Ralfinoe LLC - Marketing & Communications

Triangle Auto & Cycle Repair - Logo

2009-12-27T09:06:00.001-08:00

Have a look at the new logo we cooked up for our pal over at Triangle Auto & Cycle Repair. Great mechanic and solid dude.

Rusty Knuckles - Webstore

2009-12-09T16:44:00.000-08:00

Our newest project was to help develop the user experience and site architecture for the clothing brand Rusty Knuckles. Due to the fact the company actually develops clothing for quite a few bands along with an in-house brand, the challenge was in creating a portal site that reflected the overall hierarchy of the business. The site was built with potential growth as its main focus and allows the design to be flexible and to easily update the graphics to match any new marketing intiatives.

Shop Rusty Knuckles

Ecast Network - On Screen Ad Campaigns

2009-08-15T15:59:00.001-07:00

On screen ad campaigns for the Ecast Network digital jukebox. These are a select few screenshots from different campaigns that would appear on the network as customers intereacted with ads placed within the user interface while selecting music.

Ecast Network - Marketing Collateral

2009-08-15T15:52:00.001-07:00

Once a year the marketing department of the Ecast Network needed to be create a brochure that would show highlights and accolades of the products and services being offered. My challenge was to design within a tight budget while also creating a compelling story pertaining to the growth and expansion of the network. The final brochure was 8.5 inches by 8.5 inches with a fold out for the display of the digital jukeboxes.

Another challenge with the marketing collateral was to sell the entertainment value of the digital jukebox network. At the end of the day Ecast Network was simply a hardware manufacturer that licensed music through digital rights. Each piece of collateral and the interactive touch screens needed to be developed with a sense of style and purpose. Equally though each had to be its own entity as we were ultimately competing with the artists we represented on the music and entertainment platform through visibility.

Practical Industries - Identity and Web Development

2009-08-15T15:45:00.001-07:00

Practical Industries is a start up computer hardware manufacturer. I was contracted to develop their identity, initial website and marketing collateral. The logo is based upon what they do best, the build the brains or the integrated circuit boards for which the content can be embedded to launch their platforms.

Gearhead Records - Twitter Layout

2009-02-19T21:10:00.000-08:00

twitter.com/GearheadRecords

Logo Development

2009-01-02T22:44:00.001-08:00

Here is the latest batch of logo and identity development and a quick running list of each entity:
Delivery Agent - Logo created for a rebrand initiative, they chose another logo that was much more simplistic and to be honest, quite ugly, personal opinion of course.
HipHop Wall St - A guy by the name of Mike and I met randomly and he approached me with his idea of everyone understanding their personal net worth. He is a man with big ideas and a heart of gold.
Rusty Knuckles - Hey, whaddya know, talked about that brand earlier on another post, but the main logo that is trademarked was developed to create a very easy going yet disitinctive look, easy to brand amongst its varying clientele and fan base.
Jotmot - One rendition of multiple ideas for a start up company that may get funding some day soon.
Hellbound Glory - An identity put together for an outlaw country band based out of Reno, NV.
Mid-Town Petroleum - Company out of Chicago based in the petroleum industry that creating a proprietary product.
Practical Industries - The logo is based upon what they do best, the build the brains or the integrated circuit boards for which the content can be embedded to launch their platforms
VIEW - An interactive entertainment company that operates arcade games, pool tables and vending machines which eventually started making their own digital jukebox system. The logo is based upon the coins that drop into each machine they vend upon.
NBC Universal - For a late in the day project I was asked to create a "quick" logo for an auction website which sold products that were in NBC Universal created tv shows and movies. The auctions ran the gamut from set props to clothing.
Levi Strauss - I was aked to develop a logo series for a kid's line of apparel in which they were all simplistic logos bearing the Levi's name. The only caveat was that they had to fun and exciting for kids. I thought the idea of a heart with a kids face using the Levi's name was quite clever.

Gearhead Records website development

2009-01-02T22:30:00.000-08:00

Brand new website created by stalwart punk n' roll record label Gearhead Records. The site design and implementation is based upon the theme of being able to update any marketing strategy easily while also not overshadowing the artists aligned with the label. Within the design there are pages created for individual artists and for a large ecommerce section in which fans can download music, buy band related merchandise and interact with their favorite artist.

User Experience, quarterly newsletter

2009-01-02T22:18:00.000-08:00

For each business quarter the user experience director at Delivery Agent wanted to present his work as a pdf magazine for all other directors to take home with them to digest. He asked me to create something hi-tech and fun to show off the facts and figures from the companies quarterly successes. It was a fun project as it was different and not client based so it allowed for new ideas and concepts.

Clandestine Industries Webstore

2009-01-02T22:15:00.000-08:00

While working through Delivery Agent I was able to work on a slew of music based projects. This particual site was in conjunction with Bandmerch.com and is the fashion label created by Pete Wentz of the rock band Fall Out Boy. Pete had an idea for what the ecommerce store was to look like and they conveyed that to me. The idea was to make it very simplistic in all black, white and a splash of red here and there and to let the clothing be the prominent factor. The site came out great and the client was pleased and they are doing several million dollars a year in business with the Clandestine Industries product line.

Bandmerch.com Webstore design

2009-01-02T22:08:00.001-08:00

One of my big clients through Delivery Agent was artist themed apparel provider Bandmerch.com. I was asked to create a main portal ecommerce site for Bandmerch that would grow from 40 stores to several hundred. It was a daunting task and I knew that everything would have to be templatized in order to create an efficient work flow. For each band page the designs would need to be swapped in out and easily and allow for growth. I was able to create an efficient design that allowed for diversity and each artist to be branded with their current album or marketing related designs. Some of the artists I was able to design ecommerce stores for were Linkin Park, Steve Vai, Sheryl Crow, Rise Against, Mudvayne, Hellyeah, Eagles of Death Metal, Alanis Morrissette, Anthrax, Atreyu, Diana Ross, Five Finger Death Punch, Good Charlotte, Prince, Rihanna, Kat Von Dee, Jeffree Star, Clandestine Industries - Pete Wentz and Myspace.

A major highlight for me personally was the launch of the Steve Vai store. I designed a quick one page site to get the new products live before a big album launch and within 24 hours the site had done over $50k in sales. I would like to think the user interface enabled it all to happen so smoothly.

Flash Merchandise Widgets - Linkin Park, Kat Von D, Jeffree Star, Atreyu

2009-01-02T22:02:00.001-08:00

These are a series of flash enabled widgets placed into Myspace pages with links to merchandise sold on artist's pages within Bandmerch.com. For each flash widget I would create the designs and them implement them within the flash code given to my by the development team.

Celtics Marketing

2009-01-02T21:57:00.000-08:00

Being able to design work for the Celtics was quite enjoyable, not a huge basketball fan as in watching on television but truly enjoy playing the game or going to see a live game. There is energy and excitement involved quite unlike a lot of sports in which you have to wait for plays to happen. My goal through numerous projects with the Celtics was to convey that sense of urgency and emotion within their branding. They have a very certain color palette and it was quite the visual challenge to be able to work within those parameters which made it quite the brain tease at times, all for which I thank them. The projects with Celtics ranged from branded emails, to flash embedded product advertising to eventually redesigning their entire ecommerce store.

Online Ads - Rockband, Chicago Bulls, UFC, Timberwolves, NBC Sports, NBC, Fox Sports, BCS, Celtics

2009-01-02T21:42:00.000-08:00

Various ads created for the ecommerce stores to promote new merchandise for sale. Each flash based advertisement would be in conjunction with sports team games or a change in promotions warranting new products being created.

Hurley Store Design

2009-01-02T21:36:00.000-08:00

With Hurley clothing coming on as a client I have to say, I was excited to design their new ecommerce store. I knew a lot about their brand and I even got to skate their mini ramp at their Costa Mesa, CA warehouse quite a few years ago. They are a definitive brand amongst the skate and surf crowd and it was an honor to work with them. After they gave me the direction of the look and feel of their new products and where things were headed I was able to work with the sales and development team within Delivery Agent to create a site capable of handling Hurley's extensive catalog and seven to ten figure expected sales forecasts.

Web Store Development - Espn Store, Washington Wizards, UFC, Minnesota Timberwolves, VH1 - Kiss

2009-01-02T21:27:00.001-08:00

Here are a few recent projects I have been involved with

ESPN - Delivery Agent was pitching ESPN on redeveloping their entire ecommerce platform to work in conjunction with their online media efforts. I spent about two weeks revamping our user interface pitch to them to show all of our capabilities and how we could invigorate their online sales. Not exactly sure how the meetings went, but was a fun pitch to do.
Washington Wizards - I was able to design from scratch the entire new Wizards store. Gave me great pride in doing so knowing that Michael Jordan is part owner and the hopes of meeting him at some point. Yeah, would be nice to just meet the man behind the free throw line to basket dunk. The Wizards were elated with their new web presence while the sales and marketing teams were given a solid tool to help drive sales.
UFC - The UFC Store was one of the best selling properties that Delivery Agent could ever hope to be in business with. Sales folks use to laugh as anything that went online sold, but to me that truly shows devotion to a brand. I took that knowledge along with my own zeal for mixed martial arts and designed an ecommerce portal that is reflective of the beast within each fighter. I used bold clean colors and splatter within the graphics to convey the grit and edge along with clean typography to go along with the articulation in which a fighter trains. Personally this is a site for which I am proud and I know Dana White was as well, thanks for the opportunity.
Minnesota Timberwolves - After Delivery Agent landed deals with the Boston Celtics and The Washington Wizards who would have thunk that I would get to design yet another basketball site. The Timberwolves had just been rebranded and wanted a fresh approach to their online sales. The design I am came up with is reflective of the great white north and its cold winters and allows for the merch to stand out which is primarly in grays, deep blues and black. The color palette helped immensely to achieve a solid design solution to a large sales portal.
KISS - Finally, I got the chance to work with KISS. After being the entertainment industry for years with design work I finally got to put something together for a band that markets itself better than Walmart ever could. It wasn't a big project, just a quick afternoon pitch for VH1 but still, was a cool opportunity.

Web Store Development - RockBand Store, Boston Celtics, Interscope Records, Chicago Bulls, Warner Brothers Records

2009-01-02T21:17:00.000-08:00

Big ol' batch of new projects

Rockband - We landed the Rockband account, but now the hard part, to design an ecommerce site reflective of this amazing new game that is too much damn fun. Luckily Rockband had created a definitive vibe around the gaming platform so it made it a bit less daunting of a puzzle to put together. The marketing concept I focused on was to make the online shopper want to feel as if they were approaching the store as if they were already a rockstar. To really make the initial designs cook, I cam up with rollovers and user experience movements that rewarded the shopper with immediacy in their move of the mouse. What was once black and white would turn to color, varieties of rollovers to make the interactions feel as if they were a game themselves. At the end of the day Harmonix and MTV were happy and they sold a lot of merch on the site so it was a job well done.
Boston Celtics - The Celtics were on fire during the season and it was a few months before the playoffs and they decide to launch a new ecommerce portal. The project was put into extra high gear and I had to create an entire front end user interface and site look and feel within two weeks. I stepped up to the challenge and made them proud with a simple tonal navigation allowing their shamrock green to shimmer instead of making the site feel as if you were in the park or you backyard. By using a much simpler approach in the color and navigation along with a clean design, the Celtics and Delivery Agent finally had their first ecommerce site reach the million dollar month sales mark after its launch.
Interscope Records - After Interscope Records saw what Delivery Agent had accomplished with Bandmerch.com, they wanted to know what could be done to bolster their online sales. My challenge was to create an online portal that was as simple as your neighborhood shopping mall. They wanted each store to have the vibe of each artist but to also allow the user to click over to another store just as easily. I designed a landing page in which sales and marketing strategies could thrive and then help to steer customers towards their favorite artists to shop their merchandise. Was quite interesting developing the site for the PussyCat Dolls, I found myself watching all their videos just to get into the mindset to work on their aesthetic, ok ok, gorgeous women made it much easier to figure out as well, haha! Another note on this project is that we also launched SouljaBoy Tellem's online store and for a then unknown artist, we did over $100k in first month sales.
Chicago Bulls - After several basketball ecommerce sites were designed another team stepped on the court and wanted our help as well. We were able to reinvigorate the Bulls online store presence and give them the tools needed to help bolster their online merchandise sales.
Warner Brothers Records - The fiftieth year in business was approaching for Warner Bros. Records and they wanted a big push to sell their back catalog with repackaging along with building a better online store. They chose Delivery Agent for their merchandise fulfillment provider and I was able to help redefine their ecommerce presence. The new site they created already for the Warner Bros label was in effect and I had to take elements from its user interface and develop the branding into a ecommerce solution. By creating a online mall platform fans are able to peruse their entire catalog with just a few clicks.