Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival brings in around 100,000 people into the desert city of Indio, California for two back-to-back weekends in April. This year I got to witness the music mayhem first hand during Weekend 1.

When was the last time you received a handwritten card? These days, time is money. You don’t have time to sit down and hand write a card, and now you won’t need to. Introducing Hallmark for the digital age. Felt and Punkpost are two apps which allow you to “craft personalized note cards from your phone, with ink that looks like you actually wrote it yourself.”

Here’s how it works.

Oniracom and AIGA Santa Barbara have collaborated on several events over the past few years, but this latest one might just be the best. We are proud to sponsor AIGA SB’s joint event with StartupSB, “Convert Like Crazy: 10 Design and Copy Hacks You Can’t Afford to Miss,” taking place April 15 from 6:30-8:00pm at Workzones.

Today’s marketing environment is a visual one. Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but video content is increasingly dominating the digital sphere. By 2018, 89% of internet traffic will be video. Statistics and strategic moves from social platforms indicate why this prediction seems plausible:

• Within the last year, Facebook users went from watching 1 billion videos every day to more than 8 billion.
• Twitter, which acquired Periscope in March 2015, now autoplays their live streaming videos within feeds.
• Spotify is introducing video content to its Android app starting May 2016.

With our fast pace of business, 2014 already feels like history.  Here’s an impressive look back at our year.

Behold, our wonderful client map of Santa Barbara! Recently, a new local company called 805Connect featured Oniracom as a partner which summarizes our connection with the Santa Barbara community perfectly. You can read the full article here. Thanks for the support, Santa Barbara. Proud to call you our home.

Have you or your friends used Venmo, or any other money transferring app but feel neglected by the inability to send the recipient a seflie along with your money transference? Fear no more! We now have… Snapcash. Snapchat and Square are collaborating on this project where Square will handle the actual cash movements and Snapchat will host the social networking platform. The deal will also provide Square with access to Snapchat’s 100 million plus monthly active users according to Mashable.

To use the new feature, one must live United States, have a debit card, and be 18 years old. Snapcash will be made first available to Android users, and shortly after it will be brought to iOS users. When using Snapcash, one also creates a Square account where the actual money transference will take place. This new feature exhibits Snapchat’s ability to push past its original limitations of strictly existing as a chat application and now becoming a surprising new competitor to mobile payment companies such as PayPal. 

Snapchat has recently begun marketing and developing platforms for Snapcash, so draining your bank account might be even easier in the near future. Also, we love the video Snapchat made for the new feature. It’s crazy but that’s part of the reason why it’s amazing!

Read more about it on Snapchat’s blog.

Amazon Echo part speaker part voice activated personal home assistant is new on the market and has consumers wondering what this product is for. Alexa is Amazon’s new version of Siri, which when asked can set alarms, reference the dictionary and play music. Echo has some promising features, but at this point seems slightly out of place. Amazon’s main objective is to sell products, but it is unclear at this point whether the functionality the Echo will provide highly marketable. However, Amazon has had success in the past with technological gadgets such as the Kindle when ahead of the market.  

It looks like Echo is making its way to the smart home scene just in time along with Google and Apple’s new home smart gadgets. According to Mashable, Echo could take Amazon from one-click purchase to no-click purchase, creating the ultimate in-home impulse purchase engine — all done with voice command. this new smart home technology could be a change in the future, making online shopping, downloading audio books and simple day to day questions easier and more convenient than ever. When addressed, Alexa, the Echo will listen and respond to questions, tasks and commands given to the device. The purpose of this product is to add a smart technology feature to homes and aid in day to day tasks. Smart home devices are a rapidly expanding market, and Amazon’s new product is currently being tested by being sent to some Amazon Prime members to test the product and receive feedback. According to Mashable the device runs around 99 for Amazon Prime members for a limited time and 200 for other customers.  

For those of you who might not know, AIGA is the professional association for design, and AIGA Santa Barbara is one of 69 chapters across the nation. One of many cool benefits of being on the AIGA SB board of directors is being able to put on great design-related, educational, and networking events for our local chapter and community. Oniracom has already been part of many AIGA events (Jacob and Tad have been Portfolio Day judges, and Oniracom hosted a studio tour this past May), but the biggest bang so far was definitely last Thursday’s “Art of Music” discussion, where Jacob was a panelist and I co-moderated with David Cowan, also of AIGA SB.

We were thrilled to be speaking with some legendary heavy hitters: Hale Milgrim (former President/CEO, Capitol Records); John Kosh (former Creative Director, Apple Records; current Principal at Ten Worlds Productions), and Andy Engel (former Art Director, CBS Records; current Principal, Andy Engel Design, Inc.), and they did not disappoint. The combined wisdom from our featured panelists was a great blend of business, design and inside information, and music by DJ Darla Bea helped set a groovy tone. Here’s a quick rundown of what we covered (full audio at the AIGA SB website; all photos by Tad Wagner):

Apple pay sets a new benchmark for mobile payments, however, they are not alone.  according to Mashable, MasterCard has been a pioneer of mobile commerce innovation for years, including the world’s first contact-less and mobile payment solutions. Apple Pay turned to MasterCard to help ensure high quality mobile transactions. Earlier in 2005, Mastercard used Near Field Communication technology to turn almost anything into an instant and secure form of payment, meaning your smartphone, bracelet or watch could soon replace your wallet. These new methods of payment, enable consumers to spend more than they regularly would with traditional payment methods. Mastercard, has been working to promote and distribute these new methods of payment and further expand these technologies promoting them to be faster, more secure and convenient. Some may be worried about the security of using contact-less payment methods, but master card ensures heightened security through 3 layers of tokenization, EMV cryptology, and biometrics meaning respectively a special number assignment which prevents hackers from stealing your card information, creating a one time transaction number, and is thumb print or passcode secure.  Wallets might be a thing of the past, while reliance on smart phones and technology is predicted to expand and grow.

Ever since stepping into Topshop’s Las Vegas store several years ago, I have been in love with the UK brand. When I was in London this past year, I got the chance to go into several Topshop stores, including their flagship in Oxford Circus, and was amazed at how the brand has become basically a household name in the UK. They not only have innovative clothing at affordable prices, but they always have seemed on point with weaving technology seamlessly into their label and fashion shows.

This year at London Fashion Week (#LFW), they stood out above the others with their democratization of fashion by targeting the younger customer base with a social media takeover.

This morning at 10am PST, the whole world gathered for the unveiling of the highly anticipated iPhone 6 at the Apple Live event in Cupertino. However, Apple not only revealed the details of the next iPhone but also debuted their very first product in the world of wearable technology. The Apple Watch, described as “a smartwatch with inductive charging, a square face, sapphire glass, swappable bands, a heartbeat sensor and a rotating digital crown” by TechCrunch, is Apple’s sleekest new product proving their innovation in the advancement of technological development.

While Apple made it very clear that the watch is not simply an iPhone on your wrist (the watch is only compatible with iPhone 5 and 5s), the list of applications and functions available on the watch holds its own against its mobile counterpart. The design of the watch is classic Apple, with remarkably clean features and lines. All the watches use the innovative “digital crown”, aka the spinning thing on the side of the watch, to access the different interfaces and utilities.

A quick description of the aesthetic differences between the collections:
WATCH: The standard 38mm and 42mm watch faces with leather and stainless steel bands in a variety of loop designs and colors.
WATCH SPORT: Made to withstand sport-style use, these watch faces are made with a 60 percent stronger alloy case. This collection also includes a “sport band’ made of durable Fluoroelastomer in a variety of bright colors.
WATCH EDITION: This collection seems to be the high-end collection, with Rose and Yellow 18-karat Gold 38mm and 42mm watch faces and leather straps.

In a world where there are so many different ways and outlets to communicate, one system has stood out above the others: EMOJIS.

These little pictographs you see on their separate keyboard on your iPhone or iPad are relatively new, appearing in the last couple years or so, with origins in late 1990s Japanese cell phone usage (which explains much of the appearance of some of the emojis). Emojis were encoded into Unicode Standard in 2010, with over 700 characters currently in existence.

Emojis are there when words don’t or can’t say enough, to provide a visual example to a message, and for all those moments in communication and life when you just want to include a cute little relevant emoji. With each younger, tech-savvier generation, emojis have permeated to the furthest depths of the internet: Twitter supports them in a remarkably clean 2D style (see this article), you can track the use of emoji on twitter in realtime on emojitracker.com and there’s even a Wikipedia-esque website dedicated to explaining different emoji, Emojipedia.

When it comes to product packaging, looks do really matter. Thousands of companies have bid their farewells to the plain and ordinary in exchange for more unique and pleasing design elements. Products ranging from clothes to food to household items are now dressed and presented in interesting shapes and sizes to attract consumers, and to hopefully end up on their Instagram accounts.

Creative product packaging benefits both the seller and the buyer. It delights us and perhaps even inspires us to think differently; we like to think that the manufacturer customized the products for our pleasure. Not only is creative packaging visual pleasing for all, it also adds marketing perks for the company and future-customers. According to research done by DotCom Distribution, 35% of consumers developed a new brand after seeing the retailer’s packaging carried around in public, 90% of consumers reuse packaging, and 25% of consumers are likely to share social media photos of attractive product packaging. Once an image becomes shared or tweeted, it has the potential to land on multiple network feeds. Here are some of our favorite picks:

Chase Kettl wedding invites

Wedding invites no longer have to be in traditional paper and ink form. Graphic Designer Chase Kettl created invitations with a combination of different materials and typography.

Ben Yi Top Paw

You can now stylishly carry your furry friend’s food in Ben Yi’s Top Paw dog food dispenser. The dispenser features a food compartment as well as a handle and pouring pouch.

MochiThings Giving Tree Stickies

MochiThings’s Giving Tree Stickers put a playful and thoughtful spin on stickies. Take one, add your note, and watch the stump shrink!

Origami tea

Nathalia Ponomareva has artistically reinvented tea pouches. Her origami bird tea combines two Japanese traditions (tea and origami) and is pleasing to the eye.

Poilu Paintbrushes

Poilu uses the paintbrush bristles to portray beards of the drawn faces on the cardboard. The brush hair is even dyed to give a range of natural human hair colors!

Kolle Rebbe Parmesan Pencil

If you’re a cheese lover, this pencil is for you. Kolle Rebbe’s Parmesan Pencil comes in a pack of three. Customers are instructed to sharpen the pencil with the enclosed sharpener to create delicious strands of Parmesan.

Flickr rolled out some new features and a hot new design that offers higher resolution, a news feed, and more.

Landing on the home page, you’ll already notice the brand new design, bigger images, and crisper resolutions. Flickr is giving all its users 1 terabyte (yes terabyte) of space. This makes way for bigger and better images.

Mashable explains that the “news feed” feature is a bit similar to the Instagram news feed. To see this feature in full, check out their video that takes you through the new Flickr here.

Sharing is now also easier on Flickr. Once you post, you can easily share to Facebook. Twitter, Tumblr and more.

Overall, the new design is much more progressive in the digital/social media realm and the endless amount of space and higher resolutions are sure to make all Flickr users happy.

Mighty Bright came to Oniracom to build a fresh web presence for their Lux brand of consumer application LED lighting products. We built the site to showcase the many uses of the products, while creating a strong value proposition for Lux.

Check out a full video walk-through below!

We are happy to present our brand new site, built using responsive design and features 12 slides or “tarot cards” (as our staff calls them) outlining our most popular services.

Click on a card to find out more about that service and to see portfolio examples!

The “Web Production” slide refreshes the page with a featured slideshow at the bottom, showcasing our work. What happens when you click on “The Gaslight Anthem?”

As you have all probably noticed from our Instagram shots, we’ve been doing a bit more floor work in the office. Matthew McAvene has been working on providing a faux stone finish to our bathroom walkway. We’re letting you in on all his secrets. Here’s the step-by-step process McAvene went through when painting our stone floors.

First, he began by cleaning and sweeping the floors. They have to be shiny and sparkly in order to have this awesome finish!

Then, McAvene started patching up several holes with concrete patch, as the floor was jagged and needed some extra work and elbow grease.

Once the floor was clean and all patched up, he added a base coat of gray primer, which ends up being the color of the grout in between the stones.

Dwight Yoakam came to Oniracom through Topspin and Warner Music Nashville for an interactive album release splash page. The splash page featured staggered promotions and contests leading up to the release of Dwight Yoakam’s album “3 Pears.”

Oniracom Portfolio | Dwight Yoakam (3Pears.DwightYoakam.com) from Oniracom on Vimeo.

Imagine Dragons released their first full-length studio album Night Visions out September 4th on Kid Ina Korner / Interscope Records. The release of the highly anticipated album debuted #2 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart, selling over 80,000 copies in the first week.

Oniracom Portfolio | Imagine Dragons (ImagineDragons.com/NightVisions) from Oniracom on Vimeo.

It’s that time of year again. The time of year where you buy new shoes, get some new athletic outfits and hit the streets with renewed passion. What better place to stock up for your new athletic adventure than the Santa Barbara Running Company! Check out the new website on http://sbrunningco.com/.

Oniracom has completed work on the new website for The Gaslight Anthem just in time for the band’s July 24th album release.

Doheny Days is back and ready for 2012. After a successful and fun 2011 festival, Doheny Days is back for the second straight year following a seven year hiatus.

Oniracom partnered with Omega Events in 2011 to reimagine the Doheny Days brand and bring life back into the Festival. The branding we developed, including a custom logo and styling for the Festival brought large crowds over the two-day festival.

We just did a re-design of Scott James’ web presence as he embarks on the next chapter of his growing career.

Check out the new ScottJamesMusic.com!

We just launched a SICK new website for Ultimate Boarder (the only boardsport triathlon in the world). The contest is going to be better than ever this year with $100,000 going to the winner and a $150,000 prize purse. Check it out!

We have launched a sleek microsite for The Phantom of the Opera’s 25th Anniversary Celebration!

This site is the platform to sell the exclusive 25th Anniversary Celebration Box Set package. Check it out at www.phantom25boxset.com.

Yesterday, Google announced a new look and updated features for its email service, Gmail. We at Oniracom are major fans of Gmail so we’re interested in the experience this redesign will bring.

Watch the video below of Google’s User Experience Designer Jason Cornwell explaining the new Gmail and check out their Official Blog for more:

A little while ago we created and ran a one day only promotional “donate-to-download” splash page for Chris Cornell’s website for his song “The Keeper” that he wrote for the film “Machine Gun Preacher,” a film based on the true story of the life of Sam Childers. A portion of the sales went to support Childers’ “Angels for East Africa” charity.

Now, we have just launched the NEW ChrisCornell.com!

Check it on out!

We are super stoked to be working with Ultimate Boarder!

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the Ultimate Boarder Competition is the only board-sport triathlon in the world which finds the best all-around boarder in the Surf, Skate, and Snow realms.

We are in the process of building out and designing a sick website that will be the platform for this 5th Annual event, but for now we put together a cool splash page featuring the trailer to the 2012 competition - check out the beginning at UltimateBoarder.com!

We recently launched the new ZeeAvi.com to coincide with the release of Zee Avi’s new record ghostbird, off Brushfire Records.

The site features new aesthetics that embody the overall vibe of ghostbird - give it a look and check out more from Ms. Zee Avi!

Longtime client and phenomenal artist Mason Jennings is gearing up to release his new record, Minnesota, on September 13. The pre-sale for the album starts August 16th.

For this new release, we re-skinned his entire site to fit the theme and style of Minnesota‘s artwork, and the result is piece we are really proud of.

Check out the NEW MasonJennings.com.

Feel free to check out our latest project, Courtney O’Donnell’s new website: CourtneyODonnell.com

Courtney is at the beginning of her career, yet has already written more than 20 songs, taught herself to play the guitar and worked with major names in the music business. She released her first two original CD’s at the age of 11 and 14. Courtney has big things lined up for her, and there is no doubt that she will succeed. We are thrilled to be working with her.

Be sure to check out her website to learn more about Courtney and to see what cool features we included on her site!

CourtneyODonnell.com

The switch from the old profile to the new profile that Facebook pulled on its users in late December/early January anticipated some other alterations to occur. Alas, the new Pages on Facebook is here! The new Pages redesign resembles and operates like a user’s regular profile. However, there are multiple differences in regards to the Page’s and their admins.

The new Pages consists of all the features of the new profile more or less. For example, the menu bar is on the left-hand column with links to the wall, photo albums, videos, tour dates, etc., which also eliminates the information box that was a component of the old profile and old pages of Facebook. The edit tab option has therefore also switched to the very top of the page. Admins can now click up top to edit their pages, which directs them to editing the info, apps, profile picture, marketing, etc.

Here are a handful of great documentaries that I’ve found inspiring in one way or another.  I love watching artists work.  I love watching the focus, the intensity and all the small decisions that go into finishing a work of art or a completed designed object.  This all probably started with watching Bob Ross as a kid (Someone please make a Bob Ross documentary!)

I hope you find some of these interesting and inspiring.  Please share your favorites in the comment section.

• Beautiful Losers

• Helvetica

• Objectified

• Mystery of Picasso

• How to Draw a Bunny

• The Cool School

• Crumb

• Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye

• Art: 21 - Art in the 21st Century

• Frank Lloyd Wright

• Rivers and Tides

• Style Wars

Everyone’s heard of a remix, those songs that were released and made it big on the radio that were then adopted by a music savy dj with four computers and a slightly disturbing obsession with electronica and techno music. Love them or hate them, they are a staple of the music industry. 

Now the idea is being brought to the design world.  Let me introduce you to Nonsek’s Machine: the online interface which allows you to take work from a range of talented designers and remix that work to your heart’s content.

The dominance of the web has changed the way people work, live and stay informed. For now, I’m going to leave aside a discussion about what the internet has done to the average person’s experience of life and the way people relate to others (though they are certainly worthy subjects for reflection and consideration).

What I want to share with you today are the tools we at Oniracom use to help us stay on top of the rapid shifts and changes which we encounter daily.  As a company that works primarily on websites and social media, every new application, every new site, every new contribution to the field of design, development and social networking has the potential to rearrange the way we go about business.  This means that it is a necessity to stay flexible, because you will encounter challenges and you will be expected understand the new developments and rise to the occasion (or risk being met by a client asking, “well they did that over their; are you not as capable?”).

So with all these changes and rapid sharing of information, what is the trick to staying on top without driving yourself crazy?

The solution is finding good tools that bring you the most relevant information and allow you to communicate easily and work efficiently.

Click Read More to See The Tools We Use on a Daily Basis and leave a comment about the tools that you use!

It took a little bit of time and energy, but we’re psyched to announce that the new Marc B Music website officially launched today!

On this new and improved site you will find video, music, Marc’s latest tweets, pics, and tons more cool stuff!

I am an image addict, I search and peruse and hunt all day long.  It’s quite fun to see what all is out there on the internet, but at times it can be a bit disappointing.  Here is one discovery I made not so long ago.

The Hannah Montana Best Of Both Worlds DVD Cover

Stock Photo of a Crowd.

That’s right, it’s here.  The holiday season is in.  No, not Christmas, not Halloween, not hanukkah or any thing like that no.  It is National Design Week!  The most glorious time of the entire year, and the design room is celebrating.

The National Design Awards have been handed out.  Here is one winner who caught my eye:

Lifetime Achievement Award

Bill Moggridge

Bill is the co-founder of IDEO, a global design consultancy, creating impact through design.  He is an industry design specialist and expert, most notably, he designed the world’s first laptop computer.

Thomas Campbell makes “stuff”.  That’s the short description.  But if you take a look at his body of visual work, you’ll see that the word is appropriately broad.  Film, paint, photography and typography are just a few things he’s impossibly talented at.

If you’ve been following Jack Johnson’s career as a musician and as a film maker, then you’ve seen Campbell’s work.  Check out the beautiful handwritten “Jack Johnson” font and macro photography on www.jackjohnsonmusic.com as well as the artwork featured on his surf films “The Seedling”, “Sprout” and “The Present” (all on Jack’s Woodshed Films).  Campbell has brought a bold, timeless and fluid graphic touch to each project.

Campbell introduces himself on his web site’s bio:
“Well, I am not a huge fan of using words to describe art and every time I am asked to write an artist statement my gut instinct is just to say “Um, I make stuff”.  And in reality, that is what I do.  I am a creative person by nature and by trial and error - and I just enjoy adapting to different creative scenarios and moving with them.”  Check out the entire interview on Campbell’s web site.

Also, Brushfire Records just released the soundtrack to his film The Present which you can pick up here.

Today I thought I would share a quick tutorial on how you can make a hand drawn myspace header image and then show you a way that you can quickly add that header image to the top of your myspace.  (If you are only looking for the code that adds an image header to your myspace page, see step 10 at the bottom).

To see the Header in action go check out Myspace.com/MatthewMcAvene

From SmashingMagazine.com to DesignBump to Magazine sites like Print and CMYK, there are tons of great design resources out there. But lately, there is one resource that has been providing me with more exciting content and educational articles than any other, Design-Newz.

Design-Newz, which was built and is run by the guys over at Spyre Studios, is an invaluable resource for any designer.  It hosts a virtual library of design blog posts.  Basically, they search the web for the latest and greatest design articles and then post links to those articles on their project website Design-Newz.com.

To help promote the blog posts, they employ twitter.  I follow them on twitter and get their regular tweets linking to hundreds of different design blogs with high quality articles that offer free brushes, photoshop tutorials, and inspirational collections of work by designers.  Thus far, they’ve been a wonderful and welcome source of inspiration as I’ve worked on our company’s websites.

Their work and their site exhibits four things that inspire me: A unique idea, Fantastic quality, Regular and consistent updates (they commit to at least having 5-10 updates a day), and a humble attitude that seeks to promote great work over purely personal gain.

Go follow them on twitter and start learning.