In the summer of 2008 we helped Boxbot--and their fun robot mascot Clutch--tell their story. Boxbot specializes in packaging design for children's products, hence the tagline we wrote: "Boxbot designs stuff kids like." We also organized and wrote content for their web site, focusing on showing who they are and emphasizing their expertise.
Remember, it's OK to play with dolls.
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Twin Cities radio station 98.5 FM KTIS needed to redesign their web site to bring focus and consistency. Taylor Design Works headed up the project and we focused specifically on the homepage, working together to determine the best way to highlight multiple types of content and create a sense of hierarchy.
In addition to giving KTIS a clean look and a streamlined homepage, we advised them on site navigation and interior content, making suggestions for how to improve writing, boost online readability and avoid confusion.
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In 2000 as an intern and again in 2005 as a freelancer, Monkey Outta Nowhere worked with the National Park Service to create a trail guide for the Twin Cities metro area. The Mississippi National River and Recreation Area is a unit of the National Park Service that focuses on 72 miles of the Mississippi River as it winds through the Minneapolis, St. Paul and the surrounding area. The trail guide included historical sidebars and specific directions for navigating difficult spots along the trail.
The 2000 version of the trail guide covered Minneapolis to South St. Paul while the 2005 version expanded north to Anoka, skipped south to Hastings and included updated information about new trails in between. Both guides offered an overview of the region as well as each specific trail segment. Each segment included a sidebar covering historic, natural or otherwise interesting features of that segment. In both cases we worked closely with designers to decide how to break up the region into segments and structure the entire guide.
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In the summer of 2008 Monkey Outta Nowhere started writing content for iThemes, a creator of WordPress themes. WordPress is an open source blog software that makes it very easy to manage a web site and control the design through customizable themes. We wrote blog entries about how to use WordPress, prepared PDF tutorials and pulled together content for a new web site.]]>
The book Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper has turned into a movement and rallying cry of sorts. We worked with two designers to put together ideas and concepts for how the Don't Waste Your Life message could be communicated in multiple mediums (web sites, videos, ads, posters, book covers, etc.). Monkey Outta Nowhere offered copy and ideas to cement the visual concepts, as well as a much needed outside perspective.
Since our work was primarily in the concept stage, the results have not been fully integrated into the Don't Waste Your Life marketing plan. But they were well received and are beginning to show up in Don't Waste Your Life materials.
]]>That's definitely been true with Monkey Outta Nowhere and something we're trying to remedy. We've reworked our home page (again) and de-coupled our blog from the personal blog of our head monkey, Kevin D. Hendricks. We're trying to highlight the projects we've done on the homepage instead of a bloated, out of date portfolio.
We're making it less reliant on frequent updates (less face it, we don't have very frequent updates) and putting the focus on the work we do. Hopefully we won't be redesigning next year.
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In late 2007 Monkey Outta Nowhere launched Start Seeing Art, a local site that maps and identifies public art in the Twin Cities. The project utilizes Google maps and Flickr images, providing descriptions, pictures and detailed locations of public art installations. While still in its infancy (especially design-wise), the site has already been highlighted on the local blog MNSpeak and has mapped over 100 pieces of public art.
The site continues to grow, thanks to a community that shares photos and information.
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Churches have a communications problem. They claim to have the greatest story ever told, but they don't know how to tell it. Enter Church Marketing Sucks. The blog began in 2004, challenging churches to communicate their message effectively.
Our own Kevin D. Hendricks has written more than 700 blog entries for the site and serving as the site's managing editor. The site averages 40,000 unique visits per month and has been mentioned in The Wall Street Journal, Advertising Age, HOW magazine, The Detroit Free Press, Red Herring and more.
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The project involved working out a structure for the booklet with Taylor Design Works, researching Trout Lake history, telling individual stories and putting together factoids about the camp. The final product has been called one of the best communication pieces in Trout Lake's history.
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At the end of 2007 the Foursquare Church, a charismatic Christian denomination, held its first youth event in more than 10 years. Thousands of young people came from across the country to ring in 2008 at the Foursquare NextGen Summit '07. The event focused on three causes: embracing orphans, stopping human trafficking and fighting poverty.
Monkey Outta Nowhere came on board a year before the event to put their vision into words and their marketing plan into action. We wrote copy for the web sites, e-mail newsletters, promotional materials and more. We helped plan and execute two different designs of a Wordpress-based blog and explored online promotion on MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. We even went well outside our area of expertise and created two low budget promo videos.
Our own Kevin D. Hendricks also attended the event and wrote a wrap-up article for Foursquare's Advance magazine.
]]>We hope you and your family--and the spider monkey's--have a happy holiday.
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