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Launch Agency welcomes a new digital specialist to the team. He answers to Jon, not Muse.
With the addition of Jon Fullrich, Launch is expanding its digital creative capabilities. David Wilgus, Launch Principal, Creative Director raves, “Jon is incredibly talented. He enhances our current offerings to our clients and can provide new innovations, which will allow us to lead our clients in the digital content arena.” Jon has a Masters Degree in Visualization Sciences from Texas A&M University, where he “learned everything I could about animation, video, and motionography.”
After a stint at interactive shop imc2, Jon freelanced for several top digital agencies, including Tribal DDB, and Click Here. In addition, he was part of some award-winning project work for Launch, which is how this beautiful relationship began.
We dove deeper and asked Jon some more revealing questions:
Q: Favorite sport?
A: Basketball and football . . . and some baseball. I played basketball in high school.
Q: Favorite spare time activity?
A: Watching sports and playing poker. I just played in my first real tournament and placed 106 out of 600.
(Not a bad debut.)
Q: Favorite animal?
A: I always liked penguins.
Q: Bow tie or Ascot?
A: I don’t know what an ascot is, so bow tie.
Q: Any pets?
A: A chihuahua named Bobinot and a black cat named Pepper.
Q: Most played song on iTunes?
A: “Home” by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros.
Q: What’s one of your favorite artists?
A: M.C. Escher. His art is a blend of engineering, architecture, and optical illusion.
We’re happy to have Jon on the team.
Jon and his wife Leigh at a U2 concert
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Randall Kenworthy, recent SMU grad and standout by-product of its Method Creative program, is assisting Launch this summer as our writing intern.
Fresh from a trip to NYC for the One Show Education Festival, he’s looking forward to expanding his portfolio, learning more about the craft of copywriting and the advertising agency business and doing his part to “punk” the other interns as they come join Launch.
Randall’s one of those rare types who knew way back in 9th grade what career path he wanted to pursue. Check back throughout the summer to see how the real ad biz jives with his lifelong expectations. To learn more and check out his stellar student portfolio, visit randallkenworthy.com. You can also follow his exploits on Twitter.
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The University of North Texas held its 2010 Communication Design Senior Graduation Event in Dallas, on May 14, at the Hayworth Showroom in the Republic Center. Over 200 friends, family members, and faculty came to celebrate the 28 graduating CommDesign seniors.
As part of the celebration, Launch Agency awarded $1,000 scholarships to two students with outstanding junior portfolios in art direction and design. This year, the Outstanding Achievement Scholarship in Design went to Max Barkhatou. The Outstanding Achievement Scholarship for Art Direction went to Madison McDaniel. Congratulations to Madison and Max on their outstanding work!
Launch has awarded scholarships to outstanding UNT junior designers and art directors since 2007. Launch principal/creative director, David Wilgus, himself a UNT graduate, knows first-hand the extraordinary talent in the CommDesign program.
Check out some of Madison’s winning portfolio:
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In order to introduce the new 2011 Mercedes-Benz E-Class Cabriolet with a bang, Park Place Motorcars Dallas teamed up with Modern Luxury Dallas and designer Stanley Korshak to host an unforgettable social event. This event, dubbed the Fresh Focus Reveal Party, took place at Park Place Motorcars Dallas. 
Launch creatives Reuben Miller and Alex Slotkin created the print ad (shown to the right) that ran in Modern Luxury promoting the event. The ad was shot by the award-winning and Dallas-based photographer Stewart Cohen.
On the evening of the event, 700-plus guests, including some of us from Launch, filled the dealership to support the Suicide and Crisis Center of North Texas and experience the new E-Class Cabriolet up-close and personal. Those in attendance enjoyed a variety of drinks and freshly prepared hors d’oeuvres as the evening progressed. 
The first big reveal of the night was the fall clothing line of fashion designer Brian Reyes. Guests sat back and watched as models strutted Reyes’ stylings down the catwalk. Next, anticipation boiled as the winners of both the Fresh Focus Raffle Challenge and the 2011 Mercedes-Benz C300 Sport Raffle Vehicle were announced. The evening culminated as the women chosen to be Modern Luxury’s Fresh Faces of Fashion unveiled the redesigned 2011 E-Class Cabriolet.
Right: Launch account executives Megan Kelly and Alison Hamilton show their support.
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The Children’s Advocacy Center of Collin County held its annual fundraiser at the Hilton Anatole, Dallas, and Launchers Alison Hamilton, Reuben Miller, and Diane Seimetz were on hand. Reuben designed the Center’s new brand identity earlier this year, and along with Diane and Alison, helped create the on-stage presentation “Impact Moment,” which depicted the struggles of abused children, and the relief the Center provides.
The gala’s theme this year was “Rock On!” and that it did. The band, World Classic Rockers, was the featured entertainment, consisting of former members from Santana, Journey, Boston, Steppenwolf, Toto, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. In addition to the entertainment, both live and silent auctions were held with all proceeds going to the Children’s Advocacy Center.
The event was chaired by local philanthropist Carolyn Speese—wife of Advocacy Center Board President, and Rent-A-Center CEO, Mark Speese (a long-time Launch client). A key sponsor of the event was Launch client Park Place Lexus, which generously donated several Lexus vehicles to the raffle.
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Launch Agency is pleased to welcome its newest addition to the squad — Linda Powell. She’s our Director of First Impressions, receptionist and office den mother. To find out what’s really behind her wonderful smile, we ran her through a little Q & A.
Q: Where’s your hometown?
A: Moyers, Oklahoma, a pleasant town in the southeastern part of the state near the Kiamichi Mountains.
Q: How long you been a Texan?
A: 42 years!
Q: Favorite vacation spot?
A: None other than the home of mariachi and all-inclusives. Cancun, Mexico.
Q: Favorite movie you’ve seen recently?
A: It’s Complicated, with Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, and Alec Baldwin.
Q: Secret snack food preference?
A: I gotta stick with the whole-baked goodness of Goldfish. I just can’t get enough of those little things!
Q: Top celebrity crush?
A: Patrick Swayze by a long shot. Have you seen Dirty Dancing? Enough said.
How’s that for a first impression? Just wait until you meet her in person. Needless to say, Launch is glad to have her onboard.
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Looking for an innovative way to quickly capture thoughts, sketch visual ideas, take notes during client meetings, and gain a little extra tech cred? Launch Agency art director Reuben Miller relies on his iPad and the Adobe Ideas app to do all that and more.
Adobe Ideas is a revolutionary app that allows users to capture thoughts and draw vector images on the fly. It also makes it far easier to create your own “handwriting” font, but whether or not you should make (or even use) a handwriting font is another matter entirely.
After creating an image in the app, like the robot to the left that Miller sketched, you can throw it into Illustrator to adjust your Bézier Curves, add some copy, or combine your new design with other work on your computer. You can even add a background image in Ideas and and create separate layers for drawings and photos.
Miller uses Adobe Ideas to aid him in keeping his notes organized, sketching out ideas, and making notes directly on designs during client meetings. Before a meeting, Reuben sends himself a PDF of his work. He opens the PDF on his iPad, takes a screen capture to quickly save it as a jpg (hit the “Home” and “On/off” buttons simultaneously), and then opens it in Adobe Ideas to mark-up as he pleases. This is not only faster than making edits on paper, it also saves trees.
Adobe Ideas is a free app that can be “purchased” from the iTunes store. Let’s just hope that Apple and Adobe make up soon so we can see more apps like this one.
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In honor of Launch Agency’s 7th birthday, the whole team went to Steve Fields (one of the finest restaurants in Plano, and Dallas, for that matter) to celebrate. Nothing like some cocktails, jumbo shrimp, prime steaks, and chocolate cake to hail seven years in business and seven years of consecutive growth.
Employees didn’t drop a dime, but we did have to “sing for our supper.” That is, each person had to create an award and give it to a co-worker. Some awards were serious, some sentimental and some crazy funny. Some even came with trophies, visual aids and a poem. Not a bad deal for a gourmet meal.
Here are just a couple of the awards:
Reuben was given a golden Mexican bean, hand carved from a single block of wood. It honors his bean-styling skills displayed at a recent photo shoot. Very touching, indeed…
Ashley received a can of spinach for having the “best laugh that sounds a little like Popeye.” She was also given a miniature punching bag featuring the faces of two of her favorite co-workers (Jason and Richard).
Principal and Account Director Michael Boone summed it up best, “This is such a fast-paced business; everyone at Launch works very hard and stays constantly busy. It’s a lot of fun to take a night to celebrate our successes and spend time with one another as friends – not simply as friendly coworkers on tight deadlines.”
Launch’s b-day is March 1st (don’t forget to drop us a card or email next year).
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smart USA named Launch agency of record for their business-to-business advertising. This was the result of hard — and creative — work and entrepreneurial thinking for our longtime client, Park Place Dealerships.
It all started with our award-winning out-of-home and TV campaign for smart center Dallas & smart center Fort Worth. After those initiatives, Launch created a corporate fleet program for the two smart centers to further generate traffic and spur new car sales. This program drew the interest of the smart USA headquarters, which requested Launch develop a national program for the brand.
Alex Slotkin and Diane Seimetz crafted the witty, err “smart,” headlines; Richard Wezensky and Brent Richison developed the clean, tasteful designs.
Here’s a peek at some of the smart work thus far:
If you’d like to see more of our work, or to take a test drive, just stop by a smart center near you.
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Due to some technical difficulties, the Launch Pad blog has been offline recently. But now we’re ready to resume with regular updates on all the latest agency news at Launch.
In the meantime, we will be re-posting a series of previous blog entries to get up and running again. If you subscribe to our RSS feed, you may see a number of old postings show up in your reader. Feel free to re-read or ignore as you see fit.
Thanks for your patience. We’re excited to be back!
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