The Horizon

I found out on Friday that my company (ARC Design) had won 2 more awards; both silver Horizon Interactive Awards. The Horizon Interactive Awards is a prestigious international competition recognizing outstanding achievement among interactive media producers.

(Basically most of the sites we produce has a little bit of flash, these sites have more than the usual.)

 The folks at ARC have worked very hard and even though we did not have the Addy’s this year we have won Graphic Design USA awards, a Summit award and these two Horizon awards. I am very happy with my team, however I know we are capable of even better work in the future. Plus we can win all the awards in the world if we are not making our clients money then we have failed.Congratulations go out to my team and to our clients.

The Summit

My company, (ARC Design) was recently awarded a bronze Summit Award. The Summit awards are an international awards council who hold a contest every year to find the best design in the world, the judging criteria is based on the true purpose of marketing communications; to change, influence, or reinforce the consumer’s knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs.  Over the last decade, the competition has established itself as the premier arbiter of creative excellence for the worlds top design firms.

We were chosen from the thousands of submissions for our work with DK Enterprises. They supply goods to the military and government contractors.  Check out the website, you cannot see all the goods because you have to be a government contractor to see them, but you can see the design and delivery which was key in winning this award.

We are also up for a few more awards from other competitions; winners for those awards will be announced on Friday May 2nd.

Congratulations are in order for the folks of ARC Design for their hard work and dedication.

Party Time

Last year ARC Design moved into a new space, an 1800 square ft office over looking market circle in historic downtown Fayetteville. When we first moved in we had a ribbon cutting open house type of get together. We invited all of our clients, friends and family. The party was a huge success, clients came, mingled, and had a great time. We had a great time also and figured this would be a nice thing to do every year.

We have enlisted the help of Chef Mei again to create an awesome spread as tasty as last year. (You can learn more about Chef Mei and http://www.chefmeipcs.com). We are doing all the last minute things like vacuming the cubicles and dusting. I am trying to get some of the 8 Graphic Design Awards we won back and hung up, they are getting framed right now and we have at least 5 done so I will go pick them up today so we can display them for everyone to see. Its cool to do something for the folks who help you keep the doors open and help pay the people working here at ARC.

Everyone is invited, and if you did not get a eCard invitation from us don’t fret, just come on over, have some food, a glass of wine and unwind before the holidays! If you need directions to our downtown Fayetteville location you can find them here. See you there!

Holiday Slowdown

“During the holiday season most design agencies come to a slowdown once the Christmas advertising has been finished. While business is picking up now I expect it to slow down soon. During this slowdown Adam and I have decided that we are going to work on our new ARC website. The ARC Design site you see now is one that I designed in about 2 hours, then showed it to Adam, and he made a few tweaks to it. We published it over our holding page when we first opened our doors. We had to get something up quick because Adam was already selling websites. Imagine that, Adam sold websites for us, a web design company only having a holding page.

Almost three years later we feel like it is time to show off what we can do. We are building award winning sites every week and we need a website for ARC Design that showcases our talents. The new website will have a dynamic flash area and we are going to use ourselves as the prime example of how powerful video can be on a website. Hopefully we can get this site live by February. Launching 2-3 sites a week puts a strain on doing work for ourselves but we have to do it.

If you are looking to redesign your page yourself please at least consult a professional to learn a few things that you can do to help your search engine positioning. I have seen websites fall off searches completely after a website redesign. Or you can come to ARC and we will handle it all for you, all you have to do is sit back and relax.”

2007 Davey Awards

My company ARC Design received word last week that we had won another award. A silver Davey Award to be exact. This is the second international award that we have won this year, 15th so far this year. We should be getting our 8 GD USA awards back this coming week from the framing shop. We are getting them framed at Ty’s Gallery, Ty Barnes is the man and he always takes care of our awards so if you are in the Fayetteville NC area go check him out. International Awards are always cool to win because you know you are up against a lot larger talent pool and the competition these days is amazing.

On another note, Amanda Inderbitzen is leaving ARC Design. She was an intern with ARC while she was finishing her BA at Campbell and she worked full time with us until she was accepted at UNC for some masters work. Wanting to be closer to school she got a job at a not for profit in Chapel Hill NC. We wish her the best in all she does and we know she will work hard and acheive her goals no matter what because she is a very smart girl.

A little less than 100 days and I will be a dad, now that is better than the awards and all the chocolate pizza I can eat, I can’t wait!