Mornin’ beautiful

I Am A Terrible Person.
I’ve done a terrible job maintaining this blog. Hopefully, I can improve that during the new year.

Recap.
I’ve completed the Fall semester of my senior year at Carolina, and I’m back home (in Maine) for a couple weeks. I’ve had a FANTASTIC time sleeping and sitting on the couch, bored. It’s my first opportunity to “idle” since, shit, last Christmas!

The Future.
I’ll be in NYC Dec 31-Jan 6 for job interviews and to hang out. Several of my friends are apprehensive to graduate but I’m damn excited to do it. As Jerry Della Famina once said, “Advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.” And I totally believe it. Originally, I had planned to take some time off after graduation. You know, putter around Europe and do whatever recent college-grads do there. But, following a brief examination of my finances, I concluded that I can’t afford Europe, yet. With that said, f I had simply thought back to the last time I had an income–about three years ago–I could have spared myself the effort of loading Quicken.

Plan B.
Plan B is: move to NYC upon graduation in May and jump into a job. Perhaps, I’ll take a few weeks off in 6 months or a year to travel. And to that end, I’ve revised my portfolio.

My Portfolio.
I’ve refurbished my portfolio–I added a few projects from my summer internship at Crispin Porter + Bogusky and an integrated campaign for Virgin Mobile that I created during an advertising class.

A friend of mine shared this ad with me yesterday that cast types the dress codes of several popular agencies. Pretty funny–and accurate, if I do say so myself. Check it out.

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The 2007 Crispin Porter + Bogusky (Boulder, CO) creative interns w/ Alex Bogusky (Executive Creative Director) and Bill Wright (Burger King account - Creative Director).

Standing (from left): Brad, Elmer, Alex, Tavnir, Roger, Shadi, Fabian, Daniel, Bill Wright

Sitting (from left): Frances, Pruch, me, Jeff, Alex Bogusky, Nathan

Tomorrow, I depart for Boulder, Colorado to assume my summer internship at Crispin Porter + Bogusky as an Interactive Creative. The driving distance is approximately 2,163 miles, and if I were to drive non-stop it would take approximately 33 hours. My childhood friend Nick will accompany me on the journey to ensure I don’t end up in Texas.

Map of our route.

Our travel itinerary:

Friday
- Drive: Mid-coast Maine –> Worcester, MA
- Road time: Approx. 4 hours
- Spend night in Worcester at Nick’s apartment

Saturday
- Drive: Worcester, MA –> Cleveland, OH
- Road time: Approx. 9 hours, 34 mins
- Spend night in Cleveland at mom’s friend’s home

Sunday
- Drive: Cleveland, OH –> Omaha, NE
- Road time: Approx. 12 hours, 17 mins
- Spend night in Howard Johnson motel

Monday
- Drive: Omaha, NE –> Boulder, CO
- Road time: Approx. 7 hours, 36 mins

I’ll remain in Boulder until August 15th, at which point I will drive to North Carolina in order to complete my senior year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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.”

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:

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.

Introduction
My name is Ben, and I am a junior advertising major at UNC-Chapel Hill, minoring in entrepreneurship. I have created this blog for … giggles.

I’ve been a computer geek practically since the cradle. As legend has it, my interest peaked in 5th grade when my father and I visited a local bookstore before departing on a family camping trip. Supposedly, I spent the $60 I had saved from picking and selling strawberries to buy a HTML 4.0 programming book. Despite his constant pleas for me to partake in “natural camping activities” such as swimming and fishing, I kept my nose in the 5-inch thick programming book.

Internship
I will be in the Boulder, Colorado for 12 weeks, interning at Crispin Porter + Bogusky as an ‘interactive creative.’ I haven’t the slightest idea of what I’ll be working on but should be fun. I’ve spent the previous two summers interning in New York City, and I don’t quite know what to expect from Boulder. I’ve never visited the place. Last summer I interned at The Wonderfactory, and I have nothing but love for the place.

Gettin’ there
My last final exam is on May 8th. I’ll stick around Chapel Hill for about a week before flying home to Maine. I’ll leave Maine around May 26th to drive to Boulder in my mom’s baby-blue Mercury Villager mini-van, hopefully in the company of my buddy Nick. We’ll pal around Boulder for about a week. CP+B orientation is Monday, June 4th.

Summer housing
I haven’t the slightest idea yet. I’m currently perusing Craig’s List.

& Etc
I’ve already added WAY too many blog links. Oh well. Initially, I imported 1008 links but quickly restricted it to 75 blogs. Momentarily, I’ll add links for Design, Photography and Coding.