See the additions to the architecture and design! We will be done in a few weeks once we have the island complete we will open it to the public! Until then keep your eyes out for more pictures of this beautiful landmark!

Everyone be on the look out for slightly nerdy computer artists and programmers wearing a black shirt with white lettering!

Yes we broke down and bought some shirts for our team!

We are constantly building new brand designs for our clients that often our own stock of marketing items are neglected.

We have focused on bringing that issue to a hault by producing an entire 2008-2009 brand promotion campaign.

President of Designing Digitally, Inc., Andrew Hughes, spent the week of June 16-20 giving back to his hometown community. Andrew developed the curriculum and taught the Summer Technology Camp 2008 at the Putnam County Educational Service Center in Ottawa, OH, providing Middle School kids with the opportunity to learn about the latest technologies. Some of the activities the students were involved in included Second Life, creating a Video, creating a magnet, and creating a “Wanted Poster.”

The feedback from students was outstanding and Andrew hopes to continue teaching technology to Putnam County students for many years to come.

To view the comments from students in attendance, as well as their Wanted Posters visit http://pcesc.wordpress.com

Designing Digitally, Inc. donated their time to develop a website to accept payment for tickets to the Something for Sarah benefit on July 12. The website also accepts donations to help Sarah Alward and family. Sarah is 6 year old girl who has been diagnosed with a rare brain disorder and will soon face a very radical brain surgery. To view the site, go to http://www.designingdigitally.com/somethingforsarah

Designing Digitally is delighted to announce the beginning of a brand new Second Life island. Unfortunately this new island is on the teen grid and will not be open to the public, but we are all very excited to get started and we will be posting with updates and news on this project when possible. Keep an eye out for pictures on our blog and upon completion we will have full album of new snapshots added to our portfolio of this new island.

Designing Digitally Inc. finishes OrangeDoorStudio.com. This site is a flash based content management system using XML to publish the information to the audience. Includes loading images externally, text externally, and music externally.

Check out the site here:http://www.orangedoorstudio.com/

Our president Andrew Hughes was offered a teaching position at Miami Valley Career Technical Center to teach Second Life building and design to a programming class. Andrew taught the students for seven weeks which consisted of building, texturing, scripting, and best practices. We were proud to see him work so diligently on improving the quality of life for students in the Dayton Ohio area. We hope that MVCTC enjoyed our instructional class and would like to invite any other organization to participate in our direct instruction for kids. If you are interested in obtaining direct instruction on how to use, build, design, script, or plan within Second Life feel free to contact us today!

The students were to build custom airplanes that were fully functional within SL. Below is a picture of the final day from the class:

Designing Digitally has added a YouTube channel containing our Second Life tutorial videos. Check out our YouTube channel at: http://www.youtube.com/designingdigitally.

Designing Digitally, Inc. has completed a website for 5 Girls and a Boy Entertainment which was designed to promote their upcoming event, Be Inspired! Inspiration Speaker’s Series and Inspirational Talent Showcase. This event will take place on August 30, 2008. The website can be see at www.5girlsandaboy.com.

Today I got a chance to stop into Andrews class. For those of you that don’t know, Andrew has been taking some time to teach a few high school kids a little bit about Second Life.

This got us thinking that it would be nice to host a few classes for people out there that may want a learn a little more about Second Life. We plan to hold a class sometime in the near future and would love for you to join us. Please contact us and let us know if you would be interested.

I also posted a new short video today just to show some shots of our new island. Check it out on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R0efuev7S0

We have released our 2008 Corporate island. This design was out of the ordinary for most SL builds. We wanted to push the limits of Second Life by developing an abstract corporate headquarters. Many times when building we take for granted that there is no gravity within this virtual environment. We wanted to show everyone out there looking at Second Life that we can push the limits of design to better promote the organizations that are in need of branding themselves. If you are looking for a professionally designed island/sim within Second Life you are definitely at the right place!

Designing Digitally, Inc. is pleased to announce the grand opening of it’s newly re-designed Second Life Island on March 31, 2008. Designing Digitally, Inc. is a full-service design firm specializing in Second Life development, graphic design and printing, Web site design and programming, and e-learning and interactive media design. The Second Life island will showcase past, as well as current projects and will offer free video tutorials on using Second Life.

The new island will also provide space to rent for meetings and presentations with streaming video and slideshow capabilities. To learn more about what Designing Digitally, Inc. can offer you or your company, please visit us in world at:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Designing%20Digitally/129/123/58/?title=Designing%20Digitally or

on our Web site at

http://www.designingdigitally.com.

We have the Pub / Dance Club finished for all you virtual party people that are interested in visiting our island. For all of you that cannot wait until our Second Life island opens here is an updated screen shot:

ONLY a few more days before we open to the public!

We are finishing up our scripting on our Second Life island. I wanted to share how you can brand each and every item on your Second Life island to promote your organization. As you can see Andrew is wearing our company shirt, and the pool table has a custom design with our logo! Yes the pool table allows for people to play pool against each other! We know how important it is to make sure that the organization is properly branded within SL. And that you must have interaction within your island to keep people interested in the digital space. Design is critical when developing your SL island! See image below:

For all of you that read this blog. I wanted to let you in on a little secret. We are planning on opening our Second Life island on April 1st for everyone to view! We will be posting the SURL to teleport to the islanda few days before for everyone!

Today we took one step forward in opening our second life island for 2008. We have been diligently trying to get this project wrapped up. We implemented the pod racing game today. We also have the audio recording throughout the island. We have scripted to give the user an audio and text chat prompt in what sector they are in. This island will be used by multiple organizations so it is best that we split the parcels so that multiple meetings can take place at one time.

Check out the pod racer track.. yes you will be hovering over water!

Here is a sneak peak at our meeting room. You can see the design style from the pictures provided. We are currently working diligently to get the interactions and the scripts needed to provide a fully interactive experience. With our island being closed off for the re-design we have been provided with feedback on when it will open. We want to stress that we are working as fast as we can to make this design open to the public. We are planning on opening on March 30th. That is a tentative schedule at this time. More to come soon!

We step closer to being able to better assist state and federal bodies looking for our creative services. We have applied for the Ohio Department of Administrative Services State Term Schedule to be an official vendor for Ohio. As we mentioned in the previous post we have obtained our GSA Schedule 70 that allows us to work at the federal level. We look forward to assisting government funded organizations with creative solutions.

FINALLY!

Designing Digitally, Inc. has been awarded a U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule 70 Contract, number GS-35F-0248U. GSA IT Schedule 70 was established to provide U.S. government agencies the ability to procure the products and services they need as solutions to their information technology requirements. To view the contract please click here.

After months of hard work and dedication we have almost finished our 2008 SecondLife island. I am excited to say we are around 80% finished with the second life island!

What I see with most all Second Life islands is that users always take into consideration gravity and laws that take place within the real world/out world. If one can think past the fact that what happens out of Second Life does not need to apply to the virtual environment then users will be able to design complex interesting architecture for design purposes.

We hope to have the island finished by March 30th for the grand opening to the public. On that date we plan on having guest speakers talk about their experiences in Second Life and how designing the space can assist in the effectiveness of Second Life.