Found type from around our office:

U

Y

K

6

At OrangeRoc we don’t have anything special planned for Earth Day 2009. We live and work in one of the word’s most beautiful places and we are fortunate to have such an awesome view of the Honolulu Harbor from our office. We all feel blessed to call Hawaii our home. We reap the benefits of warm weather and clean air and water year round, and we are truly thankful for what the planet gives us every day.

As I was preparing to write this entry I thought about all of the ways OrangeRoc operates in a “Green” way. But the more I thought about all of the ways we are green, the more I realized that being green is not hard and a lot of times makes life easier without really even thinking about it. At OrangeRoc we do a lot of green things almost selfishly because it benefits us and just by coincidence also benefits the planet. Here’s a partial list:

We work with the lights off: Our office has huge windows that let in lots of natural light and the florescent lights that the office came with actually make working and designing on the computer harder. So we turn the lights off. It makes our jobs easier. If you ever visit us don’t worry, we are not vampires we just create better in natural light.

Melinda recycles our cans and bottles: This is just minimal effort for her to take them home and it helps our garbage can stay less full.

We recycle office paper: This is no extra effort. The paper just goes into our office recycling bin instead of the trash can.

OrangeRoc pays for bus passes: The majority of our staff rides the bus to work every day. This helps reduce fossil fuel use but more importantly and selfishly it reduces stress by not having us personally driving in rush hour traffic which, if you have ever lived in Honolulu, you know how bad it can be.

OrangeRoc is located close to our clients and vendors: We choose to have our office in the downtown core to be close to many of our clients and vendors so we can easily walk to meetings as well as drop off and pick up materials. It’s just more efficient for us. Sure it saves on gas but we’re all about saving minutes.

OrangeRoc encourages use of electronic documents: Both in our own office and as a recommendation to our clients, we see this as a mode of efficiency and it just happens to be green as well. We send our clients mock ups of the creative work we do in PDF format reducing the need to print and mail. We correspond with them via email like most of the world does these days. And we always are pushing our clients to market online. It’s cheaper, faster, has broader reach and saves trees and fossil fuels for delivery. Websites, email blasts, social networking and online advertising is the future of marketing and it just so happens to be green as well.

In our office we offer filtered tap water: We have a really fancy refrigerator with a really fancy water and ice filter. The water is delicious and if you stop by for a visit we’ll give you a taste. By offering filtered tap water instead of bottled water we reduce our impact on the earth by not buying plastic bottles of water. The energy in producing the plastic, filling and packing the bottles and then shipping them to our office is staggering when you think about it. We just think it’s easier to fill a glass from our fancy refrigerator..Did I mention the refrigerator is really fancy?

We print local whenever possible: Typically we do print jobs with the vendor who bids the lowest, but more and more we are considering the impact of the fossil fuels used to ship printed items from the mainland to Hawaii. Whenever possible we use local printers. It’s good business and good for the planet.

Well, that’s just some of the ways OrangeRoc is helping the planet. But like I stated previously, a lot of these things we do first because it is smart for our business and these smart things also just happen to be green. See it’s really not hard to help the planet..Happy Earth Day!!

At OrangeRoc we’ve noticed a trend lately in the design community – A proliferation of websites and Craigslist postings touting a unique logo for $50 with unlimited changes. All we can say is, you get what you pay for. Anybody with a computer and a copy of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop can claim to be a “Designer” but like any profession it takes a lot of time and skill and also TALENT to create logos that are impactful, unique, and convey your image across all communications vehicles from a pen to a t-shirt to a billboard and everything in between. What price does one put on a logo? Well the question could be asked about any product or service. You can buy a new car for $15,000 and that car will get you from A to B in good fashion but you could also buy a new car for $50,000 and that car most certainly get you from A to B but with much more comfort, panache and style. You are telling the world that you have “arrived” in a $50,000 car instead of just “arriving” in a $15,000 car. The same thing can be said for design. The design community is made up of professionals who have spent time in school and on the job perfecting their art. What price do you place on your company’s image? Do pay your dentist $50 to perform precision work on your teeth which is part of your personal image? Why would you spend only that much on your business’ image?  Check for yourself- do a google search for “50 dollar logo”. Go to these websites and look at the examples of their work. It’s not very good and if you look at enough examples you will see certain similarities in all of them. They have a formula to their design and that formula is not a very good one.

At OrangeRoc we charge the industry standard for our logos as well as all of our work. We place a high value on the time and talent of our staff and we think that any company who values their own image and reputation will see that it is worth far more than $50.

For an entertaining look at someone who tried one of these $50 logo companies click here, “The 50 Dollar Logo Experiment”

OrangeRoc attended the Hawaii Advertising Federation’s 2009 Pele Awards on April 4th and walked away with 8 awards for 6 of our clients. The winning work ranged from complete multi-media campaigns, packaging, and advertising, to websites, graphic design and sales videos. Every year the Pele Awards honors the best creative work in advertising, marketing and design produced in the state of Hawaii. We were thrilled with our success and that we have so many amazing clients who allow us to produce work of such high quality – YOU ROC!

Some of the winning work is featured below and more can be seen on our website!

We had a bit of excitement at the OrangeRoc office on Tuesday. The fire alarm went off in our building and although most times it’s just a test and we ignore it, this time we thought we should join the herd and head down the stairs. When we got outside we noticed smoke coming out the side of the building and waited around for a few minutes thinking the fire truck would be here shortly. No truck came so I thought I better get on my cell and call 911. Turns out I was the first one to make a call and the firemen arrived to save the day. We think it was just the building’s generator that overheated. All ended up good and once again OrangeRoc saved the day.

We help put out fires on a daily basis for our clients and now we  can say we help put out real ones too.

It’s hard to believe that this is our third year in business especially when I didn’t even plan to start a business. I thought I was moving back to Hawaii to write a screen play, get in shape, hike, sail, and swim, raise Chase and marry the man of my dreams.

So thirty days later and twist to a story Laura, Kristen, Andy and myself set-up up shop and have not stopped since. We are great team, very diverse in talent, have fun, work hard and accomplish a lot. Some special highlights over our tenure at OrangeRoc are: the effort it took to purchase our office space and design and remodel our space, bringing the opportunity of ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition to Hawaii, and bringing on new team members Rachelle, Terri and Mike. Most importantly we are grateful for our clients and we have put our heart and soul into their work. We look forward to many more years of creating Hawaii’s best marketing, advertising, interactive and design.