Can’t say a whole lot, but we at Needmore are fast at work on a new project. Here’s a little teaser - a fine logo by our dear friend Amy Ruppel!

So stay tuned, we’ll have more to say in the next week or two.

As we head out of the studio for the holidays, we are thankful for so many friends and clients that have shared the past year with us. Happy Holidays to you all! We will return to the studio in the New Year…

Good Morning, friends and clients. Christmas is so close we can almost taste it. Trying to think of a last minute Christmas gift? We’ve just recently added the ability to purcahse gift certificates on the Stumptown Coffee website. Were I to receive such I lovely gift, I’d surely opt for their Anniversary Blend (coffee and jar included). From Stumptown, Our Anniversary Blend is a celebration of our work to date and a tribute to the customers who are part of our family. The blend consists of coffees from the three major growing regions. We truly hope you notice the love that went into this coffee.

We’ve just launched a new blog for longtime Needmore client Presents of Mind.  The folks at Presents of Mind have a strong online presence already (with active Twitter and Facebook pages). Their new blog integrates seamlessly with each of these and takes it a bit further with slideshows of their products.

And, if you have any last minute shopping needs, we have it on good authority that Presents of Mind is open today and tomorrow…

We are coming up on the Year of the Tiger and, while pondering our resolution list, we’re awfully smitten with the calendars coming out.

Calendar by Patricia Kaegi Weiss available on her Etsy page.

Calendar by Amy Ruppel (soon to be) available on her Etsy page.

As the tiger is the first animal of Spring, we tend to see this as a positive sign for the year ahead…

“Be more like Apple and Less Like Dell” and other nuggets from the Needmore crew. We were recently asked a handful of questions by Josh, a student in a Digital Portfolio class at the Art Institute. Josh is focusing on getting ready for the real world in this class by polishing his portfolio’s and talking to people about the design business and how they get started. Below is our advice to Josh and others getting started.

Read more…

Amy Tavern has been a longtime client of Needmore Designs. In the years working with Amy, we’ve seen her designs grow and mold. She’s easily our favorite jewelry designer around (she made our wedding rings even).

Amy’s holiday sale begins today (25% off). But that’s not all she has in store for us. Not only is Amy having a big sale, but it looks to be her last for a while:

i should also mention that this sale marks the end of my collections for now. as of january 31 i will retire everything completely and will take a break from production/collection work for awhile, maybe a year. it’s time for me to really focus on my residency work and i think it’s important to have a clean slate. i will return to production jewelry in the future but it will be all new and most likely very different from my current collections. i still have a lot of work to do to prep the site for the sale and i must say i am really eager to get this one started. 5 years…very cool.

We cannot wait to see what Amy accomplishes in this exciting time ahead!

I’m always going on about how great Apple’s stuff is. Their products are top-notch. And there’s more than one reason why my other products don’t hold up to their standards.

Read more…

Howdy! We are heading out to Lake Mead today on our (sort of) annual Las Vegas visit. We’ll be out of the studio Wedensday, October 7th through Monday, October 12th. Here are a few shots from our Mead vacation last year (the second image sadly shows the waterline dwindling, currently down 43% from capacity). Although we typically are drawn to grey skies, oceans, and evergreens, there is nothing like sitting on a deep blue lake and looking out over the dessert.

Have a lovely week!

This week, Google released the first public version of Google Chrome Frame. This is “an early-stage open source plug-in that seamlessly brings Google Chrome’s open web technologies and speedy JavaScript engine to Internet Explorer.” In ordinary-speak, it lets crappy old versions of Internet Explorer - which many folks still use for one reason or another - work nearly as well as modern browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google Chrome. This is very exciting indeed.

It means that it might be possible, in the near future, for us to design all of our sites to require this, and not have to worry about the many, many problems with old versions of IE. We will be able to spend more time doing design, and less time worrying about technical issues.

Thank you, Google.