A community website is a nuanced and powerful new tool for consumer companies to engage customers. On opposite ends of the spectrum, typical brochure-ware corporate websites offer limited options for two-way interaction and social media presences remain floating communities that lack a sense of brand cohesiveness, impact and depth.

Are you excited by innovations like LEED Certification and interested in living a healthier and safer lifestyle at home and work? If so, we warmly welcome you to join Silverscape for a very special presentation!

We’d all like our customers or clients to feel passionate about our brands -- brand ownership is key to the success of any company in today’s community/buzz-driven marketing environment. Apple, in particular, is a great example of this phenomenon. Apple’s legions of dutiful fans have fiercely (some would argue, blindly) incorporated the company’s products into their own personal aesthetic and even identity (“I’m a mac,” anyone?) The release of iTunes 10, however, saw an unexpected manifestation of brand ownership – a proactive backlash, if you will.

 When our development team came back from Adobe Max last year with tales of a design/dev hybrid tool called Flash Catalyst, my interest was peaked to say the least. Flash Catalyst seemed like the holy grail of interactive apps, promising a streamlined Photoshop/Illustrator to Flash/Air experience that empowered designers and made developers’ lives easier. After a week of total Catalyst immersion, however, I have a few bones to pick with Adobe.

Consumers' abandonment of printed media signals an end of traditional book culture and the rise of a different kind of literary community. E-books account for 10% of Penguin Books total book sales, and are expected to account for 40% of Amazon.com's. These numbers, compounded by consistant Kindle sales and the much-hyped release of the iPad suggest that we are not disengaging from literature itself, but merely its native medium. If print ads are a staple of your marketing budget, if you want to make a splash in the tradeshow space or if you have a stack of novels on your nightstand, read on.

 Welcome to a new branding world order: make a unique form work for multiple functions. For a long time, the concept of the logo as a sacred and untouchable mark has reigned supreme, but the scalability/interactivity/changability of online marketing provides the perfect opportunity to shake up this old-school paradigm. The web demands (and is defined by) frequent content updates – your logo is no exception to the rule. Changes in a logo’s context and aesthetic treatment can empower your brand without eclipsing your brand standards.

HTML emails are an invaluable and sustainable tool for keeping up with current clients and for getting your name out to prospects. Especially when an HTML email can be a prospect’s first impression of your company, it’s essential to make sure that first impression is a great one; here are some tips to help...

 Except for instances where my internet is down, I pretty much never watch tv shows on my actual television anymore; I am part of what I suppose we can call the Hulu generation. The other weekend, I went home to visit my folks and prepared to settle comfortably back into the family room routine of TV-watching from the couch. And before long, the ever-growing rift between the different two mediums became painfully obvious.

You’d think that, being a creative, I would have been planning, sketching and designing out my Halloween costume both in exquisite detail and months in advance. Alas, my weekends have been filled with afternoon naps and end-of-summer bike rides and I am totally behind the Halloween eight ball. So, for all you fellow Halloween-stumped designers, here are some costume ideas.

Dear Adobe Elves,

I know I’m early for Christmas, but I thought I’d give you some time to work on my wishlist. Here are a few things that I really really really really want for the next generation of the creative suite.

When IKEA announced that they were scrapping their beloved “IKEA Sans” (a customized version of Futura) for Verdana, the design community exploded - on the internet, at least. The reason behind the swap, according to an interview in Cap & Design magazine, is that Verdana allows Ikea to establish a consistent branding both internationally and across web and print.

Riiiing! Today we launched www.ascendentsystems.com! A division of our client RIM (the driving force behind BlackBerry™), Ascendent Systems allows users to automatically extend the identity and functionality of their business desk phone to any other device. Neato, right? As a collectively smartphone-obsessed company, this was a super fun project for us and we’re looking forward to more exciting engagements with RIM.

Don’t get me wrong, I love design inspiration websites. In fact, I have a whole bookmark folder chock-full of them (favorites being designbombs, dezinspiration, ilovetypography’s ‘Week in Type’ series). These gems aside, many design inspiration sites seem to be steadily veering away from a presenting a collection of hand-picked favorites and more towards becoming indiscriminate mass-aggregators riddled with generic templates and tired web 2.0 tricks. So, here’s what I’ve been looking at instead...

One of the things that I love most about being a designer is that I’m constantly learning – both inside and outside of my own industry. At Silverscape, we’re lucky enough to have a broad client base and it’s allowed me to get knee-deep in the science behind fire-retardant performance garments, what separates artisan chocolate from your run-of-the-mill Hershey Bar, the technology that propels secure data protection and control, and even the details of safety and environmental compliance within the construction industry. Getting to really know a client once they’ve come on board is an exciting process, but beginning an engagement with a client whose services are already close to your heart is even more rewarding.

What up, MTV; welcome to our crib. We’ve done some drastic redecorating, so ditch your shoes and start exploring our new Social-Media-powered digs.