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The Challenge

The Designer’s Build-off is typically a fun and interesting series in which three designers take on the challenge of concepting a design for a type of organization or client. In this case, the organization would be a museum. Instead of creating a fictitious one, I decided to go with an existing organization. I chose the National World War I Museum, based here in Kansas City, Missouri. Here are some images of the design and the article. To read the full article, you can purchase the magazine here.

This year we celebrate our third year as Lifetree Creative. We are so thankful for all we have been able to accomplish and are excited for the years that are coming ahead.

From the moment we dreamed up Lifetree, we had a strong burden to empower non-profit organizations to communicate their message simply, beautifully and effectively through the web.

When we heard about charity:water, our hearts jumped. We wanted to get involved right away and since we have a birthday coming up, what better way to celebrate than to remember why we started Lifetree Creative in the first place.

Our purpose has always and will forever be to give life and by giving water to those who need it most, not only are we giving life, we are also giving hope.

Together, can make a big difference for this cause. Did you know that about 4,500 kids die each day from waterborne disease? By building clean water projects for villages that need them, we can prevent this.

100% of all donations go directly to building clean water projects in developing countries with charity:water.

Join us today. Give hope. Give life. Give water.

Thank you & God bless you.
#givelife

Eduardo, Gedy, Chloe, & Jack

To our surprise, the sweet icons Gedy created were featured in About.com’s graphic design blog. Definitely exciting.

We’ve updated our icon set by adding about 50 new ones. This update was free to those who purchased it initially. Enjoy!

You can purchase them here.

Updates Made:

Icons Added: App Store, Bebo, Bing, Bookmark, Brightkite, Design Bump, Designmoo, DeviantArt, Drupal, Endor.se, Evernote, Feedburner, Formspring, Foursquare, Forrst, Friendster, Github, Google Buzz, Google Voice, Google Wave, Grooveshark, Hi5, Hyves, Identi.ca, Instagram, LinkedIn, LoveDsgn, Magnolia, Mixx, Meetup, Mister Wong, MySpace, Ning, Okurt, Pandora, Picassa, Sribd, Share This, Skitch, Slashdot, Spotify, Square App, Squidoo, Steam, Windows, Xing, Yahoo Buzz, Yelp, & ZooTool

Icons Redone: AIM, Google, Gowalla, MySpace, RSS, SlideShare, & Twitter

Icons Removed: Old AIM, Etsy, Old MySpace & Virb

Because we love circles and we love to share.

• 320 x 480 iPhone
• 640 x 960 iPhone 4
• 1024 x 1024 iPad
• 1024 x 768
• 1280 x 800
• 1280 x 1024
• 1440 x 900
• 1600 x 1024
• 1680 x 1050
• 1920 x 1200
• 2560 x 1440

As you can see, we have made some changes, not only to our branding, but also to our website. When we started Lifetree in 2008, we knew in our hearts that it would be different from any other design studio. We had dreams about being able to help nonprofits, churches and ministries. Little did we know that our dreams would become a reality in so little time.

Two years have passed and we have served more than thirty-five organizations by providing quality, affordable solutions that can empower them to communicate their message effectively.

In this coming year 2011, though our goal remains the same, we want to take things to the next level in all aspects of our business. We want our designs to be even more progressive and cutting edge, we want to provide top quality products without charging an arm and a leg, and ultimately, we want our client interaction and service to exceed their expectations, each and every time.

Though the re-branding of Lifetree Creative is quite simple, we have put a lot of thought and heart behind it and the meaning of it, is very significant for us and we can’t wait to share the ‘behind-the-scenes’ with you.

We hope you like it & we humbly welcome all feedback.

Back in June I began redesigning my website. After searching a gazillion websites for some cool social media icons, none of them were quite what I was looking for so I decided to create my own.

When I showed the amazing people of dribbble what I was working on, many of them asked for me to release these as a set. I was surprised at the response they got so I opened Illustrator and started working. After a full weekend of research and pixel pushing, I had accomplished a set of 55 delicious vector social media icons.

My initial approach was a bit different than most social media icon packs I’ve seen or used in the past. The goal was to create an icon set that could be used as a tool, not just for one project, but for many projects to come. I also wanted to make them as simple as possible in case the designer would want to use the logo by itself, and not be confined to the circle. I mean, let’s face it – circles don’t go with everything, right? My second goal was to make this available in multiple formats so that the designer can choose whether they want to work in Illustrator or Photoshop without losing the ability to scale the icon to any size.

Creating the set was the easiest part, the hardest one was to contact each and every company to make sure that I had their blessing to release this set. That was fun!

After a few months, we feel that it’s time to take it to the next level. We have been working on an update that will include a lot more icons as well as multiple shapes & variations, not just circles.

For now, we gave our page a little face lift. We hope you like it.

View The Icons

We love food and apparently, food loves us.

In the past few months we finished a website for one of the best clients ever, Virginia Taylor from Taylor Made Menus. Virginia  is not only an amazing cook, she is also a great blogger. But beware – TaylorMadeMenus.com is not just a food blog like any other. Unlike most food blogs, Virginia focuses on blogging about entire menus, from the craved appetizers to the finger-lickin’ desserts. Another cool thing that sets Taylor Made Menus apart, is how she creates menus for specific occasions; whether it’s a fancy business party or a luncheon at the beach, she’s got the perfect menu for you.

We are also proud to say that TaylorMadeMenus.com has been featured in FoodBuzz.com.

Approximately a month after we completed the first food project, we began working with Aleida Arbona, also known as Foodie Lady. Aleida is the creator of FoodieLady.com; a blog full of delicious Puerto Rican dishes. This project hits very close to home because both Eduardo and I are Puerto Rican. Aleida’s project is currently under the development process and we’re excited to launch in the next few weeks so be sure to check back.

Pray for the Stars is a pretty neat project and one that has become an instant favorite. The purpose of the project is to create a community of people that would ask in behalf of those that are often forgotten.

In our culture, celebrities are held up on a pedestal where they are worshiped and loved; but when they fall off of that pedestal and they hit rock bottom, they suddenly become an afterthought. There at their lowest, the only attention they receive is from the media who exploits them and their tragedies for the sake of society’s amusement.

Pray for the stars wants to do the opposite. They want to gather like-minded people to reach out and share the hope, even if they will never know that someone was praying for them.

For those of you who do not know, both Eduardo and I serve at the International House of Prayer in our in-house design department. We have worked there for the past two years and absolutely love it.

Since I serve as the senior web designer, part of my responsibility is to work on some of the really cool projects, like this one. I was given the task to design an embeddable player for our organization. Our media team provided all of the requirements and I got to work on the wire-framing and interface design. Not only did I have the pleasure of creating this stand-alone player, but I also created the multi-player that holds all of the different channels/categories/archives, meta tag info, and downloadable links.

The amazing people of dribbble gave me some feedback which helped refined the design. Once the full player has been launched, I’ll make sure to post a link.