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in Friends, Inspiration, Interview on May 4th, 2010
Dinner with one person dead or alive? Obviously, Tim Gunn.
Who’s Tim Gunn? He’s a fashion sage/life mentor to all who take his always-dead-on advice. Oh, and he co-hosts my favorite reality TV show, Project Runway. In each episode, Gunn checks in on the competing designers during challenges and says things like “this worries me” or “make it work!”
Beside the fact that I’d sit down with Tim Gunn and ask him questions that have absolutely nothing to do with fashion—Do you like Diet Coke? What do you think of this health care stuff? Can we do this again?—he’s really opened my…
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in Business, Findings, Marketing on April 29th, 2010
For being such a large city Chicago hasn’t really gotten a good comic book convention in a few years. Even the one that was an annual mainstay at the Rosemont Convention Center has since fallen to the wayside. So how did C2E2 (Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo- www.c2e2.com) buck the trend and pull of a successful event when others couldn’t do it on a bigger budget. They went viral and put together a great grassroots campaign and most importantly, they played to their demographic of young males.
One reason the other conventions ultimately went the way of the dinosaurs is that…
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in Findings, Reviews, Software, Usability on February 9th, 2010
Last night I attended a presentation for web professionals in the Chicago area. It was organized through meetup.com. The presenter was Matt Moog, Founder & CEO at Viewpoints. You can see his slide deck here.
Among his many relevant points was the notion he referred to as ‘the dominance of search.’ Matt’s focus for the evening was specifically on sites that serve up social commerce, but I think the search issue is something any site needs to consider seriously. What Matt was referring to was his claim was that 50-80% of traffic across the web comes from search. This was a…
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in Business, Marketing on January 26th, 2010
Pretend for a moment you have never watched TV past 10:00 PM. Now go on Twitter or Facebook and type in “The Tonight Show.” (more) Just from seeing that, would you believe that guy was forced out of his show because of low ratings? The Internet was covered in Conan paraphernalia and he was one of the top trending topics on Twitter for almost the entire month of January. What could have gone down as a career low point for a cult comic on the level of The Chevy Chase Show, The Magic Johnson Show and a dozen other forgotten forays…
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in Friends, Interview, Marketing on January 15th, 2010
Two years ago I studied abroad in Florence, Italy where the wine is cheaper than water, and certainly cheaper than Italy’s version of my usual drink of choice, Coca Light. After four months under the Tuscan sun, I returned home somewhat plumped from copious servings of everything and teeth, to my dentist’s disdain, tinted purple from habitually making the more economical choice of hydrating myself with the house vino—a thrifty decision in terms of saving Euros. And the more fun one.
Part of this wine-drinking four month rendezvous can be attributed to the fact that I was enrolled in my Italian…
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in Design, Findings, Inspiration on December 8th, 2009
I can’t really put a finger on when it happened, but at some point in the not so distant past, web design broke through a pretty major glass ceiling. Up until this point web design was bound and constricted to what web ( and physical ) technology would allow it to do. Web technologies started with table based layouts, web friendly fonts and tiny display resolutions. It then progressed to CSS, web standards and the integration of application and interaction design. Now, with HTML5, CSS3 and new javascript methodologies, we are able to build creative and inspiring websites that are…
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Posted by
charles
in Friends, Inspiration, Interview on December 7th, 2009
We sat down last week with one of America’s preeminent artists, David Garrison. Considered a master of pastel and oils, Mr. Garrison has exhibited in major galleries and museums across the United States and in Europe. He currently lives and works in Normandy, France during the winter months and otherwise lives in Iowa where he teaches pastel and oil workshops and pursues his own projects. We asked him what makes him tick, and how technology has played a part in his career and art over the last decade.
Q: Once you knew you were going to be a visual artist or…
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in Business, Findings, Inspiration, Tutorials on December 2nd, 2009
One of the most challenging aspects of working in an advertising or interactive agency is managing sensitive agency-client relations. Taking clients down the path to creating a successful marketing message or making a recommendation that they may not agree with can be fun and exciting or it can be an emotional, difficult and even scary process. It seems like it should be easy. Clients hire us for our expertise in creativity, strategic direction and user experience. You are paying for our service, so why not use us to our full potential?
There is definitely something to be said for letting an…
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Posted by
charles
in Design, News on November 18th, 2009
We’re excited to announce we’ve completed work on the new Nike Women’s Training ‘Delicious Is…’ Contest and it is set to launch today! The micro-site is loaded with interactive features that allow young female athletes the chance to upload photos and text, vote and review all other entries. We also handled all creative and copywriting too!
You can check it out here: http://www.highschoolsports.net/nike-delicious-is-contest/
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Posted by
in Friends, Inspiration, Interview on November 11th, 2009
Many will tell you that when you boil it down, the stand-up comedy scene belongs to men; an underground world in the dingy basement of some bar festering with beer and fart jokes. The ratio of men to women performing stand-up may be a bit heavily weighted to one side, but that doesn’t give one gender full reign over the funny world. Take, for example, (drum roll please!) Cameron Esposito. She’s a Chicago favorite, and she proves that it doesn’t really matter what sex she is. She’s funny. And without the fart jokes. Plus, she prefers whiskey.
Although Cameron got her…
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