shotgunflat

Winter Just Got a Little More Fun.

We’re in the midst of handing off images, css, and xhtml to the the capable guys at companyBe. When this project is done, we’re going to have one heck of a fun site on our hands.

Jacadi Gets a Small Makeover

Tonight we launched phase one in the round of improvements to the Jacadi USA website. While small, we believe that they will be very effective.

First, we released the Fall 2007 Preview page and the accompanying flipbook.

Second, and more importantly, the Spring/Summer 2007 catalog, now on sale and with free shipping through Monday, August 13, has all new photography, courtesy of Mr. Ed Nute.

On August 15, we’ll be launching the full Fall 2007 catalog.

e3

We’ve been working on a fresh release of our ecommerce application for the better part of 5 weeks now, and the progress is satisfying. We’re creating a scalable, robust application (essentially a re-write of our successful, four year-old java-based app) styled with a simple, light-feeling front-end. We’ve decided to post some screenshots of the UI, especially for the benefit of the nine customers we have all set to go who have been kind enough to sign up for the service sight-unseen.

The screenshot below gives you a sense of the clean, simple interface.

SVN for Designers

We’ve been quietly but diligently working on the new release of our ecommerce tool, due out this fall.

Among the excellent tools that we’ve been using to make life easier for us is Syncro, an SVN client with a small price tag (currently $59, with a one year maintenance pack included).

I’ve used SVN with thoughtbot in the past, and Syncro just makes it quicker and easier for the team.

Take a look.

Reachable Rapture

At roughly 11:53 this morning, I was struck with a ravenous, inescapable and painfully immediate desire to eat. My pupils dilated, my palms began to sweat, and I became strangely conscious of how various objects on my desk might taste, regardless of their edibility. I closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and mustered all of the self control at my disposal.

It was ok. I could walk to lunch.

Those who have been around me for more than a few hours know that I enjoy eating. It doesn’t really matter WHAT I eat, just that I need to; frequently. I always say a packed stomach is a happy stomach, no matter what you’ve packed. For example, just yesterday I lunched on three grilled cheese sandwiches, four glasses of chocolate milk, a bowl full of ice cream and a half wedge of Dubliner cheese. Not the most delicious meal in the world, but it did the trick. I wasn’t having any food related panic attacks for at least three hours.

This is why working at shotgun is such a treat.

Having grown up in the Middle-of-Nowhere, NH I can’t tell you how nice it is to work right next door to the center of Middleboro. At any given moment, you are within walking distance of at least 5 dining options and a short drive from perhaps a half dozen more. That one stop light - which is central to all the exciting bits of Middleboro - seems downright urban some days. There’s the greasy pizza place, the soggy BLT place, the unfriendly greek place, the sorta-kinda dunkin donuts place and last but not least, the gas station (which serves a surprisingly wide variety of cokes and candybars). Each one I have come to love for different reasons over the past nine months; some for the food, and some for the service.

As it turned out, this particular story had a happy ending. I calmly got up, walked down the street, and treated myself to three bagels and two iced coffees at the kinda-sorta dunkin donuts. Then I stopped by the soggy pizza place for a lunchtime slice, and finally got a salad from the unfriendly greek.

Middleboro, you’ve made my day.

Casino Talk: Putting Middleboro on the Map

shotgunflat is located in Middleboro, Massachusetts, a smallish town best known for cranberry bogs, Tom Thumb, and Little League Baseball.

We’re located right in the middle of town—a downtown that really needs a boost. Recently, we’ve seen some improvements to the downtown area, specifically by way of some new retail shops like Hollyberries (a gift shop) and David Alan Salon; rennovation projects on several facades; and an art gallery boasting fine art from more than 40 local artists. Not long ago we were invited to join the Downtown Middleborough Business group, and we’re excited to be a part of a downtown on the mend.

But in all reality, Middleboro stood to remain in relative anonimity, until, of course, the casino talk started. Not long ago, hundreds of acres of land were purchased from the town by the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. At this time, the town and the tribe are negotiating an agreement that would allow for the tribe to further their plans to build a world-class casino resort in Middleboro. The town is buzzing. Reporters and young ladies asking voters to sign petitions are a regular sight in front of the post office. The town is quite divided. Bumper stickers read “NO CASINO” on some cars, and “Casino-friend.com” on others.

Of particular interest to us is the fact that both groups have created websites (here and here) to make their cases. And while both sites are seriously hurting in the design and information architecture departments, it’s really interesting to find two grassroots groups in a town known for anything but tech taking advantage of the web.

It’s hard to predict what will happen with the casino project. One way or another, the decisions made this year will affect this town for generations.

Letter from a client

Below is a note we just received from Kevin Woodcock, one of our newest clients.

To The shotgunflat Team,

I wanted to follow up with you regarding some feedback I have been receiving from associates with in my industry, customers, and my personal thoughts.

As a consultant that specializes in providing professional correspondence programs for my clients I viewed the creation of my website as an essential part of my business. The website had to contain the correct balance of esthetics, technology, and of course relay my business benefits to visitors clearly.

It was refreshing to work with a group of technology experts that understood getting my business message across was as important as the look and feel. The collaborative tools and milestone reviews embedded with in your process assured that our vision was matching through out the development phase .The project came in on budget, on schedule, and exceeded my expectations.

Colleagues in the industry have relayed to me that my website is the new benchmark to be reached for. All customers who have shared feedback comment on the clarity of my business offerings. In short I am proud of the Touching Clients website.

I consider Shotgunflat Creative Agency to be a valued business partner and look forward to working with your team again. Thank you for a job well done.

Sincerely,

Kevin Woodcock

Development Tools

Great Naming

Stowe, VT is full of small businesses catering to the region’s throngs of year-round tourists. Many of them sport Austria-themed architecture and names (e.g. The Innsbruck, Alpenhaus, etc.), others use the Stowe name and logo for themselves (Stowe Self-Storage, etc.), and still others are just plain blah (The Golden Eagle Resort). One service-based business in town that got it right is the personal concierge service, M’Aidez. In French, it’s “help me.” In English, when pronounced, it’s well, May Day. I got a laugh out of that every time I drove by on my way to the mountain.

Note: Unfortunately, there’s more to a business than the name—I haven’t seen the M’Aidez sign for about a year now, which can only mean one of two things—they either moved to a new location, or they needed an SOS of their own.

Summer is Shaping up Quite Nicely

July and August are both beginning to look like exciting, busy months at the ‘flat. Today alone we got the go ahead for projects with two new clients-Touchmark (Boston), and Method Advisors (Boston). In addition, we’re well underway with the design and development of a very exciting project with BOG Sports (Portsmouth, NH). Launches will be coming very soon with NorthStar Insurance (Wellesley, MA), TopNotch Design Studio (Easton, MA), RichMay (Boston), Grana and Mau (Los Angeles), and several others.

And then, there is the internal stuff—LifeSites, which will be ready to roll any day now, and E3, the new-and-improved ecommerce application that we’ve been continuously updating and improving since its initial release in 2004.

All said, it’s going to be a busy summer. Not that I’m complaining.

Happy 4th.

Google Makes Another Acquisition

I’ve been playing around with Grand Central a little bit for about 6 months now, since a client referred me to them as an example of a design they liked. In my inbox this morning was the announcement that they’ve been bought by Google, that ever-growing 2.0 vacuum.

Here’s the announcement:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/all-aboard.html

Making a Switch

One of the nice things about running your own business is that, on occasion, you get to make unilateral decisions in the wee hours of the night. For the foreseeable future, we’ll be using tumblr to post entries to our weblog. It’s super-fast and easy, and that’s what we care about for now.

Drew has joined the realm of Mac users at the studio, giving us a very nice workflow (we also converted his HP machine to our new in-house webserver, which is also nice). My guess is that by next week he’ll be sporting that white Apple logo on his car.

I found that many of the entries in the old blog were well worth keeping, so I’ll be popping them back into action here as we go along.