Fresh

Visual storytelling of one kind or another has been around since cavemen were drawing on the walls.  ~Frank Darabont

Storytelling happens in a variety of ways.

It happens quite literally by opening up the pages of your favorite book, by hitting “play” on your DVD player, and by sharing tales of days long gone with old friends over a cold beer.

It also happens on the pages of a website through compelling photography.

Incorporating a visual story throughout a website is simply another way to engage your audience, enhance the user experience, and conjure a positive emotion in your visitors. Sometimes, photography can express something or convey a message that words or copy cannot begin to describe. I find that something magical happens when people are engaged in an entertaining story; they drift into a land of possibilities and step out of time even if only for a few moments. (more…)

I’m pretty on-again off-again when it comes to seeing live music; sometimes I will go almost a year without seeing a band, but other times it seems I’m going out all the time.  (Granted “all the time” for me is every other week or a couple times a month – I don’t know how you young whipper-snappers out there go to a show a week or more.)  So far this year I’ve been to a fair share of shows and planning on going to at least a couple more in the next month.  Portland is a magnet for awesome bands (those that stop here on tour and those that live here, too), so I’d be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t get out there and see some of them!

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. (more…)

The reoccurring gender-ambiguous beaked character. The bright-yet-limited color pallet. The whimsical hand-drawn typography and witty, random and often confusing ideas it communicates. All are part of what makes Parra’s work unmistakably unique in the streetwear, music, skateboarding and fine art landscapes which it permeates.

Parra’s work is approachable, bright, funny, puzzling and graphic. Personally, I am a huge fan, and cite him as a large contemporary influence on my own work. One of his posters is tacked up next to my desk here at eROI. It is high time I share the awesomeness.

Take a peek into Parra’s world.  Pictures and video after the jump.

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When our long-time client, Wacom, approached us with a new line of touch enabled tablets, they were looking for an integrated marketing campaign that would drive sales and exposure for their new product. Wacom was thinking about abandoning traditional print-based advertising in favor of doing only web-based advertising, which was a major change for them. We took this opportunity to dive in as a team and come up with something truly different. What we ended up creating was a truly integrated marketing campaign that took one central idea and expressed it in several different ways. The results were more than any of us could have expected.

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This is a continuation of Tom’s post 10 Tracks for your 9-to-5 – Music to get any creative through their work week from last week. Props to Tom for opening the door to writing about how music helps us get through our work week and sharing the love of music with others.

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.
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It’s time to add to the collection of fashionable Fresh wallpapers for you to enjoy on your desktop and share with others!

I can hear the birds chirping! I can feel the sun in my eyes and the cool breeze flowing through my hair. The smell of tulips wafts… Oh wait… I’m here in the office. Well, this wallpaper is just that good.

I’ve used some faded tree and cloud elements combined with a water-color-y wash of lemon yellows and sea green for this wallpaper. Hope you enjoy!

eROI Fresh Wallpaper, Spring Breeze

Need this wallpaper in a specific size? Download it here:

1024×768

1280×800

1280×1024

1440×900

Some people may think that St. Patrick’s Day is a time to remember and honor the patron saint of Ireland. Others may use it as an opportunity to drink green beer, dance an Irish jig with reckless abandon, or eat Irish-inspired food they might not normally eat.

Here at eROI, we see St. Paddy’s day as an opportunity to celebrate the color green. We love all the colors of the rainbow, so having one day a year where anything green rocks is kinda awesome. Check out some of the green from around the office.

Enjoy!

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Music and design, in my eyes, are inseparable. I get inspired to draw and come up with new designs when listening to music, and feel totally strange if I am ever designing without tunes blaring or earbuds jammed into my head. I am a design nerd, and perhaps bigger music nerd, and If I had my way, would never have one without the other.

Certain songs or genres of music aid me in different working scenarios.  Sometimes I find myself knowing exactly what song or album to play for my current mood or for the task in front of me. If I am on a deadline, if I am wireframing a new site, if I am working late, or if I am just plain old stoked on a design direction, zoned out, head down, gettin’ it done, I know what to listen to to make that task more enjoyable. There are songs for reading your RSS on Monday morning, drinking coffee, ramping up for your week, and there are songs for your Friday afternoon, winding down your open projects, and thinking about your upcoming weekend.

Here are 10 tracks, old and new, and the web-design/interactive dork scenarios in which they feel most appropriate, as those scenarios fit into a 5-day work week.  Try them out and tell me if they work for you too. Hell, you might learn about some new music, get way better at those deadline pushes, or at least grumble a little less to yourself when burning the midnight oil.

NOTE: These choices are based on a combination of the general pacing and mood of the songs, and their subject matter and lyrics. Sometimes more one than the other, sometimes a perfect balance of both. One thing remains consistent: It is all subjective jibba-jabba according to one interactive designer and illustrator’s listening habits. Take it or leave it.
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In honor of Valentine’s Day’s impending arrival, I’ve compiled some images that I found inspiring in a sweet, adorable, lovey-dovey sort of way. We’re working on incorporating more posts which are image-based and simply put – inspiring to us, so you can expect more content like this from Fresh in the upcoming weeks!

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Three years ago I began working on websites as a young account coordinator/project manager. I did not understand what CMS (that’s Content Management System for you kids at home) stood for or let alone what the difference was between open source and proprietary software. But, that didn’t matter because clients wanted a way to update their content that didn’t involve them taking classes at community college. Back in those days eROI had three CMS options to offer:

Marqui – A hosted proprietary system, which wasn’t terrible, but definitely was not worth the money and developing for it seemed to be a pain. I averaged 10 calls a month from two sites that had been live for years.

CMS/MS – An open source solution that served the purpose of a basic CMS with the best price around (FREE!). The only problem was that it was difficult to use from an Admin perspective, and was not as flexible for developers to be a truly powerful CMS.

Contribute – A trimmed down version of Dreamweaver by Adobe sold on Amazon and came in a real box. I won’t go into those forgotten nightmares too deeply, but let’s just say the software in the box had about as much value as an old AOL CD. The amount of time wasted trying to get this software to function as it was billed to could have been used to go to Mars by now.

Having had clients on all of these systems made me completely hate CMS systems. (more…)