Archive for the ‘inspiration’ Category

Rebranding Adelie Studios – The Reveal

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

The people have spoken! Many through Facebook or Twitter, some by email and a handful on the blog in the comments. Crowd sourcing the design was definitely a great idea and I got a lot of ideas and feedback that I wouldn’t have gone to on my own.

#6 was the overwhelming favorite however a number of people liked elements from #7, particularly the ink blot rather than the traditional circle for the play button because of how that ink blot related to the style relative to the animated work I do. I felt it also gave it less of a “corporate” design studio look and what I do is definitely not traditional messaging as I tend to make branding more interesting and entertaining. So there had to be a fun element to the design too. So… a la peanut butter and jelly sandwiches…I combined the two elements into one logo.

I also decided to play around with the colors a bit, I felt like the dark burgundy (or PMS #1815 to those geeky designers out there) was too strong and would function better on the website in small quantities used to stress links, thin rules and such. So after playing around for a bit I came up with the following.

I bring you the new and improved logo for Adelie Studios.

Adelie Studios...better, faster, stronger

Adelie Studios...better, faster, stronger

I truly appreciate all the feedback I got which made the rebranding far more fun getting other peoples perspectives, constructive criticism and input. Special thanks goes out to Mark Cahill, David Saraiva, Jenn O’Meara, Mark Shunney, Mike Langford, Lisa Middleton Griffin, Melissa Fetterhoff, Tammy Miner Stott, Ian MacLean Davis, Paul Scannell, Jeff Brouillet, Matt “Klawful” Smith and of course to Leah Guerin, my wife who put up with my incessant “What do you think of this?”, “What about these colors?”, “What does this make you think of?”, “What if I move this over here?”, “Is there any coffee left downstairs?”…you get the picture.

Thanks to all of you and be on the lookout for the website relaunch in the next couple of weeks!

Buzzworthy Wednesday: “The Way We Get By” Documentary

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

So this is a departure for me. Typically for Buzzworthy Wednesday I am profiling different marketing videos, websites or designs that are really unique and I believe worth a look if you haven’t seen them yet. Sometimes the branding is subtle but this week’s is a complete departure and has absolutely nothing to do with marketing on online branding.

This week I am choosing to profile the documentary “The Way We Get By” about the stories of three senior citizens who are dedicated to greeting the troops being deployed and coming home from Iraq and Afganistan at the Bangor Maine Airport. I felt this was particularly poignant especially since last Wednesday was Veteran’s Day and it is truly a moving piece.

The documentary takes a look into the lives of three senior citizens – Bill Knight, Jerry Mundy and Joan Gaudet who have dedicated their lives to greeting these troops to help them deal with the losses that come with aging and rediscover their reason for living. Greeting these troops day in and day out has brought a renewed purpose to their lives.

Although this is loosely billed as a documentary about the Iraq War, it stays apolitical. It is more universally a search for purpose as these people confront their own mortality in their waning years. The dynamic between the departing soldiers and the greeters is what makes this film so successful. For the seniors their mortality is something they are confronted with every day as they confront health problems and the passing of loved ones but for the soldiers it’s a more nebulous feeling because as they depart they know that some of the people they are flying out with will not return.

So until December 12, 2009, PBS is making the entire documentary available to view on their website. You can also check their television schedule to see when it will be airing again in your area. Watch it…you’ll be as moved as I was and share your thoughts about it below.

TheWayWeGetBy

Buzzworthy Wednesday Video: Kuroshio Sea – Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

This is the first time I’ve featured an “amateur” produced video on Buzzworthy Wednesday. I use the term “amateur” loosely…but its for a good reason. The video I selected this week is an amazing and beautiful single shot video of the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan. The “Kuroshio Sea” (as this aquarium is called) is the second largest in the world as evidenced by the huge whale sharks, manta rays and large schools of fish swimming.

The song featured, which really sets the tone for this video, is “Please don’t go” by Barcelona. Barcelona credits their song placement in this video with boosting their album and song sales on iTunes and concert attendance. The video is really awe inspiring which is why its recieved well over 1 million views in just a couple weeks.

I mentioned using the term “amateur” loosely because the producer wasn’t specifically paid by the aquarium to make this piece – however Jon Rawlinson the creator is a gifted professional cinematographer and filmmaker in his own right. Perfect song selection matched with the vast open “zen-like” beauty of the aquarium…could the marketing team at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium created a better online marketing video? I doubt it. Enjoy.

7 Things You Might Wish You Didn’t Know About Me

Monday, December 29th, 2008

 

Okay so Mike Langford (aka @MikeLangford) hates me as and selected me as a Twitter friend to take part in this 7 things list with his post. This little ditty has been going around though as Lyell Petersen (aka @93Octane) sent it to him and you can follow the train back from there…

If I deemed you worthy enough to pass this glorious honor on to you, and put its continued existence in your very hands (you! have! the! power!), please follow these care and feeding guidelines:

  • Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
  • Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
  • Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
  • Let them know they’ve been tagged

All right here we go…

  1. I split my head open jumping over hurdles – but not the way you may think. We had to do plyometric bounding drills over hurdles set closely together my freshman year of college (few people even know that I ran track in college). Well I clipped my heel on a hurdle and fell. So the first thing you do when you fall is jump back up and hope nobody saw you, right? Well what I didn’t realize is that when I fell on the hurdle it had sprung up and was spinning in the air…and I stoop up into it leaving a gash over my left eye near my temple. It took 7 internal stiches and 9 external stiches to close it up. Now I just have a barely noticeable scar line over my eyebrow.
  2. I was a history minor in college - when I started college I didn’t have a firm knowledge of what I wanted to do, but who really does? That’s the type A number crunching part of my personality. So I took a bunch of history classes as well as my art & design classes. Come senior year I learned I only needed to take a history survey class so I figured why not?
  3. I don’t like football – I know sacrilege to some. I actually played football in high school for a couple of years…just didn’t have the passion for it. I can sit & watch parts of a game, just not in a group with a bunch of people yelling at the TV. Also after watching Tim Krumrie’s leg get sickeningly crumpled over and over again during the Super Bowl XXIII in slow motion I stopped watching. The only sports I follow religiously now are baseball & cycling.
  4. eric_guerinI once had a giant dyed blond Mohawk haircut – That’s right. I also had my head shaved and my hair long & dyed black as well. What can I tell you…I was in art school! While no photos exist of the Mohawk here’s a funny one of me with my head shaved.
  5. Once I was stalked by a Nile Crocodile – I was doing a graphics installation at the New England Aquarium after they were closed on an African lake exhibit. While installing some information card turrets in front of the Nile Crocodile exhibit I noticed that the 16′ Nile Crocodile slipped into the water in his tank and was gliding toward me. When I turned to look at the crocodile…it stopped completely still. So then I turned back to my work and noticed out of the corner of my eye that the crocodile was gliding towards me again! Not trusting the 3″ thick Lexan to keep the crocodile away from me I sped through the rest of my installations and got the heck out of there.
  6. I developed photos for Ben Affleck before he was BEN AFFLECK – well he was still Ben Affleck and had been in a couple decent movies already but it was before Good Will Hunting was released. He used to go into a little boutique photo store I used to work at on Newbury Street and get his film developed. I also helped him find where to buy a Hasselblad Medium Format Camera and he invited us all to go to the Boston Premiere of Good Will Hunting which I unfortunately turned down.
  7. This is the first time I have ever returned a chain mail of any form - I normally get a bunch of these emails and prior to email actual snail mail letters which promise good luck or a horrible curse and they usually all get deleted. I thought this one sounded fun and Mike is a good egg so I decided to do this one for fun.

I hope you enjoyed this little bit of useless knowledge about me & my life and now the poor souls I am passing the baton to with their Twitter handles:

Nick Inglis (@nickinglis)
Ken George (@KenGeorge)
Josh Garner (@SEOFactor)
Adam Cohen (@adamcohen)
Tom Gastall (@tomgastall)
Danny Brown (@PressReleasePR)
Wahyd Vannoni (@manifest_mag)

Leave a comment below with the link to your 7 things post once you’ve written one.

 

 

Tale of Despereaux: Movie & Graphic Novel

Monday, October 20th, 2008

Reading The Tale of Despereaux graphic novel with my dog Adelie

Usually my blog posts are about social media and using online video for your business. But as you know I occasionally take a break to talk about pop culture. Well there is no better reason than when two friends put out a really cool graphic novel that is tied in to a big motion picture release.

Matt Smith and David Tilton have illustrated a graphic novel interpretation of The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo which is a tie-in to the Universal Pictures motion picture that is being released December 19th. The graphic novel is out now though…and in my unbiased opinion is absolutely fantastic.

The story is about a misfit mouse who prefers reading books to eating them, an unhappy rat and a servant girl – whose stories all are tied with that of the castle’s princess. If you have kids, they will love it. Even if you don’t have kids…you will love it.

Graphic novels are an amazing way of seeing a visual interpretation of a great story. Definitely check out the graphic novel before you see the movie.