You’ll be seeing more as our client expands to multiple locations and plans to franchise. For the moment, a few sneak-peek images of their retail space will have to suffice:

Barn pulleys become lighting fixtures.


Junior high gym lockers become merchandising displays.

Forgotten light fixtures become a hovering chandelier.

On the air, or on the can?

Sammy the Bighorn Sheep.

That’s it for now. Can’t wait to share all the details soon!

PageExpress: One Page. One Week. One Price.

Does this sound familiar? You know your site needs improvement, but you just haven’t been able to push forward because your team lacks the expertise, time and money, or all three. Well, you’re not alone. We see this challenge again and again, and are proud to offer something to help right where you are.

Studiofluid offers a new service called PageExpress to help get you started on the journey to an improved website. We focus on one page of your choice, giving careful attention to the details that will give your site the biggest lift, without the need to replatform. PageExpress is $1,400 bucks, and you’ll have it back in a week.

This service is perfect for companies who some immediate change, even though a total overhaul isn’t realistic at the current time, or those who are curious to see how minor tweaks can make a site more functional or understandable. Either way, it’s a no-risk way to make steps in the right direction.

Small Changes Create Significant Results

When we began, this product detail page lacked focus, due to elements spread across the page and hidden behind tabs, with poor distinction of hierarchy. Key pieces of functionality didn’t show up where you’d expect them to be. By simplifying the interface and rearranging the content, we helped this product page take a big step forward. The new design is like a well-loaded backpack: organized so everything is accessible where and when you need it.

In updating the page, we solved a lot of type and focus issues that can be applied to the rest of the site, getting maximum value for your design investment. What’s more, our design team uses only existing logic and functionality, so no big back-end overhaul is needed to implement, and most improvements can be accomplished with an updated CSS. The finished update includes:

• Title, price and short description are given prominence.
• Technical information is accessible in one glance, but out of the way.
• Product display widget presents key information in one neatly organized block.
• Key calls to action and “Buy Now” button widgets are consolidated and placed in an intuitive fashion.
• Upsells have been reconfigured to make them more intelligible.

Check out PageExpress in Detail

You can download the PDF (1.4MB) to see this PageExpress case study in detail. You’ll see how we assessed the shortcomings of the existing page and what changes we made to improve functionality.

If you’d like to know more about how PageExpress service can help you, contact us to get started or with any questions.

Studiofluid recently launched the website for Black Ribbon—the first and only printer to specialize in exceptional short-run music printing. With hard work and a quality product, they’re achieving success in an ultra-specific niche. (No… they won’t print your cousin’s wedding invitations).

Black Ribbon’s new site highlights their unique printing capabilities, making marketing to new clients more efficient and cost effective. They now attract clients in Los Angeles and New York and everywhere in between.

Over the years we’ve handled all aspects of their branding; from naming and logo design to copywriting photography, print design and now website design & development. We’ve helped craft their story so their target audience quickly understands the value and quality they can expect. Black Ribbon now prints for clients such as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Dancing with the Stars and numerous other A-list composers and musicians.

Congratulations, Black Ribbon! We’re wishing you continued success.

This month we’re working on an educational site for the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) called “Shout.” The Shout program is a joint venture between Smithsonian Institution, Microsoft Partners in Learning and TakingITGlobal.

Shout mobilizes teachers and students from around the globe to participate in collecting scientific data in an effort to understand climate change. The program begins in November and covers a range of topics that relate to environmental responsibility and understanding.

Working across multiple time zones with such notable organizations has made for a fun and exciting collaboration. It’s been fast-paced and far-reaching, with project stakeholders located in Washington D.C., Seattle and Canada, and our strategic partner, LearningTimes, located in New York City.

Studiofluid refined the site wireframe, designed the site visuals—including hand-lettering and custom icon set—then handled the front-end development, with a turnaround time of less than 2 weeks. Whew!

Here’s a link to the live site.

Our current project is still very much under wraps…

We’re developing a cohesive brand language, so our client can differentiate from the competition and utilize their brand as a point of emotional connection with customers. Branding can play an even more critical role in the e-commerce space. After all, unlike a brick-and-mortar store, if a customer isn’t engaged, they competition is only one back-button click away.

Our client is an IR 500 Retailer but that’s about all we can say for now. We’ve completed the competitive analysis, developed customer personas and have compiled all of our findings into a brand strategy document that serves as a roadmap for the identity.

We’ve mostly finished up refining the logo, typefaces and color palettes, and now we’re extending all of the visual language to website graphics and UI, stationery, catalog spreads, print advertisements and more. Our final component will be to deliver a comprehensive brand guidelines document, so that whoever is creating new collateral—whether an internal designers or external vendors—their clients visual branding will maintain consistent branding over the long term.

That’s all we can say for now. Stay tuned!

Yes, it’s official! We’ve received word that the logo we created for the Pasadena Wine Festival will be included in LogoLounge 6: 2,000 International Identities by Leading Designers.

While our primary focus is to create breakthrough branding work that serves our client’s business objectives, it feels good to have our work recognized for excellence by the wider design community. You can check out the rest of brand identity that we created for the Pasadena Wine Festival in the project area.

Congratulations to everyone else who was selected, and thanks to the folks at LogoLounge for the great books you produce. We’re looking forward to getting our hands on a copy.

If you haven’t noticed, gourmet food tucks are somewhat of a craze here in Los Angeles. And the Tango Mango Italian Ice Truck that we designed rolled out this weekend, so we got to go sample flavors and check out the action on Hillhurst Ave in Los Feliz.

The Tango Mango Truck is taking old-school Italian Ice to the Streets of L.A. Our client, Art, is a happy man these days, telling us how customers immediately respond to the branding we’ve developed and are excited to try his product. You can see more of the work we did for him in the project area, including the logo, vehicle wrap and more photos of the truck.

So the truck looks good, but how is the Italian Ice? Insanely good, of course! We only work with clients that we believe in, and these guys have earned our stamp of approval. Creamy, refreshing with chunks of real fruit, give Tango Mango a try when they’re in your corner of Los Angeles—you won’t be disappointed! You can follow every move of TangoMango on twitter.

This weekend we took a Studiofluid outing to hear the Pasadena POPS at their new venue at the lawn at the Rose Bowl. Stuart and I brought our families—we enjoyed the pleasant summer evening of conversation, wine and “All That Jazz” as performed by the POPS.

We get an incredible sense of satisfaction seeing our clients thrive, knowing that we’ve in-part contributed to their success. It was fun to see the logo we designed projected onto the vibrantly lit performance stage, and to see all of the printed materials we designed serving their function.

Thanks to our friends at the Pasadena Symphony for the tickets and memorable performance.

The Pasadena Symphony Association partners with The Americana at Brand in Glendale, California, to host their Musical Circus on the lawn, and we provided some of the supporting materials.

The Musical Circus is a perennial favorite for children 3-8 years of age, which reaches some 5000 children and their families yearly from around Southern California. The Circus begins with the instrument “petting zoo” where youngsters can toot flutes, blow trumpets, pluck violins and cellos and bang on percussion instruments. Best of all, the Musical Circus is free for the whole family.

If you’d like one of these fun coloring pages, come out to the event, or you can download a free PDF. Enjoy!

The folks at LogoLounge have selected our work for inclusion in their prestigious Master Library Collection…

We’re both honored and stoked to say the least. The award and recognition is for our logo & brand identity for Half Badger Records.

The email said:

“Your work has been selected for inclusion in a remarkable new LogoLounge project, ‘Animals and Mythology’, in the new Master Library series…”

the messsage continued… “What is the Master Library series? Like our existing (and continuing) LogoLounge book series, the new Master Library books will bring you exemplary logo design work from creatives around the world. Our first book in the series, Initials and Crests, is at the publisher as we write and promises to be a new best selling series from Rockport in the model of LogoLounge.

Unlike our original series, though, each book in the Master Library series will focus on a very specific logo design category, to wit:

Initials and Crests
Animals and Mythology
Typography
People
Shapes and Symbols
Nature and Food
Arts and Culture

We hope to include your work in the the Master Library series, Animals and Mythology.”

The Master Collection will be published by Rockport and should be released in July 2010. Amazon already has it available for pre-order.