Posted by Floyd Diebel 3 Comments

Live is life

Geez. It’s been crazy busy here and it seems like I’ve not written anything since forever.

At least we’ve updated our website recently, so we’ve got that going for us. I really think our our website should be voted Most Likely to Helvetica but I’m not sure there’s an actual award for that. I’ll have to look into it.

I think our website should be voted Most Likely to Helvetica.

Anyhow, in the last year we’ve done a bunch of work for our diverse list of clients and executed some of our most successful campaigns. And that’s great.

What wasn’t great was having to entirely replace my art department (and our accounts manager too!) Even though everyone left on good terms, it was kind of a difficult adjustment for me.

Well, actually if I’m honest with myself… it sucked. Really sucked. Hella sucked. Sucked like a turbo-charged Flowbee on a bad hair day sucked.

Part of the problem is that I’m not good at hiring people. I’m sorta good at some other things, but not that. So it took what felt like forever to find new people that seemed like they’d be a good fit, and the people that work here really need to be a perfect fit. This is weird place to work.

We have a cat that lives in our shop and will leave paw prints all over your mockups, we’re adjacent to the stank-bootiest alley in all of downtown, and I probably swear too much, too often. We talk openly about politics, religion, gun control and gender issues. There are other oddities too, but I’m sure you get the point.

Hiring people sucks. Like with an extra-bold, san-serif capital S, sucks.

The process of hiring took way too long, and after a few false starts (oh man that process was painful) we were able to finally find some awesome new people willing to work with us here:

  • Whitney who’s Australian and taught us all about Vegemite and bogans
  • Elise who’s from a town in Missouri founded by a secret society of Germans so secret not even Wikipedia knows who they are
  • Ashley who’s from Auburn and is a self-proclaimed nerd that likes Star Wars a little too much and I even think she read that Silmarillion thing too
  • Ryutaro who’s from Japan and originally started programming because デジモン

So, even though I sometimes still miss Brian, Vivian, and Elizabeth, I’m psyched to have a new group assembled and see where we take this EMRL thing next.

And yeah, last year I shot the image at the top of this post for a client; we didn’t end up using it.

That’s ok. That’s life.

3 Comments
  • Well, I know, with out any doubts, new beginnings can be difficult. Stay focused, and keep your eye on the end game.

  • This makes me happy. Im glad you guys have it dialed in. I’m out in the world yelling at colleagues about things I learned with you guys. <3 hugs to Muse.

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