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Job Postings

The Orlando Egotist — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:10:06 +0000

National

Art Director
The Integer Group, Lakewood, CO

Expression Engine Developer
arrae Creative, Remote/Denver

Developer
Exit10, Baltimore, Maryland

Project Manager
Exit10, Baltimore, Maryland

Front-end Web Designer/Developer
Hero Design Studio, Denver, Colorado

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Branding the Game of Thrones Houses

The Orlando Egotist — Wed, 22 May 2013 18:04:13 +0000

National

In an effort to showcase their stock image library in a more interesting way, Shutterstock called upon Elliott Scott from studio Mondayne to get creative. What he chose to do with that directive is nothing short of fantastic. He used Shutterstock's standard stock imagery to brand each of the houses from the Game of Thrones stories, made popular by the HBO series.

View all the images on Shutterstock.

Dear Jr Creative, Earn Your Place. You’ll Be Better For It.

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:32:43 +0000

Dear Jr Creative,

I’m a firm believer in earning your keep, starting from the bottom, doing the less than desirable well, before moving up.

Prove yourself on what seemingly matters little, and people will notice. I promise.

At the very least, I promise I’ll notice. Because it’s the unorthodox grind of a route I took.

I was a rich kid from the suburbs. I was embarrassed by it. I hated it. It was a 90’s thing.

In High School, and in Gen-X “rebellion” against my white collar family, I worked for the Las Vegas Water District doing underground construction.

I dug ditches and changed water lines during the Vegas Summer for 8 dollars an hour. Not desirable work. And the guys I worked with could smell the rich kid on me. They busted my balls mercilessly for it.

I dug the shit out of those ditches. I loved it. I used my hands. I used heavy machinery and pneumatic tools—I drove a dump truck (which is awesome by the way).

All I wanted was the respect of these old guys changing water lines in the desert. Dudes that worked so fucking hard. For so fucking little. To feed their families; their addictions; their gambling debts.

Eventually, I’d earned a bit of respect.

I worked hard…”for a skinny rich kid.”

One day I mentioned to the crew lead: “Fuck it. I like this. Why not full time?”.

He pulled the truck over to the shoulder of a mountain road, heading North towards Mt. Charleston, looked deep into my face, “Every single one of us would give the world NOT to be here. Stop your blue collar charade. Go to school like you’re supposed to. Get out of this shit.”

So I did.

That was my last of three summers working for the water district.

I went to school for business. Marketing & Advertising to be exact. Which, aside from teaching me some business basics, really just help develop my aptness for bullshit.

Luckily for me, somewhere along the line, I learned a real skill and about this thing called the “Internet.” It was a place I could upload the photos I was taking (and developing in a darkroom, btw). I learned some Photoshop and HTML skills because of it. Eventually, I started freelancing: horrible graphic design and web work. Whatever I could get—fucking rave fliers, man. I just wanted to learn. The beer money was the gravy on top.

My first “real” job out of college was resizing graphics for an eCommerce company. I showed up for the interview on my skateboard, handed the HR lady my resume and said, “I’ll take anything. I know Photoshop. Here’s my book.” I didn’t even know what a “designer” was. But that’s why I was there. And by no means was I a designer; Photoshop monkey…maybe.

Ninety people had been laid off a month prior to me being brought on. I was the first hire after those layoffs and in the eyes of everybody…I was “that guy…”

I was at the bottom of the totem pole. Where I belonged.

The only thing I had going for me was a fear of “sucking.” And for the record, I sucked. (Certainly compared to the kids I see today).

“…good enough to resize graphics” was what I overheard the Creative Director say, just around the corner.

So I resized graphics. I resized the shit out of graphics, learning to code HTML along the way. I unlearned what I learned in business school. And learned…business. I developed site and page concepts for fun. Always showing my boss. Wanting critique. Always trying to get better. People noticed. He noticed. I gained more and more responsibility and more importantly, trust. Never begging for more money. Just wanting to do more work, better work.

To not suck.

Eventually, I took over as Creative Lead. I redesigned both KBToys.com and eToys.com. Enterprise level eCommerce stuff. Real businesses, making real money. I thought the designs were pretty damn good for the early 00’s. Some of the first .com’s to switch to 1024x768. We won some eCom industry awards. It moved product. I thought I was hot shit.

I was far from it.

Fast forward a decade and I’m blown away by the level of talent that’s out there. Kids today come out of school with so much fucking skill it’s crazy. But with all of that skill, in so many, there is equal-to-more parts hubris. An entitled attitude that seems to expect everything for nothing.

Somewhere, along the lines, we (everyone) got sensitive. We started giving trophies for last place. People forgot how to take criticism. We started (and continue) to want to spare people from the realities of what it really takes. Close counts. Thanks for trying. Better luck next time—even worse—Fail Harder.

I hate this phrase more than anything.

“Fail Harder” is a manifesto for the delusional, the lazy—the lotto dreamer.

Celebrating failure is a cop out. Be pissed that you fucked up—when you lose. And know why.

Fail “Smarter” maybe. But failing hard is for losers.

Industry-wise, we covet the idea. Not its realization, it’s viability.

“I want to be an AD. But I don’t write and I don’t design. I’m an idea guy”

“No, no, no, i’m a UX guy. I don’t do wires and I don’t do finished design. I just explore interaction concepts.”

“I want to be a CD. But I don’t like talking with clients.”

“My new Web 3.0 business concept doesn’t have a revenue model—it’s like Instagram but with animated gifs of kittens.”

Ideation in a clientless vacuum; devoid the realities of real life (inside an agency or any company for that matter). Feasibility. Budgets. Client bureaucracies. The fact is that big ideas take time to sell. They die. They have to be reborn. And that it’s your role to breath the life back in. But only if you really give a shit.

The “idea” is the tip of a gigantic, shit stained iceberg of work. And if you aren’t ready for what it takes, or worse, you think “that it’s someone else’s job” to push your idea from ether to reality—reconsider your profession.

My advice is simple: don’t be the entitled kid. The kid who over indexes in ambition but lacks any real passion—any real drive other than a new title at a new agency.

Be the kid who wants to learn even when he doesn’t have to—the designer who wants to learn to write, to code, to understand business because it makes the design better.

Don’t be an industry douche. They call themselves ninjas or gurus…even evangelists. They’re the ones who will tell you, to your face, that they are smarter than the other guy. They’re the ones who have stopped reading by now.

Don’t be the kid who hops around. Don’t be the kid, who, when given the chance, will opt for the bare minimum. Who scoffs at perspective. The kid who will jeopardize the team to spare his fragile ego. The kid, who, when faced with a situation that gets difficult, says “I’m too good for this kind of work. I deserve better.”

Nobody deserves shit. Until you do. And even then, never admit it.

I’m now the old guy. I get it…

I’m not saying you need to go out and work construction. But it’s good to know where you don’t want to be. And understand why.

I know I don’t want to resize graphics anymore. Why? Well…because it sucks.

But I’ll still dig the shit out of a ditch.

- Dave

I should note, that my teen “rebellion” against my Father was laughably ironic. My dad was blue collar. A cowboy who changed tires on big rigs before finishing college and becoming who he is today.

Behind my teen angst, unbeknownst to me all that time, I was trying to be just like him.

What a silly little rich kid.

David Snyder is Executive Creative Director at Firstborn. Living in Brooklyn. He likes progressive thought, design and technology. He eats and libates well. This editorial original posted on Medium.

Tobias Funke vs Capcom

The Orlando Egotist — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:58:20 +0000

National

Fortune Teller Coasters

The Orlando Egotist — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:41:55 +0000

Local

These great coasters, printed by Mama's Sauce for Seamless Creative, have received the honor of making the pages of Under Consideration's FPO division. It's a well deserved honor. The design and production of the coasters are both fantastic and meticulous. Go to FPO to see more pictures. Buy them for $14 here.

Letterpress Desktop Calendar

The Orlando Egotist — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:45:40 +0000

National

Type, a letterpress desktop calendar, printed by hand on a 1960's letterpress is a new kickstarter project we love.

The calendars are printed on a 55pt heavy cotton stock. Each card goes through the press twice, once for each color (black and gray). The stock is then cut down to size with a die cutting machine. This gives them their rounded corners. It's a very long and tedious process, that's why letterpress printing isn't cheap by any means.

The stand is crafted from 100% eco-friendly bamboo.

Fiction Gets Radio Controlled for Publix

The Orlando Egotist — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:54:13 +0000

Local

Fiction just posted a behind the scenes blog post about this Vine Ripe Tomatoes Video they shot for Publix. The post shows the process and execution of the shoot, including the usage of an RC helicopter. Read all about it on the Fiction blog.

Google Pays Tribute To Saul Bass

The Orlando Egotist — Wed, 08 May 2013 14:59:07 +0000

National

Today Google pays tribute to the late Saul Bass with a well done Google Doodle.

Megatron in Orlando

The Orlando Egotist — Thu, 02 May 2013 17:04:53 +0000

Local

Image via CF News 13

A giant sized outdoor ad has popped up in downtown Orlando to promote the opening of Universal's "Transformers: The Ride." The monstrous ad also includes a realistic crash site. Another part of the campaign is this viral video, released Wednesday by Universal Orlando Resort on YouTube.

Strategizing is for Prom Queens

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:47:00 +0000

I hear the word “strategy” thrown on just about everything. Like rhinestones on a South-Texas-prom-queen’s dress, “strategy” is too often a cheap and easy bedazzle on everything from PowerPoint slides, to someone’s superfluous commentary in a meeting that is already running too long with too many attendees. Anymore, in my day-to-day, Strategy is quite the loose little buzzword.

Often, it is a noun, as in “brand strategy” or “I am a strategist." Sometimes it is an adjective, as in “strategic vision” or “strategic insights." Also, as an adverb, such as “strategically developed” or “strategically placed.” And let's not forget it as a verb, as in “strategize” (which for the record, makes me want to punch the speaker in the nose every time I hear it).

And that isn’t to say that I don’t use the word often myself. But I used to accept the word at what I believed was its face value — a sense of something great and purposeful. A sense that when I heard “strategy” — I knew we were talking about the key to winning whatever was at stake, the secret sauce critical to achieving the mission. I knew we’d be talking about something tangible, and most importantly — something actionable. (Strategy is, by definition, a military term that, in a nutshell, means using your brains and your guts to not only stack the odds in your favor, but empower you to make the right decisions when confronted with any obstacle.)

Now, given the bedazzling trend, I’ve made it my personal charge to pay much closer attention when the word “strategy” is presented. Analyzing it quietly in my head, from every angle. Challenging my own application of it constantly. Because the real disturbing trend, is not that the word gets overused, but rather that the very concept of strategy has become a crutch. A well disguised excuse NOT to act. An exercise in lengthy requirements-gathering to plan for problems and scenarios that don’t yet exist. A perceived need to create a long list of tasks for what should happen in the future, when instead we should be driving for real feedback via iterative launches in the present. I see terms like “strategic goals” and “strategic vision” plastered across PowerPoint slides, and the actual bullet points associated with most of these goals and visions, amount to little more than minute tactics positioned as passive options to explore. Presented in the context of “we are working on,” or “working toward,” or “think there is great opportunity within this area.”

And with that lack of conviction, certainty, drive — fucking nothing can be won. It’s all a lot of bling with very little bang.

So here is what I'm really driving at — let's all of us in the industry be more thoughtful with strategy. That when creating, executing, presenting or thinking about strategy in any context, let’s be critical of ourselves, of our interpretation of strategy and when/how/why it matters or is applied. As an example, do we sometimes create formality where it isn’t warranted — like laboring over a “social media strategy,” when maybe all we really need is to just be social? Or when our strategy feels like it is a moving target, and people struggle with how to articulate it — should we check our premises? Are there assumptions at play that have been driving a weak, obtuse strategy? And if the goals are ill-defined, then no amount of “strategic planning” is going to get us anywhere, even if we wrap that anemic goal in a shiny label called “strategic vision.”

Diamonds are a girl's best friend for a reason — because they have real value. The real, lasts-for-a-100-years-and-cut-glass kind of value. Fortunately, making sure your strategy has actual value is really pretty simple — just ask yourself, is your strategy something your team can:

• Articulate without a slide in front of them?
• Apply in any given situation?
• Execute against to deliver desired results?
• Feel empowered and confident in so doing?

This piece is cross-posted from The BRAT Blog from The Aha Method — a company that coaches teams around a better working dynamic.

Rifle Paper on Fab

The Orlando Egotist — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:20:38 +0000

Local

If you're a fan of Rifle Paper / Anna Bond's illustration, and you have an iPhone 5, then you have 6 days to get a solid deal on FAB. Go buy some of these while they last.

http://fab.com/sale/20382/

Snap! – Motion to Light Wakeboarding

The Orlando Egotist — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:57:51 +0000

Local

Local photography event, Snap!, and Red Bull‘s Illume 2013 photography contest yielded this spectacular video featuring professional wakeboarders Mike Dowdy, Adam Errington, and Dallas Friday.

Shot at the Orlando Watersports Complex after hours, photographer Patrick Rochon strapped the pros into wakeboards that had been specially modified with waterproof multicolored lights, and using super-long exposures, Rochon was able to grab amazing shots of technicolor rainbows as they splashed across the pitch-dark sky.

For more from Red Bull’s Illume 2013, hit its website. Go to their website for more on Snap!.

Via

Ship Your Pants

The Orlando Egotist — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:14:45 +0000

National

Ohlando Interviews Richard Minino

The Orlando Egotist — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:50:12 +0000

Local

Ohlando is a new local blog that's aimed at celebrating the local creative culture from The City Beautiful. One of their first features is a nice interview with local creative, Richard Minino, AKA horsebites.

Recent Job Postings

The Orlando Egotist — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 18:52:43 +0000

National

Senior Commercial Copywriter
FootprintFrog.com, Denver, CO

Sales Associate
Neural Interactive, LLC., United States

Front End Developer
Driftlab Interactive, Remote

Paid Search Account Manager
Booyah Advertising, Westminster, CO

Web Designer
Water For People, Denver, Colorado

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FFF Pick: Be Good

The Orlando Egotist — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:49:47 +0000

Local

If you're looking for something to do this weekend, go out and see some movies. This year's Florida Film Festival starts this weekend, running from the 5th to the 14th of April. We got a preview of the film "Be Good", which is a beautiful film that looks into the lives of two first time parents who face the struggle between balancing quality parenthood and pursuing their dreams. Take a look at the trailer and judge for yourself.

More information can be found on the Florida Film Festival site.

Fiction for Publix

The Orlando Egotist — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:00:14 +0000

Local

New Publix Sub from FCTN on Vimeo.

Fiction created this spot to help Publix launch their new Banh Mi inspired sub.

Everybody Wants to Kill Bruce

The Orlando Egotist — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 19:57:27 +0000

National

EVERYBODY WANTS TO KILL BRUCE from Pierre-Alexandre Chauvat on Vimeo.

Somersby Cider Spoofs Apple

The Orlando Egotist — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:43:24 +0000

National

Via

Biting Elbows - Bad Motherfucker Video

The Orlando Egotist — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 14:35:20 +0000

National

Biting Elbows - 'Bad Motherfucker' (Insane Office Escape 2) from Ilya Naishuller on Vimeo.

This video for the Biting Elbows song "Bad Motherfucker" plays more like a short film than a music video. Completely shot with a GoPro, it's a wild ride that feels like a first person shooter.

Lure Design's City of God Poster

The Orlando Egotist — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 17:22:29 +0000

Local

Lure Design recently unveiled this great new poster they did for the Enzian Cult Classics showing of City of God. It's currently the poster of the week on RockPaperInk.

See the poster design that didn't make the cut.

Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling

The Orlando Egotist — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:59:31 +0000

National

You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.

You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.

Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.

Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

Shit to Hit: AIGA Drink and Draw

The Orlando Egotist — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:19:34 +0000

Local

Here's how this is works. You bring your drawing skills, design knowledge and creativity. We supply a design pictionary of sorts in one of the most awesomest bar slash furniture stores in town. We put it all together for a fun night of drinking, drawing and world class people. All peoples are welcome to come draw or just mingle, whatever you fancy. Bring a friend or 5!

THURSDAY, MARCH 28
The Imperial Wine Bar and Beer Garden
1800 N Orange Ave
Orlando, FL 32804
6:30PM

snap! 2013 Call for Entries

The Orlando Egotist — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:44:47 +0000

Local

The annual photography festival, snap!, is scheduled for May 2nd through the 5th and they've announced both student and professional call for entries. Florida state residents are invited to submit their original photography interpretation of this year’s theme, “Motion to Light.”

Go to the snap! Orlando site for more information.

Eye Catching Briefs

The Orlando Egotist — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:39:35 +0000

National

TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris in Johannesburg took a unique approach to brief replies. They used the briefs and job bags as a medium and created intricate paper sculptures relevant to each client.

Via