Growing up I had the opportunity to travel all over the world visiting about 15 other countries, flying to places such as Korea, Germany, Central America and even Siberia. No, it was not cold in Siberia because I went during the summer time. It was quit nice except for the mosquitos. They were huge and everywhere when you left the city!
In all of my travels there was always one big problem. I had to get on an airplane! I am terrified of flying. I am not sure if it is the fact I am about 30,000 plus feet in the air going 700+ mph or I freak myself out thinking who is going to fly the plane if something happens to the Pilots?
My preferred method for traveling around the country is to drive. I love the ability and flexibility to sight see on my road trips and yes, it may have to do with the fact I am in control.
Well, with all of my concerns I think I may have found my solution. This solution will help meet my desire to sight see on my travels, but also give me a little more control when it comes to flying at a lower altitude and not worry about crashing. The solution, the Flying Car! They have now successfully created a car that transforms into a plane which also has a parachute. If there is a problem with the plane while you are in the air you can deploy a parachute that will help safely bring you to the ground. This is really cool!
I can picture myself driving down the interstate on my road trip and decide to make a detour and transform my car into a plane and take off from the interstate! (Although this may not be allowed. Still fun to think about.) I would not have to worry about the hassell of going to the airport, checking my bags, waiting in line, take off my shoes, board the plane and wait to take off. Then when I reach my destination wait for my ride or have a rental vehicle. I think I could get on board with this kind of flying.
I’m often approached by clients and acquaintances in need of creative consulting, and more than not, there is a common challenge that seems to be the constant these days — I often hear, “I am in a saturated market with everyone in panic-mode to stay relevant, focused on excellence, and above all, to standout and be a trust-brand. I find myself struggling with the future and I tend to paint a rosy picture to my staff and customers while I slowly die inside.” This condition is commonly known as Economastitis. The eroding economy and fickle consumer has most business owners dazed and looking for what I call the Creative Z-Pak. (For those of you playing the home game, the Z-Pak is a 6 pill prescription antibiotic that can wipe out just about any infection in 5 days.) – an affordable quick solution.
Economastitis is an incurable condition, but symptoms can be alleviated by proper consultations and taking Kruhu+Creative everyday.
While the urgent need for marketing/creative help is valid, it has been my observation that the “quick fix” can often lead to a burn-out or a relapse in panic-mode and a dependency on Creative Z-Paks. Making the Kruhu+Creative investment is key.
Take one Kruhu solution a day, or as needed to treat chronic Economastitis – refills unlimited.
A healthy diet of brand control and marketing treatments can prevent most irregularities and maintain a healthy, energetic business without the negative side effects of re-occurring discomfort associated with Economastitis.
If you or someone you know is experiencing symptoms associated with Economastitis, we advise you seek our attention immediately.
Kruhu+Creative is not for everyone. Side effects commonly associated with Kruhu+Creative are: peace of mind, security, brand consistency, excellence, laughter, public attention, revenue, an affection for others, uncontrollable fist pumps, and euphoria.
Kruhu+Creative is not a quick-fix and does not come in a generic form. If you are serious about starting your business off on the good foot or converting your current brand into a legacy, the solution is Kruhu+Creative.
Ask yourself if Kruhu+Creative is right for you, and get back to doing what you were put on this Earth to accomplish.
Visit us online at kruhu.com or call us 706.496.7887
So here I am, walking through my local, massive grocery store scanning the aisles like only a designer can. As hundreds upon hundreds of familiar labels buzz past my eyes, I settle on something new and surprisingly refreshing. I quickly block everything out of my periphery as I pick up the can to further inspect. First thought; wow, weird name. Steaz iced teaz? Really? Something about the simple look of the can really drew me in though. Mostly white space, nice photos of fruit, simple altered text.
It was such a breath of fresh air in an environment where I am used to getting completely visually over stimulated. Needless to say, I bought a can and gave it a try (it was on SALE after all). While the tea was pretty good, the can was what stuck in my head.
On the topic of grocery design, my husband and I have made a bit of a habit of checking out the beer aisle for new, seasonal package design. One that really stands out is the new Miller High Life package. While neither of us can stand the beverage, if I had never tried it before, the new box may just have triggered a Steaz Iced Tea moment.
See, grocery shopping can be fun! Have you ever bought a product based solely on package design? How did it go?
When the iPhone 4 started to make headlines and telling us, the internet will run faster, you can now run multiple apps at one time, have video conferencing, you can even record and edit a HD Video on your phone, this got me thinking about my childhood and asking, “What technology did I have as a child?” There was not a lot, but I remember being a kid and loading up my Apple IIE computer. In order to run one program I would need to install a floppy disk in drive one, then another floppy disk in drive two and wait for the program to load up. I had a few games, but most of them were educational games, which was my mom’s way of saying if you are going to play you will learn as well.
Internet was a foreign concept for me until I was in 7th Grade. I was visiting a friend and he told me he was going to send an email to someone through the computer and I looked at him like he was crazy! He showed me how to get an internet connection by placing the Telephone Receiver on this funny phone contraption (which was a modem, see below) and would he connect to the internet, and yes it did take a while. Some things do not change.
Now today we still have dial up, but most places you have access to high speed internet in your house, at coffee shops, on your phone or even an Air Card in which you can take the internet with you.
Kids today will never know a day without Cellphones, internet, Apps or even text messaging.Technology has changed so much, so fast new things are coming out all the time. Think about the progress of technology and how it has exploded onto the scene. Some people would say it has helped our lives and others would say, it has distracted us from relationships with others. What would your life be if we did not have technology? Can you imagine life without cell phones or even the internet? Would you consider technology a blessing or a curse?
As I have mentioned before, everyone at Kruhu wears an incredible amount of hats throughout the day. While we could muddle up the bottom of our business cards with a long list of job titles, one word really sums up our purpose throughout the day; creative. Constantly trying to think outside the box to help build your business is what gets us going in the morning. Once the creative juices really get flowing, it is next to impossible to turn them off even after hours. I often find myself in my miniature apartment dreaming up ways to creatively solve our space problems. Turns out this guy might have beat me to the punch.
Some of these pieces are really incredible to say the least. Apparently, they are selling like hot cakes in big cities around the world, including places like NYC, where space is at a premium.
I think it is important to incorporate creativity into any line of work, regardless of your job title. The great thing about being creative is that you never can be quite sure what will happen next, stay tuned.
Summer vacations are planned! Details are confirmed.
One detail that enhances the experience, and brings a warm saturation to the soul, is sweet music. Tunes are an essential accessory — the compound of chairs, coolers and towels that will be parked in the sand for 6 days, the back deck that comes custom with the sounds waves and a sweet breeze, AND the evening-relaxing-wind-down-stuffed with a bowl full of shrimp tails. Yes, we have the soundtrack covered. The art of a perfect mix-tape has been diluted over the years due to satellites and such, but nothing beats the personal craft of hand picking the right songs that flow into the soundtrack that is VACATION 2010.
We have 2 mixes that will serve as the glue that binds memories with mindless relaxification. Smack the bag of ice 3 times on the parking lot pavement, click that deck chair back a few notches, apply the sunscreen, and crank your jam-box. You are now ready to drift into ethers… you’re welcome.
Want some of the ear candy? The auditory mocha? The Jamin-on-the-one?
Email us: info@kruhu.com and give us the name of one song that takes you back to that perfect vacation from your childhood and we’ll send you a link and share the love.
Spend time making memories with the ones you love.
Whenever I see that company doesn’t post anything on their blog for a while – I think that they’ve just not made it a priority or they just don’t have anything to say. We at Kruhu has so very much to say. I want to first say thanks to all of those that have contributed to to the projects of last month. We’ve called in favors, asked friends to pull a last night or two and put stress on our families due to the incredible amount of work that May 2010 contained. How can we say thanks? We can’t possibly say it to the degree that your endurance, patience and friendships have displayed. We are just starting to get back to the normal and promise that so very much of it will be shared with you.
In the recent months, we’ve had the pleasure of designing for the music business. A business that I have wanted to dive into since the days of perusing the local record store for hours in search of new music – only to buy the album based on the cover art. In those days I didn’t have the resources that I take for granted now, and the thrill of the hunt was intoxicating.
One of the biggest scores I had was back in 1989 when I snagged a copy of Toad The Wet Sprocket’s “Bread and Circus” album based solely on the album art. To this day, it is one of my favorite albums, and a little over a year ago, I was approached by the band to use one of my designs as a tour t-shirt – a crazy story of chance, opportunity, and fanaticism. I can’t begin to describe range of emotions, memories, and excitement I had during that time. To be in correspondence with the band that I “found” on the rack – the band that my girlfriend, now wife, refer to when reminiscing the “remember when we were dating?” years — only to be front stage at a show where Glen Phillips, the lead singer, stopped the show to ask if I had a request, and he serenaded my wife and I with a song that was the theme song to our college-dating-crazy-good time chapter in our lives. The shear magnitude of of that moment was surreally staggering. He even waited until my wife, who was taking a call from the sitter, came back to join the show. No words.
With all that said – designing in the business that has taken a few licks in the recent years with social media and pro-tools in the hands of every “budding musician”, I am still triggered by the same unscathed enzyme to seek out and envelope myself in the “outer-body, outer-sonic” quality that music provides. I dive in full force – absorbing the gap between ocular, olfactory, and auditory with a sponge of imagination and literal awareness. Yes, it’s the “fun stuff”, but to me it is a glimpse into intimacy and abstraction – a collage of ideas, collaboration, and emotional barriers. To me, it’s more than drumming up a cool design. It’s an investment into my passion and the avenue to inspire and grab the attention of the person blindly attracted to the “vision”.
A special thanks to Joe and Emily for unselfishly shoving my primitive printout in front of the band, and to Andy and the Sixthman warriors for allowing me fulfill my passion for music – grateful beyond words.
In the world of marketing, our existence is based on relevance. You go forward with your career or your go backward with your career. Our skill set is a constant evolution. This is utterly awesome and absolutely terrifying. You’ll find that any design firm that wasn’t on the front edge of its craft, no longer exists. It’s a wave of creativity and if you fall of your board, you’ll be crushed… or you end up working for someone else.
There are some ways that we stay channeled on the pipe dream of originality and I’d like to share a little bit on the effort in takes. For those of us that aren’t lazy, we read books, have subscriptions to design heavy magazines, focus time on inspiration and bounce ideas off one another. I’d say this was the proper way. Then there are folks like me. I’ve never had a design subscription. I don’t frequent any books on design, nor have bought one since college. It’s terrible. I depend on lack of influence to produce originality. This can result in chaos. I’ve come up with things that look dated or so far into left field that everyone was clueless on what I was trying to achieve. Most of the time, an idea mixed with caffeine arrives while i’m driving or many times in the shower. Note that I said “can” lead to chaos, but many times it leads to something the client never imagined was even possible.
My personal inspiration many times will derive from a client that I’m working with. If I can understand their dreams and put myself in the shoes of someone I’m working with, then I can try to align myself with their vision of a particular company. Once I really know what the vision is, it becomes a lot easier to accomplish the goal. Actually, I see the success of the companies outcome determining the success of the project. We don’t design to win awards. We design to win businesses. For me personally it takes on the form of becoming a solution database for any sort of situation. In multiple cases, I’ve lead a client to another company who offered a solution that met their goal more accurately for less money. In the end, we end up a company known for trust and in a service based industry – trust is most valuable thing we can have.
Most days when I come home from work my husband asks the standard, “What did you do today?” Obviously this isn’t meant to be a trick question, but there are days when it takes me a few minutes to rewind to the morning and think of all that was accomplished in one day. It gets really ugly if he asks what the guys were working on.
So anyways, today I decided that I would actually try to keep track of everything that was accomplished and how many different hats we wear throughout the day. For me, the day was started by hammering out a few kinks in two different sites that we are very excited to launch, Wings of Eagles and Neapolitan Gifts. These sites are both painfully close to being finished, so with each new tweak of the code the excitement between the kru and the client grows. It’s nice to see what can be accomplished by a morning of coding and clicking.
After lunch, the focus shifted to producing a set for our favorite new friends, Bawby and Rawtny. They are very excited to officially announce to the world the details for Papa Joe’s Banjo-B-Que at their press conference tomorrow morning at 11:30 on CBS News 12 and others. Switching quickly from web site designer, I threw on my “colorer” hat and dove into the project at hand, putting the finishing touches on a proper background for the pigs. The goal was to give these pigs a pad that matched their incredible attitude and I think they will approve.
Switch to after dinner, back to the space to let the real work begin, power tools! Making easels and a stand for our backdrop was the task at hand. Crank on the power saw and fire up the drills. With the tunes cranking and the wood chips flying, the 2X4′s seemed to put themselves together.
All in all, it is incredible to look back at how many hats we wear throughout the day. Keep in mind that this was only my day, an outline of everyone’s accomplishments for the day could take up a small novel. Combine four workaholics and all of their different skills and the possibilities are endless. Moral of the story; no job is too big or too small, too abstract or too simple, we treat them all the same. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have a job that has the ability to take someone’s business to the next level, whether it be by coding, cutting, clicking, or “coloring”.
