In this light, I am going to continue to share this time-suck with all you Fresh readers.

This post is a spotlight on Los Angeles-based designer, art director, artist, entrepreneur and skateboarder, Michael Leon.

I have been keeping up with the guy’s projects, brands, and aesthetic for the past few years, and am constantly inspired.  He has the ability to design simply and boldly while maintaining a certain whimsical feel-good quality, leaving me with a smile on my face and a warm, fuzzy feeling in my gut.

He captures fun, skateboarding, California, drawing, and all of the youthful energy that inherently comes emotionally packaged with these things into each piece. It’s honest and original — two of the hardest things to consistently embody as an artist or designer.

A native Floridian, Leon designed his first pro model skateboard for New Deal while still in high school. Migrating to California for skateboarding and eventually art school, he graduated from Cal Arts in 1997. Over the years, Michael’s distinct design and art has been exhibited internationally. He is the co-creator of the brands Commonwealth Stacks and Rasa Libre Skateboards,  and has contributed iconic art direction and design to brands such as Fourstar Clothing, Girl Skateboards, Stussy, DC, Arkitip, and most recently, Nike SB (I believe Leon was a fellow Portlander for a time while Art Directing at SB — obligatory PDX reference).

Aside from the stellar design and art direction that Leon has contributed to countless brands, it is his personal work and fine art that I am most attracted to. The skulls with creepy wandering eyes behind shady aviator glasses, the skateboard-soil-strata, and the mirrored “displacement wallrides” and the “untitled” print of California with skateboard bolt holes drilled through it; all seem to speak very clearly to Leon’s own ideas about what inspires him and how, without any overbearing or obvious gimmicks.

Whether fine art or commercial projects, here’s the one definite unifying theme through Leon’s body of work:  it all looks like it was damn fun to make. And, it’s fun to look at. Mission accomplished in my opinion.

Through all the gushing, I almost forgot the point of this post: to share Leon’s work. Enjoy!

For good measure, and for some more on the guy’s vibe, check out this old video interview with him from 2003.

When we first began concepting ideas, we needed to clearly define why it was we even needed a sign. After all, we aren’t a retail space or a restaurant where people are walking in off the street for their next online campaign. Most people that come to our office know who we are and are simply looking for a clearly marked street address. It’s more way-finding than anything. We had to take into consideration things such as public transportation and parking, so we could position the sign in a place that made sense. Once people found us they needed to be buzzed in, so we also included an integrated call box into the entrance.

Initial sketches

Once we established these basic requirements, the challenge was to execute a unique sign that also reflected the eROI brand well. It had to be bold and modern, but also live within a building with history. In almost all of our initial drawings we used the eROI yellow as a strong element. We decided that our logo could be more understated if we could rely more on our brand color for recognition. We partnered with Aaron Loveitt of Altility Art Studio to help with the fabrication of the sign. Aaron’s unique work emphasizes simple design with a level craft that utilizes old and reclaimed materials. With the boldness of our high gloss painted yellow element, we wanted to balance that with materials such as walnut wood panels and old rusted steel. These added an element of history and made the sign feel as though it had always been a part of the building.

505 Couch St

Polished stainless steel eROI logo with jewel rivets

One of the key elements of the signage is the speech bubble graphic on the call box. Usually these units have a lot of unnecessary instructions. We thought it should be an intuitive enough experience that didn’t require a written explanation. By using a simple graphic and a single button we reduced the choices of what you can do to simple one thing: push the button and talk into the speech bubble. But more importantly, we wanted this to be a casual and fun experience to set the tone for what it’s like to work with the eROI Team. We spend so much time thinking about the user experience in an online environment that it was a fun challenge to think about how those same principles manifest themselves in a physical space.

On a side note: One of the benefits of working in Old Town is its concentration of mediocre graffiti writers. And we pretty much created the perfect canvas for them. We acknowledged this early on and made sure to use automobile paint and take certain precautions. We’ve been tagged several times now but apparently they’re no match for our building maintenance man Sharky. He’s been removing graffiti since before Old Town became, well, Old Town.

Starlicious is an original online game show combining the competitive and addictive nature of Jeopardy-style trivia with the subject matter of Access Hollywood and US Weekly.  We were tasked with designing and developing the online environment in which viewers could watch each of the 10 episodes, shown over the 12 week season.

In addition to the trivia show, No Soap Radio Entertainment wanted to provide celebrity enthusiasts from around the country the ability to play an online trivia game of their own. In response to this need, we designed and developed a trivia game using a combination of technologies including Flash, PHP and XML. Here, the questions are shown in a timed, multiple-choice environment, and users can register (via Facebook Connect, MySpace ID, etc.) to post high scores, challenge friends and compete for prizes. The prizes include the opportunity to be a contestant on a future episode of Starlicious, as well as a grand-prize tropical getaway.

As part of its distribution and marketing strategy, No Soap partnered with Dailyfill.com to ensure that Starlicious reached a targeted and relevant audience to optimize engagement. This required us to design and develop a flexible site to fit within an iframe on Dailyfill.com.

Half way through the first season, Starlicious is exceeding projections and building a loyal audience – which makes us very happy for our client! Celebrities are a minor (or big…) obsession for some of us and every day we learn something new! So check out Starlicious for yourself and see how much you really know about Brangelina.

I’ve acquired the unofficial title of ‘Yoga Ambassador’ for the company. I try to encourage participation by sending out a weekly yoga reminder via email to the entire office. Before I start creating the email, I reflect on the past week and try to tie in either current events, the current holiday, or something inspired by current emotions. Each email contains an image, accompanied by a related quote. I sometimes add in health tips or words of encouragement. I hope to inspire others to either join in the yoga practice, or encourage them to be happy and healthy. We are lucky to have the flexibility to hold yoga during the day at eROI. We practice yoga every Thursday afternoon at 4:30pm. Because this is during the normal workday, it makes it more convenient for employees to take time out of their day for yoga. Who wouldn’t want to be done with work an hour early and get a great workout and relaxation session?

I can go on and on about how great yoga is in the workplace, but I’m going to let some of our own speak for themselves. I gathered up some quotes, favorite moments, favorite poses, and more from many of our yogis. Enjoy!

From Mai:

Favorite pose? “My favorite yoga moves are the balancing poses because it pushes me to focus and stand still, which is really hard for me.”

Favorite eROI yoga memory? “My favorite yoga moment was when Jill first started and had to partner up with Ryan to do the double down dog.”

From Verity:

“I started doing yoga at eROI because I wanted to get serious about my health and fit exercise in whenever I could. My favorite pose is Crow. Yoga at the office is a great way to bond with my co-workers. I makes me feel valued as an employee that we have the opportunity to have the class here. It is much needed stress relief! My favorite yoga memory is either when we all did handstands against the walls.. or when we had the windows open and the guy outside was barking so loud it was disrupting class. haha!”

From Hannah:

“I trade cocktails for yoga on Thursdays and, shockingly, it is a great trade!” “I’m not a morning person so the new time slot change made all the difference to me. It’s a great way to end the day. I wish it was twice a week!”

From Mary:

Favorite pose? “Child’s pose — helps me to relax, and pigeon — helps to counteract all the sitting I do during the day.”

Why try yoga at eROI? “I thought it was a great team building activity that would be good for my health. So many eROI team building activities center around non-health-related events, and this is a bit more mellow and low-key.”

What do you like about doing yoga at the office? “The commute is great!”

Favorite eROI yoga memory? “The sexy cat from last week — so cute and funny! And, added bonus, your back feels great afterward.”

From KC:

It is great to work at a company that values and offers yoga and health wellness!

From Sydney:

Favorite pose? “Sun Salutations. I guess it is not a pose I just love the flow of connecting all of these poses together.”

Why try yoga at eROI? “Have you seen Jennifer Aniston’s body??”

What do you like about doing yoga at the office? “The ability for us to spend an hour together in harmony without having to even say a word. It also helps me to feel more grounded and relaxed in the same environment that can at times be very stressful.”

Favorite eROI yoga memory? “Group poses with Tanya :)”

From Jill:

My favorite pose is Half Moon Pose! But I don’t do it often. My favorite regular pose is Triangle – there is so much that I still need to work on in that pose even though it is one of the “basics”.

I decided to try yoga for a couple reasons: 1) I just moved to Portland (September 2007) and was looking to find a yoga class anyway, 2) I wanted to get to know some of my new co-workers outside of a work context (and outside of the bar!)

I like having a shared non-work experience with my co-workers. It’s fun and challenging at the same time, and it’s nice to have those kind of experiences in common – it gives you something to talk about later (that’s not work) :)

The eROI yoga memory that sticks out most in my mind is when we did partner yoga back in the old office. I’m pretty sure I hadn’t worked here for a month yet, and I ended up being paired with Ryan. An interesting way to get to know the CEO of your new workplace!

Like my emails, I’ll leave you with a quote: “The world may be chaotic around you; it may be full of fluctuations; it may be fearful; it may be full of pain; but the Yogi aims to be in peace even though circumstances are not.” ~Gurani Anjali

Namaste,
Christine

*All photos were taken by our fabulous designer, Elliot Olson. Thanks for taking the time out of your Thursday afternoon to snap some shots. We really appreciate it!

The first live show I saw this year featured one of the latter category of awesome bands in Portland (those that live here): Deelay Ceelay. I had just downloaded their music the week before a FREE show at Berbati’s Pan (and did I mention you can download their music for FREE also?) so I was pretty dang stoked. I hadn’t seen them before so it was quite a treat.  Two guys on drums, some crazy video visuals and a hell of a lot of fun electronic melodies.  Here they are playing at the 2009 PDX Pop festival:

Deelay Ceelay are taking a break from live shows now so they can concoct new audio/visual goodies, but I can’t wait to see them again once they re-emerge from the studio.

Another band I saw at Berbati’s recently was High Places – a duo that isn’t as fun to watch live as Deelay Ceelay, but who produce beautiful headphone-worthy music.  Perfect for listening to at work. Here’s their song, “On Giving Up”:

I couldn’t find an online version of my favorite song off their new album (“Constant Winter”) – but here is a live version.

High Places were opening for Cymbals Eat Guitars – a band I hadn’t really listened to before, but they were incredibly fun to see in person! Here’s their (recorded) song, “And the Hazy Sea” (check out YouTube for videos of them playing live, I couldn’t find many with great sound quality though so I didn’t want to post them here):

I love going to shows at the Doug Fir – I’d probably go see the live version of dogs singing Christmas carols, I just love hanging out there. But most recently I went there with some friends to see Surfer Blood (quite a bit better than dogs singing Christmas carols). It was good, but we were a bit disappointed since they didn’t have enough reverb on the vocals, which is kinda their thing. Observe:

The best performance of the night in my opinion came from one of the opening bands, Turbo Fruits. From Nashville, and sporting hipster/Nashville mustaches on the night of the show, the guys from Turbo Fruits shredded crazy nasty blues rock while obviously having a pretty heavy buzz on. I haven’t been able to find a video that portrays the intensity (or the mustaches) that I remember, but this one’s close.

Here’s their more poppy song, “Naked With You”:

My friend Dan was sure to let me know how badly I missed out when I didn’t go see Morning Benders at Holocene. Here’s a pretty rad video of the band and all their friends performing their song “Excuses” in the studio:

I’m also sure to hear it about Beach House, who I also didn’t go see (but he did).

I AM going to be seeing Yeasayer at the Wonder next Monday, however! I’m pretty excited for this one. I could show you their trippy, face-squishing video for the single off their new album, “Ambling Alp“, but instead watch this great fan-made video for their older song “2080″:

Thanks for reading and listening! If you have any shows on your list to see this year, leave ‘em in the comments!

Okay, maybe I’m overreacting, but the first words out of my mouth were “you need to quit that job asap.” And maybe I’m just a snobby agency person, but I totally meant that. How is it possible to get through 8 -10 hours of working 5 days a week without music? As a designer? I don’t get it.

Now I work in account management, which traditionally isn’t a job that most would see as one that needs “creative inspiration” to do well, but on the contrary, I believe music is incredibly important to being successful at what we do. For me, music is the primary provider of motivation and inspiration. Now that’s not to say that other things don’t inspire me. Great creative work inspires me. New, exciting projects inspire me. Seeing a project through completion inspires me. But you must remember, most of an AE day is writing emails, managing schedules, writing proposals, putting out fires. That’s when I need that little extra boost of motivation. And for me, that motivation is something only music can provide.

I am an account person, so I (of course) have a process for choosing music I listen to at work. The goal is always to find what will best accompany my current state of mind. Am I feeling happy? Inspired? Bored? Angry? Challenged? Do I want to throw myself out of a window from a particularly difficult day? Am I hungry? (Okay, I know that last one is random…but if you knew me you’d understand. It matters.)

I then must map my current state of mind to the task at hand. That’s when music becomes crucially important to the efficiency of my day. Like a bored Summer coupled with maintenance billing, for example, can be a particularly challenging task. I’m going to need something that brings me to my happy place to get through that – something like this -

Postal Service – Give Up, Recycled Air

Or perhaps an album that that reminds me of a vacation I loved -

No Doubt – Tragic Kingdom, Sunday Morning

Or a song that reminds me of a person that inspires me -

Kings of Leon – Only by the Night, Use Somebody

Or a song from a time when things were much harder…something that to reminds me to be thankful for where I am now -

One Republic –Dreaming Out Loud, Goodbye, Apathy

Or maybe I just need a boost of energy to bang out a proposal -

Monster – Lady Gaga

(This is not the actual video, but hilarious and somehow accurate nonetheless)

I have to be honest, there’s really nothing I can think of that makes proposal writing easier than Lady Gaga. And yes, I’m embarrassed to admit that. But I guarantee most of us (women at least) in the AE department here at eROI would agree with this statement. Those damn pop beats and stupid lyrics about being rich, famous and awesome just makes you want to dance. Or write proposals. Or dance while writing proposals (we do that sometimes – see previous post from Mai on desk-dancing).

And then there’s just some great fallback albums. No matter what I’m doing, or what mood I’m in, I’ve got my playlists of favorite bands to help me zone out, get through each task one by one, and make the not so fun parts of my day a bit more enjoyable -

Death Cab For Cutie – Narrow Stairs, Grapevine Fires

See for me, music is about taking me somewhere else other than where I am. I think that’s why I love it so much. I can put something on and it can make the current moment disappear and put me back to the place it first came into to my life. With the right song everything can become easy again, instantly.

Planning

As with most of our projects, loads of background research was done on our primary target audience and main communication objectives to help narrow down the design decisions. This research also informed the other parts of the campaign, like the video work by the Wexley School for Girls in Seattle and the rich media banner ads done with the help of Swirl in San Francisco.

The Pitch

We made two stop motion pitch videos: one explored the idea of connection between human and technology while the other was about technology making your life easier. Both of videos were made by the entire design team pitching in to make a very short deadline. Even our intern got in on the fun and was thrown into the fold as a model on her second day. In the end Wacom went with the “What if real life were this easy?” pitch and then the real work began.

The Microsite

Collaboration was at the core of everything we did on this project and that really came to light when the site design began. Designers Tom O’Toole and myself were tasked with creating the microsite. This phase began while the design direction for the products packaging was being developed by Wacom’s internal team. Without much in the way of assets to base the design look on we created a home page and sub page for the site based on the user profiles we created at the outset. It generated a different outcome than Wacom expected and we needed to start over with the design.

They loved all our initial ideas, but we headed down a light and fun direction and they were thinking a more dark and “cool” direction. This time we started with some preliminary package designs. We were also able to hook up with Wacom’s house photographer and did a photoshoot to get our hands on some custom assets we could use. This  made the design process faster and more successful.

The first Home Page we designed

The Video

While all this was in the works we were collaborating with the Wexley School for Girls on some video assets that would be used in both rich media banner ads and on the microsite. The initial idea began with our pitch video and its stop motion, first-person style. We created some user personas to give them a better idea of who the work would be speaking to. Based on these, Wexley did some scripting, storyboarding, and the ball was rolling.

Wexley began doing story boards for three different videos based on the three main user personas. Once the story boards were signed off on production began. Charles, our Senior Account Executive, traveled up north to provide any guidance to their team and was an important part of the doughnut-eating phase of the project. Seriously, he was the link between our creative team and the vision of the guys at Wexley. He was the glue that held together the concept and final videos. When the initial cuts came through, we knew we had found the right team to work with. The work was pretty amazing, and when we got our first look at the final product, we were outright estatic. See for yourself.

Mobile

As design began to wrap up on the microsite, we ramped up the mobile team to create an entirely different design for mobile devices based on the original site. Stephen Aase, a member of the design team, worked with Charles to create a unique site architecture focusing on how the tablet is used, where you can find it, and the video assets. Using the same look and feel, he created an intuitive, easy to use interface that funneled users to a form that sent out an email prompting them to visit the main microsite.

Rich Media and Email

While design was in progress with the mobile site and the microsite was in production with our resident code ninjas, Christine Baker and Noel Hougland, we started email design and some rich media banner ads. With our long history as an email marketing company we had the email covered but needed a little guidance when it came to rich media banners, so we turned to San Francisco-based Swirl.

Launch Email Campaign

Banner Ad

Understanding that everyone wanted video to be a big part of this campaign, Swirl got us in contact with the rich media ad network Video Egg. Video Egg helped us create a great banner experiences via their own networks as well as supplying these ads to other ad networks.

Takeaways

This had all the makings of a showcase campaign. The eROI team worked together well, partnered with other great agencies, and made an already excited client even more so. The moral of the story here is that a successfully integrated, multi-faceted marketing campaign is truly a collaborative effort. With the emails sent, the banner ads live, and the microsite working, all there was to do was pat ourselves on the back and wait for some results.

Working on something like this is kind of a strange experience as a designer. You work your butt off for months and then once it’s live you’re on to the next thing. You stand back, proud of the work you and the team have done, and oftentimes wondering what will happen to that site you lovingly designed. Well, in this case, it performed wonderfully, was entered into a few marketing and design competitions, and won. Holy cow, it won an award! How do ya like that?

With all that forethought, careful planning, brilliant design, and flawless execution one would have thought it may have fallen to the wayside with the other projects that experienced the same parameters but this one was different. This one was special… What if real life were this easy? Big thanks to the team at Wacom for trusting us. We had a great time.

Let me clear my throat by saying how much music affects my daily grind here at work. Aside from Tom, who is a designer looking for inspiration, I am a developer looking to get my work completed with an attention span of about 4 minutes and listening to music while working helps extend that to about 17 minutes. That may not seem a lot to you, but I’ll try any method to get those extra minutes.

When you listen to music while working, it’s just you, the music, your subconscious and nothing else. When I get a new project, I always like to have new music to go with it ‘cause it helps me get into what I’m working on and it helps filter out all office noise. Plus, what better way to discover new music!?

I’m no doctor but I’m convinced that listening to music releases serotonin and who doesn’t want to be a little happier while working right? Ever have those moments when you listen to a song that is so good you can’t help but bob your head, maybe do a little bit of desk dancing (huh?) or can’t wait to share the track for others to enjoy as well? I am guilty of all.

I love all genres of music, but I’m an avid fan of Hip Hop. I’ve included a list with different genres made by amazing, creative artists. Put your ear phones on, sit back and start working on something…

Artist: La Roux
Track: In For The Kill

Artist: Chew Lips (Dope video!)
Track: Salt Air

Artist: Styles of Beyond
Track: Winnetka exit

Artist: Gang Starr
Track: Work

Artist: Grip Grand
Track: Love/Drama

Artist: Amanda Blank ft. Chuck Inglish
Track: Lemme Get Some

Artist: Macklemore
Track: Stay at Home Dad

Artist: Rebelution
Track: Attention Span

Artist: Janis Joplin
Track: Kozmic Blues

Artist: Common Market
Track: Brasso

Artist: Mac Lethal
Track: Calm Down Baby

“Desk dancing” is a term I created a while ago and it doesn’t mean jumping on top of your desk and dancing. It simply means dancing in your chair while sitting at your desk. It’s fun when you find the right track to desk dance to. Try it, I dare you. Don’t worry, your co-workers won’t judge you.

But before we share our deep thoughts, I just wanted to give a quick overview of my experience this year and share some notes I compiled on the plane ride back to PDX.

Unlike last year, I came to Austin armed with a smart phone so I got to tweet to my heart’s content (from my barf account) and check in often with Gowalla. Lots of my friends were using Gowalla this year and it really did come in handy trying to figure out which panels they were sitting in or at which bar they were responsibly partaking.  Plus there was the excitement of possibly finding a virtual VIP wristband to get into the Gowalla Tiki Room party, where Diplo was slated to perform, or one of the many real life prizes that Gowalla was giving away. I didn’t pick up any prizes or the VIP pass, but a friend did win one of the Lomography cameras (and we did make it into the outdoor Gowalla party, albeit after Diplo had left the stage and during a rainstorm).

In general the panels I went to were really cool and informative, with several truly awesome and inspiring ones — though I did hit a few duds. I was disappointed in the workshops I attended as they seemed a bit too basic and went over things that seemed pretty obvious, even though they were marked as “intermediate” in the Interactive booklet) On the other end of the spectrum, I attended some javascript talks that were over my head, though for me it was a positive experience to hear about concepts that have been on (and past) the periphery of my knowledge sphere (I just made that up: “knowledge sphere”, it sounds awesome, doesn’t it?).

But I definitely had a lot of great ideas to take away from the conference, and a whole lot of notes and drawings too. I’ll try and share some of my notes on specific panels later (and I know at least one of the other eROI attendees had some “visual notes” goin’ on, too), but for now here is my post-South-By-plane-ride overview (click for larger version):

On the right side is a list of everything I wanted to follow up on after returning home – as you can see I completely ran out of room (and the perfectionist in me didn’t want to start a new page). There were SO many more great ideas than what is shown here, though – these are just the most important that I could gather while flying from PHX to PDX.

And here’s the eROI SXSWi crew on the last night of the conference, digesting the information gathered over the previous 5 days, and maybe a few Lone Star tall boys as well.

Also, all four of us participated in the Beercamp beer pong tournament on Monday night at Emo’s. We didn’t win, but we made some friends and drank free beer so we can’t really complain.

Justin Michaliga and Chris Castiglione – they beat me in an unofficial beer pong match so I gave them each one of my (personal) business cards.