At least we think the calendar we just donated our services to create does thanks to the gorgeous faces in it, and we hope you do too.  The year itself is up to you.

Calendar Cover feat. Matthai Lion

We’ve been volunteering photo and design services for Conservators’ Center, a nonprofit rescue for exotics like lions, tigers, bobcats, wolves, and binturongs, for over four years now.  I suppose it’s obvious by now that we like animals and we like do-gooders, so this seemed like a natural fusion of our “likes”.  We get to spend time with tigers and bobcats who sweet-talk us and recognize us while knowing that we are helping them in some way.  That’s why we had the idea to do a 2012 calendar for the Center as a fundraiser for them with a selection of some of our favorite photos of some of the most engaging animals there.  TCG Legacy, a Garner, NC-based printing company who puts out great quality product agreed to discount printing costs for the good cause, and all proceeds from calendar sales will be going directly to the Center to benefit their animals.  These calendars will be printed on an off-set printer to ensure the highest quality in the images!

We’re excited about this project for so many reasons, not the least of which is the opportunity to collect several of our favorite photos into one place.  We feel that the sum of them makes a statement about both the experience of working with these animals – the rewards, the relationships – and also about how important it is for rescue facilities to exist in the first place.  Most people we’ve met don’t know that there is even a need and that animals in captivity like these are in huge need of care and rehabilitation because of the sometimes horrid circumstances humans subject them to.

For the next few days, Conservators’ Center will be accepting pre-order purchases of the calendar.  It’s a good idea to take advantage of this to guarantee that you get a copy (or more for gift giving this holiday season!) because there will be a limited supply.  So far, the response on these is great and sales are very high, so jump on it if you’re interested!  It’s a great way to support a cause and get something in return that you’ll get a lot of use out of.  You can click on any of these photos in this post or on the Center links to be carried directly to their online store!

Let us know what you think, and feel free to share this with your friends!  See some samples of the spread inside the calendar below.

We’re WAY overdue for a new blog post!  We have a lot of good things in the works including a completely new website, a business growth plan, and lots of support for some of the animal rescues we volunteer for.  Given all that, we’re going to get back on track with this blog and keep you updated on all of it.

So, first order of business: United States Equine Rescue League, Inc.

Sweet, emaciated horse rescued by USERL last year.

We’ve posted about this organization before (see previous post with photos of a couple of adoptable horses we took pics of) and continue to love what this group is all about.  They balance business sense with passion for rescuing the abandoned, abused, neglected, and unwanted.  Blood, sweat, and tears for a good cause.

Here’s the thing about horses.  They can weigh from 150 lbs to 2000 lbs, they are strong, agile, intelligent, and sensitive, yet they can be so incredibly forgiving of the horrors of their pasts.  Perhaps that sereneness of spirit is why they are among the most effective therapy animals for humans who need their own rehabilitation.  I’ve certainly been able to lose burdens in their soft breath and long manes, not to mention the thousands who have benefited from their time with them while being handicapped with physical or mental illnesses or behavior problems.  Winston Churchill once said “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.”

To even glance at world history makes you wonder what a different place the world would be without them.  Wars have been won and lost on the backs of horses, agriculture and communications changed hugely by them, and unchanging affection from them to their people.  So maybe not all of those pivotal moments worked to the benefit of the individual horse, but one still has to consider how they have worked for humans and consider working to help those of them who have dire need for it.

"Insignia of Rohan"

All of this is why we decided to approach USERL’s Triangle Chapter with an idea to help them during a current financial pinch.  This is a nonprofit organization that runs solely on donations and volunteers, yet donations have been down drastically due to the time of year combined with the ever-present economy worries.  Every summer people tend to get more concentrated on vacations and traveling, entertaining the kids while they are out of school, etc. and think less of the ways they can donate to a favorite charity.  It’s understandable, summers are hectic, but it sure does hurt the charities.  This summer, USERL is struggling with the heart breaking decisions to limit the number of horses they can afford to save.  It’s a hard decision to make, but money has to be spent wisely so that those already under their wing will continue to be rehabbed properly, then they can be adopted out to make space for a new horse in need.  Personally, we have the utmost respect for them for being able to make the responsible decision. Live within your means, right?  So let’s pull together to help this great group with those means so that the “living” part can continue for countless others.

What we’ve decided to do is donate a 24″ x 36″ x 1.5″ canvas print of our photo Insignia of Rohan for fundraising purposes.  Our sale value for this print is $395.  We’ve set a goal of receiving $1200 in online donations (to go directly to USERL’s PayPal account, so it’s all tax-deductible) between now and Aug. 6.  All donors will be entered for a random drawing to win this print, and every person who makes a donation in excess of $100 will receive two entries and a free 2012 USERL calendar as soon as they are printed and released in the coming weeks.  We need your help both with donations and with sharing this!  If donations exceed $1200, we’ll throw in a second place smaller print to a second name drawn.  If you happen to be local to the Raleigh, NC area, you can see the canvas in person at Triangle Horse Sports from July 23-Aug 6.  If you are not local and win the drawing, we are happy to have the canvas shipped to you.

So, how do you donate?  Use this ChipIn widget!  It will direct your donation directly to USERLs PayPal account while keeping a running tally of progress toward our goal.  All donations are tax-deductible.  Please, please share this. Share it on Facebook, Twitter, in emails, etc.  It’s a sad reality that finances do sometimes mean life or death, so that is the weight of this.

Thanks for reading and donating to this great organization.  We appreciate it!

Please look us up on our Facebook page, and follow us on Twitter!

On Monday, we got an email inviting us to attend the final dress rehearsal of the North Carolina Opera‘s production of Faust under the condition that we simply tweet about it on Twitter.  Well, that was a no-brainer.  Of course, we went!

For those of you who aren’t quite sure if opera is your thing, this is your chance to find out that it is.  Faust, which is a tale about whether or not anyone wins when making a deal with the devil, is dark, intense, romantic, funny.  Think you get the experience when you watch a performance of an opera on PBS?  Think again.  We’re pretty sure that all the fancy surround sound home stereo equipment in the world can’t achieve what these performers’ lungs and instruments can make you feel.

It’s a sensory experience not to be missed.  A full orchestra, powerhouse vocals that gave us goosebumps, and a projection screen with eery images and English subtitles all make for an engaging show.  Méphistophélès, played by Christian Van Horn, is amazing to see and hear.  Funny and evil, charismatic, he’s perfect.  And it’s not all the muggy weather that will make your hair stand on end.  It’s the incredible voice of Dimitri Pittas.  Flawless.  Mary Dunleavy sings like an angel and pulls off Marguerite’s innocence beautifully.  Liam Bonner, Irene Roberts, and Janice Meyerson all knocked it out of the park as Valentin, Siebel, and Marthe, respectively.  The orchestra is powerful, and Tim Myers, conductor, is fabulous.  And, for the record, we aren’t professional critics or formally educated on the subject.  That’s just how enjoyable this is to even the random viewer.

North Carolina is lucky to have a rich and ever-growing arts scene.  It’s not every day or everywhere that one can go out and see a production like this.  Raleigh, especially, is special because it is the home and hub of so many great organizations and artists of all types.  They lay themselves bare for their art – musicians, singers, and painters alike.  It is very important to go out and support these people and enjoy being entertained at the same time.

A couple of posts ago, we went into a little detail on the design process for creating a concert poster for New Music Raleigh‘s collaboration with Shara Worden and Sarah Kirkland Snider to present Sarah’s original composition Penelope.  Penelope has been widely praised so being able to hear it live was a big deal.  It’s a timeless meditation on war.  Both classic and contemporary.  Add to that a force of nature like Shara, and you have the kind of music that transports you with every blink of the eye, if they are open at all.  It’s heartbreaking, exhilarating, and intoxicating.

So for us, being involved with a project like this on any level is when we feel most excited and centered about what we do as a business and as individuals.  Not just because we discovered a great new composer, and not just because we have been starstruck fans of Shara since Bring Me the Workhorse, her debut album as My Brightest Diamond, but also because we get to work on a community project for the arts, and we get to do it as a team.  Design, eblasts, photography, and all for music, one of the most important forms of art in our lives.

Monday night was the night of the show, and what a great night it was!

And a shout-out to Myriad Media for donating their time to come out and film the show!  Thank you!  Can’t wait to see the final product!

Great Dane, that is!  As some of you may have gathered, we’re animal lovers.  Our latest donated project is for Great Dane Friends of Ruff Love, a North Carolina based dog rescue.  We offered to update their look with a new website design that would also use WordPress on the back end to simplify the CMS. We are doing the site maintenance right now, but it needed to be something that anyone could learn down the road, too.

Simple, welcoming, no fuss: that’s their style.  The redesign needed to convey that first and foremost while sticking to their brand and colors.  We decided to start it all with images that said “dog” even before any text hit the page.  So the header was made from a photo we took of a leash and collar.  The logo was turned into an ID tag.  No words yet, but there’s no mistaking where you are if you land on this site.

The rest is based around the dogs in the rescue and their needs and qualities.  A gallery of available dogs, a medical fund page with a focus on fundraising for vet bills, and an easy to use calendar of events.

Jax

During the last few days of tweaking the site, we even had the pleasure of caring for an emaciated new addition to rescue for a few days until he could go to his new foster home.  What a handsome man!  He’ll be healthy and happy again in no time.  His name is Jax, and he made a great photo subject.

We hope you’ll enjoy!

With his muffled English accent, I remember my design instructor telling us during design critiques, “don’t explain that you LIKE the design, explain why the design WORKS or DOESN’T WORK.”

But let’s face it, from any type of designer’s perspective, whether it be in print, on a website, or in a fashion show, the designs that WORK end up being the ones you really LIKE. Especially when you get to break out of “the box” a little and add in your own personal touch. It’s just important to keep the two in the correct order.  Be sure it has the components to make it work first, then add all the touches that will make people like it even more. With a recent project, we were able to do just that.

New Music Raleigh (NMR) is a new nonprofit to whom we’ve had fun donating design and photography services. Recently, they needed a poster design, eblast, and overall aesthetic for their upcoming show featuring a well-known artist/musician, Shara Worden. This will be NMR’s edgiest show yet, offering an indie rock/folk sound that will include strings-and-harp all the way to drums and guitars inspired by an epic story. NMR’s goal is to make classically influenced music cool again by keeping it modern and styling it up, therefore, they needed a look that would line up with the goals.

The piece being performed, Penelope by Sarah Kirkland Snider, is inspired by Homer’s poem, The Odyssey. It relays the emotions of absence and memory; portraying what Penelope would’ve felt while she faithfully awaited the return of her soldier, Odysseus. The music allows interpretation for anyone yearning and waiting for the return of the one they love, so it also carries a heavy value in our current times as many of America’s soldiers are deployed, their families waiting longingly.

While I wanted to convey that edgy, rock vibe in the poster, the inspiration of the music could not be ignored. After listening to Penelope several times, it’s obvious that the emotion of the story is what really drives the music and gets you, well…involved.

I started out by using the basis of the teal and beige brand I’d created for NMR, with grungy clouds over a suggestive cityscape of Raleigh, the home of the organization, to keep with the branding.  Now to “rock” it up a bit.  Make it vibrant, dramatic.  Abbie and I agreed that to add pop and drama, red seemed to work really well (we really liked it). Bright blue complimented it in an urban way; the way you might expect a punk rock poster to “scream” to get your attention with simple, vivid colors.

I organized the text in a way where the important information is easy to pick up at a glance, but the details are there if you want them. The NMR logo design offered that introduction to being grungy but clean by being at the top. I made a select few lines of text blue to pick up the color from the bottom of the poster. I brought a modern, digital feel in with just a few hashed lines that also would help lead the viewer’s eye gracefully around the poster.

Grungy Rock with clean info: check. Shara’s name & photo as prime ‘real estate’: check. What was missing? A representation of what inspired the music to begin with.

Then we found it. Abbie had an old letter that was written by her grandmother in the 1940s to her grandfather, while he was deployed during World War II. It was perfect. It played into the emotion of the piece and offered an AUTHENTIC piece of history. The words scribbled on the page were poured from a heart that was experiencing exactly what relayed in the music. The letter was complete with a lipstick kiss right on the paper.  This would subtly add texture and meaning in the background of the poster.

The outcome was an overall look that ties into the music and organization it represents pretty well, and should be interesting enough for people to notice it and read it. And we really like it.

In the days and weeks after tragedy, it’s easy to gradually become numb to the pain, ruin, and heartbreak that had us all on the edge of our seats when the news first broke. To those living the nightmare, it’s still just as tangible. It’s cold, their possessions ruined, their loved ones dead, their income halted. You’re probably sitting on something comfy, running the heat in your house, freshly bathed, sipping something hot, and not worried about your survival tomorrow as you read this. Not everyone in the world is so fortunate. Think about it.

In an effort to continue to provide support for our brothers and sisters in Japan, our friends over at Ahpeele Studios have come up with a simple way for people to donate while getting something awesome in return. Ahpeele is known for it’s high quality screen printing and unique, original artwork with an Asian influence, so when they decided to create a new t-shirt dedicated to Japan and donate all of the profits of sales to the Japanese Red Cross, it got us excited to spread the word!

Go to Ahpeele’s website by clicking the links or photos, and order a shirt!  You get to make a donation to the Japanese Red Cross and rock a piece of art at the same time. Make the statement that you support Japan, you support your local small businesses, and in those things you show that you have a great sense of style that goes beyond the garment.

The Japanese text on each shirt reads “The sun will rise again”.  That’s a statement worth making.

So begins the William Blake poem that always stood out to me as a child. I read it over and over and over sometime around 7th grade just because I loved it so much I didn’t want to forget it. I loved lots of poems and stories, but now I know why this one stuck out to me. Tigers would become more than just an animal in the pages of National Geographic.

About three years ago, Jason and I discovered the Conservators’ Center in Mebane, NC, a grassroots rescue and permanent home for many kinds of animals, mostly carnivores, many of whom at some point in their lives desperately needed someone to rescue them from sometimes truly horrible situations and give them a place to live out their days. They would not be hurt or starved ever again.

So it didn’t take long before we were out there frequently taking photos to capture the true personality of the animals and donating graphic design services in the form of logo design, the look of the website, etc.  In the process, we got to actually know many of their tigers, lions, wolves, caracals, binturongs, etc. Can you imagine how amazing it feels to have a tiger walk up to the fencing of its enclosure just to chuffle hello? Or to have a huge wolf wag his tail when he sees you coming? So, of course, we were happy to jump on board with helping the Center by developing some marketing materials for them. Fundraising is a constant struggle for most nonprofits, but especially for animal rescues that most people have never heard of.

Recently, I got to go there again to snap more photos. It’s a challenge, that’s for sure! I shoot through the fencing, of course, because I can’t say that mingling with a 400 lbs predator is on the top of my to-do list, nor would people be allowed even if they were a little crazy. The fencing itself is challenging, but add to that the fact that animals don’t always cooperate. They move around or sit facing the wrong direction all the time. I try to get shots that show just the animals so that each photo can pull you into the animals’ eyes and personalities, but because they are in enclosures that are on the small side (back to the fundraising issue), it’s also tough to catch shots that don’t have the fencing as a visual distraction. Of course, the flip side of that is that funding could expand their space, so maybe that needs more attention somehow. Also, being outdoors in general can be tough. Bright sun, clouds, suddenly sun again, then clouds moving by again. Getting exposure right isn’t always a piece of cake, either. Altogether, though, we couldn’t pick a more intriguing, beautiful muse.

“…And what shoulder and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand and what dread feet?…”

We have a soft spot for do-gooders.  We’ve had the honor of meeting a lot of people and groups over the last couple of years who truly do give of themselves for the greater good, whether that be for something like supporting the arts or rescuing abused animals.  These are people who have blood, sweat, and tears invested in their causes, sometimes literally.  We should all aspire to such passion and kindness.

For that reason, nonprofits will be a recurring theme in this blog.  We make a point to work with our favorite organizations to help them reach their goals through donating our services, and I have to say that we love every second of it.  It is truly amazing how rewarding it can be!

Jason walked Wee Biscuit

Of the ones we love and admire, there are a few groups that have really touched our hearts in a unique way.  They are the animal rescuers.  They are the voices of those who can’t speak for themselves, the arms who hold frightened, hungry, injured, or abused creatures of the world. These are the people who spend their nights and weekends transporting neglect cases to foster homes, and the first thoughts in their heads every morning are of how to raise more funds and support so they can help the other faces in their inbox who have yet to be saved.

Recently, we got to spend an afternoon at one of the barns of the United States Equine Rescue League to take photos of a couple of their adoptable horses: Wee Biscuit, a young mini horse who had just had surgery to remove embedded wire from around the bone of a rear leg, and Maggie, a senior mare who was found in one of the most severely emaciated conditions we’ve ever seen.  Thanks to the dedication of this group and donations from their supporters, both horses have made huge improvements and will be able to live happily ever after with the right adoptive family.

Our photos have been used in USERL’s website and Facebook page to help bring a face to Wee Biscuit’s needs for donations for his surgery (the goal has been met!), to have some fresh, happy photos that show Maggie’s personality to help her catch the eye of some lucky family out there, and one or two will even appear in the group’s 2012 calendar which is an annual source of fundraising for the horses.  And considering how much fun we had, I’d say it’s a win-win!

Wee Biscuit

To learn more about the stories of each of these horses, click on their pictures to go to USERL’s website. They are truly remarkable.  Our photos are toward the end of each page.

Keep your eyes peeled for another blog post in the very near future about another nonprofit we enjoy donating graphic/web art and photography to.  This coming weekend we’ll be taking some photos of some lions, tigers, and bobcats, oh my!

The Style Sheets?  Yes, we’re a graphics company.  Web, print, photo…you name it.  Style?  Absolutely!  That’s what it’s all about!  “Style sheets” is actually a web design term, but it seemed appropriate for bigger reasons.  Style can mean different things to different people, but we believe it transcends media-drenched fashion, interior decor, graphic design, fine art, or cultural traditions.

Style is what should make us all unique.  Trends come and go, but art and creativity are the roots of it all, and the best styles incorporate something else – heart.  That’s where style starts, personally and professionally.  It’s a way of living, a manner of being, and it can trickle down to the details of life from skinny jeans to corporate branding to black and white photography or just presenting yourself kindly all the time.

The goal of Chariot Creative, Inc is to use our love of the arts to create and apply a style for our clients and favorite nonprofits.  The goal of this blog is to shed a light on our style.

So who are we?  We’re a husband and wife team, we’re art lovers, music junkies, philanthropists, coffee snobs, and animal rescuers.  We like visual communication.  No, we don’t know sign language.  We love creating things that make a difference to someone.  That’s our style.