DEPARTMENT OF PROJECTS: Canary Sing Album Art

You could have probably guessed the ladies of Canary Sing were darn cute kids. And thus, the title of their new EP is by all accounts perfect.

New album art for The Beautiful Baby EP :

Hollis and Maddy, as always, pleasure doing business with you. Two of the most talented and creative women I know.

kamp grizzly's cupcake cannon

This is what we did Saturday. I really like having creative friends (that like to blow things up).

If you don't know Kamp Grizzly, click and be cooler right now.


CUPCAKE CANNON from kamp grizzly on Vimeo.

lady gaga treats

WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THIS!!!??

Props to you Matt Mayer, 18, and Devonne Ditinick, 19, of Merritt Island, Florida. Your clever sweets make me happy.

Full set here. (via design for mankind)

watch what you consume -- or sketch it

One of my favorite Portland bloggers and radtastic Creatives, Kate Bingaman-Burt of Obsessive Consumption, gave an adorable talk today during lunch about her work. Kate makes sketches of all things consumption -- things she buys, receipts, bills, coupons. I really enjoyed seeing her in person and remembering that all these amazing people I covet out in the blog world are indeed just people like us. Kate had little to no artist aspirations growing up, but found herself happily in the midst of projects after she started exploring her interests in peoples' consumption patterns. You sketch, you think, you blog, you talk, you smile -- and thus a good life of projects is born.

spike lee

Spike Lee came to the office today.

I'm just completely blown away that I was able to listen to him in person for an hour and that I shook the guy's hand. He was just awesome (and completely intimidating in a brilliant sort of way and amazingly inspiring in terms of advertising's cultural relevance). Not to mention his love of young film making and his desire to push the medium as a powerful platform. (Sidenote: Spike told us his first film, She's Gotta Have It -- the inspiration for the Mars Blackmon/Michael Jordan spots -- was made in 15 days with $175 budget. This was one of those moments where I felt completely motivated to make Sirocco happen in a big way.)

Thank you, Spike (and Bill Davenport and Jim Griswold). You made me remember 10-fold why I am excited to work at w+k as well as why I think we all need to keep on making things we believe in and are inspired by.

Below, one of my favorite Mars Blackmon commercials -- Hang Time. Watch all the way through so that you don't miss one of the few great f-bomb drops in advertising history  /

a cause worth fighting for

On the set of Red Moon many emotions surfaced, but none quite as potent as Doug Sacrison's (Red Moon's writer and comrade Federov) deep love of McDonald's McRib.

Doug wishing he had a McRib.

To our excitement, we awoke last Saturday to find that Doug had taken his McRib love to a whole new level of brilliance. Published in the Bellingham Herald, Doug's conquests at the Bellingham Tea Party Protest:

While others took a more serious tone with their signs, Doug Sacrison, 26, used the protest to take up his cause against McDonald's restaurants. "It's a cause I believe in," he said, during the Bellingham Tea Party's second annual Tax Day protest event Thursday April 15, 2010 along Meridian Street in Bellingham.–ANDY BRONSON|THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

Doug, you are the best.

all i want is for work to be fun

I woke up today and was so excited to get to work because I knew we would be discussing new scripts on one of my projects. I love when we talk about scripts. Everybody gets so excited and dreamy when we plan out locations and think about casting. People get all hot and bothered when stuff gets turned downa nd then they get so elated when the creative director throw out the thumbs up. It's a real show. Today has been fun at work.

It's also Thursday, which means there has been a large amount of dancing to Michael Jackson and Yeasayer  in the Project Management hallway (but really who am I kidding? we do this most any day of the week, Thursday aren't special). We also went walking to get coffee this morning in the sun. And I think I ran like 20 flights of stairs while I was trying to get a presentation deck to all the right people this afternoon. This day, this day has just been fantastic.

My blogging about work so far at w+k has been limited, I know. Apologies. It's hard to blog about the work when everything is so secretive for clients and then all the other stuff seems so silly and simple that I forget to write it down. But really the culmination of my last few months here have been amazing and completely blog worthy -- just hard to remember to blog when you are so tuckered out from a great day, you know? It's like when you try to journal while you are traveling, but traveling seems more important than journaling.

I have had some choice cellphone snaps in the office -- no high res photos for you guys yet, but maybe in the near future. Until then:

PM Resident Badass - Jane with Beard. (Yes, yes we do goof around during presentation reviews on the stairs) 

Without you baby french press, my desk would feel so regular sized. Thank you.

David Kennedy and Dan Wieden rallying the troops on Founders Day 2010.

In short, at my three month mark here at w+k, I must say I absolutely love it. It is hectic and BIG and fast and weird (my favorite project characteristic combo). I'm learning a lot by trying to keep up with the pace of everything. I'm still at freelance status, but judging by some of my reviews I've had lately and the degree to which I got sweaty+awesome on the dance floor at the company party...there just must be a salaried position in my near future. Right? Maybe. Whatever it this pans out to be, I'm having fun at work.

DEPARTMENT OF PROJECTS: Emerald Petals

Department of Projects has been busy, busy this month with a new project. Introducing the lovely Hilary Holmes and her big, shiny new, awesome baby, Emerald Petals. Emerald Petals is a new flower shop set to open very soon on Mississippi Ave in Portland. Bike delivery service, vase re-use discounts, recycled materials interior and locally or sustainably grown flowers abound. It's going to be great!

And so Ben and I have been trying to make Hilary some equally great marketing materials.

We went the hand-drawn route again for this one. Hilary had some great inspiration items that were very art deco meets Portland crafty -- an odd direction, but we felt up for the challenge.

Some of our early work we've created includes Emerald Petals's basic branding look and feel.


Business Cards /
After weeks of toying with font faces and awkward flower-meets-bike-wheel dorky logos, we decided on something sweet and simple.

I hand drew the letters, Ben turned them into computer friendly bits and then I sketched out some flowers per an image Hilary had found (that she might get as a tattoo!). The final product is crisp and crafty feeling. We had custom rubber stamps made of the images and now Hilary can stamp out her cards on whatever paper pieces she prefers -- all recycled or reclaimed to keep with the EP mission. Hope to get some nice shots of the crads in action soon. Until then, our comps:

Decal Sign /
One of the most exciting projects DOP has completed to date. Seeing our design in big, beautiful colors cut from vinyl...swoon. We had some geek out moments.

Promo Cards /
Informational little coupons to hand out to flower and non-flower lovers alike. Big idea: make something that was cute enough to keep on your desk for at least 3 months (longer if we are lucky). Comp shown on kraft paper:

More to come on Emerald Petals / Department of Project partnerships. We will let you know when the doors open and flowers start pouring out.