breakfast for dinner

Fancy Schmancy Boss Lady

2011-01-16T13:28:00.000-08:00

A holiday break project for my favorite ladies.

Needle craft on vintage crew neck colors.

pendelton wool bag

2010-10-31T16:38:00.000-07:00

Made a very long awaited trip to the Pendelton Woolen Mill fabric store a few weeks ago. Finished my first project today with some of my goods.

A large size tote bag with a small cell phone pocket and heavy canvas straps.

halloween times three

2010-10-31T16:07:00.000-07:00

Free candy, jumpsuits, gord crafts, dancing, fake blood, candy, friends and cute little kids dressed as inanimate objects. Do you really have to ask why Halloween is my all time favorite holiday?

I love halloween so much I did it three times this year.

Three pumpkins (because I couldn't pick just one at the patch). And three costumes, because I wanted like 15, but was too busy and only made it to three.

Awesome Jumpsuit Girl

Mr. Furley with the cast of Three's Company

Space Zombie and Figure Skater Zombie

Red Moon Credits Make Us All Freak Out

2010-10-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

Hey, did you know that sometimes we make movies? And sometimes the credits look like this?

(Via Sirocco Research Labs' Blog)

friends, twins

2010-10-28T11:59:00.000-07:00

I texted Annie to tell her she and Appleby dressed the same.

She had a good come back.

What should I do?

2010-10-28T11:51:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest projects yet that I've worked on at w+k.The new LeBron James commercial, "Rise."

It was crazy and hectic and stressful and exciting and scary and exhausting. And all very worth it to see such an awesome final product that our whole team is so proud of. Big high fives to everyone who worked so hard on this.

how to make a sweatshirt fancy

2010-10-23T18:59:00.000-07:00

Space Shuttle Woody to the Patch

2010-10-19T11:13:00.000-07:00

Took the buddies, Adam, Sara, David and Mike, out to the Hillsboro hills for some much needed fall frolicking. The sunny was shinning, the caramel corn aplenty and the city kids ready for some field wandering. Great day overal. Big, big props to Space Shuttle Woody for getting all six of us out there safely and well entertained by your luscious rumble seats.

See more pumpkin wonder on the Flickr tubes.

Bye, Summer

2010-10-18T22:55:00.000-07:00

The last day of summer was well spent on our picturesque deck at work. Thanks, WK Retouching Department, for throwing a great party and for having such an epic photo booth. I suppose it is to be expected.

Uniforms Over at the Labs

2010-10-04T19:30:00.000-07:00

Take a look at my new blog post at Sirocco Research Labs -- UNIFORMS.

A teaser: Ben's Beautiful Thighs.

Sometimes work feels like a huge castle/fort.

2010-09-28T23:37:00.000-07:00

Photo by Hutch.

cloud hugging

2010-09-27T12:09:00.000-07:00

I think I need more cloud hugging in my life.

Photos by Barbara & Michael Leisgen.

Via Hamilton Hughes.

big ups

2010-09-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

Missing you, Seattle. Believe it or not, this is one of the smaller reasons.

Blogging, BOOM!

2010-09-26T23:39:00.000-07:00

When you have big, fun personal things like traveling or making movies or graduating or road tripping, blog posts just seem to come very natural. Now that I'm into a near half year of my first full time adult job, blogging feels sporadic and scattered. Apologies. I need to figure out how to get back in the habit.

So bare with me for the next month. I'm thinking breakfast for dinner is going to become more regular, but a bit more of a catch-all for random musings. It's got to be random because the only consistent projects in my life right now are w+k and Sirocco Research Labs. The first is oh-so time consuming and unfortunately often consisting of things I can't talk about due to big, lofty nondisclosure agreements. The second has it's very own blog that I guest write on. No really, I have blogged this summer. Honest.

I do find some blog-worthy content at work though. Today is one of those days as this morning a big Nike spot aired that I have been working on since day #1 of my w+k adventure. It's one of the few projects I've seen come full circle from conception to launch so far in my young stint. Here it is folks, my favorite of one of five :15 second spots we created for the Nike BOOM campaign.

Boom, baby! I'm back to blogging.

In the States of America - Friends and Stripes

2010-07-18T15:36:00.000-07:00

We all found each other dressed the same on 4th of July. We never really hang out. Just hang out. So this seemed like 100% magic.

now look at your blog, now back to mine

2010-07-15T21:18:00.000-07:00

His skin was soft and his words were gentle. Everything we've ever dreamed of, ladies.

I Work for a Robot - Nike LIVESTRONG Chalkbot

2010-07-15T21:04:00.000-07:00

A large chunk of my time at work thus far has been spent working on the Nike LIVESTRONG Chalkbot campaign. The Chalkbot was hot on the scene last year and doing it's thing yet again at this year's Tour de France.

This is what it does:

And this is part of what we made this year to hype the banners:

Go the www.nike.com/livestrong and submit your own message before the end of the Tour this month. It's fun and very yellow.

Big high fives to all the rad creatives and account folks and studio whiz kids I've had the pleasure working with on this account. Most are sweating+stressing+laughing+chalking in France right now as I type. It's a crazy world, you know, fighting cancer and wrangler robots.

outdoor mural painting - The Ritual Project

2010-07-06T22:23:00.000-07:00

If you enjoy art, advertising, documentaries or things that are enjoyable you need to spend a spare 12 minutes watching this short piece Up There by The Ritual Project.

Love this art and love this profession. I think this may be one of the most well executed out of home ad campaigns I have seen all year. Kudos to you Stella for commissioning such a gorgeous project.

UP THERE from The Ritual Project on Vimeo.

(via Rifle)

COLAB - Freaking Out One Year Ago Today

2010-07-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

Today is the mark of this year's orientation for the Portland Advertising Federation's COLABORATORY intern 2010 group. That means that one year ago I was giddy/excited/nervous/pumped for one of my heftiest internship undertakings.

Good luck, 2010 Lab Rats! Welcome to the not-so-big, oh-so-friendly and big-time-awesome world of Portland advertising.

And to my Wet Paint compadres from '09 -- miss you all dearly. Big thanks to Lincoln for posting this video from our COLAB wrap party last year. Made my morning much more smile-filled.

Sirocco Feature in Jettison Quarterly

2010-07-01T23:05:00.000-07:00

Sirocco Research Labs has received our first ever media coverage!

Check out our feature article in this month's issue of the ever so awesome Chicago based art rag, Jettison Quarterly. Issue #6 is gushing with some Labs love. Great stuff.

And in case you haven't guessed already, this is the big surprised I had mentioned before when we showed some of our Portland SRL crew's photo shoot gems.

Thanks, Jettison, for all the love!

OH, YEAHHHH!!

2010-06-30T20:44:00.000-07:00

What a GOOD day.

I signed papers this afternoon and am now officially a full-time salaried employee at Wieden + Kennedy. And then there was an unrelated company party on the roof with lebanese margaritas and baba ganoush.

AND!!!

A good majority of the Sirocco Research Labs crew will sleeping on my floor this weekend and riding on bikes with us on adventures.

My sentiments can only accurately be described using in the following joyous video:

Thanks w+k buddies, life buddies and family for supporting me through the ups and downs of freelance life. Baba Ganoush on me next time!!

Sirocco Website - WE HAVE FOUND THE INTERWEBS!

2010-06-27T23:22:00.000-07:00

Brand new website, full of color and clips and projects.

Special high fives to the my co-website varsity team captians, Karl of Sidearm Design and Ben of I Love to Eat Hot Dogs. Double high fives to Karl for programming and designing the shit out this thing. Well done, buddy.

The whole SRL crew has been working so hard to get this pretty project our there in the public realm. Enjoy!

CLICK HERE

Sirocco Photo Shoot: Portland, Oregon

2010-06-20T21:07:00.000-07:00

The Sirocco team members, all of us scattered about the west coast, have ventured out on a mutual photo project. We tried out some new colors and workin' hats for our Portland shoot.

More on the mysterious and exciting reason for the shoot soon. Other photos and colors on the Flickr front.

write the future - ripple effect

2010-05-21T12:43:00.000-07:00

I am very excited for the World Cup to begin next month. Compounding my excitement is my gushing pride for Wieden+Kennedy's new World Cup, Write the Future campaign for Nike the Amsterdam office has been slaving over. Our Portland office will also have some new shorter spots as well as some amazing print ads releasing soon. Until then, lean forward and enjoy what may be one of the most epic commercials Nike has created to date. You may need to watch it a few times to catch all the amazing details, cameos and sub plots -- it's insanely exciting.

Write the Future - "Ripple Effect"

From w+k's blog:

We are proud to present Nike’s global football brand campaign in celebration of the 2010 World Cup, titled “Write the Future.” This fully integrated campaign, spanning TV, cinema, print, digital, out-of-home and nontraditional executions, is the culmination of an 18-month-long collaborative effort led by W+K Amsterdam with support from W+K London and W+K Portland.

“Write the Future,” showcases a series of international football stars in their quest for victory and how one moment can be met with heroic achievement or defeat, sending a ripple effect across the globe. To bring the film to life W+K partnered with renowned Hollywood director Alejandro González Iñárritu.(Babel and 21 Grams) Music featured in the spot is performed by Dutch rock band Focus. The song “Hocus Pocus” brought the band international acclaim. For the spot, the music track was given a modern twist through remixing by MassiveMusic of Amsterdam.

Congratulations to everyone who worked on the campaign.

Sirocco Sunday MASS

2010-05-17T14:14:00.000-07:00

Sunday Meeting About Sirocco Stuff.

We're getting organized, people. One MASS at a time.

productive, creative friends are the best - FRASERHEAD!

2010-05-11T12:17:00.000-07:00

I have many friends that are productive and creative*. It's really amazing and one of the reasons I love my friends so darn much. (* see Sirocco Research Labs, Canary Sing, Samstag... the list goes on and on)

Welcome to the line-up of cool, creative kids pretending to be adult-like and getting mucho legit: Fraserhead! The lovely Lara Schmidt is doing her thing -- crafts, inspiration, art, design, making things and even a Fraserhead Etsy account! I mean, really!? When did you get so cool, Lara? I'm beaming with pride.

Need more proof of Lara's swagger? Take a look at her recent Etsy post -- gorgeous handmade bag, made from vintage fabric. Lovely design and she makes a great model.

The crafty power is strong in this one.

DEPARTMENT OF PROJECTS: Canary Sing Album Art

2010-04-30T15:21:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-28T22:33:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-25T21:31:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-23T14:01:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-22T19:42:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-20T10:46:00.001-07:00

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

2010-04-15T18:26:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-09T18:18:00.000-07:00

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.

DEPARTMENT OF PROJECTS: Sa Vidya Marketing Materials - Pretty Things to Raise Money for Cute Kids

2010-03-25T11:18:00.001-07:00

Chad Robertson is a great guy and he made a great film. After spending time with the wonderful people of the Ashram Paryavaran Vidyalaya, he decided to spread the good word and make a documentary about their practices in hopes of raising money to support the school. Some information on Chad's film:

Sa Vidya Ya Vimuktaye: Knowledge is that which Liberates explores the world of Ashram Paryavaran Vidyalaya (APV), a school and ashram at the forefront of an organic educational revolution. The film enters into classrooms and assemblies, sits in on meditation gatherings, follows the children to their villages, and visits the ashram to learn more about community living. Through candid interviews with headmaster Anand Dwivedi, APV teachers, and students, discover an enlightened form of education and way of life.

Ben and I, both huge fans of Chad/Cute Kids/India/Documentaires, were charged with the task of helping brand the documentary and the screening event.

Beginning with the end, the screening went over amazingly well. The Sa Vidya team got enough butts in the seats and enough donations to fund an entire month of costs for the APV School. Ben posted pictures from the night here.

The lead up to those smiling faces was a doozey of a project. Branding materials galore! Ben and I are super happy with the way everything turned out. Below are some pictures outlining our process. And laugh all you want at the over abundance of kraft paper choices -- when I win my award for "Most Times Using Kraft Paper in One Freelance Design Project Scope" you all won't be laughing then!

The Making of Sa Vidya Pretty Things /

Three Girls in the Ashram Meditating - Reference imagery used to create sketches for branding materials.

Three Girls Sketch - Rough sketch used to add to marketing materials.

Original Comps of DVD Packaging - Kraft cases with custom made ink stamps for printing. Finished with a red string.

Sketches from my journal during my India trip. Used for additional imagery on the posters. We were very excited to get to meld pieces of all of our trips to India in this project.

The final poster! Printed on kraft paper (of course) and posted and sent out alllll over the place.

The final DVD packaging in action at the merch table at the screening.

Butts in the seats! Mission accomplished.

Chad is currently putting the funds to good use in India and working at the APV School to see what the next steps will be for helping this great organization continue their work. You can follow his adventures on his blog.

yeah, no, really, we did it, i'm here, sorry

2010-02-09T06:53:00.000-08:00

Dude, that live blogging thing while shooting ... definitely did not happen. At first I could blame it on the fact that the loft didn't have internet access, but after that was remedied I only had my crazy-AD self to blame.

In lieu of all those awesome daily updates, you now can take a look at the Sirocco Research Lab Flickr for photographic evidence that last week did exist and indeed we did make a beautiful movie.

Red Moon Pre-Production

2010-01-27T00:54:00.000-08:00

Ben and I leave tomorrow morning to head south to Los Angeles for round two of Red Moon shooting.

I'm very excited to get there and start working face-to-face with our Sirocco Research Lab chums. Lately our pre-production meetings have looked something more like this:

I hope to blog more often this time around, so keep your eyes on Breakfast for Dinner for up to date Red Moon production news. And stories. And gossip. And pictures of Ben in his underwear. And alllll that good stuff.

Whhhheeeewwww. Here we go!

23rd Birthday - Candy, Dancing and Candy

2010-01-27T00:48:00.000-08:00

Documentation of my birthday madness found on my Flickr.

Hello, W+K! I've been dreaming about you.

2010-01-22T15:16:00.000-08:00

At some point I met the right people, I went to the right place at the right time, I told the right stories that got the right laughs and I managed to not trip and fall as I walked through some really big, oversized metal doors -- which all adds up to me finding out today that I got a job at the dreamy ad firm, Wieden+Kennedy, as a freelance project manager. I am shocked and excited, to say the least.

I was at the point only yesterday where I resolved to not settle for anything but HUGE here in Portland because I knew I wanted to spend more of my energy on the Sirocco Research Labs' film projects in LA. And that is when the universe chuckled to itself and said, "A-OK, Miss Reardon. Let me tell you a funny joke called Getting What you Wished For..." This really couldn't be more ideal, I'm now realizing. I will be working freelance at W+K while still having time and resources to jump down to LA for weekend shoots. And more importantly, the people at W+K are already big fans of SRL. I gushed about all my side projects in my interviews and got a big proverbial high five from everyone for making a werewolf movie. W+K seems to be an epicenter of all great side projects in Portland. Restaurants, films, art shows, bands, webisodes -- you name it, likely someone in that gorgeous building is working on it.

I leave for LA this week to finish shooting Red Moon and then when I get back it is go go go time for my very first real world big kid job at what will likely be one of the greatest play lands I have ever been lucky enough to stumble upon. No seriously, they have a human-size birds nest at the top of their atrium and they bring in premo bands for lunch time concerts in their salvaged lumber auditorium and there's a roof top patio that over looks the Pearl and there are dogs everywhere inside. Gush. Gush. Gush.

Beautiful building aside, these folks also really have their stuff figured out when it comes to creativity and pushing yourself to make bigger and better things. W+K has a motto or two that I couldn't agree with more. The first being the original proclamation of founders Dan Wieden and David Kennedy. "Don't act big, no sharp stuff, follow directions and shut up when someone is talking." Rules to live by.

And a more recent credo of W+K's is to "Fail Harder." Beautifully illustrated in their Portland office by way of more than 100,000 clear push pins.

This is going to be a fun and challenging gig, folks. For sure. I'll keep you updated.

Read more about W+K on their site or on their blog.

Canary Sing Music Video - Freak Show

2010-01-19T19:10:00.000-08:00

Spread the word, mark it down, take note: Canary Sing is one of the hottest female hip hop groups you well ever know in your life. Ever.

Perhaps I'm bias because I adore the ladies of Canary Sing, good buddies Maddy and Hollis, but seriously they are fantastic. New tracks up on their MySpace. AND a fabulous new music video out for their song Freak Show. Directed by Wes Goodlife of the Kiss Kiss Goodnight production studio. Take a look:

I'm thinking my different groups of awesomely creative friends need to merge in the near future. Sirocco Research Labs / Canary Sing mashup?! The next CS music video featuring some handcrafted, dreamy aesthetic? !! Just sayin' ...

Old Pages, New Clip

2010-01-12T14:35:00.000-08:00

Projects of note the last two days:

I cut myself some bangs and made myself a new hair clip using old book pages. So far, both seem worth keeping around.

And then they believed us that Red Moon was the prettiest movie we have ever made

2010-01-08T13:20:00.000-08:00

New photos posted to the Sirocco Research Labs' Flickr. I told you we were making cool stuff.

2010 - This is Project Time

2010-01-05T18:15:00.000-08:00

More crafting, more building, more messes, more sketching, more writing, more creativity.

Make more. 2010 will be my Year of Projects.

To kick it off, my first project of the year is a board that demands the making of more -- a to-do list chalkboard for our room. Ben and I have grown accustomed to giving our projects a home under one collective name -- The Department of Projects. We try to get at least one DOP project in everyday. It's like a pretend business, like when little kids play pretend grocery store, but our pretend business has a sewing machine, power tools and no bedtime.

The making of the DOP board:

Candy Safe

2010-01-02T18:00:00.000-08:00

Christmas came and went and my love for candy was rocketed to a new level of absurdity.

A month or three ago I made an off hand remark to Ben about how I really wish I had a Candy Safe. This may sound like a bizarre statement to those of you that don't know me well, but let me just say, I adore candy. I'm kind of obsessed. I can tell you which mini-marts in Portland carry Abba Zabbas and which ones carry apple flavored Zots. If anyone knows the true depth of my candy love, it is my other love, Ben Sellon. And thus, for Christmas 2009, Ben gave me my bestest gift ever. My very own Candy Safe!!

Why a Candy Safe you ask? Well, don't let the typical nature of a safe fool you -- this safe is not for hording or archiving treasured objects. On the contrary, this Candy Safe is for sharing. You see I have very strict beliefs on who in the world deserves candy. I hope, by way of my now securely locked Candy Safe, to control distribution of the best candy to all my friends. Jerks don't deserve candy. Come over to my place. If I like you, I'll pop out my Candy Key and we'll get our Abba Zabba on. If you are a jerk, stop being a jerk and maybe you'll get some candy.

Thank you Ben for helping me on my quest to give candy to nice people and nice people only. You get me.

PM turned AD (???!!!)

2009-12-29T17:41:00.000-08:00

As of one month ago I was still a college student at Seattle University and basically sure I wanted to be a Project Manager (PM) for an ad firm. In one month time I have graduated from said college and promptly began considering a life of assistant director work (AD). I blame Red Moon and Jimmy Marble and Co.

The shoot for Red Moon was fantastic. Fantastic in the sense that we hardly slept for 7 days, Ben and the other actors/sailors completely perfected their Russian accents, I only showered twice, I got my own clipboard for AD work, we had the most awesome lego-man-like costumes made by Mr. Martin Morse, our sets looked like a gosh-darn submarine thanks to one Ms. Adi, faux beards were aplenty (hat tip at Ms. Murphy), we had a real crew, we had a REAL intern, we all fell madly in love with movie making and each other and lastly, we had a minor fire on set. Don't worry, no flammable beards/costumes/actors were harmed -- only minor damage on the set that won't even be visible when we begin shooting again. Yup. I said again. We will be back in Los Angeles at the end of this month to finish shooting some last bits of Red Moon. Really, we owe the fire a thank you card. We all will be reunited in all of our Red Moon productivity-meets-creativity love and glory.

Which brings me to my next thought -- I need more productivity and creativity in my life. I am living in Portland now, post-college pre-career, feeling awfully in-between and all I can bring myself to think about is how much I loved making movies. I mean, we're talking loved it. Assistant directing was a job I didn't even have a full concept of prior to the Red Moon shoot and now I can't get the idea of "Reardonk, AD" out of my mind. AD work filled a niche in my creative meets organized self that I have never found before. I made spreadsheets, I posted schedules, I ran back to wardrobe and picked up a needle to help on costumes, I discussed camera angles, I picked up power tools, I swept the floor, I calmed people down, I got people excited ... it was everything I love all rolled up into one glorious, clipboard-wielding job. I'm really in love.

I don't know for sure yet if I need to take a complete shift from my PM plans for a world of AD'ing, but I do know that in the one month I have been done with school I have had countless discussions with folks and many daydreaming bouts that have led me to one solid concept. I can say with almost completely certainty (which is 80% more than should be expected at my current life state) that I want to work in an environment where I can help manage creative projects that I really believe in and surround myself with productive people that push me to make more and do more.

I'll let you know how this all pans out. I'm really curious myself.

More on Red Moon to come, I promise. If you haven't already, check out some of my cell-phone camera stills from shooting on my Flickr. There should be more photos put up soon on the Sirocco Research Labs' Flickr.

Red Moon Poster by Sidearm Design

2009-12-03T09:50:00.001-08:00

Everyone needs to take a look at Karl Peterson's blog immediately. Sidearm Design was sweet talked by Sirocco Research Labs to create the Red Moon movie poster. Below is the first round. It is so fantastic. Well done, Karl. Excited to see the final product. I also vote that you make posters for all the other SRL productions. The series would be so gorgeous.

the werewolf has paws

2009-12-02T20:57:00.001-08:00

progress on the werewolf!

check out the Red Moon Flickr set for the making of the werewolf.

cram week

2009-11-30T13:49:00.000-08:00

muppet to werewolf; project time

2009-11-29T14:59:00.000-08:00

Cleo in the Universe provided The Sirocco Research Labs with a large array of projects. We built spacesuits and muppets and beautiful spaceship sets. And now we are ready for movie number two. Prepare yourself, blog readers. The next month will be a wild ride of project madness rolled up in a movie called Red Moon.

Red Moon is the next installment of the line of short films we are aiming to help produce this year with our dear friend Jimmy. It is a movie about a submarine, love, werewolfs and Soviet Russia. It's going to be fantastic. Jimmy has really done it with this one, folks. Real good stuff. Ben and I will be heading back to LA, home of the Sirocco Research Labs Headquarters (The Hang Zone), to film Red Moon the beginning of December. And by beginning of December I mean next week. Hot damn ... we've got some work to do!

First project on the docket is to build the werewolf suit, played by Mr. Sellon(B) himself. Ben, Annie and I are all chipping in to make this one materialize. It's a doozey. Ben and I started the mask last week and bought oodles and oodles of fur at the Fabric Depot -- all adventures that seem to be par for the course these days now that we are devoted Research Lab Assistants.

This week we need to turn this ...

Into this ...

Can it be done!? Of course. We are Sirocco Research Labs -- making a werewolf costume is like making waffles. No big thing.

Well, it's sort of big thing considering we all are super slammed with many, many other project happenings. Oh and did I mention I am finishing college this week? I give my last marketing class presentation Tuesday, pack up my Seattle apartment, move back to Porltand, return to Seattle for my last Sullivan meeting and final exam, check out of my apartment to then hop on a plane and fly to LA to begin the shoot week for Red Moon. It's happening! Pretty good graduation trip, don't you think? Kicking off my "adult life" with a week filled with sleep deprivation, friends, werewolfs and LA movie making magic. I love it. I really do.

all that glitter

2009-11-15T19:34:00.000-08:00

Sunday I had the chance to accompany The Samstag Saturday crew, a Seattle vintage collective, to the 26th annual Seattle Goodwill Glitter Sale. The Glitter Sale is one of Goodwill's largest fundraising events where they sell some of their best formal attire and accessories they have saved up throughout the year. It was an epic day filled with many adventures -- sleep over prep the night before, 6am wake up call, leotards, donuts and some of the best vintage I have ever seen.

You can read more about our shenanigans on the Samstag Saturday blog.

And take a look at all of our photos from the Glitter Sale.

Thanks Goodwill for an oh-so awesome day!

CLEO IN THE UNIVERSE TRAILER!!!

2009-11-12T00:45:00.000-08:00

CLEO IN THE UNIVERSE teaser from Sirocco Research Labs on Vimeo.

LA in review

2009-11-05T00:50:00.000-08:00

Let me just say, I was skeptical. Not so sure how I felt about our dear, lovable, creative Jimmy moving to such a smoggy, mall-tastic city. But let me tell YOU. LA WAS MAGICAL!

My god. Our one week in LA was by far one of the best trips I have ever been on. Maybe it had nothing to do with LA? Maybe it had everything to do with matching pink tank tops, productivity, adventures, producer necklaces and movie making madness?

Nested away in the wonders of the Warehouse District was the Hang Zone, Jimmy's killer loft that is now home to all the Sirocco Research Lab film productions. It smelled like movie magic (and tuna, sometimes). There was not a night the whole entire week that was not spent making sets/costumes/sketches/laughter or all of the above. And to boot, we stayed up late most nights sipping wine and watching YouTube episodes of Are You Afraid of The Dark. And to double boot, we made the most wonderful new friends, Adie and Martin, who we've deviously pulled into our circle of movie making love. Really, it was one long week of taking full advantage of our young adulthood -- no bed time, access to power tools and Funfetti cake for dinner. BOOM!

We are going back. Not indefinitely, but certainly wholeheartedly. New movie in the works. Cleo in the Universe will soon be fin and then it's on to the next. Which is great, because Jimmy has ingrained in us such a heightened level of creativity these days I think I need another movie to work or I. Just. Might. Burst.

*Photos courtesy of Mr. SellonB / more here

Jimmy Says LA is Magical

2009-10-19T12:49:00.001-07:00

I need to go verify that.

You may remember back in August when I wrote about filming Cleo in the Universe, the fantastic short film written and directed by our good friend Jimmy Marble. In a serendipitous twist of fate, some of the footage must be re-shot and Jimmy has up and moved his operations south to Los Angeles.

So, off we go!

Tomorrow Ben and I leave on a Virgin America flight (which I heard is like flying in the inside of an iPod) for the glitz and glamour of Hollywood -- to film a movie no less! A shame production has drawn out so long, but like I said, Jimmy claims LA is magical so I'm excited to go verify that.

Jimmy posted the below still from the Super 8mm footage shot over the summer that he's currently editing. Isn't it gorgeous? Hopefully a trailer will be done very soon.

Other photos from the filming of Cleo, by Abiel Hoff and Greg Boudreau:

Next?

2009-10-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

The idea of having an easy schedule this quarter has faced some resistance from my sense of unrest with the 'planning what to do next' feeling. I have had a hard time doing just nothing when I know I need to be putting one foot out the SU door and trying to figure out what it is I will be doing in December.

I have been spending a lot of my time emailing with potential employers, printing out resumes, sifting through pictures form Portland to combat homesickness and walking around Seattle saying farewell to all my favorite things. A lot of my time is spent with friends doing very not-so-college-like things. The other night Annie and I stayed in and ate a dinner of waffles and wine while watching Mad Men episodes. Likely, a lot of my mornings are spent sitting in the park reading Garcia Marquez short stories and writing project ideas in my notebook. I fear I've aged rapidly since the end of summer. There just isn't much college kid left in me and the new adult-like me is getting antsy for some big adventures

So, what are my plans for December you ask? Likely a job. Most likely. Likely in Portland. Very likely.

I've been missing Portland a lot since I moved away, which is exciting. I like that I feel at home in that city as much as I have the last few summers here in Seattle. Most signs are pointing towards some sort of an entry level job at an ad firm in Portland and moving back in with Ben and the boys in our little green house on Division. Well, not all signs. My fortune cookie the other day seemed to think I should go a different route.

Apparently I will be inheriting a small piece of land soon,

... which is convenient considering that I have been looking for a place to build my dream tree house.

Plan A: Portland

Plan B: Rad Tree House (pending The Ballet Restaurant paying out on my supposed land aquistition)

Plan C: Live on Annie's couch and eat waffles and wine for the rest of our gosh darn lives.

this is what summer looks like

2009-09-18T14:42:00.000-07:00

in two days i move away from my amazing little home in Portland, away from Ben, Chad and Jeff, back to Seattle. I am excited for the new school year to start, but I can't help but be pretty sad to say farewell to such a lovely summer.

to paraphrase my summer; it was fantastic. allow me to show you.

this is what summer looks like -

this is what summer looks like from Katie Reardon on Vimeo.

Allow me to clarify

2009-09-17T01:27:00.000-07:00

I have not graduated from college. Yup, I was Just Kidding.

So, I graduated. I just didn't graduate. I walked, I had the tassel, I threw the hat, I ate the cake -- I'm just not done with classes yet. I know, it sounds silly, but really there is a logical explanation for my bogus pomp and circumstance.

As you may remember I traveled abroad to India during the fall quarter of this last year. Taking this quarter off meant that I was deferring a quarter of my Sullivan Scholarship, a scholarship group that I am a part of at Seattle University (more on this amazing program later in this blog post). In all its pre-meditated glory, the Sullivan allows its recipients to use essentially 4 years of schooling as they see fit, in whatever chunks and sequence that works for them. For me, this meant that I could take fall quarter off last year and roll over that scholarship money to this year. And, wallll AHH! I am returning to SU for a 5th year fall quarter to take my one last marketing elective class.

Now, you may be asking why oh why would I return for just one class. The answer goes a bit beyond the simple, "Well, in case you didn't notice this isn't the best economy to be joining the work force." My reasoning for returning to SU for one more quarter is much more rooted in the core beliefs and values of the Sullivan program. The Sullivan was created to foster better, holistic leadership in young college students. We work on things like group facilitation, community engagement and general mental well-being. It's the latter of those qualities that has to do with why I'm staying around for a 5th year. I realized I needed a buffer before I had to make decisions about the bigger world outside of SU and Capitol Hill. I'm a firm believer in buffers. With both the monetary and community support of the Sullivan, I now have the time to relax for three months, post-COLAB and pre-world. I'm really looking forward to taking time to enjoy my last class, Entrepreneurial Marketing, having time with a few good friends that are still in the Seattle area and simply reflecting on decisions. In all honesty, those things are likely going to be accomplished by way of sitting in the Quad and going on long bike rides to Ballard. I don't have any big plans for the quarter and I'm really, really looking forward to that.

So, apologies if I confused you with that whole cap and gown thing before. I wanted the pictures to show the grand kiddies some day, you know? It was fake-it or forget-it. And really, in the end, I realized that the ceremony wasn't all a big hoax for me. It felt as though I was celebrating the end of my true college years; the hoopla was to bid farewell to all my good friends and all the amazing memories I made during my four years at SU. In my mind, I'm returning to campus this Sunday not to really go back to school, but rather to relish in the campus life one last time. Say goodbye to it all in a real long, cozy way.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Below are some pictures from this summer's Sullivan Retreat on the Oregon Coast where we talk about our ups and downs, learn to relax better, practice Tai Chi and dance to bad pop music. More pictures can be viewed on my Flickr account.

COLAB, Over and Out

2009-09-16T22:29:00.000-07:00

About a month out from the COLABORATORY grand finale and I finally feel like my thoughts are cohesive enough to write a blog post in review. Excuse my tardiness, but this beast of an intern program is not so easily summed up in one quick post.

The final blowout event of the COLAB program was the team presentations to Columbia Sportswear. The day was something I never imagined myself having the opportunity to partake in at such a young age in my career. The act of pitching our campaign to Columbia, a prominent corporate brand, is alone an amazing thing to have lived to tell about. I think what was most nerve racking for me was not necessarily the Columbia judging panel, but more so the 20 or so COLAB committee members sitting behind the judges. These COLAB folks are the real deal, the professionals that do these sorts of pitches for a living, our bosses from the last six weeks and not to mention the people we all might someday want to work for if we stay in this industry. There was pressure. For sure.

Photo By Erin Davis / Columbia Sportswear judges.

I think our team really found a lot of motivation in that pressure though, or at least I think I can say so for myself. Getting up in front of that room and spilling out on the table the amazing work Wet Paint did was a total rush. It was not so much about "selling it to client" like I had assumed it would be. Once we got up there and got rolling with our pitch the whole thing turned into this sort of enthusiastic show and tell. We were simply showing off this baby we had made, this adorable little bundle of joy all rolled up into one neat package that we called a campaign. Our group really made fantastic work -- we all were so proud of it which made the pitch just seem like the fun part. All we had to do was show Columbia how much we loved our stuff and how much we believed in it and the rest just happened. The rest being the part where Columbia deliberated for two hours to decide which team's campaign would be named the winner.

From the sound of it the other group, Silo5, had a great campaign as well. We didn't actually get to watch their pitch, as is the nature of agency pitches in the real world. Once it was deliberation time the two groups finally, finally reemerged from our absurd six weeks of head-to-head competition and got to tour the Columbia Sportswear campus as a cohesive group of 10 smiling, not stressed-out interns. The results were out of our hands; we could finally relax. During the break we got to meet Mrs. Gert Boyle herself! Such a cool lady. It was so great to see her in person after all those years knowing her as the Tough Mom from the Columbia ad campaigns.

Photo By Erin Davis / Meeting Mrs. Boyle.

When we returned to hear the panel's final vote, we were greeted with a ton of fantastic feedback which again was something I think none of us interns would have imagined having the experience of at such a young age. Immediate, relevant, thoughtful critiques from a real client -- those 15 minutes were likely one of the most pertinent payoffs of the COLAB experience. In the end Columbia chose our team's campaign as the winner. They had a lot of specifics to say about positives and negatives of campaign as well as some good, broad tips for us. I can't give you, my dear blog readers, too many specifics though. Sorry! Both team's ideas are now full property of Columbia, so we've got some super confidential insider info on our hands. This is good news for us though because if all goes well in the next stages of Columbia's ad planning, we very well could be seeing some of Wet Paint's ideas in full swing next Fall. So. Exciting!

In the meantime, I can show you some very basic pictures of the very awesome book Wet Paint designed for our pitch to give to Columbia as a takeaway. Consider this a teaser/valid proof that we had as much fun with this project as I had been alluding to in my blog all summer.

More pictures of our book in detail can be viewed on my Flickr account.

The long, last day of COLAB was polished off with a lovely after-party filled with beer, snacks, awkward bonding and Voodoo Doughnuts.

Photo By Erin Davis / Awkward team bonding at the after party.

Overall, I can't imagine having spent my summer in any other way. COLAB was an amazing opportunity, albeit experimental and nontraditional. If you are a prospective intern reading this blog (because I know there will be some, as the 10 of us 2009 Lab Rats sure did our fair share of Googling prior to applying), I'd say apply if you think you are adventurous enough and thick-skinned enough to survive an internship of such abnormal nature. It was rapid fire, for sure. We had to be on our toes enough to handle three first days of work, three sets of bosses to impress and three sets of office responsibilities. And on top of all that there came the extra time needed to devote to the Columbia campaign work. After a 9-5 day you'd usually have another three hours of work or so to do on your own time for your team. It is a big time commitment, but with that said, it comes with big payoffs. The amount of experience we all gained in six weeks far surpasses a traditional internship in my opinion and the number of contacts you make during the course of the program is unreal. I have a stack of business cards on my desk that would make any unemployed college grad drool. So, apply if you think you can make the time/energy commitment and know that if you are willing to go all out during the six weeks, the experiences will be a huge reward.

I'm now venturing off into the seemingly "real world" knowing that I do feel intrigued and inspired by this sort of industry. Where I will fall within the mix of advertising/marketing/graphic design I do not know. Through COLAB I think I came to realize that for me the allure of being a project manager in some facet of this industry is rooted in my love for the process. The late night work session with Wet Paint where some one would get an idea which would make another person sit up in their chair and go, "Oh, oh, OH!" Which would in turn cause everyone to start scribbling away in their journals... that is what I really enjoyed. And then the mass translation of all those good ideas into one cohesive pretty package; that's where the good stuff is at. That is what I can see myself doing for a career. Now to just figure out how I want to make that happen... More on big life decisions in another blog post. This one is already proving to be far too epically long.

Thank you a million times over to the Portland Advertising Federation and the awesome COLAB Committee for being adventurous enough to create this weird program and for choosing me to be a part of the second round of Lab Rats. I look forward to watching where this program takes itself and the great things you all will do to help it get there. And of course, thank you so much to Ascentium, Grady Britton and Anvil Media for letting me sneak into your agencies. I learned so much from everyone on your teams; too many great people to name. Apologies for the many questions, drinking a lot of your coffee and building robots in highly trafficked areas. And most importantly, thank you to Jimmy, Jenny, Erin and Lincoln, the most AMAZING intern agency team a girl could have asked for. I was continually impressed with your guys' ability to produce fantastic content all while sitting in my un-airconditioned house. Well done, Wet Paint. Seriously, well done. I miss you all already and hope some day we all can sit in a room again and laugh uncontrollably at absolutely nothing. I really do.

WOO HOO!

2009-08-21T23:27:00.000-07:00

we did it.

were done.

we DID IT!

WE WON!!!!

Team Wet Paint walk away with a victory today at the Columbia Sportswear pitch. Silo5 gave us serious run for our money though. Great experience. More blog/reflection later. Right now I'm packing my bag for my 8am flight to Vegas. No joke.

Woo hoo!

Getting a Minor in Google Studies

2009-08-18T21:48:00.000-07:00

My third and last agency placement, Anvil Media, has been a whirlwind. As you probably noted by my lack of blogging, things have been busy. I'm already in my second week at Anvil and last week of COLAB!

In the face of the fun, crunch time madness of planning our Columbia Sportswear pitch for this Friday, there has still been time to learn a slew of new things at this agency placement.

Anvil does search engine optimization and social media marketing--two things I'm not even going to try and pretend I didn't Google before COLAB started. This is new territory for me, but it feels good to be this challenged. Anvil has a very lean business structure. Every person in their 12-person team has basically a comparable title to each other which translates to everyone having their own projects, doing their own research, their own analysis and their own pitching. It's really neat to see everyone work together in such a simplified environment. There are even weekly sessions where the entire team gets together and talks simply about cool stuff they've found that week (blogs, conferences, innovations, etc.). The thought being, this keeps everyone in the loop with not only one another, but also with industry happenings.

Don't let the tech-talk fool you though. The people at Anvil are a pretty is lively bunch. The other day, the office playlist took a romping tour of Dragonforce followed by some Gangster's Paradise. Crazy kids, I tell ya.

My basic takeaways from the SEO world so far pertain to client interaction. In my mind, that is really where Anvil earns their money. They take mass amounts of data and statistics and charts and boil it into a very approachable report and recommendations for a client to immediately put into action. Yes, most of their tools are platforms like Google Analytics, Google adWords, etc. that anyone can access, but Anvil's power rests in their expertise of the tools and their ability to immediately get the SEO ball rolling for a company that would normally be dwarfed by that much data.

It's almost as if what Anvil is offering their client base is 1 part concepts/actions and 3 parts education on what they should be doing. I suppose that is the nature of a company dancing in such relatively new territory. The machine of SEO work is moving pretty rapidly, but I can tell just from my short time here, Anvil has a solid grasp on the industry.

Oh, and one of the other big perks of working at Anvil Media; Heather Schwartz, COLAB Class of '08, is employed here. Heather has been a fantastic resource to have around when I think of random Wet Paint questions. And not to mention she's also just a really rad person. Woo hoo, for COLAB alums!

The Oregonian shows COLABORATORY some love

2009-08-10T23:02:00.000-07:00

yeah, we are kind of a big deal -- in print and on the web.

It's all about ideas

2009-08-05T23:23:00.000-07:00

One of the most rewarding and encouraging experiences I've had thus far during my COLABORATORY experience have been the times when I get to sit in on brainstorming session.

At both Ascentium and Grady Britton I have seen that in the world of ad/marketing no man is left behind. Brainstorm sessions revolve around every member of the team -- designers, project managers, media buyers, copy writers and interns alike. These sort of free flowing, all-out dump fests are so fantastic. The whole shebang is really show to be seen. It all begins with one good idea. I get excited and start scribbling things in my journal, throwing out random stories. Then someone references a seemingly unrelated event which triggers another idea for 5 other people. We all laugh. Someone reads a Tweet aloud. We laugh again. Then there's an awkward moment of deep-thought silence. Then the whole beast gets roaring again and 58 new ideas flush out on to the table, every single one of which can be traced back to the original good idea that the client had that we as an agency are trying to make BIG. Meetings like this rarely happened in the graphic design world--being on the content side of this creative process is great. Gosh. I'm really starting to like this whole creative strategy thing. I really am.

A sharpie rendition of what a brainstorm session looks like at GB.

space and love

2009-08-03T17:24:00.000-07:00

I took a break from internship happenings for a project of a different sort.

This past weekend I spent nearly three days 'round the clock producing Jimmy Marble's latest short film, Cleo in the Universe.The experience (my first on a working set) was surreal, rewarding, exhausting, intensely filled with good friends and, did I mention, exhausting?

The film, I am sure, is going to be gorgeous. We filmed the whole piece in Super 8. Mind you, the film is set in space. Cleo in the Universe will be the most dreamy, soft rendition of space exploration you've ever seen. This I can guarantee.

I played Cleo, the captain of the SS Sweatheart who toils with the juxtaposition of finite love in an infinite universe. I wore a blue spacesuit, took advice from Karl, the onboard computer system, co-stared with the muppet known as Lt. Baby Baby and dreamt about a girl named Duke Jupiter.

Note worthy details from the weekend:

CLEO LEAK from Benjamin Bearclaw on Vimeo.

The warehouse we commandeered.

A picture from one of the many Twitter reports from production.

Big thank you to Jimmy for letting us all be a part of his amazing art. I am very inspired by your unbridled, absurd creative expectations and want to make shit with you for a long, long time. Good luck with post-production!

More to come on the Cleo in the Universe premier. Until then, think really hard about space and love. It'll be good for your imagination.

COLAB meets the future; a huge, awesome table

2009-08-03T15:49:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday some of us COLABORATORY interns had the opportunity to meet the brilliant folks at Fashionbuddha, via a typetour of Portland hosted by the ever-so-connected Bram Pitoyo.

Creative Director Todd Greco showed us one of Fashionbuddha's crowning badass projects to date: their DIY touch screen table. Think Microsoft Surface ($17,000) meets a small budget ($1,000-ish). It really blew my mind. Interactive art gallery openings and collaborative symphonic sounds all coming out of one relatively simple contraption. It's agencies like Fashionbuddha that make me increasingly thrilled by the creative work being pumped out of Portland. Great stuff, Fashionbuddha. Thanks for having us!

To watch Todd's presentation on how a DIY touch screen table is made and the insane apps Fashionbuddha has made to go along, see his speech from Ignite Portland.

In the land of Griffins

2009-07-28T12:56:00.000-07:00

The COLABORATORY clock seems to run faster than I had anticipated. It's week 3 already and I am no longer at Ascentium. I started Monday at my new internship home, ad agency Grady Britton.

It's an odd thing shifting between internships at such a quick pace. Kind of jarring actually. I felt like I was just getting the hang of office life at Ascentium, finally knew who to talk to when I needed something and even had a few inside jokes under my belt. And then the COLAB wheels cranked a little bit further and it was time for me to move on. I survived my first few days at Grady Britton just fine, obviously, but I think all of us interns will openly admit that 3 first days of work in one summer brings 3 times the first-day-jitter stress. Chalk that up to an added benefit of this program -- our nerves are 3 times tougher than the average newbie.

Grady Britton is proving to be a good fit for me. Among the amazingly friendly welcome I received and the fact that I've already played on the GB softball team, I think what I'm liking most about this placement is the type of work Grady does. Grady Britton has a strong line-up of really great local clients. They even have a grant program they run annually to provide a local non-profit with $25,000 of creative services. Cool stuff all around.

And where do the good people of Grady Britton find all their energy for such awesome work? Well, Ascentium had their coffee robot, but I haven't found such a fountain here at Grady. There's a lot of griffin swag everywhere in the office in honor of the company's logo, but my money is on the well equipped fleet of razor scooters that line the hallway.

COLABORATORY + MUFFINS!

2009-07-23T10:23:00.001-07:00

Little Debbie launched a fantastic marketing campaign this summer to promote their new muffins. The Intern Hero campaign is Little Debbie's attempt to feed the under-paid interns of America. Send them a clever shot of you holding a pleading sign for muffins at your internship office and if selected, they'll send you a big ol' box of muffin goodness. Luckily, a bunch of us COLABORATORY interns have an infinity for muffins and photoshop alike. Jimmy Zimmerman and I have been featured on the site thus far. Curious to see how many more COLAB kiddos are going to strike pastry gold.

Lasting Impression at Ascentium

2009-07-23T08:53:00.001-07:00

Today marks my last day at Ascentium for COLABORATORY. I started the morning off right, leaving Ascentium with what surely will be what I am most remembered for.

Thank you, Ascentium for an awesome first two weeks!

One Word Reviews

2009-07-21T07:15:00.000-07:00

Wet Paint finished our first all-day work session on our Columbia Sportswear campaign Friday at Coates Kokes. The following is our one word reactions on how the meeting went. Or at least our attempts at one word...

One Word Reactions from Katie Reardon on Vimeo.

Hello, Ascentium!

2009-07-14T17:26:00.000-07:00

This is me, looking all sleepy/excited on my first day of interning at Ascentium.

I have been under the watchful and helpful eye of Mason West, a copywriter and the COLAB liaison here at Ascentium. My first two days have been full of meeting people, seeing how the office works, sitting in on meetings, researching for real projects and even contributing on some brainstorming session for, again, REAL projects. If you had any doubt in Colaboratory's authenticity, get yourself out of my blog.

These first days have really got my wheels turning on what this industry is about, and more specifically how I function within it. Here are a few snippets from my thoughts thus far --

NOT EVERY AGENCY IS THE SAME
I came in Monday morning assuming there would be some sort of all-office meeting to sync-up projects, talk about office happenings and such because that was what always happened at Turnstyle, my former internship home. Wrong. Ascentium has so many different people all under one roof--creative directors, designers, consultants, project managers, web-types, ad-types--and not to mention so many different projects running at once, an all-group meeting would ultimately just bore some with the others with project happenings that they don't ever touch. That's not to say Ascentium doesn't function without cohesiveness. Everyone seems to operate in these self-proclaimed teams. For example, my desk is located in what is known as the "Creative Cave."

Fellow Colab'er Erin Davis Tweeted the other day about 'learning the language' of an agency. I couldn't agree more. I need to go into each agency with a clean slate, without expectations of how they operate and what their culture is like.

DESIGN VS. AD/MARKETING
To some these may seem like tangent worlds. To me, they seem very far apart. Even on the opening day of Colab at orientation I felt pretty out of place discussing media strategy and promotional events as compared to my norm of brand identity and color schemes. I do miss the rub-off creativity you find in a design office that is full of people sketching, sharing photos and chatting about pretty packages they saw at the grocery store. However, I am really loving the feel of working at an ad agency that is upstream from the design world--meaning, being where the concepts are conceived versus on the end where they are executed. Ideas are happening in the Ascentium office so rapidly. It's one creative brief to the next brainstorming session, basically end-on-end all day long. I like that.

TO SUCCEED, INTERNS NEED TO ASK QUESTIONS
Lots.

ARE PERSONALLY RELEVANT CLIENTS NECESSARY TO PERSONALLY ENJOY AGENCY WORK?
I don't really have any finite revelations on this one. I suppose its more of a question I'm posing to all of the marketing professionals reading this blog. Am I going to feel fulfilled by this project management work if the portfolio consists of cool, but personally not-so-stimulating businesses? Will I have to do work for projects that entail art+bikes+traveling+community+coffee etcetera to really get passionate about this work? I find myself generally very excited about the process of the work I've done so far in this industry regardless of the client, so I've found myself wondering what the relevancy of the client type really is. I like wrangling info and people and ideas all into one cohesive product and I even like to think I'm pretty good at that--but, does there need to be more than that there for this to be my career path? Come on wise elders, help a intern out!

There were introductions, questions, hugs, business cards, beer and post-it notes

2009-07-12T14:14:00.000-07:00

COLABORATORY orientation was on Friday and all of the above was a plenty.

As you all can tell from my last post, I was a wee bit anxious before orientation. I arrived on time and ready for whatever was behind the doors of POP ART, the agency hosting the event. What I found was an immensely welcoming bunch of familiar faces--ones I had seen on agency websites or Twitter profile pictures--all eager to meet me. There was also a killer post-it note art wall, but I had little time to gawk with so much to get started on.

First, all the agency representatives introduced themselves and their companies. The hour or so of client/agency run down is likely more than most could hope to figure out in the first month of working in a new town. It was really insightful into the tone and personalities of each and made me feel very affirmed in my assignments to work at Ascentium, Grady Britton and Anvil Media. While they all varied in client base and offerings, each seemed to have a common thread of strong mission and strategy focus which made me happy.

And then it was on to meeting the fellow interns and finding out which teams (or mini agencies) we would be on for creating our campaigns for Columbia Sportswear. Classic red rover style, they called us out one-by-one to our groups. Then they gave us 15 minutes to come up with an agency name, tag-line and strategy and then present it to the whole room of ad executives, our client, COLAB committee members and even a reporter from the Oregonian. No pressure... really no pressure at all.

My group is great. We all meshed together quickly and eagerly jumped into our assignment. At the end of 15 minutes, we emerged with --

Wet Paint
Every brand could use a fresh coat.

Agency team Wet Paint!

The other group of five interns named themselves Silo 5 - Ideas that ignite. I'm excited to see the directions we each go with our campaigns. (Video of the presentations soon to come!)

After a thorough and informative client meeting with Mark Shea from Columbia Sportswear, the day transitioned into a social event with more PAF members flooding through the POP ART doors, all kicked-off with the unveiling of our new COLAB shirts.

Shirts for each Lab Rat/Colab Intern.

Mingling+Networking+Snacks+Beer

These pictures and others can be found at the COLAB Flickr group.

I think my big takeaway at the end of the orientation day was how immediately impressed I was with the intense community feel of the PAF group. I suppose it was evident all along considering I was jumping into a program in which "competitors" literally share employees and students are allowed to have creative control of a real advertising account--but, wow. Perhaps it's a Portland thing? I took this internship with the intent of exploring the Portland business scene in comparison to Seattle's. I feel already this much more potent sentiment of group-good. Jamie Sexton, the director of PAF, stressed to us her belief that Portland has this ability to be a creative hub for business in the country if all the agencies work together to build a stronger network of entrepreneurs, new thinkers and young talent. I'm excited to see what this mentality looks like from the inside during my next weeks interning.

Big BIG thank you to all of the PAF COLABORATORY Committee members, Mark Shea from Columbia Sportswear and POP ART for hosting a most fabulous shindig. I feel really lucky to be a part of this program and this community.

Tomorrow marks my first day of interning with Ascentium.

Looking Forward To...
Having the veil that is the first week of being an intern over me when asking as many gosh darn questions as I like, whenever I like.

Scared about...
Making this transition from the graphic design world of project management to the ad/marketing realm. My work before consisted of brawls over Pantone color chips. This media buying stuff and multi-outlet campaign craziness has me on my toes.

Today's the Day - COLAB Orientation

2009-07-10T10:07:00.001-07:00

This afternoon is the kick-off event for my summer internship with COLABORATORY. I will finally be meeting my fellow interns, finding out which team I will be on, meeting folks from all the agencies AND, as if that weren't enough, having our first meeting with our client, Columbia Sportswear.

I think I am ready.

I ought to be ready.

Just found out a reporter from The Oregonian will be there.

Golly, I hope I don't drop an f-bomb.

Still freaking out about stupid things, like what to wear.

So EXCITED!

So, so, so... AHHHHHH!

My feelings can be summed up in this, my first ever video blog -

The Morning Before COLAB Orientation from Katie Reardon on Vimeo.

I will blog more tomorrow morning or tonight after all the festivities are done (yes, there are festivities and even our very own custom COLAB shirts). Until then, you can follow my Twitter happenings live.

Here we go...

A Map to COLABORATORY Treasures

2009-07-07T14:47:00.000-07:00

For a preliminary act as a COLABORATORY project manager intern, I want to make sure all of us interns (and coordinators alike) know where we are going.

Check out this Google Map directory of all the participating 2009 Colab agencies and locations for our Friday group work sessions. The Map is open for anyone to, dare I say, collaborate on, so feel free to add anything I missed.

No excuses! Download your directions to our sites now and don't get lost; for sure an intern first-day no-no.

View COLABORATORY 2009 in a larger map

COLAB Agencies

2009-07-02T13:05:00.000-07:00

Upon receiving my COLABORATORY Survival Guide--a 15 page PDF detailing everything I need to know about my summer internship--I found out which three agencies I will be interning at.

Three very different agencies in three very different chunks of the Portland-metro area -

WEEKS 1 & 2

Ascentium is an interactive marketing and technology consultancy firm.

WEEKS 3 & 4

Grady Britton is an advertising, marketing, media and communications agency.

WEEKS 5 & 6

Anvil is a search engine marketing company.

They all make me very excited and very eager to get the Colab ball rolling. With my project management skills spanning simply my limited knowledge from my three years at a graphic design agency, I'm sure all three of these locations will prove to be extremely educational.

Orientation is this Friday where I will meet all my fellow interns and then I start this Monday, the 13th at Ascentium.

good ideas

2009-06-30T20:56:00.000-07:00

There are few ideas that cross my path that give me such ample fuel to explain and generally geek out about marketing quite like these two.

I often find myself fumbling when I try to explain my business marketing degree to others. I run in a mostly artistic, creative and liberal circle which translates to a generally hostile mentality when it comes to anything business related. After assuring them that not all marketers adore Super Bowl ads, nor do we all focus on profit oriented advertising schemes, I then launch into a spiel about how I really just love people with good ideas. I love the idea of making one person's BIG, good idea happen with other good ideas. Idealistic and hokey, I know, but really, its what got me through all those corporate finance classes in business school.

Best ideas I have heard this week; things I'm willing to word-of-mouth market and would love to get behind in a bigger way -

Contrail

It's bikes, it's art, it's community, it's clever. The Contrail, a chalk tool for bikes, had me at "pretty colors."

Contrail is a chalking device attached to bicyclists' wheels in order to create "trails" or bright ribbons of color in heavily trafficked biking areas. The idea being, bikers proactively create awareness of shared road spaces.

More bikers = more color = heads up for motor vehicles.

Contrail was a concept design submission for a 2008 contest and is not in production yet, but hopefully with enough support something will materialize soon.

Obviously, I think Portland would be an amazing place to kick off a product launch of the Contrail. Can you imagine the colors on Clinton Street or Hawthorne... or, really anywhere in this bike-loving town? It would be great. I suppose the frequent rain could be a problem, but that's a minor detail in the grand scheme of this art+bike+community love obsession.

Carrotmob
It's the opposite of boycotting.

Frustrated with the not-so productive nature of traditional activism and the act of boycotting, Carrotmob founders conceived the idea of "carrotmobbing." A large network of organized consumers supports on-mass a business that is choosing to make socially and environmentally responsible business practices. By mobbing the business all on one day, the business gets a ton of publicity and a ton of cash to support their worthy endeavors.

I had heard of Carrotmob before, but the full extent of its awesomeness really hit me this week when I learned about Carrotmob's recent invasion of Hot Lips Pizza in Portland. Carrotmob invaded Hot Lips and racked in a over $6,000 for the business on what typically would have been a slow Sunday with as little as $2,000 in sales. The added income will be used for Hot Lips' commitment to make their locations more energy-efficient.

Watch this video for more on Carrotmob and a look at the first ever Carrotmob event that slammed a liquor store with business in San Francisco.

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

Gosh! Good ideas. I love them. They make me want to MAKE THINGS!

All that pomp and circumstance

2009-06-17T18:09:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I graduated from Seattle University with a degree in Marketing, cum laude, kinda sorta. I have to return in the fall for one last elective credit (it's a long story), but for all intensive purposes, I'M DONE.

The weekend was amazing and I surely could write for a while about it all--however, I'm so darn tuckered out from all the festivities I think I'm going to not say much at all. Rather, you all should take a look at all the many of my pictures. It really was grand.

my summer with Colaboratory

2009-05-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

After a long and adventurous hunt, I have secured the illusive beast: an creative business internship in Portland, OR.

This weekend I found out that I will be part of Portland Advertising Federation's 2009 summer internship program, Colaboratory, serving as one of two Account Managers.

Colaboratory is 6 week program in Portland that accepts 10 junior or senior college students each year who are interested in writing, design, interactive multimedia, account management, production, strategy or public relations. We will be placed at three different Portland ad/marketing/design agencies for three two-week intensive internships over the course of the six weeks. During the six weeks, we will also be divided into teams of five--our mini agencies--and will compete head-to-head to develop a campaign pitch for a local company. Last year's company was Sameunderneath, a local clothing line. ~~We do not know yet who the client will be this year--all they can tell us it is not Nike.~~ The Internet rumors are true--the 2009 Colab client will be Columbia Sportswear! We will be meeting with the director of international marketing from Columbia on our first day of orientation.

Colaboratory's purpose is multi-functional. The local agencies get aptly funneled, highly qualified, eager interns, while PAF promotes young innovation city-wide and the interns get a broader perspective of the market and much more networking outlets. To say the least, it is an exciting program and for that reason and many others, I was highly invested in my application and was elated when I heard I was accepted.

Another function of the program is for the interns to be very public with their experiences to serve as a resource for other students looking to enter into an internship or the Portland business scene. The Colab interns are encouraged to blog, video-blog and Twitter about their experiences all throughout. That being said, I thought it would be fitting to make my first act as a Colab intern of the class of '09 to be a blog post about the details of my application (particularly seeing as it was the source of my blog-distraction for a few months).

My Colab Application ::

We were asked to provide three samples (shown below). I included 1) A group project Internet Marketing Plan for the Broadway Farmers Market in Seattle. Acted as group coordinator, designer and programmer for updated website, 2) DRY Soda Press Cards. With Turnstyle, acted as Project Manager and 3) Current marketing topic report on QR Code applications in package design.

One of the largest and most complex portions of the application was an open-ended response question where we were told we could use any form of media. The question asked us how we would explain to an automaker the value of marketing, PR and advertising when they are only concerned with price-reduction strategy. For my submission (shown below), I created a small book that reiterated my response using first a full page with charts, then just one paragraph, then one sentence and finally no words--the idea being, as an account manager you must be able to convey your team's idea in any way, whether that be a big long pitch or quick and short email. The book's cover was made with kraft paper and hand-sewn binding. Note the extra rad drawings of my "bull" and "bear" for the final page.

I grouped together all the main pieces into two bundles (shown below): the first included my résumé, business card, letters of recommendation, the application with my essay question responses and my little open-response book. The second bundle was my samples.

The whole thing was shipped out in this custom made envelope (shown below). Machine stitching on large sheets of kraft paper. Thanks to Maddy Eiche for letting me borrow her sewing machine!

And... then it was mailed and my Colab fate was resting in the hands of all the cool Portland professionals working with PAF.

The program is young (only in its second year), so I am sure it will be a growing process for all parties involved--but, I think that is what attracted me to the program. It is an adaptive concept that recognizes that there is no feasible way to learn everything about the creative business industry in the course of just one internship. Think bigger! Do more! Dive in the deep end and trust your skills! And most importantly, surround yourself with creative, excited, helpful individuals and figure it out. I am really excited to devote so much of my time this summer to this program. I am eager to find out who my fellow interns are and who our client will be. This summer has officially been dedicated to creativity and collaboration. Go go go.

I begin my stint with Colab on July 11th at which time all of you, my dear blog readers, will be subjected to a steady dosage of internship stories right here on Breakfast for Dinner. Prepare yourself, it is going to be an intense six weeks. You will soon read, see, hear and watch everything I encounter while venturing into the wild mix of the Portland Creative Class.

namesake

2009-05-13T12:39:00.000-07:00

There have been quite a few questions coming my way lately regarding my namesake(s). What is a Reardonk and why does she eat Breakfast for Dinner?

Reardonk -- This one can be attributed to my soon-to-be alma mater, Seattle University. Upon receiving my SU email account, I was one part stunned and one part elated to see that my prefix was ReardonK@seattleu.edu. Unfortunate correlations to a rear end and baa-donk-da-donk-da-donk? Yes. Amazing ease of remembrance for my email recipients? YES! And a nick-name was born. The first rule of branding is to have a memorable name. Check one off for the Reardonk empire.

Breakfast For Dinner -- And then there was a blog. I created Breakfast For Dinner in the summer of 2008 in preparation for my trip abroad to India. The blog has evolved since to include all things simple and exciting that I encounter in my daily life--i.e. breakfast eaten at dinner time. There is a small block of copy at the bottom of my blog explaining this concept more thoroughly:

General notes in regards to things that are simple and exciting. Adventures (at home or abroad), beautiful packaging design, new moleskine journals, perfectly executed secret handshakes, jokes (inside or outside), shark week, babies with hiccups, fire pits, red shoes, yellow bikes and breakfast for dinner.

So, that is the why and what of Reardonk and her blog named Breakfast for Dinner.

thermos

2009-05-12T19:49:00.000-07:00

in case you were wondering, a vintage thermos makes an excellent vase.

Trekkies

2009-05-11T20:02:00.000-07:00

More amazing than the ending of th new Star Trek movie: the fact that Ben and I have successfully completed our, count it, SECOND year of dating. Oh boy.

As the dutiful, dorky girlfriend I am, I surprised Ben with midnight tickets to the opening night of the new Star Trek movie. The beauty of this gift was that the show actually premiered at 7pm; we just went at midnight for an extra one-two punch of awesomeness. Joining us on the excursion were some of our good buddies, including Mr. Chris Kissel, the most die-hard Trekkie I know.

It really was a fabulous anniversary. The candy was plentiful, we got to be in-awe of Kissel's Trekkie knowledge and the movie was epic. Oh! And to boot, I think I now have a crush on young Spock. Sorry, Ben. It's the eyebrows...and the ears...and the heightened level of logical thinking. Gets me every time.

Trekkies x2

journals of sorts

2009-05-05T19:15:00.001-07:00

In my purse, next to my bed, underneath my coffee cup and in the back pocket of my pack you will find a journal.

I have journals of all sorts. I typically use the classic small Moleskines. I vary amongst the lined/plain/and graph paper options. The tipping point of like ---> love for me with these journals is when their kraft outsides become soft and fuzzy from rubbing in your pocket so much. It's really a beautiful thing. When I go on a big adventure, like a trip to India, I opt for the classier version of the Moleskine, bound in black and perfectly suited for heavier sketches and scuff marks from adventures. I've also acquired many miscellaneous journals in recent months. One of my favorite new items is my "FIELD NOTES" journal from Draplin Design Co. (thanks to Portland marketing collective, MilkMilk, for the goody).

I use journals for just about everything. I make sketches for my homework for classes.

I take note of important things while I'm traveling. Volunteer ID card from Mother Theresa's House, daily schedule notes and ideas:

Given the prompt to draw a monkey and a lion playing together, I sketched this in one of my journals:

All of my journals have the same last page: Current Feeling. It's a habit I picked up while traveling. I tell myself, at the least, I can simply jot down my current emotion in my journals. Long entries are infrequent for me, however the cumulative sentiment of a whole page of my feelings tracked over a period of time is surprisingly representative.

This one time, I had an idea for a blog and I wrote it down.

My journals are like a community. I feel supported, nagged at, reminded and inspired by all those darn little pages.

thank you cards

2009-05-04T21:15:00.000-07:00

A new set of thank you cards.

Made from found paper, little red strings, re-purposed vynil wood and vintage rubber stamps.

merry christmas!

2009-04-28T16:39:00.000-07:00

I realized I never made any form of a Christmas card this year. Poor form. So, you know, in the spirit of April, I've made this belated Christmas card to share with you all.

Merry (Almost Halfway Through the Year) Christmas!

This post was made especially for Doug Sellon. Apologies for my lack of blogging the last few weeks. I promise to blog more this month. And likely, to not rely on Kodiak's laser eyes for blog content. Thanks for being one of my most devoted readers.

a poster

2009-04-23T18:20:00.000-07:00

Ben, Chad and I finished the flyer/poster for Chad's next screening of his film, Sa Vidya Ya Vimuktaye.

The screening will take place next Tuesday at Brown University--a very impressive location for Chad's film to be shown (despite their request to put references to an pizza party on the flyer). I am not sure if I have any readers in Rhode Island, but if you are for any reason in the area I highly suggest going to see the film.

Brainstorming and sketches in the works for packaging design for the DVD. Stay tuned.

trees against the wind

2009-04-13T20:03:00.000-07:00

I am officially addicted to the ReStore.

A week ago I became the new owner of some wonderfully old treasures from the Re-Store in Ballard. I usually walk away with old windows or cabinet doors or floor boards for making things out of. This time, my trove of treasures was a bit different. I found many, many trinkets and if there is one thing I love more than old scrap housing supplies, it's trinkets.

Highlights include:

A coffee tin that I am now storing buttons and spare change in. It reads "Hills Bro Coffee," which made me laugh, because I thought it said "Hillsboro Coffee" at first glance (my hometown where no real great coffee can be found).

Two lovely boxes. One is an old, wire gym locker, #62-3, that belonged to Frank D. Cohan. The other is an old, wooden fruit crate that once held "Japanese Mandarin Oranges" (no actual Japanese present any where on the box).

Then there's this foot thingy. It's wood and it has a big crank that makes the foot portion grow wider and wider. I assume it is for stretching shoes for people like Chad who have really wide feet.

And last, but not least, this glorious print block. I plan on taking Intro to Print Making soon, so I'll tell you then exactly how to go about using this awesome piece. It reads "TREES against the WIND." I Googled 'trees against the wind' and only found a small publication concerning reforestation in the NW under the same name. Therefore, I think we (creative people who read my blog) can use this print for a project. Ideas? I vote someone make some music and we'll call the album TREES against the WIND. It's so very indie.

Thanks for the trove, Re-Store. You never fail me.

knowledge is that which liberates

2009-04-08T20:03:00.000-07:00

You may remember my talk of going to visit the ashram that Chad lived and worked at in northern India and where Ben went to visit during his trip. I ultimately was not able to make it to the ashram due to, umm, typhoid, but I have vowed to go back some day very soon.

In the meantime, I watch Chad's amazing documentary he made to create awareness of both the APV school and holistic education. Jimmy did the editing, Chad did the directing and a bunch of Delhi-Bollywood-yars filmed it. It's truly beautiful. If you have any interest in India, children, holistic education, meditation, art, tabla music, great documentaries or all of the above WATCH CHAD'S FILM!

Sa Vidya Ya Vimuktaye: Knowledge is that which Liberates
For more information on the APV school : www.apvschool.org

(free film removed -- buy a DVD @ apvschool.org you cheap kids!)

feathers

2009-04-02T08:33:00.000-07:00

Certainly a new trend, but shoot, I still love them.

My good buddy Michelle from Turnstyle sent me this amazing hairpiece made of eclectically colored feathers.

I borrowed one of these same pieces from Maddy to wear to Jared and Vicky's wedding. It was different colors, but equally rad. They really dress up any plain outfit.

I think I'm going to rock this new treasure a lot this summer in more casual outfits. Though, pairing it with my bike helmet might ruffle some feathers, literally. (Ohhh. Oh, oh. So funny.)

Crafters, I vote we use more feathers in our upcoming projects. Yay/nay?

oh, and also

2009-04-01T16:07:00.000-07:00

ben and i danced on the beach at sunset. it was so romantic.

spring broken

2009-04-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

Spring break adventures were varied and plentiful. Pictures of Ben and I on the coast found here.

Also, there are some amazing shots of Monty, my parents dog, having a play date with Ben's stuffed dinosaur named Dino.

where the wild things are

2009-03-25T15:20:00.000-07:00

THE TRAILER IS OUT!

Gosh, I really am very excited for this. Really. The typeface on the poster alone makes me happy.

Click below for supreme happiness.

recession buster

2009-03-02T11:03:00.000-08:00

From 9-10am on Monday mornings, Stumptown gives away free coffee as a Recession Buster deal. As if this weren't awesome enough, the coffee is served up in these snarky little cups:

Yet another reason why I love Stumptown.

some day i will be lucky enough

2009-02-26T00:16:00.000-08:00

to own this fabulous chair

perma-spring break

2009-02-24T22:15:00.000-08:00

Three weeks, following three massive business reports, three passing grades and three presentations, I will be on spring break for two weeks. My plans include riding my bike in Portland and having Lara teach me to knit. Bam.

I realized today this will be my last traditional, school-sanctioned spring break. I think I am going to really miss this mandatory spring frolicking. You know what...I say patooey. Screw this. When I graduate I'm going on perma-spring break. I vow to live my life everyday like its sunny and I don't have homework and my bike is freshly greased. Take that, adulthood.

bus tickets

2009-01-28T21:13:00.000-08:00

Today I went through my journal from my India trip and decided to scan some of my sketches I had made while traveling. I realized one of the most amazingly striking pages in my whole journal was one that I never really intended to be art.

Every morning I would take the 202 city bus to work. For four rupees I would get a small little ticket stub--a scrap piece of paper the bus owner had stamped a ticket number on. Everyday was a different ticket. After purchasing a glue stick at the market, these little bits of paper quickly became my daily craft project. So many colors. So very India.

carded

2009-01-22T23:06:00.000-08:00

In the midst of my internship hunt for this summer, I have decided to make some new business cards that match my résumé. I had a custom rubber stamp made--it arrived today and I'm absolutely loving it's faux-screen printed look. I'm still deciding on the paper I'd like to use. I printed the ones below on brown kraft cardstock. Dual-toned matte board, white/canary yellow, is also on my mind. Oh, the joys of a marketing major, minoring in studio art.

Put me in a box; I like it

2009-01-19T14:43:00.000-08:00

Nonexistent blogging is certainly not excusable--I should have stayed in touch. I know. If it means anything to you, anything at all, I've been busy.

After the joyful craziness of not 1, not 2, but 5 Christmases between my family and Ben's, I started 2009 off with a mustache. Yes, we threw a formal mustache party in Portland for New Years, in case you were wondering (formal attire optional, mustache required). Leaving my mustache behind for a land of homework and sales tax, I packed up my bags, drove north and moved into my new apartment on Capitol Hill the day before I started classes again at SU.

Moving was great. I have an adorably small studio. It feels good to have my own place again. I think I've learned that studios do good things for me in terms of productivity. I have no choice but to make every inch of my space usable, functional and aesthetically pleasing--there's no escaping bad habits in a small box disguised as a home. Productivity level is on the rise and arts and crafts are abundant. There's just enough room for me, my bike, a little bed and my trunk of art supplies. Things are good.

"This is our time down here!"

2008-12-19T14:47:00.000-08:00

I'm off for the weekend with Ben and the parental units to Astoria, Oregon, home of the Goonies and Kindergarten Cop. This Saturday is the three year anniversary of my little brother, Nolan's death. We usually take off somewhere every year at this time for a family getaway. The weekend will be filled with arcade tournaments, excessive Goonie lines, Fort George beer and stories of Nolan's culinary feats in the realm of sushi. I doubt this is a traditional way to pay tribute to a loved one... but it most certainly is the Reardon way.

you could have told me

2008-12-09T14:32:00.001-08:00

I know I've been gone for a while and I know for all intents and purposes I've been living under a rock, but you guys could have told me they made Q&A into a movie.

I read Vikas Swarup's Q&A by recommendation of Maddy while I was in India. Buying this book used and tattered from a old book vendor in a crowded Indian alleyway was the perfect set up for this story. It's about a young boy from the slums of Mumbai; an unlikely winner of a billion rupees on a Indian game show. The book is essentially a collection of short stories that all weave around the circumstances of the boy's newly found fortune. Quite clever. I loved it. In fact, I made Ben read it as soon as he got to Kolkata. And he loved. I think you'll love it too.

And now, unbeknownst to me sooner, it's a new movie called 'Slumdog Millionaire,' directed by Danny Boyle. And! MIA is on the soundtrack.

Watch the trailer, read the book, go see the movie.

tape, just brown packing tape

2008-12-07T19:38:00.000-08:00

I haven't been this eager to share an artist in quite some time. This is exciting.

Mark Khaisman's art consist simply of brown packing tape layered on plexiglas and then back lit for an oh-so-just-right amber glow. I really do adore art that makes effective something as generic as packing tape.

the mural and the train and the portland

2008-12-02T21:12:00.000-08:00

there is a mural in seattle on capitol hill next to the value village. it is new (well, new to me) and it is so very spectacular. everyone should go take their picture in front of it.

after annie and i went to see the mural, i walked to the train station to go back to portland.

a secret place that i know

2008-11-30T16:08:00.000-08:00

Today is a good day. A really good day.

My parents and Ben dropped me off at Annie's house on Capitol Hill after our weekend in Bothell. I'll just be in town for a few days to take care of some things on campus and, you know what they say, 'kick it.'

My return to Seattle is barely at the 3 hour mark and I'm already elated and on the verge of stupid-giddy. I've been to Stumptown, I've gotten hugs from Chris, Borges and Laurie Om and now I'm sitting at Vita with Annie and Mike having a laptop party. Two coffee shops and a handful of really good friends feels like the opposite of a slap in the face. Whatever that is.

And, just in case you were wondering, the fog is so thick on the Hill right now I can't even see across the street. It's magic.

Thanksgiving goes something like this

2008-11-28T12:46:00.000-08:00

I eat a lot of this...

...and hang out with my cousins