We just had some wicked thunderstorms roll through Virginia Beach today knocking out power, phone lines, snapping trees and more. Our street has tons of very old large trees and we lost 3 huge branches from some surrounding ones this afternoon. One landed right on my deck less than a few feet from our sliding glass door and my desk and another landed right next to my truck. If I’ve got 9 lives for any reason I’m using them up quickly these days.
Author Archive for mr.b
Storm Damage
Brave Solider Goes Live
After months of designing, programming, discussing and tweaking, our first true client (sans agency) has a new site up at www.BraveSoldier.com. Brave Soldier is a well known skin care line in the professional athletic circle. You can find it at most cycle shops and running stores. This year the company decided to update its brand and started with their site and you+we. As agency of record we hope to help Brave Soldier redo everything from their packaging to advertisements and more. We’ve already begun work on phase 2 of the site and looking forward to the great things to come.The site is a simple BluePrint CSS structure with some basic AS3 elements. For the first time since the studio was founded we were able to focus on art and creative direction vs. having to get over a massive technology hurdle. Overall the site is very minimal and clean. We used quotes related to bravery and hero shots of the sport to reinforce what the brand is all about… pushing the limits. This was also the first time we’ve been able to use stock outside of a large company as well as shoot the products. Thanks the Leon for his amazing work with what were nothing more than some simple plastic bottles.
What Are We Doing?
So as most of you know I have 2 employees on staff now and I always seem to busy to talk. I stay up until wee hours of the morning and work weekends most of the time. So with all these extra hands and all this extra time being put in…. wtf have we been doing all year? Where is the new work? What have we been doing??? The answer isn’t as easy as sending everyone a URL here and there as things are done. So here is kinda’ of what’s up…
- We completed a site with a small studio in NYC in January for a director of photography. Unfortunately he’s been out of the country since November/December filming a huge new movie which I will assume most of you will be going see next year. So it’s under wraps until he’s back in the states and approves content and videos.
- Many of the projects we do are under a tight NDA or we’re working under another agencies’ name. So we’re doing work but can’t show it publicly. We’ve done 2 projects that you’ll never see unless you’re an agency looking to hire us. I can say that one was a game for a branch of the military and the other was a portal design with lots of mash up utilities.
- We’ve done a match game and an intro for a new product with another marketing agency in the north east. That is under NDA as well. Sorry… you’ll never see those publicly either.
- This month we’ll be wrapping up a new site for a brand that produces skincare products. We have been working on it for weeks and weeks and it’s our first client that isn’t through another agency. You will see that soon.
- There’s also a company outside of London we’re working with on a small application component. You’ll be able to customize t-shirts and browse them. It’ll have a YouTube style embed widget for your blogs and social sites.
- You’ll also see some work we’re doing for an event production company in NYC. We have done the identity and the are working on the site as I type.
- Lastly we’re working on a fairly large recruiting site for a cruise line you have probably been with on a prior vacation. That should launch next month and I believe we’ll be showing that. It’s still in the works as to whether or not we can talk about it and it’s our first AS3 build.
As for this spring we have 3 things on deck already. Everything from here out will be AS3. One of the projects may be for a security company you know well. Another site is for a large brand and may include a PaperVision piece. We are also in discussions about a possible physical installment which we’ll be working on with other artists over the summer. A lot of people ask me how we get work when no one can see what we’ve been doing. The God’s honest truth is that we get all are work through referrals. People know people and recommend others when friends or contacts are looking for resources. While the average Joe looking at my portfolio can’t see 100% of the work we’ve been putting out, a client referred to us by another happy client will see it behind closed doors. Eventually we’ll win some of those fancy awards you see all over the place and we’ll get lots of cold calls for new work but if you read all the bullets above then you know we wouldn’t be able to handle all that anyway. We like it just how it is right now… do good work and good work will find you. So….. THAT is what we’ve been doing. I know… it doesn’t seem like much but for 3 little guys in VB. Stay tuned.
Stefan Sagmeister

I’ll be the first to say that Hampton Roads is probably on the bottom of the list when it comes to design and interactive hotspots. While I like to consider myself an innovator and decent designer in the area (it’s up for debate), there have only been a handful of other respectable shops around town IMHO. With the addition of new blood and AIGA over the last few years I really feel like this is changing. We have had some amazing speakers with AIGA over the last few months and next Friday’s presentation by Stefan Sagmeister will set the bar yet another level hirer. If you live in the area or even DC, Richmond or even the Raleigh area you owe it to yourself to try and attend the event. It isn’t everyday that someone as good as Sagmeister will be in our area. http://www.aigahamptonroads.org/events/34
