I have trouble with emotions. After all, I’m a man. A big, strong one. So I’m going to use this blog post to tell Hemant Jain how much I’m going to miss him rather than tell him to his face. So if you’re reading this and you’re not Hemant, you might not understand some of the things in this post. And it might get weird. Not super weird, but weird.

Dearest Hemant,

You and me made a good team. Yeah, I understand. You gotta head back East. I wish I could talk you into staying but I know you’re mind’s made up. And it’s what you need to do. We had a good little run though didn’t we? About a year and a half of good times, talkin’ shit, laughing and terrible guitar playing. I’m gonna miss you coming over to my desk and hovering around without saying a word until I acknowledge you. And our whiteboard sessions. How can you give those up? Are you sure you have to leave? You selfish asshole.  I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Shit. Here come the waterworks. I told myself I wasn’t going to cry… And your rings. Holy shit, I’ve never seen a man wear more rings. When you’d make a firm point in a meeting and you’d slam your hand down on the table. Boy that pinky ring would make a sound. And your obsession with Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder. Despite it no longer being 1998, you stood by him. And I appreciate that about you. And of course, the sweater vest. We all grew to love it. But I remember when they first paired me up with you. Secretly I was like, “This guy’s supposed to be some super awesome creative we imported from India? How cool can he be, he wears sweater vests?” And wear them you did. With pride. Every day. No seriously, every fuckin’ day. But those sleeveless sweaters aren’t what I’m gonna miss about you. What I will miss is the intelligent conversations we had. Well, mainly it was you being intelligent and me listening to you be intelligent. From your published Indian political cartoons, to all the work you do for the environment. I was just always so impressed with how smart and passionate you were about everything you did. And it rubbed off on me. And it probably rubbed some other people the wrong way. But in the best kind of way. You have a knack for making people think. Really think. And that’s what this business needs more of, in my opinion. So I guess the long and short of it is, have I ever loved a man? No, of course not. But did I enjoy being your partner here at Creature? 100%. I’m sure the whole office will miss you. But I will miss you the most. And that doesn’t make me gay. I don’t think.

xoxo,

Pat

Everyone at Creature has the opportunity to curate our front windows. This week Dave Kaul took the initiative and did not disappoint. In fact, I want to live in that world. As a special treat, Dave wrote about his creation in some depth. Give it a read. Follow the links. Enjoy.

- Jim

After five years as a designer at Creature, I started to have this feeling, like I had to get something out of my system. I wanted to paint something big, overwhelming, and put it on display. I realized that this feeling I missed was the feeling of painting graffiti, which is where my roots are. I realized, after years in the agency world, that I needed to get back in touch with those roots, and make something outside of the computer. The perfect opportunity came along in our 12th Avenue Storefront project.

So I turned the windows into a magical winter feather-land. The idea was to do something bright, almost glowing – when I paint, I'm always drawn to very vivid colors. The feathers are an element I've been using in my painting for a little while, and I've been wanting to do them on a much bigger scale. The concept is not so much of a concept; it's just something I really wanted to make and could visualize in my head.

The display features four 5 x 8 canvases painted with the monochromatic illustrated feathers in pinks and greens. The repeating feather pattern gives it an infinite, wallpaper effect. I then painted real feathers in matching colors and hung them in front of the canvases – I was trying to create the illusion of feathers lifting off the canvas almost, and fluttering to the ground.

On the floor is a train that spans the two windows, set up to look as though it's magically traveling across to the other window. The train reads “What is love” on the green side, completed by “baby don't hurt me” on the pink side, which is a lyric from the 90's dance hit by Haddaway. Haddaway who? Exactly.

In the end, I was trying to achieve a contrast between each side with a strict color theme, inject some of my awkward sense of humor, brighten up the gray Seattle streets.

 Maybe most of all, I wanted to get back in touch with my immature, skateboarding/graffiti writer past. I'm also currently working on a book, “Denseone: 19 Years as a Mediocre Graffiti Writer”, which looks back at my time as a wandering teenager in California all the way through my current career as a designer, and my attempt to stay connected to my favorite way to pass the time. Which is art.

It's also a way for me to do something with my ridiculous amount of graffiti knowledge, or what I like to call a wealth of useless information. Ever since I got into graffiti, I've never gone a day in my life without noticing it, without reading even the tiniest signature on a garbage can. It's almost like someone put it there just for me to read. I don't think I could stop looking if I tried. I'm pretty hooked, and I guess my current work centers around this hope that graffiti stays with me into my old age. It's who I am.

 DK

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David's blog is Art / Design / Surface, where he posts one example of each (art, design, surface) daily. 

Also, check out creative and design director Steve Cullen's blog, Makecentric, where he also wrote a piece on Dave's recent window art.

As we bid farewell to our friends from Creature London, and a lovely long stint of American debauchery, British mannerisms and some work mixed in between, it seems fitting to talk about how we decided to welcome them here in the first place.

With balloons.

In the UK, they’re called… well. Hmm. We never asked them what they call balloons. Shoot. We really were going to do that before they left. They probably call them something very clever. It’s probably way nicer-sounding than “balloons”.  In any case, we used them—balloons—to recreate both their nation’s flag and ours in the Creature 12th Avenue Storefront windows.

As the balloons slowly grew tired and flaccid, only stronger did the bond between ourselves and our 2 British + 1 Dutch compatriots grow. We closely observed their frequent bathroom habits, due presumably to their near-constant consumption of tea. Their manners are impeccable, or, at least, their accents are, which makes everything they do, including wearing wigs, performing Miley Cyrus’ smash hit "Party In The USA" in front of strangers, and frequently going to the bathroom, all a very elegant affair.

They enjoyed our not-fatness, our tendency to parade ourselves around at karaoke bars for their attention, and our strange sandwiches. (You can read about their experiences at their blog, http://jayraylangdon.tumblr.com.)

In all seriousness, the Creature exchange program, as we're starting to call it, is becoming less of a business necessity and more of a fantastically rewarding swap of ideas, laughs, ways of doing things, strange habits, and more permanently, pokes and email addresses and phone numbers and invitations.

And so. Until the next time, our friends across windows and oceans.

And also because you can build a tree out of them:


But as we've been diving into this business for the last month, I know there's a lot of work ahead of us. I'm incredibly proud of Creature right now, and we're all looking forward to a relationship with a brand that has so much to offer. It's time to put our Dickies on and get to work.
 
Look, we're already right at home in Fort Worth:

We wanted to view the world through a child’s sense of imagination and transform an everyday object into a symbol of this great festival. We’ll use a symbol ubiquitous with Seattle, and the time of year the festival owns: the umbrella. An umbrella is basic, functional and universal—but to a child it becomes a character, a vehicle, a playmate and muse. Through artful use of umbrella shapes, and playful interpretations of its function, we spun stories and scenes that capture the adventurous, joyful, imaginative spirit of the films themselves.

Creature brought on director Branson Veal at production company Unclebob.tv to craft these stories into a reality. Branson chose to combine live action, stop frame animation, utilizing children and colorful hand painted umbrellas to give each story the magic touch. With a bit of a nod to the French film Amelie, Creature & Unclebob.tv had original music scored for each spot. All of the spots were shot on location in Seattle.

Anyway, right before the holidays Creature took over the façade of the Chelsea district’s famous Maritime hotel to wow crowds with arresting visuals, perfect sound design and a fun HP-themed holiday show.

Start-to-finish, the entire process required a few grueling months, 3 different animation studios, 1 very cooperative client, 2 event production staffs and a lot of talented people.

We had the distinct pleasure of working with the esteemed Projection Mapping partner Drive Productions and look forward to working with them again.

Take a gander at the event video below and be sure to check back later in January for our “making of” documentary of the entire event.

On a side note, Pat Horn commandeered this glorious screen for a moment to propose to our own Kaylin. Very 4D and romantic. 

Also, Pat is convinced the Maritime is haunted. I think it’s just good marketing and part of their USP.

Here at Creature, we think about Champagne a lot. Not just because of Champagne Friday but also appropriately because we work for the Comité Champagne (The Champagne Bureau) with the glorious task of making sure people don’t inappropriately steal the name for their own devices.

As you all know, Champagne can only come from Champagne, France. Take heed, all you California sparkling wines. What we don’t have control over are the names the official Champagne houses give to their products. The case is illustrated here with DISCOBITCH. Yes, it is a fine Champagne. In fact on the back it even says it represents 300 years of heritage and passion. We have to thank our clients for this gift among many other fine Champagnes we will be sampling this Friday for our first Champagne Friday of 2012. And of course we’ll be launching our new campaign shortly. Cheers.

In the meantime, please enjoy the exact type of name abuse we are fighting against here.