We are excited to announce the launch of a newly re-designed website for CRUZ Tequila, a local company that produces an ultra premium tequila with a uniquely soft flavor profile. CRUZ approached us wanting to update their online hub with a fresh look, and develop a brand presence that invited users to find out more about this distinctly different tequila.

While the old site contained a lot of valuable information, the design was cluttered and the site flow was unorganized. We wanted to take the existing content and present it in a more engaging and accessible environment.

CRUZ Tequila has a broad range of clientele, from punk rockers and rodeo fans to affluent doctors and animal lovers. We wanted their site to speak to everyone, so we created a presence that was fun, honest, and approachable to a wide range of people.

After months of research on the adult beverage industry, we structured the content to highlight several important elements for the end-user including drink recipes, spirit awards, and where to purchase CRUZ Tequila. The end result is a site that offers clean, easy-to-access content that can be comfortably built upon over time.

To compliment the design and overall painless navigation, we set CRUZ Tequila up with a content management system to make updates on the fly. The CMS gives CRUZ the ability to edit most aspects of the site, most importantly their upcoming events and list of retailers.

All that being said, what are your impressions of the new CRUZ Tequila website? Love it? Hate it? We’d love to hear your feedback in the comments section.

Now back to the important stuff… Where’d I set that damn margarita down?

When the W Scottsdale approached us about adding some visual interest to the front of their hotel at Scottsdale and Camelback, we jumped at the idea of giving a little life to an otherwise dull arrival experience. Their dramatic 2nd floor WET® pool, which can be seen from the street below, had an empty acrylic box just begging for some attention. The W wanted us to embellish this box with imagery that resembled water, movement and the sexy style they are so well known for.

Working with the existing 3-dimensional red W that, strangely enough, seems to be the only red W anywhere in the hotel. We created an illustrative graphic element that captures the essence of the hotel’s water features and wraps all five sides of the acrylic box. Visitors to the W are now welcomed by a serene splash of purple and blue, accented by a pop of red! You can see the dramatic transformation in the before and after pictures above and below.

If you spend any sort of time on the freeways here in Phoenix, you’ve most certainly come across one of Clear Channel’s digital billboards. Scattered along the I-10 and I-17, these billboards allow advertisers exceptional flexibility with their messages. Whether you want to change up your advertisement throughout the day, purchase multiple spots to increase your number of impressions, or get your specials out at a specific time during the day, digital billboards are gaining steam and emerging as a dominant outdoor medium.

How it works:

Once your digital billboard space has been purchased, you’ll need some eye-catching creative to ensure your message gets out to the target audience. On the Phoenix outdoor network, each billboard has eight rotating advertisements at eight seconds each. As with printed billboards, you’ll want to keep your message short and sweet as viewing time is at a premium. After getting the design aspect squared away, your outdoor ad can be up and running in as little as 24 hours. So not only are printing costs wiped away, but the ability to get your ad displayed is no longer restricted to a monthly basis. Want your ad displayed one day per week? One week per month? Wednesdays at 5pm? A great example is the way various television stations use the medium from around the valley. Got a hot news segment showing on the nightly news, or does Oprah have a special guest on today? As the advertiser, this is about as flexible as it gets, and you can even switch out an ad during the course of the campaign should you feel the results are below targeted expectations.

While some may argue that digital billboards aren’t all I’m cracking them up to be due to exclusivity issues, it all depends on how you approach the situation. Who ever said the advertiser could only buy one eight second spot? With eight spots, each running eight second ads, couldn’t one purchase all eight spots on a billboard? I think so, and with those eight spots, you could display eight different messages that are not only branding your company, but highlighting several important factors of your campaign… And for all my stats people out there, even with 1 spot every 64 seconds, at 17 hours of up time per day, that’s 187,376 spots over the course of a 4 week period. Not too shabby if you ask me.

Digital Billboards in Phoenix, Arizona

All this being said, we recently finished an outdoor digital billboard campaign for London Gold. Being that this is still a somewhat new technology, we were excited to experiment with different color contrasts, and make those diamonds “pop” off the screen as so many clients request. We worked with London Gold to create a variation of ads in order to keep the consumer engaged. Just think, you can hit drivers with variations of the message all while strengthening your brand and gaining exposure. It truly is the new era of outdoor advertising.

I’m just waiting to see when animation will come into play on digital billboards in Phoenix. Is animation something digital billboards can support? If so, are there state and federal laws against motion graphics due to motorist distractions? When I spoke with a rep at Clear Channel, I didn’t really get a definitive answer, and when conducting a search on Google, I came up empty. If you’ve got an answer for me on this one, I’d love to hear it.

Between client work and events it’s been a crazy couple months for Splinter Creative. So… I thought I’d check-in and give everyone an update on several things that are beginning or ending in the old project pipeline.

Twestival Local Phoenix turned out to be a huge success and a great time. With help from twitter nation and area businesses, the localized effort was able to raise $9,332 for St. Mary’s Food Bank. This is double what Twestival Phoenix achieved back in February and exceeded the preliminary goal of $7,000. Our hats off to @chrislee, @aussieheather, @jennycarnie, @amandablum and countless others for organizing the event and getting members of the Phoenix community involved. I don’t know what it is, but the fact that a couple hundred people came together and raised enough money to provide over 65,000 meals to the Phoenix community, kinda makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside As always, looking forward to helping out with the next one.

In addition to Twestival, we’ve had some pretty cool client work the past few months. While I don’t have quite enough room to show everything, here’s a few logos I hand picked from the “need to update portfolio” folder. From left to right: Up and coming skateboard company out of northern California (Ladera), a Scottsdale, AZ based law firm (Bar Urness) and a newly launched non-profit organization (Phoenix Innovation Foundation). It was a pleasure working with all three clients on their respective logos, and we look forward to furthering our relationships with them over the coming year.

And last but not least, Splinter has been working with a couple ladies over at Type A Events to help out with the production of event signage for Crave 2009. For those of you unfamiliar with Crave Arizona, it takes place in the heart of Old Town Scottsdale and treats the world’s culinary community to a celebration of food, wine and spirits. According to their site, the event highlights local chefs, artisans, and one-of-a-kind dining experiences found only in Arizona. Splinter Creative is excited to be a part of this great event, and even more excited to attend (wine and food is NEVER a bad thing). For all the juicy details, be sure to visit the website… And if you end up attending, make sure to track me down so we can share a few spirits and a laugh. Cheers!

With the launch of a new website several months ago, you probably have a decent idea of our style and what we’re all about as a company…  Pair the website with our facebook, twitter and other social networking accounts, and you could pretty much stalk us if that’s the sort of thing you’re in to

If you’ve visited our key players page, you know that I rocked one mean tuxedo during my childhood days.  What can I say, I was a born lady killer.  While many of you have gotten a kick out of our childhood portraits (as you should), humor was only a small factor in why we chose to display ourselves in such a manner.  In our minds, it was important to show current and potential clients our youthful imaginations, and demonstrate that while we’ve grown up, we still like to think big and achieve things others only dream about.  I mean, that’s what being a kid is all about, right?

Albeit the childhood pictures are great (thanks everyone for your feedback) we felt it was time for a mini photo shoot.  Sure, we’ll need a serious corporate head shot for this, that or the other thing, but most importantly, we needed to have some sharp looking avatars for our social networking accounts (I’ve almost got everyone at the office on the facebook, twitter and linkedin bandwagons woot!)  So we got with our creative director, Steve Clark, and asked him to dig up some lighting and other goodies from his old photog days.

It turned out to be a super rad time Tuesday morning at the office.  Not only did we have a blast putting everyone on the spot to come up with an “O” face (or in my case, the People’s eyebrow) we were able to capture more of the personality that is Splinter Creative.  So while the childhood portraits aren’t coming down anytime soon, we figured it was time to supplement them with some current day goodness.  After all, a picture can tell you an awful lot about someone…

To see all the pics, check out our facebook fan page here.

As I write this brief post, I can’t believe it’s been over a month since my last entry…What can I say, time flies when you’re having a good time.

In case you missed the June issue of Sign and Digital Graphics Magazine, Splinter took down the Vendor’s Choice Award from Mimaki in the 2009 Auto Art Contest. We submitted two sets of vehicle wraps to the auto art contest, one commercial vehicle and one set of team racing graphics. While the Cruz Tequila vehicle wrap made the publication as a vendor’s choice winner, the set of Mini Cooper Racing Graphics for RSR Motorsports took home an honorable mention and is featured in the slide show here (slides 40 and 46).

A great honor to take home the Vendor’s Choice Award, it marks the second time Splinter Creative has been recognized for its outstanding vehicle wraps in the trade publication (the Scion won Best Graphics in the December 2008 issue (page 28)). We’re certainly ready for the next competition, and figured until then, we’ll lay on the shameless self promotion pretty thick

Let me know your thoughts on the vehicle designs in the comments below…  Think they rock? Could have done better? You would’ve liked to see…

Thanks to popular folks and networks such as Ashton Kutcher, Oprah, Barack Obama, CNN and ESPN, twitter has officially blown-up in mainstream media. While many people are hopping on the band wagon to follow their favorite celebs, there are others using this hip new social site to brand their business and more importantly, themselves.

With over 1 million users and 3 million tweets per day, twitter alone is the perfect little tool to market your product or service, meet new people, gain a few leads, or land that next big job. They key is beefing up the profile information with intriguing content that gets others to engage in conversations and learn more about you. Just make sure you have that oh-so-important link to either your Linkedin profile (an online resume for you job-seekers), personal or corporate blog, or directly to your company’s website. Not only can this drive traffic to your business or free lance expertise, it helps educate those starving to obtain more information about you online. No point in making those juicy details hard to find, now is there?

Once you’ve got the content locked down, and you’re keeping pace by actively participating in the ever changing conversations that are happening online (tweets, blog comments, status updates, etc) it’s time to give your profile a professional look and feel. However, for reasons unknown, I see more and more users and businesses that aren’t taking advantage of the impact a custom designed twitter background provides. With some basic contact information, a rad color scheme and a couple cool photos or illustrations, you or your company can have a stronger presence in your social network and stand out from the crowd. Just get creative (or hire a creative, cough-cough) and make the most out of your online wardrobe.

The ultimate goal for any type of networking is to get out there and make more connections in the business world, but until Obama changes the length of a day to 36 hours, many of just don’t have time to hit every networking event we would like. Thus why having a unique online appearance, sharing your story, connecting with others, and engaging in the conversation gains trust and credibility from others (which is what building a brand is all about). So while you may have ¾ on lock down, keep in mind that an interesting look conveying your personality traits and/or a little bit about your business, can gain more qualified followers and friends then you ever imagined (click on image to see a custom background we did for @charshaff). Who knows, maybe you’ll even become the next big twitter star!

Just remember to stick to the basics – whether you’re marketing online, in person or through print, a cohesive look is the key to “great success!”