The video below is our latest photoshoot that we did for a website we are working on for Cleo’s Hair Salon. The website will feature a directory with over 40 stylists with headshots and other various photos of the stylists’ work. The photoshoot was actually a lot of fun and had a great time hanging out with all the different stylists. I can’t wait to show off their website when it is ready to be launched!

Check out a glimpse of our crazy day at the salon!

On Friday, May 29th, Artifice Studios held a nice little party at BJ’s Restaurant to celebrate Artifice Studios’ one year anniversary. Overall, I was very satisfied with the turnout. Endless pizza with beer/wine was served as we exchanged laughs with our awesome clients. This will certainly be something we will do again. Without them, there would not be any Artifice Studios.

View the Flickr Photo Album

Yesterday

I started Artifice Studios as a naive 21 year old, but incredibly passionate about putting my two cents on web design and helping the internet look just a tiny bit prettier. Let me tell you, starting a business with no prior experience at such a young age is no easy task. While friends my own age were out busy getting drunk or doing the whole college thing for 30 billion years, I was busy researching contracts on Google, building a decent portfolio, and watching Gary Vaynerchuk videos at 3AM in the morning.

It took about one year to prep Artifice Studios before I had enough cash, research, and a basic foundation for clients to take the risk and quit my job in the corporate world. I know there are some out there that gave in YEARS to the man before they ended up doing what they love, but it really isn’t rocket science to understand what you are getting yourself into. I for one, am thankful that I quickly realized that I was going to cap off as a designer in a corporation doing the same thing over and over. I’m young, have too much energy, and have far too much anxiety to just sit still and to “suck it up” while I am not happy doing what I want to do.

“You are too young. Get some experience under your belt first.”

BULLSHIT. Those days are over. With the internet taking over, it is a young man’s game. The days of resumes and “x amount of years of experience” are for the birds. How about doing what you are passionate about and be your own boss instead? That’s where the game is. It’s like being thrown into the jungle with nothing but a stick to survive. The ones that make the smart decisions and have the guts become warriors.

Now that I run my own business, make my own hours, and do what I love, I am told that I am “lucky”. Luck had nothing to do with it. I simply put my lazy ass to the side and sacrificed watching Lost or playing xbox, and put in my hours at a corporate job to pay the bills, while I prepped my business from 7pm to 3am. Eventually, I went with my gut feeling that it was time to make the jump. I was never actually “ready”. I made mistakes and learned a whole lot about talking to clients, and simply kept fighting through the trenches. No luck, just do it. Especially if you’re young.

Today

Today, Artifice Studios is now a limited liability company, with two managing partners and several contractors to keep pumping good work. We position ourselves as a boutique web design studio. We are passionate about quality and our philosophy around what creativity is worth. In the end, you get what you pay for.

Most of our clients are here in California, with the exception of a couple in the east coast. But our main focus is to build long-lasting relationships with clients that we can meet in person. We want to be transparent and for our customers to feel comfortable with who they are working with. We want them to know that they are working with a couple young guys doing what they love, not some posers acting like they are a giant agency.

All in all, I am very pleased at our progress and how far we’ve gone. I’ll be honest and admit that this business has mostly consumed my life with pulling in 12 hour work days at times, meetings left and right, doing presentations here and there, and doing the actual design work. But here’s the thing: It doesn’t feel like work. My stress levels may have skyrocketed and may grow gray hair by the time I am 25, but hey, I am doing what I love and would never trade it for anything else. I am only 22, and I am now doing what I wanted to do in life (with the exception of only growing the business). How many people can honestly say that?

Tomorrow

I don’t predict the future. I live in the now and embrace it. Artifice Studios is going to KILL IT in the future, that’s all that I need to know.

So yesterday we did a presentation at College of the Canyons‘ Intro to Digital Media class. We had  a lot fun and I hope we were informative and interesting. One thing I decided to showcase was the process that we take in order to complete projects. However, that process is just part of our DNA now and it is executed by instinct. I decided to put it on paper in a nice little diagram which was then called “The Seven Holy Steps”. These holy steps take us from A to B with our projects and they’re really nothing out of this world. It is a standard process we like to use, and so far, it has been successful.

View The Seven Holy Steps Diagram (pdf)

1. INITIAL MEETING

We make it a point to meet most of our clients. The philosophy behind Artifice Studios is to create a strong relationship with clients and to be more than just a simple service provider. I know everything is starting to become behind the computer with a plethora of tools to utilize, but at the end of the day, nothing beats a face to face meeting. We want to be transparent and we want our clients to feel comfortable with who they are working with.

During this first phase, it can be anywhere between one meeting to several. It all comes down to learning as much as we can from the client and what they are looking for (business requirements). At this time we also review past work with the client so they can get an understanding of our skills and what we are capable of doing. And no, we will never do spec work, which is essentially doing work for free to win a project. That is why we have a portfolio.

2. PAPERWORK

I love this step. Contracts! Legal stuff! Words! Fun! During this phase, we’ll go back to the barn and crunch out numbers, decide on a timeline that works for both parties, and work out a proposal/contract for the client to review.

3. RECONNAISSANCE

After we collect signatures and our deposit, we do a little reconnaissance and research. We’ll work together with the client to establish their target audience, who their competition is, and brainstorm how the project will come together to benefit their customers. All of this information will help us design or develop the best solution. We want to know everything. Even if we have to sleep at the client’s company under a desk to understand their environment.

4. CONCEPTUAL DESIGN

The Holy Grail of the seven steps. The goal is to present a mockup of how the website will look in its final form. The reason why I feel this is the most important phase is because the mockups approved will become like project’s bible; the project’s foundation. We’ll bust out the Moleskin notebooks and sketch out comps and our ideas. Hell, sometimes we even sketch out ideas on a napkin during lunch. Design ideas work much like dreams. If you don’t write it down as they come, you’ll soon forget by the end of the day. Hmm, maybe that just happens to me…. I don’t even remember what happened yesterday…

Anyways, we’ll then work at 2AM with lots of tea by our side and work in photoshop (or illustrator) to pump out the very best design. Then send it off to the client for the green light to move forward.

5. DEVELOPMENT

After our design mockups are approved, we’ll slice and dice up the design and create the xhtml/css for it. Our programmer will be involved if the project requires further development, such as PHP programming and database connections. If a Content Management System (CMS) is required for the project, we’ll implement that in and sit down with the client to teach them how to utilize their CMS. Our goal for this stage is to what we like to call a “preflight”, which is  preparing the website for use on the server and get it ready for testing.

6. TESTING / IMPLEMENTATION

Bugs are inevitable, so we spend enough time on the final product to finalize the website and polish it up for the public, bug-free. We’ll dust off our PC to boot up Windows and test it out in Internet Explorer (speaking of which, we’re dropping IE6. Supporting that stupid browser is just ridiculous now).

7. LAUNCH

Launch the website and celebrate. Once again Artifice Studios saves the day.

At Artifice Studios, we have worked with many old school companies that were founded on last generation’s business fundamentals. As a social media advocate, we help some of these companies to understand the importance of online tools that are offered today. That is not to say that you will magically gain new customers or viewers by creating a profile on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. Creating the profile was only step one of an ongoing process of interaction.

The number one thing companies should be looking for on the web is embracing a community, no matter how small or large it may be. It’s ridiculous when a company’s sole ambition is to monetize online. A business isn’t a business if it isn’t making money, but the Game has changed. Drastically. It requires a different mentality of thinking, which is the ambition of hugging your community.

I know starting a community takes lots of time and effort. Posting updates on Twitter, responding to comments on your blog, or building your Facebook page…. they all take time from our busy schedules. But if you are passionate about your business and what you do, you will want to spend at least a very minimal portion of your day to show your appreciation to the people that follow you that you actually care. You shouldn’t be in this for the money. Those days are over, and just turn on CNN to see what happen to those companies now. It came back full circle, didn’t it? 

Money will come naturally. If people like what you do, people will talk about you. And there’s nothing sexier than a company actually caring what others think. Stop thinking in terms of dollar signs, and start thinking in terms of followers. Get down and dirty, and put a face to your company. Not a corporate face, but a genuine human face. One that speaks to its community, but most importantly, one that listens to its community.

So how do you do this? There are so many social media websites, which one do you join? The answer is all of them. Jump on all of them, especially the ones that are blowing up right now. You don’t want to be late to the party. Twitter it up, Facebook it up, create videos, talk about your space, do everything and anything. Put your face everywhere, because if you don’t, someone else will.

The Game is a ratrace, people. We haven’t seen nothing yet, so jump on now, because you need to be ready for what tomorrow will bring. 

That being said, apparently there is another group of individuals that share the same view as I do: Proxart. Basically, they are trying to pull in local artists by doing monthly live music events and expose Santa Clarita to local talent. I mean, we have CalArts, THE art school. Yet, the city still seems quite fake and saturated with nothing but mercedes and lifted trucks.

Anyways, I checked out one of these Proxart events over the weekend: Black & White at Abbey Lane Cafe. I’m all for supporting the arts and young talent. Overall, it was… decent. I mean, you gotta start somewhere, right? It’s great that some of these young guys are actually doing something productive and meaningful for the city. 

So I recorded just a tiny bit of it on my brand spanking new Flip Camera. Everyone should have one of these. I love it.

We lease an office from another company (also a client) which has made our stay here a little more interesting. This relationship has helped us become more like a family and involved in each others’ projects. However, the most interesting aspect of it all is the variety of characters that roam the building. Whether it is our crazy antics, our obsessive compulsive landlord, or guys like Chris from the video.

We sometimes just leave the camera running and we’ll be sure to share more videos!

Here is the result we want:

Obviously, you’ll need to take a sexy photo to begin with in order to have maximum quality (or a photo of a crazy zombie chewbacca dog). This photo was taken with a Rebel Canon XT which is perfectly fine for these type of photos.

Here is the original:

Original is actually not that bad, but we want something dramatic. Your first step with almost any photo should be some action with Levels.

The idea is to bump the whites and darken the blacks. Keep in mind that none of the settings from this tutorial will work with all photos.

Our second step is the desaturation of the photo through our Hue/Saturation adjustment. Typically I drop the saturation about 40 or so points.

Finally, we’ll increase the contrast to have those colors pop since the saturation was dropped. Don’t exaggerate too much, but give it enough to give it a grungy style. 

And that is pretty much it in a nutshell. I did not want to get all technical, but rather just give you three easy steps to make some quick color modifications to give your photos a different feel than the over saturated garbage that is out there.

So last thursday, Jake and I had to take a drive down to Orange County to take some photography for an outdoor marketplace. Our photography will then be implemented into the website we are creating for these guys (should launch soon!). I want to start doing more videos where it shows us actually doing the work. I honestly do not see many videos like that, and it’s something I would love to see from other design companies. 

Unfortunately, I could not get much video of us taking the shots since most of it was done inside the stores of the marketplace. At least you get to see us outside and not in front of a computer! Overall, the “feel” that I wanted to get out of the video is there… which is two young guys with a cheap ass camera showing us in the field. Far too many companies try so hard to be so corporate and professional, when our style is more human and having fun at work.

Enjoy!