Carrot Creative Blog

Carrot Creative was tapped to create a website and visual campaign in response to the catastrophic earthquake that hit Haiti in January 2010 through Hope, Help & Relief Haiti.  Created by a conscious community of leaders in music, fashion, film, finance and art, Hope, Help & Relief Haiti was established to become an agent of change for the rebuild and renewal of the devastated nation.  Shaped from the collaborative efforts of Andre Harrell, Donna Karan’s Urban Zen Foundation, The Mary J Blige and Steve Stoute Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now (FFAWN) and Andre Balazs, Hope, Help & Relief Haiti sets out to galvanize a community in response to Haiti’s immediate need to rebuild.  Through a new initiative aimed at bringing “Tents Now, Home Tomorrow” to the people of Haiti, a kickoff fundraiser was held at The Standard on Monday, February 8th to get the ball rolling on the new program.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re officially Hollywood big shots. Well, almost.

After much anticipation, Carrot Creative has completed our first film site, and what better way to lose our film site virginity than with the cinematic adaptation of Tucker Max’s New York Times bestseller, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell?

Some exciting news on the next Kick Ass addition to the Carrot Creative team.

Jacob Cass will be joining Carrot Creative in the beginning of 2010.

As he describes on his website, he’s a self-employed graphic designer, specializing in the fields of corporate identity (logo) design, web design, print design and branding with the majority of his time spent designing and implementing marketing promotions for small businesses such as logos, websites, brochures, letterhead, business cards and more.

But really, who IS Jacob and why did we hire him? (via Twitter to boot!—check out how we lured him in on his own blog post announcing the news!)

I had the pleasure of attending a NextNY event last Wednesday with Carrot Creative’s own Kristin and Maury in Time Square. The Topic - Does Design matter to Startups? The discussion was led by designers Crystal Beasley, Kevin Kearney, Nicole Tecco Reece, Dagny Prieto, and Stefan Lawrence. The meet-up was to help entrepreneurs better understand the role of a design team (often looked at as a wild, type-loving troupe of hippies) in the greater scheme of things while running a business.

So, will bringing on designers really matter, or does having your product or service “work” outweigh how it looks? Here are some insights from the discussion.

TR3 released their latest album “Radiance” in January, and we had the pleasure of assembling the artwork for the band. Tim Reynolds had a pretty clear concept in mind, featuring an abstract photo he took himself while on tour with DMB last summer. It was a ton of fun hanging out with Tim, Mick, Dan & Tour Manager Fluffy (and Marcus Eaton Trio) at a show this past Fall, as we started work on the project, and a pleasure to bring their vision to life. Thanks to Kitty Bateman for the recommendation. You can pickup TR3’s “Radiance” here, or read more about it here.

Also, check out >carrot creative in the liner notes, and look for Tim on tour with Dave Matthews Band in 2009! If you’re interested, take a peak at some “Radiance” concept art & wallpaper.

We’ve had the pleasure of working with the Peter G. Peterson Foundation to launch a site dedicated to demystifying the national debt. Owen and Payne, brothers in accounting, take users through the haunting debt figures and explain exactly what it means to each individual American.

While this is ridiculously scary, our team here saw the great opportunity in this to use comedy and social media to showcase the current situation and reach out to consumers on a less formal basis. Check out the website where you can learn why YOU owe the government an additional $184,000 on top of your 2008 taxes at owenandpayne.com and on Twitter at @OwenandPayne.

We just wanted to thank Dave Matthews Band & Redlight Management for asking us to design the download page for the track “Funny The Way It Is,” the first single from their upcoming album “Big Whiskey & The GrooGrux King” (available June 2nd). You may have seen Dave and Stefan tweet the link earlier today- look for more Carrot/DMB work next week!

I just wanted to say thank you on behalf of the entire @CarrotCreative, for the positive feedback & numerous features of carrotcreative.com. We really had a blast putting together our site, and it was a great way to test out some ideas and technologies, creatively. We’ve been featured on numerous CSS sites (css WOW, cssimport, CSSclip, CSS Remix , to name a few) for inspiration to others. We’ve also been cited as an example for designing cityscapes (Lee Munroe) and wooden websites (FarStyle.com). We’ve even received feature for just general inspiration (The Best Designs), and even a nice nod to our name & brand (DesignO’Blog). Finally, we had some recognition for our use of jQuery (Build !nternet & another link I’ve misplaced), which powers the sliding navigation & the real icing (and sprinkles) on the experience of the site.