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openbox9 takes Manhattan

michael — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 20:22:40 +0000

Outside of Washington DC there is the nice (lesser known) city of New York that hosted the recent Global Leadership Awards Dinner. openbox9 had the pleasure AND honor to attend. We primarily traveled to celebrate the host, AICGS, but an added perk was the chance to check out the design work we did for the event and the rebranding work we did for the non-profit. Below is an account of our expedition to the Wall Street neighborhood.

Hannah and Nathan in front of the other Brookland called Brooklyn

Hannah does a new yorker impersonation - nailed it.

Calling it a dinner was slightly misleading as they fed us the programs we designed. tasty.

The openbox9 representatives, Nathan, Michael and Hannah

Hannah leads a packed room of empty chairs to a rousing rendition of "danke schön"

Michael stirs the crowd to sitting applause and accepts the dented punch bowl award for cheesy photos

AIGA’s Lightning Strikes… strikes Nov 17

michael — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 02:38:01 +0000

We were honored to help-out our local chapter of AIGA with a visual campaign for an upcoming “night that will awaken your mind with inspiration and creativity.” Imagine what mischief could happen if your mind was woke up… with volts of pecha kucha (20 slides in 20 seconds) Registration is open – check it out creatives!

Summer of Launches

michael — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:41:51 +0000

As summer officially ended last week, a summer where we received news of NASA never launching a shuttle again… I thought I’d cheer us up about celebrating our launches this summer. There were many for us astronausigners to float on about (in no particular order)

Ethnotraveler
Experience the crossroads of culture from your livingroom. www.ethnotraveler.com

East Africa Ventures
A wonderful group of bighearts working to relieve Sudan through micro-enterprise strategies. eastafricaventures.org

GraceDC Downtown
An outstanding church with a new look and dynamite custom built features. www.gracedc.net

Mckinley Marketing Partners
Partnered with our friends at Design Army to develop a crafty recruiting tool for marketing geniuses. mckinleymarketingpartners.com

Atlas Theatre
We love the arts here, so we loved developing this WordPress site with our friends at The General Design Company. atlasarts.org

Cause Placement
Heard of ‘product placement’? Now wouldn’t it be great if non-profits could promote their causes in the media? www.causeplacement.com

Revive Your Heart also revived their website with our design and the crafty development work of Five Q. www.reviveourhearts.com

Razoo’s Live PC Give PC
24 hour barnburner event raising money for the causes of Park City Utah. livepcgivepc.razoo.com

Razoo’s Give to the Max Day DC
24 hour hootenanny event raising money for the causes of the Wasington DC area. give2max.razoo.com

Public Religion Research Institute
At the intersection of Religion and the Public square you’ll find this content rich gem of a site www.publicreligion.org

AICGS’s Global Leadership Awards Dinner
I love RunDMC, which means I love adidas. What great joy to design a site for the CEO of adidas who is being being honored. www.aicgsglad.org

Kathy Worek Group
Homes need a champion like Kathy to sell them, that’s why she needed a team like the designers General Design Company and developers openbox9 to build her a superhero website. www.kathyworekgroup.com

Printed projects can’t launch but people can now physically hand this to someone:

National Wildlife Federation’s 2010 annual report covering their work in the Gulf

What can openbox9 launch for you?!

openbox9 is looking for a designer!

michael — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:09:20 +0000

Ready to use your design talent for good? Ready to work in an environment that will challenge you with exciting responsibilities? Ready to have fun designing comprehensive solutions?

We would like to hear from you.

Designers at openbox9 are:

Well versed in designing positive user-experiences for online projects
Understand the importance of function before form
Committed to seeing our clients succeed
Able to bring in visually compelling expressions
Students of branding organizations and campaigns
Passionate about the influence of design in society

The design position we are looking to fill will require a high level of design skill, creativity, time management, a good sense of humor, and dedication. You must be both independent as well as collaborative, thus being able to discuss your ideas and work under art direction.

Requirements for the position:

Currently we are open to senior designers and designers with 2-3 years experience
Fluent in Photoshop, Illustrator, Mac environments (InDesign experience a plus)
HTML/CSS knowledge key
Ability to self-manage time and collaborate with team

Don’t apply if:

You are looking for a ticket to wealth – we are cost-considerate for our non-profit clients.
Working in a home-office turns you off – you don’t like the idea of little cute kids talking to you about butterflies
You don’t like music

What about us you say?
We are a small but mighty studio with our office in Brookland, DC. Our work ranges from identity development, branding, web design, print media, online marketing, search engine optimization, and programing. Take some time to look around our site…

How to apply:
Send your cover letter, resume and link to your online portfolio to info@openbox9.com

Spring is ringing

michael — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 02:00:17 +0000

As our eyes stick with pollen and our hearts ooze out joy from the warmth, we are not charging into spring with idle hands. Much is happening in our international studio (its true – Joe works in Canada):

Wrapping up

National Wildlife Federation is about to launch its crazy sized blog – over 32 separate blog sites merged into WordPress MU and openbox9 is designing and developing it all.

9Marks will shortly launch its extreme web makeover that we designed and developed in Drupal

WeSupport is a great new start-up that is about to go public in late april that we helped with its full branding and online application design

eCards, ecards eCards – we just finished up the designs and are going into development for NWF’s eCard offering AND we designed eCards to help celebrate Earth Day for Bank of America, Entergy, Alcoa and Pew Center!

Basics Conference 2010 is almost here so we are in the final thrust to complete the print materials.

Wrapped up

Access Partners are the proud owners of a new website, brochure and exhibit booth design – to quote the client: “YAY! This makes me so happy! It looks so good.”

Bank of America’s Make an Impact design is off to the developers and should launch soon

Imagine Schools across the nation are getting fresh brochures in both english and spanish – oh si, we speak espanol… no we don’t but we love formatting spanish copy.

Just started wrapping

The GraceDC church plant website design… 9Marks eJournal cover designs… Convio donation form study with NWF… flash animations… Tilev Design portfolio site (should be hot)… preparing taxes… eating some pie… don’t worry, we have time to help you with your endeavors – contact us today!

The day made for openbox9 – 9/9/09

michael — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:30:25 +0000

Nine, nine, nine — yes, yes, yes, this is the best day! It is the day made for openbox9 and it will never repeat, so please join us in nines… eat nine grapes with nine toothpicks, say “bunny” nine times, scratch your foot nine times while singing 99 red balloons… make it pure nine madness.

We are by no means celebrating openbox9 but more giving thanks for all the incredible work we’ve been blessed to work on. Without our clients we are openbox-zero.

Here’s what the folks at openbox9 will be doing on this grand day of nines (in case you’re asking):

Wrapping up an annual report for a charter school organization making a difference in the lives of 37,000 students — Imagine Schools.
Continuing our efforts designing websites for the org that is helping preserve the wildlife for our children – National Wildlife Federation. To date we’ve designed over 30 unique screens and 6 subsites. Not to mention some branding work.
Hard to think about Christmas on September 9th, 2009 but we are designing the online catalog for Food for the Hungry where you can purchase needed gifts on someone’s behalf to help feed the poor.
John Calvin you’re 500 years old. We are fortunate enough to design the promotional materials for the “Calvin in the Capital” speaker series at Christ Reformed Church.
Our grand friends at Parkside Church will soon have a welcome booklet hot off the printing press.
We will also be brainstorming ideas for a buck-rogers themed Crossroads church gathering. Last year we did an elephant on a tightrope for the bigtop theme… submit ideas please!
A community cannot thrive unless both genders play a part in development. This is the study of USAID and we are in the midst of designing a plethora of materials including a 100 page field handbook.
We’ll be checking in on the BEFORE project google ad buys and making necessary adjustments.
Then nine small tinkle tweaks to Taggle’s social-networking site design; nine push-ups everytime someone says nine, nine, nine; and the putting the final touches on a interactive website filled with databases galore (you didn’t know we programmed? Oh yeah we program with vigor and panache).

Those are the nine things we’ll be slinging our computer mouse’s to as we sing to the band The Ting Tings. What nine things will you do?

Craving more updates from openbox9 – check out the refreshed portfolio.

Easter Should Taste Like Chicken

michael — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 02:46:56 +0000

For years now, I have been working semi-laborlessly, on starting a new Easter tradition for homes across the world to enjoy. As far as I know, it remains only a Schafer family Easter event. Eating rabbit, err the Easter Rabbit for dinner may sound horrific but allow me to tell a little story about Plump Peter Cottontail.

Plumb Peter Cotton’s tail hops, maybe even saunters, down the bunny trail to tell the good news of the risen Christ and celebrates by delivering peeps and chocolate statues of himself.

This is the story we’ve heard for generations but through some poor German translation (not really) the symbolic event of what happens next got lost. You see we missed the part about Peter sacrificing himself for our dinner and rising again for the next year’s Easter event. All you need to do is tell him oven or frying pan.

Now isn’t that a nicer, complete and symbolic reminder of what Easter is about? Convinced to start your new Easter tradition? Here are some recipes to get your taste buds roaring:

Ricks Fried Rabbit – can’t go wrong with simple and oily
Hasenpfeffer! German cuisine with bacon!

Have a rabbit recipe? Ideas to add to the new and complete story of Easter and a rabbit? Please share!