2008 is turning out to be quite the year already; Needmore Designs has hit the ground running. In fact, we may have spent more time chatting with accountants, bankers and lawyers so far than all of last year combined. Whew! Lucky for us, we have a fantastic support team out there and I’m realizing more and more that Needmore wouldn’t be where we are today without them. However, enough businessy calls in a row can get a designer into a bit of a creative funk.

Then, the waters parted and we received a remarkable phone call out of the blue. A woman in New York had come across our new release, Dolcezza, and wanted to let us know that it was the most lovely website she had seen in ages. “I was going to write you,” she said, “but I had to call and thank you for the eye candy.”

It is astounding what such encouragement can do for a person; that call wasn’t just a breath of fresh air, but also a reminder of why we are here and why we got into web design in the first place. So, here’s to a year of creativity and design. And, to our mysterious caller, thank you for taking time to give us a ring. You made our week.

We’ve recently joined One Percent for the Planet, a group of businesses that donate 1% of their slaes to environmental organizations worldwide. In the past, we’ve given to local and national organizations here and there. Most of these donations were spurred by one-time occurances, such as Katrina. One Percent for the Planet is somthing altogether new and different for Needmore – it is a way for us to not only raise awareness, but also to make a commitment to ourselves and the environment that is directly tied to the work that we do.

The list of supported environmental groups is astounding and constantly growing; everything from Global warming to Portland organizations such as Ecotrust and the Oregon Wildlife Heritage Foundation are represented. What environmental group or cause is close to your heart?

Ever wonder about the magic behind our newsletters? Want to know the biggest marketing mistake we’ve made to date? Check out the Needmore interview over at Campaign Monitor. Thanks to David and his team for inviting us over!

Hey, just wanted to remind everyone that we’ll be at the PDX Web Innovators Meeting tonight, 7PM at Equator Coffee. We’ll be showing a preview of our raw foods recipe sharing website and perhaps chatting about our experiences with Cuppin’. We’d love to see you there!

Cuppin’, our coffee tasting site, has been up for several months now and we’re excited to see interest grow! Oregon Live’s Tech Blog recently noted:

Cuppin’ Brings Social Online Networking to Coffee. Want a new way to share your local coffee thoughts with others? Check out Cuppin’ … The site draws its inspiration from the word “cupping”, which means the technique used to evaluate the flavor profile of a coffee. The focus of Cuppin’ is to “help people find, compare, and enjoy coffees from around the world”. Sounds good to me!

Still waiting to hear if we won the Rails Day competition!

Our March newsletter is featured in the Campaign Monitor Design Gallery today. With as much fun as we have creating these monthly newsletters, it was quite a thrill to have one highlighted!

Beyond the design, our writing was also noted:

The copy grabs your attention right from the opening paragraph and doesn’t let go for the rest of the newsletter with featured projects, genuinely useful tips for their readers and more.

We spend most of our newsletter production time writing, using Writeboard to brainstorm each newsletter, passing the copy back and forth until we’re happy with the text. The process is great fun, with each of us throwing in information and odd statements until the newsletter is a real hodgepodge of ideas and personality (well, there are only two of us, but we like to mix it up).

If you are asking, “What is Campaign Monitor?”, read the recent review at Digital Web Magazine. It’s a clear picture of why we use and enjoy CM for our newsletters.

Hey Portland! Team Noboto (that’s us) is mixing music and video at Ingredients – a night full of music, free stuff and 16 original music videos created in the previous 24 hrs by local artist teams using only audio and video samples. The free event is at Holocene – April 15th, 9 pm. Hope to see you there!

Check out the Ingredients website (our donation to the event) – more information will be posted over the next weeks!

Confession: we did not have anything to do, whatsoever, with the making of this website: dailycandy.com

Now that that’s out, hey – we appear to have won an award about a year ago for the making of Daily Candy! Our very first award. Feels…um…strange. And the accolades – at least one person a week writes to tell us of their love for the site and to inquire about hiring us.

Why the misidentification? We created the website for Daily Candy’s talented illustrator, Sujean Rim. Sure, the sites have similar illustration, but the similarity is all Sujean, not Needmore Designs.