’s supposed to represent a meat-cutting blade, which works well with their new positioning. Gotta love the hat.

Brion Isaacs: The 3D effect has no place in this logo and looks forced and is executed poorly. Sucks. It seems like Arby’s is trying too hard. The whole glossy thing is so out of touch. There’s this retro throwback now, which is kind of cool. The old logo was familiar and classic; it’s a nice piece of Americana.

What do you think of the new ebay logo?

In the past few weeks we have seen several redesigns for a variety of well-know logos. The most recent being ebay's logo. 

Here are some of the comments being written about the new logo.

Of all the potential logos that could be done for eBay this is the absolute most boring and risk-averse logo that could have been both presented and selected. There is a lot of “could”s here and that’s what I find the most disappointing with this redesign: there was an opportunity to create a logo as memorable — ideally for better reasons — as the old one. Instead we got a typeface out of the box with super tight tracking and kerning. Somebody call the Fun Police, they are all fired because we clearly don’t need them anymore.

Armin Vit

The old design has a lot more character, and I’ll be sad to see it replaced with a wordmark that loses much of that flavour, even if it did always seem like an afterthought on the website, squashed up in the corner without room to breath. With such a distinctive name and palette I doubt the logo change will have an adverse affect. You could say the update is more “grown up,” and that probably would’ve pleased the shareholders.

What are your thoughts?

An All Paper Cup Eliminates the Need for a Lid

The Compleat is a disposable paper cup created by Peter Herman. What makes this cup different is that there is no need for a plastic lid. The cup is entirely made out of paper which can be folded down to serve as a lid and then be sipped out of.

Why we love this idea:

Less plastic

Environmentally friendly

More surfaces for branding messages

Fun and original design

To find out more about the Compleat, visit http://www.fastcodesign.com or http://thecompleat.com 

 

The Clinton Foundation and Taná

arangostudio and avantgard media worked with the The Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative (CGSGI), a project of the William J. Clinton Foundation, to develop communication pieces in English that would help sell Taná products and tell the story of the women behind the product.

Taná was created by a group of afro-Colombian women living in Choco, one of Colombia's poorest regions. In order to gain a better income, they began growing herbs and spices that were native to their region and continued teaching the necessary skills to other women who were in similar situations.

CGSI has been assisting in Taná's growth and expansion. So when it came time to take the product to Canada, the foundation asked us to create new pieces in English based on Taná's already existing brand.

 



A brochure was created to tell the story of the women and the origins of these spices.

Recipe cards were designed suggesting uses for the herbs and spices as well as showcasing a few traditional Colombian recipes. 

We also designed pieces that would be inserted into Taná's gift boxes and could also serve as a bookmark.  

The Clinton Foundation and Pies Descalzos Foundation

The Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative (CGSGI), a program developed by The William J. Clinton Fundation, helps promote a better childhood to the children assisting Shakira's Piez Descalzos Foundation in Colombia by providing them with healthy nutrition.

arangostudio and avantgard media created banners and tent cards for the event.

Banners

Tent cards

The William J. Clinton Foundation

The William J. Clinton Foundation has established several initiatives with different missions for the purpose of achieving its goals. The mission of the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative (CGSGI) is to create job opportunities and generate income to help low income communities in developing nations to "work themselves out of poverty".

In Colombia, CGSGI developed a program that provides training skills to construction workers working at Ciudad Verde, a very large development of low income housing created by 8 different construction companies. The training skills would provide workers the opportunity to improve their craft, become certified in certain fields and make them eligible for future employment at other construction sites. 

The challenge was to inform all stakeholders of the program and then have them actively participate. 

arangostudio and avantgard media worked together to develop a series of communication tools directed towards each of the targets or stakeholders. We understood that in order to get each party to commit and become engaged, we would have to customize the look, feel and approach of the message being sent.

Flyers, posters and banners were designed using minimum text and adding a character or mascot that would provide more personality to the pieces and that construction workers could relate to.

A contest called Construyendo Futuros or Building Futures was developed in order to encourage participation on behalf of the large construction companies who were disengaged. The winner was announced in the newsletter we created.

Through the use of graphs, charts and percentages in the newsletter, the construction companies were able to see how they ranked in terms of who had the highest number of workers participating in programs, contest winners, etc. This information created a healthy competition among companies.

Attendance numbers for the training programs greatly increased. Many construction workers completed the programs, becoming certified and feeling a great sense of pride and accomplishment. 

We also designed invitations (both print and e-vite) to the graduation ceremonies.

Tired of chemicals in your home? Why Not Make Your Own Non-Toxic Household Cleaners?

This nifty infographic by BrightNest shows you how:

BrightNest is a free service that helps homeowners by providing customized tips, weekly reminders and step-by-step instructions on how to care for their home. For more tips, you can sign up via their website or blog and find more useful and ecological friendly advice.

MTV Popland

arangostudio is known to collaborate on many projects with different partners and allies. We believe in coming together to provide solutions for our clients or those of other small businesses that can benefit from our joint effort. 
 

One of our most recent collaborations was for MTV Networks and the launch party for a new soap opera style show called Popland that was taking place in Bogotá. Mirona, the company in charge of organizing the event, contacted us so that we could develop a concept for two sets of invitations. One set that was to be sent to the general public and the other to VIP guests.

The show tells the story of a girl who becomes a paparazzi and how her life evolves around celebrities and gossip. We decided to focus on the paparazzi aspect, creating two invitations that played on the concept of making the guest either a paparazzi taking the picture or a celebrity having his/her photo taken.

One of the original concepts was to create a pop-up card that would resemble the flash of a camera when opened.

For VIP guests, we used point and shoot disposable cameras with the logo and look & feel from the show.

How to fix blue links on your blog in Blogger

A few weeks ago we were having problems with our arangostudio blog in spanish. From one moment to the next, we ended up with very ugly and very blue links that were underlined! Our blog now looked like the original web pages back in the day. 

After several attempts to fix this issue using the design and layout templates, we were still having the same problem. Until eventually we figured out that our problem was Microsoft Word! We were editing our copy in Word and then cutting and pasting it into our blog. Apparently, this process was adding additional code that was overriding our settings.

If you are having this problem as well, here is what you need to do:

"Scroll down through the blog and see if you can pinpoint where the change happened. If all the posts look fine after a certain point (ie: older posts are OK) then the one with the colour change is the one that is causing the problem - and this one will affect all the new posts written after it.

Go to Edit Posts, then tick the box beside the suspect post and click on Edit. This brings the post back up onscreen. Click on the Edit Html tab (right next to the Compose tab). This lets you see all your code.

To find out if this particular post has the fault, click CTRL + F on your keyboard, which opens up a toolbar just above your bottom toolbar (at the bottom of your screen, just above the Start button).

You'll see a white box with Find: beside it. Type in a:link and hit Enter. If your post has the problem I had (ie: the colors kept defaulting to blue & purple, and overriding the color codes you typed in in Settings) the section will highlight for you (see below). This only works if you are already in the Edit Html view.

Right - you found it. Now what do you do? Take it all out. You'll find you have a ton of Word code in there. Click over to the Compose or Preview views to see how it looks, and whether you have deleted anything important. If you did, hit Edit Posts again and when prompted to Save or you'll lose your work, don't save it (because you DO want to lose it) then go back into Edit Post and have another go. If it's only one item (or typo) then right-click your mouse to Undo.

You'll find the Word stuff is very obvious - a whole chunk of code, and in there is the font: blue etc stuff. There will also be some code immediately after about underlining, which you also don't want. As per the link I gave you at the top of this post, your code will look something like this (notice the highlight:

a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {color:blue; text-decoration:underline;
text-underline:single;}
and
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple; text-
decoration:underline; text-underline:single;}

Once you have got rid of all the code you don't want, hit the Save Now (blue button, on the right) which saves as a draft, then view the blog - all your link colors should have changed. If you are happy with everything, you can now go ahead and Publish Post, and your link colors will be back to what you want them to be."


The text above comes from Susie Jefferson's blog http://1stfloorflatcomputery.blogspot.com/2009/04/blogger-links-colour-problems.html

Post-It Note Desk

Here's another well designed, fun and functional object. It's the Post-It Note Desk! Perfect for all of us designers and creative types or just for those of you who like to draw, doodle and write yourself reminders. Created by Soup Studio in Milan, it was made to function just like an actual Post It Note pad where you tear off a page once it has been used. The "table" can be replaced by another "pad" when you are done. 

Eco-Conscious Indoor-Outdoor Rugs

At arangostudio we are always interested in great designs and patterns and if these happen to be part of an ecological friendly object, even BETTER!

This is why we are excited about the new rugs created by Fab Habitat. These indoor/outdoor rugs are not only made out of recycled materials, but they are also reversible and also very easy to clean.

To see more designs, colors and patterns, check out www.Fab.com

March 22 is World Water Day

Birthdays can change the world // a story from charity: water fundraisers from charity: water on Vimeo.

Last week many of us were reminded of the damaging consecuences of not having water and how it affects people worldwide but few of us were informed on what can be done to help.

In the past, we have written about charity:water, the non-profit organization dedicated to bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. On March 22, World Water Day, charity:water decided to focus on the positive rather than the negative by inviting us to share the efforts made by many to bring clean water to those who need it the most. A simple, clean and engaging website was launched to tell the stories of those who have contributed by giving up their birthdays and they invite us to do the same.

Many of us at arangostudio have given up our birthdays to help this cause. Today we want to encourage you to see and hear what other fundraisers have to say by visiting charity:water's new site and watching the video above.

Exactly!

I just read an article from www.designtaxi.com and thought I would share these truths created into posters by graphic designer Anneke Short. The posters are part of a collection called "Confessions of a Designer" which state what many of us designers think but can't always say.