Robert Coats:8-bit Cities. City maps for old school gamers.
Gary Graf: For lyrical virtuosity, and a darn good time, catch bare naked ladies. The band. I’m talking about the Canadian band. Who were you thinking of?
Lea Loya: OK Go’s marching band version of ‘This Too Shall Pass.’ Props again to these viral video darlings. Read lead singer’s brilliant NYT Op-ed piece from last February on the utilization and creativity of viral videos in the current stifling recording industry environment.
Willem Buys: A full-CGI animated piece by Alex Roman that illustrates architecture art across a photographic point of view where main subjects are already-built spaces.
Last night, in a live televised media event, NBA superstar LeBron James announced his decision to leave his hometown team and city of Cleveland and head south to Miami. While this was major news in the sports world, another related story has had just as much play in the blogosphere and twitterverse: a bitter, scathing letter blasting James written by Cleveland owner Dan Gilbert, and posted on the team website.
The amusing part? The letter was set in Comic Sans, a common Microsoft font usually reserved for birthday party announcements or “free puppies” posters. Instead of taking the letter seriously, people everywhere are mocking Gilbert for his choice of font. Not since James Cameron’s use of the font Papyrus for his blockbuster movie Avatar, has a font received so much notoriety.
Hatred of Comic Sans is not new. In fact there are entire websites (bancomicsans.com, flickr.com/groups/comicsans/) dedicated towards the eradication of the typeface. The font itself was conceived at Microsoft in 1994 for use in a software program aimed at children, and featuring a cartoon dog. A year later, it was included as one of the few standard typefaces in the Windows operating system, and has been a fixture ever since. Comic Sans can now be seen in everything from warning signs to official documents.
Here are some examples of questionable uses of the font:
It’s time for you to weigh in. Tell us what you think about the font, the letter and the drama around the trade of King James.
Competing against more than 17,500 other runners, Gina clocked a rapid 1:32:32 over the 13.1-mile course, good enough for 44th place among all women finishers, and 192nd overall.
Gina first found her stride playing soccer at Lewis & Clark High School (Spokane, WA) as an outside midfielder. Seeing her speed down the sidelines, the school’s track coach recruited her for his girl’s team. Smart move. By the time Gina was a senior she regularly qualified for the state track meet in the 400 meters. And more than 10 years later, still holds a number of the school’s top marks in the 400 and 4×100, 4×200 and 4×400 relays.
“I just love to run,” says the trim 5’6” Auffant. “My competitive juices get going and I just can’t help trying to pass the runners ahead of me one by one.”
After passing thousands of runners in Seattle, Gina was so encouraged by the experience that she’s planning to run the Girlfriends’ Half in Vancouver WA later this year to support breast caner awareness. Seems not only is Ms. Auffant a quick study, she’s quick to support worthy causes, too.
Jason Frummet: The eternal optimism of Seattlites about their weather. One good day among 30 grey days is enough to lift the spirits and make people thankful for the Summer that will eventually arrive.
Capabilities-wise, we’ve built some progressive digital and Web-based marketing programs around Search, Analytics, and Behavioral Targeting that we’re stoked about.
B team wins championship playoffs, A team upset in semifinals!
My “Chips” team won the Seattle B Spring League 2010 Darts Championship; this follows our Fall/Winter League Championship. It was a great match at Cooper’s Ale House. We were down 9-6 (first team to 11 wins) and ended up prevailing 11-9 over “Who Darted.” See our photos here. Individually, I ended the season ranked #14 of 31 players. Overall a great clutch team effort, led by captain Kirbie Predmore and fellow arrow slingers Russell Nash, Tim Hannon, Frank Martel, and Rob Schwenn.
Meanwhile, Gary Meyers’ A team, “Dartmatter” (Gary, Bill Baltra, Andy Baker, and Taylor Callaway) got whipped in the semi-finals by the “Roach Motels,” whom “Dartmatter” had handily beaten twice in the regular season. I asked Gary what happened, and he said, “Those Roaches kicked our butts.” Gary finished up at #9 of 46, individually.
In the world of business-to-business advertising, every so often client and creative planets align just right so as to produce a sterling piece of work—one that turns out exactly as it was drawn up. Such was the case when agency Hodgson/Meyers teamed up with client UC4 to produce a flash video as a showcase introduction to the latter’s website. Take a look for yourself: UC4 Rethinks Automation
With blue chip clients from Siemens, Shell and Suzuki to GE, Gucci and Goodrich, UC4 is a global leader in business automation software. For B2B Top 100 Agency Hodgson/Meyers the task was to develop a Web video that not only explained what UC4 did, but do so in an accessible and entertaining fashion.
As with similar success stories, this was most certainly a team effort. UC4 Chief Marketing Officer Fred Kahout and Director of eMarketing Paul Rosien provided company insight. H/M Director of Account Planning Jason Frummet and Project Manager Lea Loya gave strategic guidance, while partners Tim Hodgson and Gary Meyers offered brand direction. All that was left to do for graphic designer Charlie Worcester, Web master Craig Labenz and writer Gary Graf was translate those marketing thoughts into creative genius.
Key to the concept was the combination of rhythmic—dare we say, poetic—copy and imaginative—nay, truly inspired—design and flash animation that brought to life the difficult-to-convey concept of business automation.
(From top left, moving clockwise: The word “communicate” connects two animated servers; Servers rotate and mesh as if gears in operation; Camera pulls back from a line of servers to reveal a conductor’s baton as enterprises orchestrate; Black and white server squares make up a city skyline and cloud, showing that UC4 works on site, in the cloud and everywhere in between.)
Agency and client collaborated on the project through a sequence of storyboards, test footage and refinement. UC4’s graphic standards (developed by Charlie) provided the color palette for the animation. Mr. Rosien’s background as a drummer influenced the techno-percussive beat. And UC4 voice Kevin Crawford provided the narration.
The result? A lively, engaging animated story that visually reflects the power of UC4’s ability to integrate and orchestrate business processes, all to help automate and accelerate companies’ growth.
All in a day’s (well, several days’) work for the team at Hodgson/Meyers
Spike is the first bird to travel by BOAT! He visited Fort Lauderdale, Georgetown in Grand Cayman, Cozumel & Puerto Costa Maya in Mexico as well as Roatan, Honduras. He lived the life in the sun and enjoyed some drinks. He even went as far as to visit Hell in Grand Cayman. Don’t worry, Hell is just a washed up coral reef that has turned black in the sun!
Cruising
Grand Cayman Pirate
Having a Drink (it was non-alcoholic. . . . I swear)
Practicing Safe Sun-bathing
To see more images of Spike’s fun in the sun, go to our Flickr album. Cheers to a relaxing vacation!
The writer-art director team for the WatchGuard “Get Red” Campaign was Gary Meyers and Charlie Worcester. The writer-art director team for the CSG “K.O. Churn” campaign was Gary Graf and Charlie Worcestor.
The Communicator Awards is a leading international awards program honoring creative excellence for Communications Professionals and receives over 9,000 entries from companies and agencies of all sizes, making it one of the largest awards of its kind in the world.
This is the second Gold award for the WatchGuard campaign.
The Fluke Corporation selected Hodgson/Meyers after an agency review to provide campaign strategy and creative for a significant, new, international (and, as of now – confidential) 2010 product launch. “We are particularly interested in exploring new creative and media opportunities to reach different channels and audiences around the world, and Hodgson/Meyers really wowed us with their approach and thinking,” said Senior Marketing Communications Manager, Barbara Hanson. “We’re excited to get moving on this product launch.”
Fluke Corporation is the world leader in the manufacture, distribution and service of electronic test tools and software. Since its founding in 1948, Fluke has achieved the number one or number two position in every market in which it competes.
A wholly owned subsidiary of Danaher Corporation, Fluke is a multi-national corporation headquartered in Everett, Washington, USA. Manufacturing centers are located in the USA, the UK, Asia and The Netherlands. Sales and service subsidiaries are located in Europe, North America, South America, Asia and Australia. Fluke Corporation has authorized distributor and manufacturer representative channels in more than 100 countries and employs approximately 2,400.
