You Were Here: Vanity Meets Voyeurism

As long as we've had these windows, pedestrians have wondered what on earth it is that we do. We wanted to play that up but still interact with the community. Store front windows are usually a one way experience. You look in. You see the display. You walk on. We wanted to make our windows a two way conversation. When you check yourself out in the mirror, could the mirror check you out as well?

You Were Here uses two cameras controlled by a laptop. The first camera uses a motion sensing program to know when someone's in front of the window that has been treated with a two way mirror material. This in turn triggers a flash and DSLR camera. Every morning we comb through the previous day's crop of photos, and select the most interesting to post here. And some we print out to display in the opposite window. We’re adding to it every day.

It feels sort of like going fishing. We never know what we’re going to get every time we pull up the line. We invite you to come by and show us what you got. 

Creature Windows: Valentine's Edition

This window installation was created as we approached Valentines day and is

dedicated to people finding their one in million perfect love. Let’s hope

they have cool butts.

The Creature Window Shop

Introducing The Window Shop, the perfect place for all your holiday shopping.

We’ve been using our street facing windows for art installations and visual experiences for awhile now. But for the holidays, we wanted to do something extra special with those windows. We also wanted to do a charity effort. So we combined those goals into something we call The Window Shop: windows you can actually shop from. You can shop from your laptop, walk in, or have a true window shopping experience and buy the things you see in our windows directly through your phone. All proceeds go to an organization we deeply believe in – Hamomi Children’s Centre.

We’ve filled our windows with a selection of eclectic items, described as “one of a kind gifts to confuse your loved ones.” The offerings include a rum pendant lamp by Brandon Waterman, “Dirty Hankies” by Kaylin Fitzpatrick (you’ll have to see what that means), and a paper maché dolphin with the face of Elton John that you’ll have to ask Bekah Grim about. Some are just cool items we’ve been acquiring. Like a miniature presidents set.

So for that person on your list that already has everything, well….we bet they don’t have one of these things.

This whole effort is to benefit an organization that we’re proud to share our office space with. Hamomi provides comprehensive care to orphaned and vulnerable children in the slums of Nairobi. Through their primary school and scholarship program, they provide education to 144 students, along with medical care, meals and micro loans to help graduates start their own businesses. We’re grateful to be able to be able to help support such an important cause. Learn more about Hamomi Children’s Centre.

Items are being sold and new items are being put up for sale all the time. Browse the windows in person at 1517 12^th Avenue, Suite 101, or just go to creaturewindowshop.com. And if you have something you’d like to donate to the effort, just let us know – email pamfujimoto@creature-us.com.

Blue Duck

Blue Duck, by Nick Bruskewitz and Troy Burrows.
Here's a little insight into their process.

“I drew the duck blue because I’ve never seen a blue duck before … and to be honest with you, I wanted to see a blue duck.” 

So Nick and I were talking about what to do for windows. Somehow we got on the subject of Billy Madison. There’s this scene where Billy is on his journey from k-12 to prove to his dad he deserves to run Madison Hotels. During crafts time when Miss Lippy approaches, he’s drawing a blue duck. 

So we were like what could be our blue duck? Then we were quiet for a while. Until Nick said: “I’ve always wanted to see what a bunch of electronics would look like painted the same color.” I said: “Cool.” Seemed like a blue duck. 

Overall, what does this idea say? Is it an idea? Not sure. But it looks nice and it takes all these old electronics that didn’t have much to live for and gives them a second act. And we saw what they looked like painted. Maybe the idea is: they’re a reminder to go make blue ducks. 

-Troy

A wealth of useless information

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.

Hullo. Goodbye.

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.

Free Haircut Friday

This week, our 12th Avenue storefront has been transformed into a dandy little barbershop. And this Friday, it will be a fully operational one. Come by. Get a snazzy hairdo in a real old-timey barber chair while pedestrians gawk at you. It'll be fun.