Hunting the Spark

Creature Shop

When Seattle-based creative agency Creature moved into their new space 18 months ago, they took advantage of the retail style window displays by rotating various art projects and visual experiences. For the holiday season, they opened The Window Shop, a functioning boutique featuring “one-of-a-kind gifts to confuse your loved ones." All proceeds went to Hamomi Children’s Centre, a local cause that shares space with Creature. 

The window display at The Creature Window Shop .

The window display at The Creature Window Shop.

We are featuring this for a few reasons. One, it's an innovative way to use the physical attributes of the creative agency for good and the agency got behind the cause. Second, many of the goods offered for sale were created and made by Creature's talented staff.

Lastly, we asked Creative CD Pam Fujimoto why the team chose Hamomi Children's Centre as the recipient of the proceeds. "It seemed like a perfect cause to donate to that we already believed in," said Fujimoto. She also pointed out that they were small enough for the team to feel like they were making a bigger impact.

The original idea was dreamed up by writer Shirley Hendrickson. Christine Ogborn helped this come to life as the producer. Brandon Waterman was the digital producer and did the e-commerce site. 

http://creaturewindowshop.com/

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Celebrating every minute spent outside

For outdoor enthusiasts, every minute spent outside is precious. The people behind a new site from outdoor sport outfitter REI have come up with a way to communicate that they feel the same way.

Titled the REI 1440 Project, the website is a timeline made of one 24 hour period, broken into individual minutes.

REI encourages visitors to the site to share their favorite photo of their time spent outdoors. When a photo is uploaded, the site catalogues the time the image was captured by the user, and plots that photo into the timeline. The goal is to celebrate every minute on the timeline with a unique group of images.

The concept for the site was developed by ad agency BBDO, and built in cooperation with the team at RESN. It's an intelligent way to get people to share images in the context of a greater story.

http://www.rei1440project.com/#

http://www.resn.co.nz/#/home

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Have a heart

The tone of what we make when we are creating often times is decided by someone else. Whoever has commissioned the work has a tone in mind, and we must execute to that tone.

When the events of 9/11 occurred, I was working on a pitch. The pitch called for light-hearted, comedic ideas. On my way into the office that morning, I was sketching out jokes while listening to the radio on headphones. As the news starting coming in, and I started computing it, I took an elevator up into the tallest building in Boston. I got to my desk and stayed as things got worse. I looked at live updates on the web in horror. Of course, by 10, we were released from work. I walked a shaken friend home, then the remaining 4 miles to my apartment. 

Photo by madamepsychosis on Flickr

Photo by madamepsychosis on Flickr

The next day, I woke up and stared at the ceiling. I got up, and nervously boarded the train for my office. When I got upstairs to the 40th floor, I met my partner. We ran into to our Creative Director in the hallway and blinked at him, clueless how to move on writing jokes about mufflers in light of what had happened; what was still happening. 

He was sympathetic, but calm. The assignment wasn't going away. It wasn't less important to the company than it was when we accepted it, even though it paled by the recent events. The agency offered us the chance to work away from the office, and we jumped at the chance. Grinding out a few dozen concepts meant to be funny while our minds were feeling anything but. 

In pure art, the feelings of the artist about a particular subject or just their emotional state in general are a powerful tool. They harness a storm and convey it through a medium that draws in the viewer. But in commercial art, these feelings must be put aside. We have to find ways to wade out past our personal challenges—or shared events—to get to the necessary results. We don't usually get to walk away from a project until we're feeling it again. 

Scan this blog since its inception, and you'll find no trace of my ups or downs. You'll not know which days were good and which were bad. I don't know what that says about me as a professional. I suppose it means I'm no artist. 

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Behind the Work - "They're just parking signs"

By Tony Simmons

When the Atlanta arm of Partners + Napier moved its office to midtown, it shared a small, busy parking lot with a pizza joint. The building’s management required that we have signs to restrict parking in our spaces. My CD thought we should do something original and gave me the assignment. It was a cool way to promote the agency. Perhaps win some awards; better yet attract a client. You never knew who might steal one of our spots. I took them seriously.

As an Art Director, my initial approach was to try and do something visual. After all, the Partners logo was a p with a circle around it. I could have put a slash through it and been done. I could have run out into oncoming traffic too. I kept going. I worked long hours and had idea after idea but none struck the right chord. “They’re just parking signs”, a couple of people said to me. Oh really. Now I had to nail it.

I felt it fair to say that most honest people would admit to having parked illegally at some point in their driving careers, even for a brief moment. If nothing else, everyone wished they could take that handicapped space or parallel next to the fire hydrant when there was nowhere else to park. And with so much going on around our office, it was hard to imagine why people wouldn’t want to pilfer our spaces. You had nightclubs, restaurants, music venues, a high-rise condominium building with inadequate parking, bars, a MARTA Station across the street with easy access to the airport, Falcons, Braves and Hawks games. Not to mention tons of other office buildings. There was plenty of parking in the area to access it all; you just had to pay for it.

Having always believed that the best ideas are based in human truths, the fact that people WILL park illegally was one to work with. Another was that it sucks to be booted or towed. I’d been in that position before and thought there could at least be something to make people smile about it.

Senior Art Director Tony Simmons

Senior Art Director Tony Simmons

The idea became to focus on the reasons people would park there illegally. The signs were designed to look like normal no parking signs but the penalty messaging was written into anecdotes that offered warnings about what would happen if you parked there illegally. I wrote brief stories involving all of the things going on around the area. The shopping, food, nightlife, job opportunities and so on all became fodder for these warnings not to park in those spaces. As I continued writing, not only did I want to try and make people smile if they were towed. I figured why not piss them off more, they shouldn’t have parked there in the first place. Then came stories about cheapskates, plain assholes and people who thought that they were just too special to have to follow the rules.

As the signs came together, my CD walks in with one of those orange, impossible to remove stickers they slap on your window when you’ve been booted. He suggested that I write up a replica version to place on windshields. Like the signs, it was designed to look exactly like the sticker (the date, license plate number, make and model of the car) except the messaging read more like a psychiatrist breaking down your cries for attention by doing something illegally.

They worked pretty well overall. Most people didn’t park there. Some did and were booted. When they were and actually read the signs, they either smiled or kicked the dirt. Exactly what I was going for.

We never towed or booted anyone. After all, they’re just parking signs.

For incoming tenants
For incoming tenants
For impatient restaurant goers

For impatient restaurant goers

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