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.