The event was a National Boat Racing Championship so we wanted the race program to be representative of the type of event it featured. Wavy cascading graphics were created of various blue hues to depict the motion of water. Images of water were also used to carry the concept through. Complimentary colors such as orange were used to give the piece more vibrance to match the summer occasion. High definition photography was utilized to really capture the excitement and special moment of the event as well.

There was also the issue of content. In years past the race program was just an accumulation of a poorly formatted welcome message, repeated hall of fame pictures with one or two additions, list of contestants, sponsor ads and order of events.

I thought this piece should be more special than that. It’s not the usual job of a creative director to generate the content of a given piece but I felt it needed it to meet the significance of the occasion. Since people were coming from across the country and the world around I thought it might be nice to highlight of few of them. The purpose was to tell a story that most might not know. I highlighted those with the most championships, those with the most records, women and kids as well. I got their point of view of their experience and the event itself. This really added the personal touch that I thought this piece needed.

The first step was to outline what the user was supposed to be able to achieve and how they were to achieve it. An outline was created of interface sequence from registering to creating a profile, uploading media and creating a battle. Other considerations were made as well including inviting friends to vote for you after a battle was created as well as how that battle would be initiated and end. Heavy deliberation was made regarding the introduction of each battle. We wanted to be sure that it depicted the excitement and enthusiasm as a live event. Video was introduced to depict different venues a participant was able to choose from. For example, a challenger can send a challenge to a contender to meet them at the TerrorDome. Once accepted the challengee and all who are invited to watch will be introduced to the battle through the TerrorDome video introduction.

The ranking systems was also a challenge as we didn’t want it possible for a challenger ranked 559, for example, to be able to challenge someone ranked number one. So we developed an
algorithm that doesn’t allow someone higher than half the distance to the challengee place to make a challenge unless you are ranked in the top 10. Rankings are determined by number of battles, wins, losses, draws as well as battles accepted and battles turned down.

Since the site is geared towards youth and young adults around my daughters age I used her as a test user to determine what the new site needed to be. Her feedback was invaluable. What she said is that my original site had too much text. She said she is constantly swiping on her phone for video. She said we don’t want to do too much reading. We’d rather watch a video and then if we are interested we will read further. Her feedback provided me my basis for the new design. What was a created was a floating thumbnail interface that the user can swipe through to find the content that interest them. Once they found it they could click on it to go to the video associated with that page if one was loaded to it. If there was no video a brief summary of text appears. If they were more interested they could click for an additional summary. If they wanted to read the entire story they could click through to that content age. If not they could close the window and continue to swipe through the other thumbnails that appeared on the that page. We call it the 3D Thumbnail Flow. Patent Pending.

Other features were designed and developed into the site including a social network, a free user online store, an online social lounge, web version of the iTunes app BattleBoys, and an email magazine that the user could customize and send out to their own email list.

Lighting, camera position, focal length and position of the subject all play a part in nailing the moment and revealing the story. From moody to light-hearted to sorrow to inspirational capturing the emotion in a single frame is like playing a symphony of the aforementioned. When everything is in tune you make music to the viewers eyes.

Over the years I have had an opportunity to produce a variety of advertising from high tech, to home goods and just about everything in between. My attempt is to try to resonate with the reader with words and interest the most resonate with them.

I liked the “Did you Get the Memo” concept because there was a notion that our competitors had a foothold on customers because their brand name was so well known they considered themselves the safe bet. Meaning if somthing went wrong no one would blame them for buying the Industry favorite. So this ad created to confront that notion and convey the message that you can choose Supermicro and make significant improvements to your server infrastructure to please your bosses rather than stick with the industry favorite.

I also liked the “Play Harder” concept. It gave a great depiction of the gaming experience being taken to the next level due to the use of Supermicro Motherboards.

Of course there is always a budget and the budget in this case ruled out the use of more exotic materials like metal or leather.

So what we settled on is a an intricate diecut of C1S clay coated bright white stock. A rough mock-up was created out of regular 100# stock writing paper and then passed on to the vendor to have a CAD drawing made of the dieline and laser cut mock-up to depict the die. To assure accuracy in position and layout we designed the piece with the dieline in place in the file.

The diecuts were arranged in such a way that each panel revealed slightly what was behind the next.

An array of metallics, gloss, matte, and UV finishes were applied to Pantone inks to provide distinction between images and greater depth and perceived value of the piec.e.

Diecuts were also utilized to hold a DVD, CD and business card in a fanned out manner.

So what we decided on is to leverage the persona of the many urban music icons and the lifestyles that endorsed them. Nightlife, Music and Swagg were all incorporated into stand alone POPs where Dre Beats head phones were displayed along with kiosk that allowed you to watch and listen to the latest videos of the endorsing artist using the Dre Beats headphones.

Next we needed to transcribe the entire episode into a script then for the animators to follow. Everything from stage cues to camera direction, to facial expressions are all scripted it out for the animator to follow.