I have recently seen the photo for this banner ad on a couple of different websites (Facebook and Yahoo) in a few different layouts. One ad is to encourage people who make less than $45,000 a year to go back to school, the other I saw was for Dads to go back to school, both could qualify for Financial Aid.

I have to say this is probably the worst photo I have ever seen used in and advertisement. At first I thought it was a joke, that no serious ad could use a photo that looks this out of place.The guy looks like a member of Al Qaeda. I doubt a person like that would be surfing online looking to go back to college to better their life. The title should be changed to something like you may qualify to be on the US Most Wanted list.

I would of loved to sit in on the design review for this project when they presented this to whoever was in charge of making decisions to see their reaction or hear what they had to say about it “ok that looks great, it really captures our target audience, go ahead and send that out”. Though they may of chosen this photo to get a reaction out of people or at least cause them to look at it for a few seconds loner than they normally would of.

I wonder how well this ad is actually doing. I’d like to find out.

So I finally got to paint my first piece! I had custom stencils cut awhile back from BlackBooks of the circle DS logo and put them to use last night. They showed me some techniques and let me have at it. I had a blast doing it and can’t wait to do some more decks and other projects. I think it came out alright considering this was my first run. I really like how some of the circles over lay to form arrows coming off of the d or s.

We also bounced around some ideas for a project we are starting and came up with a really powerful idea that we are gonna be working on as well so stay tuned for that!

Enjoy the pics, it looks good hanging next to the 53 piece.

We just received our business cards from BlackBooks and they look sick! I was blown away with how cool they actually are. These photos won’t do them justice as you need to feel the cards. They are on a nice thick cardboard type stock and the etching is amazing. The back of the card features a circle pattern that feels cool to touch.

They are expensive for business cards but well worth it if you are trying to impress a client or potential business prospect. As a web design agency it is critical to have a professional and creative image and these cards help with that.

I also came across a cool free set of watercolor brushes for Photoshop today and used them in a mock up for a project.

We seem to be blogging quite a bit lately, maybe we can keep it up! So keep checking back and tell your friends!

A few weeks ago we ordered some stencils of the Digital Skratch circle logo and have some custom etched business cards coming soon from BlackBook Stencils. They are a cool company located in Fort Lauderdale that specializes in stencils, die cut business cards, etched books, sticker kits, basically anything relating to stencils and graffiti. We will be painting some skateboard decks with our DS stencils and will post pics when those are complete. We also worked with BlackBooks for the signs at our office for AgencyWeb.

We are going to be working with them and my good friend Jay on an upcoming project that we have been talking about for years. It’s exciting to finally get that going. Should be pretty creative and a nice long term thing we can really sink our teeth into.