Mornin’ beautiful

Final week of classes, last Ad Club meeting and it’s time to move on. No, I’m not a senior, just a junior in remission.

The CP+B Boulder interns are finally in touch. Forty-four interns between Boulder and Miami; approximately 22 interns in either location. Students and recent graduates from across the country — areas in which I’ve never even visited. It ’tis a summer to look forward to.

Crispin won Nike Running, Nike Plus and Nike ID. Nike announced this on Friday but for some reason, not a single industry publication has run a story or even mentioned it. This Oregon paper was the only reference I could find to it. How weird.

“Nike said Friday it has selected Miami-based agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky to handle advertising for its U.S. running, Nike ID and Nike Plus businesses.”

Ra Ra Riot, the killah band of my old high school friend Allie. Check ‘em out.

AIM conversation this evening

* = intentional omission for privacy

rme****: whos this
rme****: i said
rme****: whos this
Me: you’re the one writing to me, hah.
Me: you’re not on my buddy list.
rme****: ok
Me: i have no clue who you are.
rme****: ok
rme****: who is this
Me: ben fisher. who is this.
rme****: ryan ****
rme****: do you go 2 school
rme****: ..
Me: i’m writing a paper — can’t talk, sorry.
rme****: your a computer
rme****: stupid computer

On Wednesday, I attended a presentation by Ben Casnocha. He’s a 19-year-old serial entrepreneur who’s best described by a blurb on Amazon.com promoting his upcoming book (yes, book):

Ben started his first company at age 12. By the time he was 16, he was nominated for Inc. Magazine’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” and was chairman of his second company, Comcate.

During Ben’s visit, he discussed his philosophy toward entrepreneurship. Ben identified three commonalities among effective entrepreneurs and offered recommendations on how to pursue them. The qualities are as follows:

1. Consider entrepreneurship a “life idea” and a commitment

Several traits:
• Screwing around (experimentation with ideas); exploration.
• Juggling several projects and pursuing the ones that show promise.
• A good listener.
• Short, medium and long-term goals.
• Expertise (well, at least emitting the “expert” effect)

2. Seek self-improvement and personal growth

A few areas:
• Mental
• Physical
• Spiritual

Tactics to improve oneself
• Travel somewhere
• Handwritten gratitude notes: Let someone know how much they mean to you and what you appreciate about them
• Form an advisory board: Individuals that you can seek out for advice
• Read books
• Exercise & sleep: Ben challenges the popular misconception that success must come at the price of one’s own health

3. Start now, act always

• Curb the paranoia and share your ideas: Few truly “original” ideas exist. The execution of an idea that typically dictates its success, not the idea in and of itself. The probability of failure is very high with a venture. You should share your ideas and consider their comments/suggestions. It may reduce your probability of failure.
• Laugh at yourself
• Have a bias toward action: Act now or forward hold your peace

Ben’s presentation was truly insightful. He articulated ideas and qualities that I’ve always embraced but couldn’t put into words. I can hardly believe he’s only 19 years old.

When you have a free moment, check out his blog.

Much to my surprise and delight, Citero was recently praised in the blogosphere for his live Hip Hop performance at the UNC Ad Symposium last February. From what I can tell, Pro Hip Hop Marketing & Business News or Access Musik saw the YouTube video and made a post that was picked up by several Hip Hop news feeds. Google “Chris Citero” yourself.

Listen to his tracks. FYI, he just released “Rat Race.”

Articles:

Good post by Antonio endorsing the use of grid systems in Flash sites. My perception is that grid systems are more prevalent in static sites, so I’m happy to see somebody advocating for their use in Flash sites.

He cites several useful articles / tutorials on Grid based design. Here a couple good ones on why and how to use a grid. Antonio’s a Senior Art Director @ Ogilvy-NYC.

Just stumbled upon A Bridge of Separation, which is a short 3d movie that I created for a 3d animation class freshman year. Apparently, our then-professor maintains an online archive of his students’ videos. Aha, the joys of Google.

On a separate note, I highly recommend reading this article on organic architecture. Truly fascinating.

Too funny / kinda sad: How not to get a job at Wieden + Kennedy, part III

Interesting post by Russell Davies on 7 things he learned from W+K-Portland in 2006. That mural in the background was created by the 2006 class of W+K 12, and it’s made of push-pins. I remember watching the video a year or so ago. Super cool.

I’m not intentionally honing in on W+K. I’m just perusing through my bookmarks. Alright, I have class in 5.5 hours. Off to bed I go.

Wieden + Kennedy recently launched a new version of their web site to celebrate the agency’s 25th anniversary. The general consensus within the online design community is the site’s difficult to use, its technological wizardry overshadows the portfolio and it has an eerie similarity to Think Map’s Visual Thesaurus. Personally, I don’t find the site particularly difficult to navigate, but I certainly see how it may overwhelm less savvy web surfers, such as clients. I feel allegations of poor usability trivialize what I consider to be a much larger problem: W+K didn’t build the web site.

There’s been a whirlwind of speculation surrounding Nike’s new Running account not going to W+K. Critics assert W+K was overlooked by Nike because their interactive capacity isn’t up to par. To date, R/GA has been responsible for most, if not all, of Nike’s interactive work in the United States.

It would make sense for W+K to launch an impressive interactive web site to show the world that they are in fact capable of great interactive work. Hell, it might even justify their new site’s impressive, but superfluous, emphasis on technology. With that said, it perplexes me that W+K outsourced the project. Sure, most agencies are too preoccupied with billable work to develop a decent corporate site, BUT with allegations that their agency was overlooked for its weak interactive skills, this sure doesn’t help their image. To their credit, W+K certainly had a role in the site’s design. On the other hand, judging from the site’s emphasis on technology, most of the work was done by Marumushi. This, unfortunately, doesn’t leave much for W+K to take credit for. As someone who has the utmost respect for W+K’s offline, I was disappointed by this move.

Edit: W+K certainly began working on the site before the Nike conundrum. Consequently, I probably shouldn’t be as critical of them having someone else develop the site while there are assumptions roaming around about their interactive capacity. It may just be inopportune timing.