A couple weeks ago we had our first Velora team meetup and spent the weekend exploring Bucharest, the capital city of Romania. It was a blast. Though we are a multimedia design studio based in Philadelphia, our team is spread across the world. We collaborate remotely everyday with each other using tools like our project management system, Dropbox, and Skype. Read on for pictures and more about what happened.

How do you differentiate yourself when there are so many similar applications and products in the market? The story, image and personality behind your brand is what can make your brand stand out. It is important to realize that people aren't just purchasing your product, they are purchasing an experience and the story behind the product. Everyone wants to hear a story and to be part of an experience. The most important thing a brand can do to promote their product or service is to make it tell a story. A great story adds value and personality to a brand and its products or services. It makes the product more approachable and friendly.

If your brand can present a unique story or make the customer feel like they are a part of something, you'll win big time.

The most successful and loved brands have a story to tell. Some of the best memories we have are carefully crafted into the best stories of our lives. There is, undoubtedly, a very strong attachment to stories we recognize in ourselves. And there will always be a charismatic person, a storyteller who uses his skills and social intelligence to energize, inspire and influence thousands of people, for the better.

In this article we will talk about how you, the designer, can create stories that people love, remember and share.

Becoming more productive can help you get where you want to be with your business, but the answer to what you can do to become more productive usually isn't staring you in the face. We often get used to our workflow and make a habit of it. It takes effort to identify where bottlenecks are and to take action on improving your process to become more productive as a designer or business owner.

There are many different little things you can do to become more productive, ranging from meditation to exercising to learning how to speed read. We have outlined what we think are the five most important techniques that will have the greatest impact on your productivity as a designer or business owner. Following, reviewing and conditioning yourself to these five strategies will help you to optimize your workflow so that you can get more accomplished each day.

Website prototyping has been and still is regarded as a simple incipient stage in design and in some unfortunate cases – it is simply overlooked. But there is more to sketching a mock-up than some people may think. Wireframing has more to do with the message and the core concepts of a business, than it has to do with graphic design - because a website mock-up is actually about mapping businesses and figuring out what goes where and why. It's important that both designers and clients understand this. Website prototyping needs your attention and thought (more than you might be giving it now).

Website design prototyping is a process that refers to three main practices. This blog post will help you understand how to use them efficiently, as a designer, and help your client see it as a map of their business, instead of as just a sketch, before the "real" design comes up.