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Launch principal, creative director, David Wilgus, played host this past Saturday to scouts from his church. Boy Scout Troop 835 came to the Launch office for insight into the world of advertising. In addition to Wilgus’ words, the scouts were particularly impressed with the “fun” office, replete with all the toys and random decorations that make it comfortable and personable.
As thanks, the Troop sent Wilgus a Merit badge in Space Exploration. The rocket-themed patch matches the Launch decor and will be a great addition to our prized collection of memorabilia. The boys received more than Wilgus wisdom; each walked away with a brand new Launch ball cap.
Merit badge for Space Exploration
Boy Scout Troop 835 visits Launch
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We’re ready to impart more wisdom from Launch Art Director Reuben Miller’s experience at the 2010 HOW Conference.
An interesting session, “Building a Business: If I Knew Then What I Know Now,” featured Brian Dougherty and Marcia Hoeck. Dougherty is a founding partner of Celery Design Collaborative, which has studios in both California and Paris. Marcia Hoeck is president of Hoeck Associates, Inc. and acts as a business coach. Her mantra is, “Create a business that will run without you.” These two entrepreneurs described their tried-and-true methods for starting a successful business and growing it — specifically, how to keep from getting sidetracked so you can focus on why you started the business in the first place.
Next they explained Dougherty’s “design backwards” approach. By starting from a design project’s ultimate destination and working backwards, designers are able to make more informed choices, allowing them to creatively avoid many roadblocks that might prevent solutions. The best way to begin brainstorming is to imagine the “best possible destiny for a design. Next, imagine the user’s experience with the design and envision scenarios that would make the experience particularly memorable or valuable.”
Reuben said the last session he attended featured “the most inspirational speaker [he'd] ever seen.” The session, “Rediscovering Play: Bringing Fun and Passion to Your Work. . .and Life,” was given by Kevin Carroll.
Carroll’s childhood was less than idyllic; his parents struggled with substance abuse problems, so he moved in with his his grandparents. One day, he found a red rubber ball on the playground, and from that point on, focused his life on the pursuit of fun and the “red rubber ball mentality.” Now he collects different and interesting balls from all around the world as a source of inspiration.
After 10 years in the air force, Carroll spent time with the Philadelphia 76ers and Nike before starting his own business, Kevin Carroll Katalyst/LLC. We don’t do Carroll’s story justice, so check it out after finishing our post.
One of Reuben’s takeaways from HOW was that, “It’s an incredible asset to be a great presenter; it can be the tipping point between whether an idea sells or not.”
Find more information on 2010 Conference sessions visit the HOW website.
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Art Director Madison McDaniel rounds out the Launch summer intern team (Copywriter, Account Service, and AD) as her student portfolio and design skills landed her the art director internship. Madison joins us from UNT’s Communication Design program where she also earned this year’s Launch Outstanding Achievement Scholarship for Art Direction. See for yourself how good she is on her portfolio site.
We gave Madison a break from computer layouts just long enough to ask some telling questions:
![Madison 1[5]](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4071/4700473992_2e6dbdceef.jpg)
Q: Are you an ocean
or lake person?
A: Ocean.
Q: Pen or pencil?
A: Pen.
Q: Favorite video game?
A: Mario Kart.
Q: Which platform?
A: N64.
Q: Favorite color?
A: Black.
When asked what her favorite flower was, Madison couldn’t think of one. (Perhaps this has something to do with her favorite color. After all, we’ve never seen a black flower.)
Q: Are you on Twitter?
A: Yes. @/_sealion.
Q: So you like sea lions?
A: It’s a Fiest song . . .
Q: So you like Fiest?
A: Yes.
Q: What do you want to accomplish at Launch?
A: I’d really like to go on a photo shoot, but I mostly want to immerse myself in the agency environment.
Well, good news for this small town (Brock, Texas), Johnny Cash-loving girl turned art director: she’ll become more immersed in agency life than she ever could have imagined. Welcome aboard, Madison!
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Caitlin Christopher is a Texan, born and bred. She was a dancer growing up, but now she’s a recent graduate of SMU, from the prestigious Temerlin Advertising Institute, with a major in advertising (and a minor in Spanish).
While in school, Caitlin completed an internship at The Richards Group, focusing in account planning. She also spent a summer studying abroad and visited Mother UK, Naked, Pentagram and Tribal DDB London. With that background, experience and eagerness to continue learning, Caitlin bested many other qualified candidates to earn the coveted Launch internship gig.
Caitlin may be an account service intern, but we tested her creative thinking with a round of Q&A.
Q: Paper or plastic?
A: Paper.
Q: Favorite nail polish color?
A: Fiji – by Essie.
Q: If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
A: Greece. I’ve just always wanted to go there.
Q: What’s your favorite website?
A: Does Google Reader count?
Q: What do you want to get out of your internship at Launch?
A: I want to better understand the management side of advertising because my prior internship focused on account planning.
Q: What’s your favorite place in Dallas to get take-out?
A: Green Papaya. It’s like Vietnamese food, on Cedar Springs. Or Eatzi’s. (Eatzi’s, a former Launch client, is on Oak Lawn).
Q: What’s your favorite flower?
A: Stargazer lilies.
Q: What do you do in your free-time?
A: I dance a lot — in the car, sometimes walking down the street. Then I catch myself and realize other people can see me.
When she’s not dancing to a meeting, Caitlin is quietly tapping her feet under her desk.
Welcome to Launch, Caitlin.
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A new Mercedes-Benz dealership will open soon in Grapevine, Texas. To help Park Place Dealerships tout the groundbreaking, Launch Agency created invitations to the ceremonial event using some groundbreaking printing techniques.
Printed on Cromática lavender paper, the invites have the nostalgic look and feel of architectural blueprints. Art director Reuben Miller and print producer Laura Carroll worked closely with the printer, Colormark, to attain the right effect – first adding a layer of flood metallic blue ink to create the architectural “grid,” then double-bumping the white type to make copywriter Alex Slotkin’s copy pop off the page. The invites were sent in a white mailing tube to current Park Place customers and City of Grapevine VIPs.
Launch also created an online version of the invite using the same theme. To see it for yourself, check out the animated invite.
Despite impending thunderstorms, the May 20 event counted more than 100 guests, including the mayor of Grapevine, the head of the Grapevine Chamber of Commerce and a representative from Mercedes-Benz USA.
Park Place Motorcars Grapevine is expected to open in August of 2011 and will feature a 27,000-square-foot showroom, a service shop with 71 bays, and one of only two Park Place BodyWerks paint and body shops in DFW.
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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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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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As 2009 drew to an end, the Launch team gathered together for our annual holiday lunch party, featuring a catered BBQ feast with all the fixin’s. (Yes, some Texans actually talk that way, but not most.) The highlight of the celebration was the prize-filled agency trivia contest, followed by the surprise gifts everyone received from Santa. One was a very cool, high-tech gadget; the other, a decidedly low-tech gift.
View all the fun on Flickr.
From all of us at Launch, here’s to a happy, healthy, prosperous 2010.
