The cobbler’s kids.

It is always a tough task creating a website for your own company. We do this all the time for our clients, but as a creative shop we always want to be…well…creative. After many iterations, we decided the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) approach was best. Get all the good stuff out and available and keep the fluff to a minimum. Really, the problem we were facing was not the look of the site, but the delivery of content.

With that in mind and a blank slate, simplicity became the main goal in the new direction for carbonhouse.com. Building off one of our product sites, venuelements.com, we wanted to keep it uncomplicated, clean and clear, and allow the work to speak for itself. We relied on the typography to create the space, but also improve usability, by providing quick access to all the pertinent information (the good stuff). Taking the single page site concept and amping it up, we used the mootools framework to dynamically deliver the content from our greenhouse content management system and create transitions that aren’t just fluff. These transitions ensure the correct flow of the content to the user and communicate our message.

Design

• Clean, uncluttered design to communicate and focus on work and let the interaction via javascript provide the ‘bling’ or motion
• Single-page format to allow visitors quick access to pertinent information and messaging
• Object-oriented approach to home page spotlight area that showcases recent projects in a less traditional, more unexpected way
• Utilization of sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) to present titles and headers in Helvetica Neue Light, which offers a more sophisticated look than the standardized web font palette.

Technical (all the techy goodness)

• A degradable javascript navigation for users with javascript-disabled browsers allows the site to be navigated while also providing search engine-friendly standard hrefs for our links.
• We utilize AJAX calls with the mootools framework to load page content and project details from our greenhouse CMS, thus avoiding page reload.

Accessibility Benefits

Overall, there are a lot of different ways to handle navigation. By incorporating the degradable javascript within our navigation, we have reduced the possibility of viewers not seeing the site as intended, while increasing the ability of Google and other search engines to find our links.

Author: Taylor Nall

I would describe my paintings as thoughts emerging from my finger tips.

Jonathan Grauel, Director of Media Design, carbonhouse, inc.

Jonathan Grauel, director of development at carbonhouse, will be on hand for a gallery night with the artist for his gallery show, VILLAGES / a collection of visual interactions, at the Warehouse 242 Gallery, Friday, December 5th at 7:00 PM.

Also be sure to get your copy of the the companion book created for the show.
On Friday, September 26th, the Gallery at Warehouse opened its fall show featuring Jonathan Grauel’s work: VILLAGES / a collection of visual interactions.  Opening night saw over 150 visitors attend, mingle, talk with the artist, meet the surgeon, and experience the work first hand. The show presents an evolution of Jonathan’s work from sketch through completed art.

VILLAGES explores and expands on Jonathan’s ‘village’ series. The show reveals some of the mystery behind the process of creation, and the way the loss of a finger from his drawing hand has impacted the way he makes art. This visual trip through live environment sketches, inked gray panels, oil pastels, and 3D installation interpretations is a stunning examination of getting there, being there, and what lies ahead.

The gallery is open for visitors every Sunday 8-12:30 and by appointment through the rest of the year.

Jonathan Grauel was also featured in a cover story of the fall issue of OrthoCarolina Magazine, which features his work and the story of the incredible surgery that has enabled him to continue making art.

Jessica Davis is a recent graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology where she majored in New Media Interactive Development.  “I love a challenge and have a passion for learning new things and am very excited about my opportunity here at carbonhouse.”

Joel Kuehn jumped into the world of design soon after moving to Charlotte in late 2006.  Joel’s passion for creativity and technical functionality lead him to focus on web design as he developed skills through a web-based t-shirt company he started after earning a BSBA from Western Carolina University, majoring in Entrepreneurship.

The site is built on carbonhouse’s Venuelements system, tailored exclusively for major event-driven facilities.

Let’s make fists!

Jeffrey Brown, Writer and artist

As a creative design firm, we find inspiration from other creatives. The weekend of June 20-22, the Heroes convention took place in Uptown Charlotte. The Convention was started in 1982 by the gang at Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find —one of the premier comics specialty shops in the country.

Most of carbonhouse attended the show at some point–as well as many other creatives from around town (Shoutouts to Studiobanks and Marty Kelso).

There were many great guests this year, but what always stands out for me is the Top Shelf Productions‘ booth. They publish outstanding, contemporary graphic novels by some dedicated artists.Two favs generally make the trek to Charlotte—Jeffrey Brown and Alex Robinson. These two excel in the little episodes, slices of life stories and I highly recommended you check out their work.

One of the great things about the Heroes Con is the chance to talk with your favorite artists/writers; they can even provide original sketches for you for a minimal charge. Jeffrey had a great idea this year to create convention trading cards. Three of us had our portraits done by Jeff with a running theme. A little back story: last year Mr. Brown created a self portrait for me with him saying “Let’s make fists.” Jeffrey took that theme and ran with it. Below are Jeff’s sketches of us, which assemble a nice strip. Thank you, Jeffrey Brown!

View more photos from the convention here.

Contemporary Graphic Novels that satisfy:

Blankets by Craig Thompson
Box Office Poison by Alex Robinson
Mother, Come Home by Paul Hornschemeier
Epileptic by David B.
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
Sleepwalk: and Other Stories by Adrian Tomine

Remember, this is an Adobe Fireworks-only tip.

Step 1
Obtain said nasty JPG logo from the web site or client. In this case we will use the Lex Mundi logo.



Step 2
Place logo on the dark background in your layout



Step 3
Turn the logo into grayscale. Either adjust Hue/Saturation under Filters or convert to grayscale (Menu> Commands > Creative> Convert to Grayscale)



Step 4
Invert the logo (Filters> Adjust Color> Invert)



Step 5
Add a color fill (Filters> Adjust Color> Color Fill) and in the Color Fill Dialog box adjust the Blending Mode to Color Dodge. Adjust levels as needed for clarity.



Step 6
Choose the background color as the ground in the logo in the Blending Mode dialog box


That’s it. Hopefully you will receive a vector logo, but this will help when in a bind.

carbonhouse has launched a new website for RBC Center in Raleigh, NC.

The site, powered by Venuelements℠, offers many features including detailed event listings, interactive calendars, seating charts, groups sales, special offers and more.

The RBC Center in Raleigh, North Carolina, is home to the 2006 Stanley Cup Champions Carolina Hurricanes and NC State University Men’s Basketball.

Each year, the RBC Center welcomes over 1.5 million guests and plays host to more than 150 events. The RBC Center continually offers Raleigh, the Triangle, and the Southeast an abundance of sports, major concert tours, and events year after year. The $158 million RBC Center encompasses approximately 700,000 square feet. Four different seating levels provide 18,176 seats for hockey, 19,722 for basketball, 19,500 for center-stage concerts, and 18,800 for endstage 360 performances. Amenities include over 8,000 designated parking spaces, 18 permanent concession stands, over 50 portable concession stands, 37 public restrooms, as well as escalators and elevators throughout the building.

VenuElements is specifically tailored for venues, facilities and performing arts centers. It currently powers the websites for a number of major facilities around the U.S., including Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, Prudential Center, Sprint Center, Target Center, RBC Center and more.

Some of the judges comments included:

“The execution of the green leaf is very nicely echoed in the liquid inside the flask, complete with the white inline.”

“This is a very well-executed logo. The curve of the leaf is a perfect arc to represent flowing water and it possesses great color combination that says ‘environment and modern.’”

“‘Greenhouse’ is well centered between the secondary type and the illustration. If the flash were a bit larger, it would definitely be the focal point instead of being equally important as ‘greenhouse.’”

Artevation is a show of works depicting historic places and properties in Charlotte. The show is a tribute to the late Warren Burgess, an influential city planner, urban designer and talented artist who worked many years for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission and the Town of Davidson. Artevation will showcase many of Burgess’ architectural drawings, as well as the work of the following local artists whose work depicts Charlotte’s architecture and history through photography, fabric art, paintings, woodcuts, illustrations, and more:

• Wendy Arundel
• Nellie Ashford
• Bryon Baldwin
• Diane Davis
• Starr Davis
• David French
• John Howard
• Deborah Langsam
• James Sack

“When I was asked to participate in Artevation I jumped at the chance—especially with the tribute to Warren Burgess,” Sack said. “I had the pleasure of working with Warren for a number of years while I was vice president of the Historic North Charlotte Neighborhood Association. His sketches on the NoDa area are fantastic and were an inspiration for my NoDa series of wood block prints. Warren was a true visionary for Charlotte, and his mark on Charlotte’s fabric is a constant reminder of his work. I look forward to this show.”