There is a poster boldly displayed on one wall of Dynamic Digital Advertising’s new digs that proclaims, “Don’t be afraid to be different.” I think that is the common thread that binds all who work here; we are each very different. Not weird different, but creatively, healthy, believe-in-ourselves different. 

A specific example would be our Programmers. David says our Lead Programmer,  Amy, can solve any problem to do with code.  She is also a whiz with an electric drill.  Tyler is our “Go To” guy for everything from small changes to clients’ websites to installing a complex phone system, while Reggie has become an expert at building gargantuan retail shopping carts, and Vinnie does a lot of action script work and helps with Coldfusion code issues and other language problems. If you put the four of them together, you would never mistake one for the other, and yet they are linked by this strange gene Programmers have for speaking little and spending hours solving problems. It is like there is a mind meld between them and their computers.  

Dynamic Digital, as an entity, is unusual too. There is no model we followed when David and I first started a decade+ ago. We grew organically, and David’s business instinct and vision helps shape what is our very complex organization today. But from those early days, we never lost the goal of providing marketing, promotional, and advertising services to businesses. Our old self-promotion brochures push digital photography, cd-rom development, graphic design, and print production among other things. We still do all that, but we just keep adding services. So many services that our Lead Designer, Carrie, wonders how she is going to showcase the new service. (P.S.-She always figures it out.)  Check out our website, the timeline graphically shows our growth, the changes, and the new services. And today, May 15th, 2008, I can promise you, there is real excitement planned for the coming year. Stay tuned. 

What makes people want to create art, design brochures, or study feng shui? I think we are compelled to recreate nature, because we’re part of it.

People find great beauty, peace, drama, and connection in nature. Everything on the earth is interconnected, literally by the earth itself, and it’s organized, just like our bodies are composed of organized, interconnected cells. The world and our bodies are full of form, color, pattern, and purpose. We recreate these qualities in music, on fabric, in poetry, and in writing, and we search for patterns to understand more about the world through science and astronomy.

Today feels pretty warm, and I might go outside in DDA’s back yard to sit on a bench and eat my lunch. It would be great if the wall to my office could slide open on a nice sunny day, or if I took more breaks to walk.

In some ways much of my home and work environment is artificial in the sense that it is man-made, but in a very real way, as I sit in my office at a computer creating brochures, I also feel connected to nature.

The worst job I ever had was as a cashier at a supermarket. The monotony of standing on the rubber mat, scanning can after can, waiting for the next person to arrive, was not for me. I am a person that cannot stand still and who needs to be occupied at all times.

Which makes DDA a good fit for me. Though you can argue that I spend a large part of my day in front of a computer, I can assure it is never just staring at the screen. There is rarely a dull moment and I certainly never have to wait for the people to arrive.

At the moment, I have a handful of requests from existing clients, for whom I act as Project Coordinator, involving flash programming, search engine optimization, traditional programming, and web work. I have two websites that are just beginning — one will be highly search engine optimized and is in the keyword research phase and another is at the design level — and a highly-involved ordering system that is on its way to completion, with proofing that needs to be arranged.

I have a few inquiries that I am trying to arrange either an estimate or  conference call for, a quote that needs to go out, two conference calls, and several follow-up e-mails that need to be sent out. That is in addition to the requests for work that will come in throughout the day either by e-mail or phone.

I also have proofing to do, a direct-mail piece that needs to be written, and an outline that needs to be prepared.  It’s a hectic day, as always. And I am not alone. I am in good company with my fellow three writers, as well as everyone else — the graphic designers, programmers, web developers, videographers, animators, and search engine marketing and optimization teams. Just another day in the life of DDA.

And I most certainly am not complaining.  I like the fast-paced atmosphere and a job that constantly challenges me. It’s a far cry from the rubber mat I once stood on scanning frozen peas, but I’m OK with that.

I just received my new WD 500 gig My Book this morning. I immediately started setting it up so I could begin the long process of transferring my data. I don’t remember if I mentioned this before, but my current HD takes forever to transfer data! It once took me a whole day, from 9am-5pm to transfer 12 gigs. 12. My beautiful TB HD I have at home uses her super fast fire wire connection to transfer 12 gigs in a matter of minutes. Even my 500 gig HD, which has a USB 2 connection, transfers really fast. On a side note, when I bought my 500 gig HD over a year ago, I wanted to get the firewire version. However the sales person at Best Buy convinced me to get a HD with an eSata connection. He also assured me that I could acquire the card for my mac when they had them in stock. It wasn’t until a month later that I found that eSata cards were not made for macs. The archiving session I had a week ago was painful only because it took me forever to back up my files via external HD. I am really hoping that this HD will rise to the challenge and be able to transfer my data at the speed of light. Yes, the speed of light. Perhaps I should name her the Millennium Falcon? Naah, too cliche. On another note, completely unrelated to my HD, I am closing out a number of projects due to my upcoming travel. (I will not be in Thursday or Monday.) I just uploaded a newsletter for print production, translated three web designs into html expandable pages for the client to see and approve, and finished various website updating/alteration projects. Today’s tasks are to start and complete concept sketches of a town setting, get further in the DDA Sketchbook, take some product photography, make a few graphics/roll overs for websites and complete some other site updates. I need to finish these before I leave today.

I picked up a new game yesterday for my Nintendo DS. It’s called “The World Ends with You.” I was initially turned on to this game by the rave reviews of the game play by the enthusiastic press. After having played the game for myself, however, I have to say that it is the design aesthetic that really hooked me.

The look is very reminiscent of Japanese anime cartoons, however, it has an edgy quality to it that I can’t quite describe. It is simultaneously stylish and gritty, like the well-thought out graffiti murals that are intentionally done on the walls of inner city parks.

I love the style of this game, and it is games like this that inspire me with my work in 2D animation. At DDA I have an incredible opportunity to work with the uniquely talented artists who excel at fusing their own creative flair with a professional style. Whether it is Carrie expertly designing a professional corporate website, Judy hand crafting an eye-catching trade show brochure, or Melissa going wild on one of her amazingly inventive and unique character designs for animation, DDA’s artists are second to none. While our inspirations and influences come from a vast number of sources, the creative talent at work here at DDA is always a joy to watch in action!

Spring is full of new growth and fresh beginnings. I see the little baby goslings following their parents, and fat bunnies ready to give birth. The trees are profusely spreading, sending their seeds into the wind. Trees are so efficient at this, that we find the seeds in every corner of every space - even where you least expect it. And although not all end up in a place that may be conducive to growth (like in the vacuum), so many more will be able to continue the pattern of life. You just have to give them something to grow on and a little TLC. Our websites and advertising services are much the same. When properly planted and maintained, they will grow into a very large, thriving and profitable endeavor. In order to grow a successful campaign, we will start with a beautiful graphic design that can be for web or print design. Then, we can add all types of digital animation, flash animation or any number of video production, photography services and programming services. But the magic is in the maintenance to make it grow. Our Search Engine Optimization, SEO copywriting and Search Engine Marketing Services are the food for growing big in Google. Everybody needs a little TLC.

Last night I watched part of a movie, “What A Way To Go.” The subject matter was serious, very well documented, and the presentation was poetic.

My friend asked, “Do you think that movie was done artistically?” I said, emphatically, “Yes.”

The movie, which consists of a collage of images and interviews, has a consistent background ambience created by music and old movie clips.

However, I mentioned that it looked low budget, and that perhaps it was taken with someone’s home camera. This doesn’t matter to me at all, and did not take away from my enjoyment of the movie or how artistic I think it is, but my friend, who also thinks highly of the movie, felt I was being insulting.

I tried to explain that I was just making a observation, based on seeing many movies, that if the producer created more movies and had better equipment, it would appear more technically “slick.”

Technical skills are very important at DDA, and DDA’s writers, graphic designers, web designers, and videographers pay close attention to them. Although technical skills may be grasped intuitively by some people, if not, it’s no problem, because they can always be learned.

From my work illustrating academic textbooks before I was hired by DDA, I learned many technical copywriting details, like what is the proper minus sign to use in an equation, to add a space before and after an equal sign, and to use straight instead of curly quotation marks for measurements.

DDA’s writers know the rules of grammer, but what makes their writing interesting is their creativity. Likewise, as a designer, I must be aware of rules about typography, what font size to use on websites, how to photomanipulate an image, and what colors are best for certain markets. But all of these rules would be useless if they weren’t fueled by creativity.

Here at DDA, we are all driven by a desire to create interesting and quality work, and that provides great motivation to learn the technical details!

I’ve been having all sorts of fun times with this sketchbook. Yesterday I began dissecting the sample flip book file in flash. I’m not used to Flash, and I’m even less familiar with the new flip book! The old flip book, which you can view in our Print Brochures portfolio, was pretty easy to work with. All you needed to do was place the desired images into a folder and make sure that the flash files were linked properly. This one is a little more complicated, and for good reason. You can have transparent or tear away pages! It also seems to run pretty fast. I remember finding a flash flip book that had transparent pages for a past print brochure Judy designed. It looked nice but it took a while to load and seemed to have a small lag. Hopefully this flip book, once uploaded, will still be fast. After talking to our lead designer, Carrie, I had a better grasp on what we are going to be doing with this project. Basically there will be one large DDA Sketchbook that you can view from a main page. The sketchbook will have spreads containing the client approved design as well as a few designs that the were shown to the client, but not chosen. As for now it seems that all DDA projects will be contained within this one sketchbook. It could change in the future though. Now you might be asking, “What if I only want to look at a particular project?” If you are interested in a particular project, we will have a link from the project in the DDA portfolio to the corresponding page in the sketchbook. If you’ve seen our portfolio recently, you’ve noticed the ‘Related Projects’ links. The DDA Sketchbook links will be similarly attached to the portfolio.

At DDA, we are proud to offer fully integrated advertising campaigns. With the wide array of services we provide, from video production to graphic design and copywriting to programming, we can provide any company with complete digital advertising services. We can build any marketing campaign from the ground up, design company logos, build custom and unique websites, and promote products with brochures, or we can work with established businesses looking to extend their marketing efforts with print designs or trade show ads.

But most importantly, everything at DDA is customized to fit your company’s exact needs. Our websites, for instance, are not created from templates and are custom built. And with the knowledge of our programming department and video production team, your website can be molded to exact specifications, integrating high-end video, search functions, and anything else you need. The sky is the limit when you choose DDA!

One thing graphic designers get very excited about is “white space,” or the empty space on a page around images, in the gutter, on the edges, between lines of type, in the middle of a big letter “O.” Expertly used, white space (or any other solid block of color) acts as a frame, grouping the content on the page into distinct areas that can be more easily digested. Like how a bright blue sky sets of a few fluffy clouds, like the spacious feeling standing in an old building with 10 foot ceilings, or like the ocean reflecting the setting sun’s rays.

White space can make clients nervous.

They look at the half inch of space here and there, add them together, and fear the space may be wasted, underutilized… When we ask for feedback on the design, the client may look at these slices of white and exclaim, “My, what big white space you have!”

The graphic designer grins and says, “The better to see your message with.”

But unlike big bad wolves, DDA’s graphic designers can be trusted. For one thing, our teeth are much smaller, and well-flossed. We don’t want to gobble up all of the important content with our big white space. We want the client’s message to be experienced as if it is an elegant, balanced, seven-course meal, not as an overpriced raisin on a plate, or an overloaded buffet.