The idea for Capsule CEO was spawned out of the years Anthem has spent developing websites and apps for large companies, and the hundreds of encounters with dozens of company representatives and business owners we experienced in doing so.  It was common to feel that they were speaking in code; all the words were big and impressive, and pleasant-sounding, but also confusing, almost like a secret language.  The people who spoke this language always talked to you in the friendliest way, like they assumed you would understand exactly what they meant, and that these words would help you answer some impossible-to-solve question.  In beginning the design process for Capsule CEO, this sunny helpfulness was the most important thing to capture.  Capsule CEO speaks in nonsense, but he does it with the sole intention of providing clarity.

It was also important that he be short.

With these thoughts regarding his personality in mind, the process of determining his look was begun.  First of all, Capsule CEO would not be young.  He was not an upstart, eager to prove himself.  He was established, experienced, self-assured; these indecipherable nuggets of wisdom he would be offering you would be the same golden principles that had rocketed him to the top of the corporate ladder.  To illustrate this, a silver streak was added to his hair; his slightly unkempt hair and wide-eyed, clear smile would project a casual but together attitude.  His jacket was left hanging open, and his shoes made loafers instead of the typical polished, gleaming wingtips.  The majority of our time was then spent finding exactly the right facial expression to make Capsule CEO seem personable, trustworthy, and slightly unhinged.  Here’s a full page of concept work by character designer Darius Scott Hill:

Around the bottom right corner there is where his character really began to shine through.  His eyes seem warm, reflecting hope and excitement at the prospect of the continual new adventures finance brings his way.  Business is a sport for him, and his face reflects the wholesome craving for the prize at the end of game well played.

Darius took the previous design, simplified it, cleaned it up, and posed him so that his body language shouted “Have I got an idea for you!  This time, we’re really gonna knock ‘em dead!”

Capsule CEO was initially dressed in a dark gray sweater.  It fit his personality, but said “motivational speaker” more than “business maverick”,  so an unbuttoned dress shirt was substituted.  The app’s programmer, Dan Sandland, added a sunny, bright background to the design to amplify Capsule CEO’s radiant enthusiasm.  Now that the CEO himself was complete, the task of filling his tiny virtual mind with words of pure genius was put upon Anthem’s programming team.

We scoured our contracts and proposals for every vague, obfuscating piece of legal jargon we could find.  We pored through speeches, press releases, interviews, and blog posts by the most luminary figures of the business community.  We nearly wore out our thesauruses and dictionaries seeking out every last scrap of arcane boilerplate to plug into our tiny tycoon’s database of entrepreneurial excellence.  Once it was all there, magic took care of the rest.

So don’t let our efforts go to waste!  Capsule CEO exists to strategize dynamic new approaches for maximizing YOUR profit influx!  New business owner? Fledgling entrepreneur? Not sure what your first steps should be in this confusing world of high risk and high finance? Need someone to help you economize your commercial paradigm perception management?
Don’t spend another minute waiting for success to find YOU… let Capsule CEO help you achieve your ultimate transactional potential today!

Ha ha ha ha!  Indeed!

To get the app.

Check out the website: http://capsuleceo.com/

Step 1:
Hire an eclectic and talented group of designers, programmers, artists, animators, and other miscellaneous geniuses. Cram them all into one (1) large passenger van.
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Step 2:
Drive said van to Chattanooga, TN. Park van outside the illustrious and ever-expanding Chattanooga Zoo. Enter gift shop. Provide one (1) large stipend for purchase of multiple plush camels. Advance from gift shop into zoo.

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TIP: Be aware of the availiability of lavatories and avoid embarrassing situations.
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On to the living attractions!

Step 3.1: Commune with primates.

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Step 3.2: Draw deep inspriation from the warmth and compassion of goats.
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The Chattanooga Zoo has the world’s largest indoor Red Panda exhibit. Where are the pandas??

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Step 3.3: Look at Red Panda.

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Good job!!
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Sometimes you have to travel far from home to appreciate what you already have. Luckily, signs exist just to point these things out.
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Okay, you can go now.

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Step 4: Go to the muthaflippin’ Tennessee Aquarium.

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Step 5: Look at fish there.

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NOTE: Sea creatures can be incredibly depressing. Don’t let them bum you out.
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These aquatic agitators can also be very frustrating. Retain your composure; don’t get dragged down to their level.
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Some water-dwelling animals have evolved the remarkable ability to sprout wings and fly freely. The Tennessee Aquarium is one of the only North American facilities fortunate enough to have a varied congregation of these amazing achievements of natural selection. A visit there is indeed a unique opportunity to scrutinize them closely.

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Okay, you can go now.

NOTE: Prolonged exposure to undersea conditions may prove confusing for your charges. Remind them that though they may feel waterlogged, topside they do remain.
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Step 6:

Leave Tennessee! Georgia patiently awaits, and there with it, the comforts of Dr. Pepper, Cheez-Its, and the unceasing, endlessly brutal cyclopian gaze of your computer monitor. Satisfying though they may be, fish are fleeting. Home and true design glory await, and you can tarry no longer. Onward, ever onward, like a shark.

Avanti, brave warriors!

Paperdoll, after bringing down the house yet again.

We think this makes it a better time than ever to revisit our own version of the video, and the design process behind it.

Starting the project, our most important consideration was Time. PaperDoll had fortuitously found themselves with the opportunity to get the song nationwide exposure as part of a DayQuil commercial that would air on major cable outlets, including Comedy Central and Spike. The ad had a set date for its premiere airing, and thusly our deadline also fell near that date. We had previously done a fully animated video for the band’s song “Anything At All,” but the time crunch imposed on this project made doing another animated piece unfeasible; Our solution was to follow in the footsteps of one of the most monstrously important and influential of all music video pioneers: The Strokes.

Though there is some performance footage of the band present in the video, the bulk of it is stitched together from vintage TV and movie clips, documentary films, commercials, and other visual ephemera. Enough correlation exists between the video’s images to maintain some sort of forward momentum, but the thematic vagueness of the flow of images allows the song’s energy and texture to remain the focal point. Especially for a song whose title and lyrics express confusion and immobility, the barrage of mood-buoying pictures more than anything else accentuate the personality of the song, without being distracting. Their technique seemed an inspired solution for our spur-of-the-moment assignment. By using copyright-free material produced by third parties, we would save ourselves the time needed to generate original assets (time we simply did not have), without sacrificing our ability to provide an effective video foil to PaperDoll’s song.

Our first step was to decide on an approach. The major connective tie between The Strokes’ song and its video was the parallel between the song title (“Hard To Explain”, as also heard in the song’s chorus) and the capricious, searching dynamism of the video’s imagery. Thanks to careful and expressive lyrics, PaperDoll’s song had a much more cohesive theme than The Strokes’, but it was unlikely we’d be able to create an equally coherent visual counterpart quickly enough. So a more general relationship to the song would have to be found. Our song was entitled “If Nothing Happened.” Much of our source material would be from vintage sci-fi and horror flicks, with lots of drama, explosions, and overwrought faces bearing extreme expressions; in broader terms, lots of Things Happening. Perfect!

Thanks to Mill Creek’s mammoth public-domain movie box sets, we already had hundreds of hours of available footage at our disposal. Cheap cartoons, japanese monster movies, weird commericals, and silents were sifted through for their most exciting seconds, which were then sheared off and sewn into the fabric of our moving collage. For movie buffs like us, getting to massage snippets of familiar schlock staples like Creature From the Haunted Sea and The Revenge of Dr. X into a framework that supported PaperDoll’s great song was an uncommonly pleasurable task.

Only about a weekend was spent corralling workable bits of film from DVD onto our desktops. Darius Hill, veteran Anthem animator, handled directorial duties, exercising his nearly superhuman understanding of the laws of film to re-edit the hours of unrelated, scruffy, obscure video into an actual statement that both we and PaperDoll could be proud of. Timing had to be worked out; clips were synced up to the words of the song via labyrinthine, arcane correlations between the two (Metropolis‘ Rotwang the Inventor indignant intonation that he’s made a robot that never makes mistakes occurs as PaperDoll audibly explains “Everybody makes mistakes”; and later, one of Gumby’s robotic domestics goes haywire, wreaking prophesied havoc on his neighborhood.) Shots were carefully organized to draw the viewer’s eye from one edge of the screen to the other and back again, leading you into the next shot with natural ease.

From inception of the project to delivery, Darius and his team completed the project within one week. Inspiration joined forces with hard work, passion for cinema, love of pop culture, and love of pop music, to hurriedly produce a suitable counterpoint to an expertly crafted tune. The result:

Let’s do it again sometime!

So as a company that does a ton of e-commerce, we tend to be using Authorize.NET to do online credit card processing.
Recently, we had quite an ordeal trying to figure out a seemingly simple issue.

The Problem : We had the PHP Class sending the transactions to Authorize.NET and every time it was returning a Decline.

The Error : Transaction Status:  General Error (Request rejected by FDC omaha – Invalid merchant number) ( The Error Code is 205)

The Solution : This is not a developer issue! HA! Wish I had known that 3 hours before we figured it out. This means that the Payment Processor for Authorize.NET is telling them that there information and active status on your client does not match the information Authorize has or that they are not set to active status.

I hope this helps other developers out.

Regards

What can branding do? Sell you 6 of these for a ton of money.

I came across this amazing branding of a product while having tea with my grandmother.

The package was a gift to her , it came with six (6) tea bags.  It is black tea with a smidgen of jasmine green tea.

Its decent, had a good taste. I enjoyed it, but then again I enjoy the black tea from Target, in which a I paid $1.50 for 100 tea bags.

Our delicious 6 bag black tea escapade? Apparently, $48.00.

Its pretty cool, that packaging can add so much value to a solid product.
The tea is not bad by any means, it tastes great, but it went from $3.00 for a pound to $48.00 great. (Thats 8 bucks per bag).

Check out Tea Forte. Their strap line even says it, “Extraordinary Tea. Enchanting Presentation.”
It goes to show you, the battle is partly having a good product and the other part making sure your customer psychologically sees your product as high class.

This chart is funny, because its actually quite accurate.

I wanted to make a quick post for other web developers to enjoy it.
Also for non web developers to understand why most of us really hate IE, its nothing personal, it just makes our job harder and forces any work we do to take 3 times longer.

…Okay, I guess making our job harder and more frustrating makes it personal.

This weekend the Anthem crew headed outdoors for some do it yourself fruit picking.  Throughout the year, many farms throughout the US will open their doors to visitors, letting them pick fruit for exceedingly low prices.  They’re often referred to as “pick your own” or “u-pick” farms. It’s a great way for smaller growers to make some extra income, and it’s the best way to get incredibly fresh fruit for a fraction of market price.  Everybody wins!

We decided to head out to Briar Patch Farm, located in Dacula Georgia (that’s “Da-Cue-La”, not “Dracula” minus the “r”) since they were one of the only farms in the area that still had some blueberries.  July is the peak blueberry season, and has even been declared National Blueberry Month by the USDA (not to be confused with Boo Berry Season, which peaks on the 31^st of October).

Lines of Blueberry trees at Briar Patch farm.

When looking for a good place to pick fruit, it’s best to call ahead for availability. Popular farms tend to get cleaned out very quickly since the early bird gets the worm. If possible, you should head out early in the season, and early in the day.  The folks are Briar Patch Farm were very gracious and easy going, and it was a very pleasant low key experience.  Basically, you show up, they give you a bucket, and you’re on your way.  They had warned us ahead of time that most of the berries had already been picked, though there were still some ripe ones to be had if we rummaged carefully.

Buckets o' Fun!

Sure enough, when we got there most of the berries left on the trees were unripe.  It felt like slim pickings at first, but we quickly got the hang of it.  I found it was best (as with many things in life) to approach the trees from unusual angles, and often times I’d see plenty of berries that had flown under the radar of less discerning eyes.  Once you spot one, tons of them suddenly come out of the woodwork (I felt like I was seeing the Matrix).

When picking blueberries, it’s important that you only pick the ripe ones which are a deep blue or purple color.   Picking unripened berries severely cuts down on the year’s available harvest.  A lot of farms have closed down early this year for this reason.

ripe for the pickin'

Blueberries have some of the highest brand equity among fruit.  Mention blueberries to anyone health conscious and they’ll be sure to respond “that’s one of the healthiest things you can eat!”  This is because they’re absolutely jam packed with antioxidants, and they taste great to boot.

The blueberries at Briar Patch were genuinely organic with no pesticides since they’re already very naturally pest resistant (there wasn’t a single bug bite on any blueberry in the orchard).  Blueberries have a high concentration of flavonoids, an antioxidant compound that repels insects and microbes and also gives them their deep blue color.  Recent studies have shown that the ingestion of flavonoids found in blueberries may also lower cholesterol, fight cancer, improve memory and help to prevent Alzheimer’s.

By the end of the day, we had collected a full gallon of blueberries, which only came out to $7! If you go by the average supermarket price of $3/4oz, then a gallon of blueberries would cost $96!  That’s THIRTEEN times more than what we paid (And they wouldn’t be nearly as fresh either)!!

A gallon of delicious and nutritious

When we got back home we made a pretty rockin’ Cobbler with just a small fraction of the berries.  It was one of the freshest tasting pastries I’ve ever met.

we gobbled that cobbler

The U-pick experience was a ton of fun and we recommend it to anyone.  It’s a fun, memorable experience that yields delicious souvenirs for weeks to come!

You can find a participating farm near you at the following website:

http://www.pickyourown.org/

Happy picking!

Hello gentle travelers, today is the debut of Anthem Recipes! That’s right, when we’re not innovating the web-space, or the games-space, we are innovating the taste-space located just below your nose.

For our inaugural entry, we are pleased to unveil the Napoleon Bacon Hound.

The Napoleon Bacon Hound was born out of the question “how can we improve on the hotdog?” Our solution? Wrap it in bacon (this is a good solution for a lot of food related inquiries) and then wrap it again in a croissant (well, it’s actually a flakey dinner roll). The result is a time stoppingly tasty treat that’s quick and easy to make.

Here’s some simple instructions.

Ingredients:
Hotdog/sausage of choice, preferably hand sized.
Bacon (we recommend maple bacon)
Flaky Dinner roll tube.

just 3 simple ingredients

Hardware:
Convection oven
Oven safe tray, or aluminum wrap
Optional: stove and pan

Step 1 – Preheat your oven to 400 degrees, or whatever is recommended for preparation of your dinner rolls.

Step 2 – wrap each sausage with 1 strip of bacon. Try to wrap it as evenly as possible.

Step 3 (optional) – If you want your bacon to be crispy, be sure to cook it first. Heat up a pan or skillet and cook the sausage with the bacon wrapped around it until it is browned and crispy. Remove from stove and let it sit, so the bacon hardens around the sausage.

Step 4 – Unwrap your dinner rolls. Wrap them around your bacon/sausage combo. Your dinner wrap will typically be in a triangle shape. For the most even roll, start with the thin end of the triangle and wrap it around the meat, angling it so you’re going over, up and back down rather than just straight across.

Step 5 – Place your wrapped Napoleon Bacon Hounds on an oven safe tray and put em in the oven for 10 minutes.

Step 6 – Remove from Oven and ENJOY.

warning: contents are extremely HAWT

These things are super tasty, but they’re also REALLY heavy. I don’t recommend you make them a daily habit. Still, it’s a fun and easy recipe where every element works well together. The dinner rolls are usually cheaper than hot dog buns, and I think they taste way better. Also, the bacon adds a true meat flavor to the hotdogs, making them feel much more substantial.

I personally prefer to let the bacon cook in the oven rather than pre-cooking it, because the bacon stays soft and tender like pork belly ought to (fat tastes good!) and the bun absorbs more of the run off flavor (animal fat tastes good!).

I hope our good audience enjoys this recipe. If you happen to try it out, let us know what you think, or if you have any improvements on it (for instance, phyllo dough might work even better than the dinner rolls).

Cheers!

Welcome to zen office, kinda.

In an effort, to make the office even more pleasant and productive, we are beginning phase 1 of a new decorating motif and improvements. This is in preparation for new staff coming in ( who will be enjoy the new space in the back), and to achieve an overall more productive space.We also got a few Bonsai trees and some spa looking rocks, which are surprisingly low cost and cool looking. We will be putting in more awesome stuff, hanging new art and some fun stuff.

Still much improvement to be made, but its still feeling good.

Currently, these is just our back offices, more updates on the lobby, front offices and conference room improvements coming soon.

We're normal people, we promise.

Have you heard of James Jean?  While you might not have heard of him, chances are more than likely that you’ve seen and enjoyed his work. Among his list of well-known clients of various walks are: Prada, Target and Koji Igarashi (The creator of Castlevania). One of his starting gigs was the covers to Fables. Much to our delight, a finely crafted book gathered his gorgeous cover works during his run with Vertigo.

His work is of immense joy to behold, a blend of just the right amounts of classical rendering skills, a playful but mature illustrative sensibility with an international influence. The result of this is a timelessly enjoyable collection of work.The book holds itself to a high standard; it’s a huge format, it’s got solid binding, is printed on a high quality paper and a lot of care was put into the layout of the book. The sketches also provide a slight insight into his process in crafting the covers. It’s definitely an excellent thing to have if you’re a fan.

If you aren’t familiar w

ith James Jean’s work or is curious about his work, do take the time to visit his excellent portfolio @ www.jamesjean.com

The residents of Anthem office are happy and proud owners of James Jean’s Fables Covers Collection.

Now, Obama has released to new logos for other government initiatives the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act  and DOT’s TIGER plan :

I am actually not a huge fan of the TIGER one (U.S. Department of Transportation’s TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery)  but, Obama understands that design is essential to positioning an idea successfully  in consumers minds or in this case, the minds of the American populous.

The logos were designed by Mode Project

Normally, I am pretty chill about magazines when reporting on subjects they do not understand. But, I feel like I need to comment on this article by Forbes, because

a) Forbes is a respected (and well branded) magazine.

b) They seem to have missed the point, since they take advantage of such creative services themselves!

I first saw this on David Airey’s  blog, a fantastic logo designer in his own right.  I am reiterating a lot of what he posted and most of the design community agrees with.

Essentially, this is not a new problem. Speculative work has been an issue in the design industry for sometime. see the NO!SPEC movement.

Forbes has posted a poorly researched and unbalanced look at the subject.  Are we supposed to be okay, with people telling us that design and development is easy and that anyone can do it? As many have said similarly, having Microsoft Word does not make you a writer anymore than having Photoshop makes you a designer. The design business is an industry that requires expertise and skill to excel in, and it is highly valuable. Why is it ridiculous to ask a fair price for it?

Look at Forbes themselves, I guarantee that did not get their brand, commercials, and website for a couple hundred dollars or before they signed a contract and retainer. It’s almost a double standard.

This article states that

“Now if you live in India or Peoria you can buy a computer and sophisticated software for a little bit of money and compete with big agencies–and they don’t like that.”

That’s amazing, I would love to know how you can get sophisticated design software for “a little bit of money”.

We are not a “big agency”, but I can tell you that I don’t like it either. CrowdSpring is based on the concept of essentially hundreds of designers working and 1 getting paid.  I apologize, agencies like us are definitley at a disadvantage because we pay our designers for their work.

I am mostly reiterating posts made by the design community but I think it is important that people realize that this is not an acceptable way to do business.

Here is a great post on the Logo Factory’s blog

Allow me to start with the main title. The text is a slight variant on Alternate Gothic/ Futura Condensed with the subtitle in a Caslon or Garamond. At first glance, the texture on the main title is a bit sloppy and uncontrolled; it does not really convey what it is supposed to be.  I also, feel like the abrasive red lens flare was shoe-horned into the bowl of the “O” in “Lost”, it creates an uncomfortable tangent and the overall inner padding is cluttered; which makes it harder to read. I can see the thought behind it, but It seems like the designer had the idea, but did not dedicate the craft and time needed to execute it in a solid manner. The subtitle feels thrown in; there seems to be no consideration for the spacing or alignment, and the serif all caps seems like a nonsensical choice, given the subtitle’s content and the game’s theme.

Next, we can see the cliche A(“V”) as I like to call it. This is generally a fallback for less experienced designers; essentially an easy way to imply futuristic themes or content, I believe Capcom’s design team/or designer are above this sort of convention. Many great logos and distinct marks are great because the convey abstract or themes with little associative imagery with quirkiness, distinction and originality. Even though the red line completes the bridge of the “A”, it does not read properly and feels more like an accident than a design decision. Based on where the lens flare line hits on the ascenders of the other letters, it leads me to believe that every letter was inconvenienced in terms of layout and tangent for the sake of the “A”.

I believe, the only thing that is somewhat successful is the planet shape itself. However, I think the designer simply needed to but more time into creating the contour of the planet, because when you look at it, it feels like a blue half moon, not an eclipsed frozen planet. Plus, the tangent with the planet to the “S” seems more like a mistake than an intentional call.

To me, It just feels somewhat bland and uninteresting in comparison to some other rather well done and distinct logos by Capcom.  In my mind, Capcom has always created
some of the most memorable and appealing marks for game franchises and releases. Look below, and many of you will recognize and remember these games without even actually reading the logo.

Capcom has never had to rely on using crazy or busy typefaces; many of their logos
use classic typefaces that we all love. So, it disappointed me that Lost Planet’s logo was so uninteresting and forgettable…

True to their reputation, Capcom has restored much of my confidence in their logo designers. Behold, Lost Planet 2 comes with a new logo, not a huge deviation from the previous.
Its actually quite  subtle. But, subtle makes all the difference, I believe this new logo falls right alongside the rest of their distinct and memorable games (the game looks excellent as well.)

Lost Planet 2 New Logo!

Gorgeous.
Notice, in the type the designer has removed that goofy and cliche A(“V”) shape and replaced it with an aligned, properly kerned type setting. The alignment is controlled and intentional. Notice, the top descender on the “2″ aligns with the top of the “T” and the bottom of the “2″ draws a comfortable parallel with the thin lens flare line.

The new metallic texture is smooth , more delicate and controlled. What do I mean by controlled?
Well, notice how it has subtle outlines, implication of shadow, and the reflection and light makes sense. It creates a nice dimensionality that was not present in the previous logo.
This also allows the type to have solid contrast, making extremely readable and effective.

The planet silhouette shape is much more elegant, it uses the orange color to imply heat and the planet shape without using a generic looking clunky blue beveled edge. It’s great, it reads immediately as a planet, not a moon or a crecent shape.

Lastly, the lens flare is a subtle alignment through the middle, it creates a slight symmetry, it doesn’t smash you in the face with a hard circle forced into the O’s bowl or a hard red line that throws off the contrast. Instead, the lens flare line is thin and unobtrusive, and is aligned beautifully to the bridges throughout the title text, not just to the “A”.

Overall, the entire logo is much more subtle, elegant and appealing. However, I think the change in type and alignment considerations did most of the heavy lifting here.

Nice Capcom, very nice.

Google Advises Users to Drop IE6

With Google and MobileMe officially dropping support for IE6 and now commanding only a 19% market share and dropping fast.
Anthem has decided to also officially drop direct support for Internet Explorer 6 for our websites. However, we still support it when our client’s
target demographic calls for it and also within portals and intranets.

It has an eight year run, but I think its time. With barely any PNG support, support for CSS 1.0 and consistent Javascript rendering errors IE6 is a bit outdated.
This will simply make web development one browser easier.

As a note, Anthem currently builds our websites to work flawlessly in Internet Explorer 7 and 8 Beta2, Firefox 2 and 3 , Safari 3, Opera 9 , and Google Chrome.

And we now officially remove Internet Explorer 6 from that list.

This is the Anthem Blog. The Anthem Groups is a game and website design firm, we wanted to share our fun, failures, successes, breakthroughs, and goofiness with the world. Plus, some of it is interesting…

If you are considering hiring Anthem, we invite you to look around our blog and get to know us, because we want to get to know you.

You can check back here, subscribe to our RSS feeds, or even subscribe to Text message updates for recipes on good food, cool experiments we are doing with Flash, AJAX, PHP, etc, Fun stuff from around the office, cool new (Non Confidential) Projects, cool art, bad art, good art, video games and the creative antics we get ourselves into.

The blog catalogs the culture and approach of Anthem and our love for what we do.

Thanks for stopping by and:
Enjoy.