Cubicle Ninjas’ mantra is to make beautiful design for the masses.

Today we’re launching the first of over ten new sites aimed at this goal. Each Monday, for the foreseeable future of 2010, we’ll launch a new project focused on making custom design accessible to real people. Some will be benefit small businesses, others non-profits, others the design community itself. All share the same hope: that the design industry is changing for the better and we can have a say in its future.

After months of creative exploration and testing we’re proud to share our work. Please enjoy Business Card Ninjas.

In the coming days we’ll be sharing our the exploration process behind this site. As always, we’re excited and humbled by your feedback. Please don’t hesitate to be in touch (good or bad) and we will take your thoughts to heart.

And please stay tuned – the best is yet to come!

Josh Farkas
Creative Director, Cubicle Ninjas

Our friends over at WooThemes have posted a quick interview about the Cubicle Ninjas philosophy, why we love what we do, and why we adore customizing their themes. You’ll notice that we can’t help but gush. We honestly think WooThemes are the best thing to happen to Wordpress since plugins. A hefty bow to Adii, Magnus, and Mark Forrester for letting us be approved WooThemes Workers.

For extra incentive, we have the first peek at the new Cubicle Ninjas idea dojo (aka. offices)!

Whew!

It has been a wonderful few months here at the Ninja Idea Dojo. Even amid the economic turmoil seen across the world, we’ve seen that Design continues to bring exponential value to clients. Here is proof:

We officially launched a little less than a year ago. No money spent on advertising or promotion.

Yet today we were featured in our 70th article or gallery. That is the power of effective branding and design. This doesn’t even take into account the hundreds of social media links and reviews, tweets, or emails to a friend.

Thanks to all of the new friends and clients who have made this possible! We owe you a giant platonic ninja hug.

Here are a few of our recent mentions:

10 Beautiful Wordpress Sites – Web Designer Mag, 2009

Cubicle Ninjas, your totally badass web design team – My Life Starting Up, 2009

Creative Business Card Designs – Logo Designer Blog, 2009

Featured Artist – Directory for Designers, 2009

We’re the official ninjas of Woo Themes

Featured Artist – ChicagoWebDesigners.org, 2009

CSSchick.com

iCoolz.com.cn

Logospire.com

Update:10 websites built with Wordpress

Update #2: 25 Unique Uses of Wordpress as a CMS (as seen on the front page of Digg)

Update #3: 72 Stunning Business Cards That Will Blow You Away

Update #4: 25 Sites of the Week

Listed on Agency Pimp

Update #5: Business Card 24

Update #5: 30 Great Uses of WordPress

Businesses are fairytales. They’re really unbelievably optimistic when you think about it. People bound to a logo, moving in unison, and held together because of small stack of legal filings? It doesn’t sound possible in the real world.

Yet these people move mountains. These giants shape our future and give context to our present. They make magic. So whatever story they they tell themselves to work together, they believe it so much they’re willing to give the majority of their lives at this greater goal.

What is your business’ story? One where you save the world from itself. One where without your hard work we’re all doomed. It should leave me wanting more, hoping I’d have a chance to brush up against you in the elevator filled with questions. Make me a believer.

Because when I understand why you really matter, I’ll make your goal my own. And when you head home for the day your doors will still be open, lovingly tended after in the hearts of those that were inspired by a simple tale.

Microsoft announced a new application today called Songsmith. Designed to work the upcoming version of Windows, it is a music program encouraging users to sing as a matching background track is generated. And while novel in concept, the press they’re getting is a little less positive.

Why? Well their official advertisement shows it running on an Apple computer.

Lesson: Sometimes it is better not to do an ad then to do one so poorly it can only be used as evidence of your incompetence.

I adore Seth Godin. He has the brevity a haiku poet and the mind of a marketing-focused George Carlin. With a few words he can reveal wonder within the most mundane.

Earlier today he tackled the topic of advertising, or more specifically how your advertising is free when marketing does its job:

If the local bank were offering a sale on dollar bills, ninety cents each, how many would you buy?

Most rational people would say, “I’ll take them all please.” Especially if you had thirty days to pay for them.

So, why, precisely, do you have an ad budget?

If your ads work, if you can measure them and they return more profit than they cost, why not keep buying them until they stop working?

And if they don’t work, why are you running them?

The time-tested response is that you’re not sure, that ads are risky, that you can’t tell. And for some sorts of products and some sorts of ads, you’ll get no argument from me.

Digital ads are different (or they should be). You should know cost per click and revenue per click and be able to make a smart guess about lifetime value of a click. And if that’s positive, buy, buy, buy.

Makes sense! For more Seth Godin goodness take at look at our favorites The Big Red Fez, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable, Free Prize Inside!: The Next Big Marketing Idea, and his latest Tribes. Each book is filled with page after page of delicious mind candy.

When a client asks us the question, “What options are there to host my website?” we usually lie. We say, “You should pay to host all of your own work. That is the only option. We’d be happy to set you up with a wonderful web host.”.  And then we quickly leave the room.

This is not the truth, and we are shame-filled ninjas. But we lie because we care.

Last week Journalspace was in the top 100,000 websites on each with over 14,000 visitors per month. With six years of experience under its belt there was no need to believe that would change…

Yesterday Journalspace announced they had lost all user data. Every single article, image, and user was gone. After trying to restore a corrupted server the owners officially threw in the towel, citing the end of the website.

And here is why we lie. I’m not concerned with the future of the owners of Journalspace. They’re talented programmers who made a big mistake in not backing up the website more securely, but they’ll move on. I am concerned about the thousands of people who built a writing audience that will never get these readers back. Honestly, how do you console an author that lost six years of writing? How can they connect with their readers again?

This is why digital ownership is important. When you trust others too much you can lose everything. Don’t take that chance with your business.

Leather Creations Furniture has a dozen locations across the US, though you’ve probably never heard of them before. I hadn’t. Sure, they’d received the Customer’s Choice Award for five years in a row, and even named one of the fastest growing privately-held companies by Entrepreneur Magazine, but they were still just another leather furniture store.

That was until a small ad in an Illinois newspaper changed everything. Last week this ad made its way onto the internet, where it has been mentioned over in over 350,000 blogs and websites. Take a look…

When businesses say promotion is hard, I can’t help but laugh. Promotion is easy. Mimicking your competitors is easy. Parroting business cliches is easy. But saying something humorous or unique when every aspect of your marketing is drained through a committee…now that is hard.

When people come to a creative company they don’t look for the latest editions of Photoshop or Illustrator. In spite of what schools may tell you, there is a surplus of talented software wizards. People pay creatives to think for them. We solve their problems by knowing how to implement ideas. We iterate potential directions until they find the one they can proudly stand behind. We exist to mediate bad decisions. In effect – we’re their outsourced brain.

If creating were as easy as using software proficiently, everyone who knew Word would have created novels in their spare time. Those who knew Excel would have balanced their budgets with aplomb, and skilled Outlook users could send Html emails to their family without batting an eye.

And so more important than learning the tools, a young designer must accept that their first job is rooted in psychology: How do you lead a team through a series of open-ended decisions?

We’ve found that the greatest obstacle to decision-making is fear. It crops up in emails, or in conference calls, veiled through feedback, or tucked away in a hurried voicemail. Giving up control even for a moment is hard. It takes trust and respect and asks you to forget the potential failures that could lie ahead. Most people invite fear in for dinner. And once inside your heart, fear doesn’t leave easily. It makes itself home and infects choices and undermines your ability to act. How can a project possibly move forward when filled with so much doubt?

“I’m afraid for my job.” “I’m afraid my board won’t like this.” “I’m afraid the president will hate that.” “I’m afraid customers will dislike it.” “I’m afraid we went too far.” “I’m afraid we didn’t go far enough.”

We’ve worked with hundreds of start-ups. Every single start-up that had a problem deciding on a design for a logo or business card has failed. Not one, not five, every single one.

And the reason is that small decisions are reflections of larger decisions. If you are filled with fear and doubt when it comes to pointing at a brand you admire, you’ll see this same fault amplified 100x when the important business decisions arrive. After all, the color of your logo won’t matter if you don’t satisfy your clients in time.

So a note to the young designers: When looking for good clients, find the fearless. They don’t have time to mull over doubt. You’ll see them by the trail of success they’ve left behind and the strength to trust over worry.

And a note to entrepreneurs: Your job is to stare fear in the face and keep moving forward.

A few weeks back we shared our excitement over our snazzy new business cards. Time has passed.

Since then our cards have been featured in the Ever-Real Marketing Blog’s article “The 75 Hottest Business Card Designs You’ve Ever Seen!” and were also discussed in the portuguese article “Business Card: Does yours need upgrading?” where they say (according to our trusted friend Babelfish):

Closing the list, a card that breaks practically all the rules [...] Cubicle Ninjas, uses a strong image and a creative name to pass a message, counting on the curiosity of that it does not know of what it is treated, to go until the site and to discover, since it has very little tracks: name, telephone, and an email for which we can discover the URL. But who to receive a card from these and not to know of what it is treated, with sufficient probability will have the curiosity to go to investigate what these ninjas walk making. ; -)

To round out the celebration hat-trick, we held the spot for the #1 business design card design in the history of the prestigious Fave-Up gallery.

And to think we’ve only given one physical card away…