Last night, I gave a presentation to the Richmond chapter of AIGA entitled “Enabling Interactivity”.  The presentation aimed to share insight on the tools and practices Grow utilizes to help ensure the smooth execution of complex digital initiatives.  Here are the slides from that presentation.

Download: Enabling Interactivity PDF

On our Thank You Begins With A T site, developer Josh drew a marker and an envelope. Astute visitors pieced together that they could draw on Josh and e-mail him copies of their creations.  Thousands of drawings flooded Josh’s inbox, and the rest of our team followed along with an RSS feed.  Many of the drawings were too good to keep to ourselves, so we’re happy to share this compilation of our favorites.  As a disclaimer, web users given a pen and freedom of expression will frequently draw genitalia.

Want to win a shirt from the site?  Leave a comment, and we’ll pick three random winners next week.

We spend most of our time in the digital world, so the Grow identity gave us a nice chance to work with a natural, homespun kind of feel. That’s why we loved the idea of hand drawn patterns and customizable iconography.

Each employee receives business card labels with his or her own custom icon.  The labels attach to any of the cards printed with 6 different patterns in 3 colors.

The envelopes match the same way. They come in 3 colors with 6 patterns printed on the interior, and each is affixed with an icon-specific address label.

To keep the look and feel of the identity consistent, we use the pattern on everything from our website to the tags on our Thank You campaign t-shirts. The stationery and template also make their way into our presentations and pitches.

The upcoming issue of .net Magazine (Issue 193, September 2009) features insight from our Sr. Art Director, Joe Branton.  The article is part of .net’s “Makeover” feature, in which prominent designers are asked to redesign a lackluster site—in this case an online vodka retailer called Vodka Emporium.  You can check out the article here.  And since you don’t get to see the real of the quality of Joe’s work, we also wanted to share full resolution images of the designs.  Click the thumbnails below to view the work.

I’m so excited to finally see our K-Y Intense collaboration with Mother New York go live! Just for kicks, I went through my sketches of the reaction room to see how close my original drawing compared to the final composition. I was both surprised and delighted that they were remarkably close. It just goes to show you that drawing your ideas out on paper before putting them into Photoshop is the best way to avoid making critical mistakes and help get your head wrapped around a project before even hopping on the computer! If you haven’t seen the live site, visit it at the K-Y Intense Satisfaction Lab, and enjoy a laugh or three.

Whenever we wrap up a big project, we like to celebrate with a fun-filled Grow outing. As luck would have it, Drew’s birthday fell on the same day as our latest adventure, so we had even more reason to party.  At the always-delicious Plaza Azteca, Drew dawned his sombrero like a good sport, but he was thoroughly embarrassed when the whole place was clapping and singing to him.

After our delicious and entertaining lunch, we headed over to a nearby mini golf / driving range. After an exhausting 18 holes and a few astonishing holes in one, the scores were tallied and a winner was announced. Drew, Careyann, BJ and I took home bragging rights. Go team!  We spent the rest of our day at the driving range, where we mostly made fools out of ourselves.  The full Flickr set is here.

It was a lovely day and a well-deserved break for our hard working team.  The celebrated project just launched, too.  Check out the HP Photosmart site, or see more details here.

Welcome to the Grow Interactive blog. We’re excited to finally have a place where we can share inspiration, advice and insight into the world of Grow.  So to start this blog off right, here’s our blooper reel from the production of our Thank You Begins with a T campaign. If you haven’t already seen the site be sure to check that out first. Enjoy!