Working from a home studio has its advantages. This morning it took the form of a brilliant red/orange dragonfly that landed on the fig tree just outside my window. Mad dash to get the camera, makeshift tripod of a ladder, tin box and towel and I was able to capture this shot with my Nikon D5 / SIGMA DG 70-300mm lens. Thought I’d share.

I recently had a gallery reception at Tag Gallery in Santa Monica. This gallery is a collection of about 40 artists and not only provides an opportunity to show your work, but it is a great source of inspiration and collaboration. Each artist is responsible for their own show; from the signage on the windows to the hanging of the work to the mailing of invites. The gallery director drives PR and marketing support while the members all donate their time throughout the year for reception hosting and gallery sitting. I think it is a great example of how a community-based network of individuals can work towards the collective good of the group. Similar to what has happened with musicians leveraging the power of their fan base, vs. letting the labels dictate the when, where, how and what of their work. Not to mention a much more favorable split between artist and gallery, musician and label.

The FORMO team just got back from a pretty intresting shoot in Atlanta. We are in the process of putting together a spec video pitch for a luxury fashion brand. The concept involves a motion control shoot that will enable a user to interact with full motion video. For the spec shoot we used a neat alternative called the Skater Mini. We will post the finished piece in the coming weeks once it is complete. Wish us luck!

Below is a video showing how riveting the shoot was all day. 90+ degrees on a rooftop watching a little camera go back and forth all day. Shooting is soooooo glamorous

The FORMO team just returned from a video shoot for our client Snake River Sporting Club in Jackson Hole Wyoming. We worked hard but had a great time. Below is a slide show of some of our favorite stills. You can also check out some of the videos we shot over the next few week over at SnakeRiverLiving.com

As we develop digital strategies for our clients, we find ourselves more and more thinking about the relationships between a series of interconnected online experiences versus the traditional hub and spoke idea of one central corporate dot com. A brand exists online today in an almost limitless and uncontrollable number of places. From twitter “twits” to specialized social networks to mobile to your grandmother’s blog, brand’s must enable and foster the portability of their content while still trying to maintain some common threads.

The above diagram represents our current view on how we develop our client’s prescenes online. A “cobweb” of interconnected experiences that play a part in an overall brand expereince. Each piece has its own roll to play and enables a brand to engage a user at the appropriate crossroads in their life. The most exciting part of this concept is the flexibility that it gives the creative. By engaging people in numerous different environments we are able to contextually focus our messages and visuals resulting in a more authentic and engaging communication.

Today was eventful. I had the opportunity to fly with a stunt pilot.

As I sat in the front seat of the small cockpit, my mind raced back to the many years I spent as a Naval Aviator. The smell, the noise, the sensations as the engine came to life and the small plane began to roll forward. But perhaps what struck me the most today was the instinct that took over. We were completing a simple loop and as the airplane reached vertical and began to nose over towards an inverted horizon, my head instictively rolled back to look for the horizon and a reference point to keep the wings level.

20 some years and an eternity from flying an aircraft, but my instincts rolled my head back and looked for those simple reference points that I had been taught so many years ago.

The sensation changed from the exhileration of flight…to a reminisence of something I knew so well, so instictively so very long ago.

I was in control of an aircraft, I knew how to fly…and fly well…

What a day.

Art Of The Title
http://www.artofthetitle.com
From “Cowboy Bebop” to “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” this site is a fantastic collection of some of the best title sequences ever done. Each sequence is viewable in a very decent quality quicktime as well.

Gerd Arntz Web Archive
http://www.gerdarntz.org
This site is an unbelievable archive of the work of Gerd Arntz. From his pictograms and visual signs to his stunning statistical visualizations, this site can provide hours of inspiration.

Wordle
http://wordle.net/
Wordle is a JAVA Applet that creates beautiful word clouds. You can paste in any text you like and then adjust typeface, color and layout to create some very nice typographic layouts. FUN:)

Part of the joy of watching a digital strategy come to life is seeing how real people actually engage and interact with the work.

For our client Turks & Caicos Sporting Club we developed a blog and emagazine platform that has been incredibly successful. Not only has is generated significant sales leads, it has served as a wonderful central point for the members of this exclusive private island community to share their stories.

This morning a string of comments from the Deets family about Michael’s awesome birthday fish really made me smile.

You can view the post HERE.
How fun to see a family all applauding their son, and sharing the experience with one another online.

Check out all three of our Sporting Club clients blogs at:
Snake River Living
Life On The Cay
and
Life At The Greenbrier

Recently we completed a campaign to celebrate the launch of our client’s private 5700 ft jet strip (the longest in the Caribbean). The campaign began with the creation of an emblem for the airport itself. The emblem was inspired by the original wings worn by Frontier airlines’ pilots from the 1950’s and 60’s. The end result was a sleek and elegant mark that pays homage to those maverick pilots and reflects the contemporary aeronautics of today. In addition to their many other uses, the wings were cast in metal in order to create an original and authentic pilot’s wing pin for the prominent members of the Turks & Caicos Sporting Club.

For the invitation to the launch event, the wings were embossed and foil stamped in silver metallic ink on the cover. As you flip open the piece, you begin to see the markings of the Ambergris Cay Jet Strip on the interior. The invitation unfolds vertically downward revealing more of the jet strip panel by panel along with the copy describing the celebration of the jest strip opening. Once the invitation is completely open, the reader is able to view the scaled Ambergris Cay Jet Strip (MBAC) in its entirety. The length and dimension of the invitation were designed to highlight the magnitude and scale of this incredibly eco-engineered private jet strip.

The invitation was a complex print piece that needed to express quality, refinement, and luxury. The product exemplified this. Its paper stock was a thick, five star metallic sheet which was foil stamped on both sides. The interior carries a white foil stamp that mimics the jet strip’s markings while the copy is foil stamped in a metallic silver. The black of the airstrip was carried out with an aqueous coated oxidized ink. Inspired by aeronautical engineering, the packaging was composed of an elegant and chic, charcoal translucent envelope.

Other elements from this campaign included rich media and video ads exclusively placed at wsj.com/realestate and an email campaign. We will be sending a video crew down to document the big opening show so we will be sure to share.

Amazing work by an amazing team!

Very exciting seeing the first round of identity ideas from Aeron and Caryn last week! The team presented several concepts that were amazingly well thought out and much farther along in terms of being realized that any of us thought we would see. Their presentation was nice in that they showed the various marks and looks and feels executed in several business formats across all of the concepts.

The boldest concept featured the F in Formo alone as very strong icon. They used the F in a very cool geometric fashion, even using it as window to create negative space with photography. The big F however quickly felt too bold and dominating for the vibe we were trying to capture. It also kind of looked like we were putting a big F as in a grade on a paper from school DOH!

Two fantastic concepts from this first round have survived so far. The first being the idea of a “brand sleeve” for the container for our business cards. This sleeve would only feature the logo and maybe the www. The card when pulled out of the sleeve would reveal a unique full bleed image, specific to each persons card. Very Cool! The second concept is the idea of a controlled scribble as an accent. More on this in round 2.

Here is the PDF of the first round.

Be Gentle!