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We’re excited to announce the selection of the AOL Giving Good Campaign as an Official Honoree of the 16th Annual Webby Awards in the Corporate Social Responsibility Campaigns category.
Blue Collar wins Gold ADDY Award for Fontfuse Launch Campaign
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We’re excited to announce that Blue Collar clinched a Gold ADDY Award for our Extensis WebINK Fontfuse Launch Campaign!
The now-defunct Extensis logo
This past summer, Extensis asked BC to re-imagine their brand identity. Over the past 20 years or so, the brand has been a household name among graphic designers, most well known for their popular font management software, Suitcase. Given how embedded Extensis has been to an extremely opinionated and cynical audience, we understood the gravity of getting it right. At Blue Collar, we believe in bringing the best people to the team for maximum horsepower. In this case, we collaborated with the talented creatives at Owen Jones & Partners.
Last week, Tom and I made a full moon trek down to Eugene, OR for a “Personal Raptor Experience” at the Cascade Raptor Center. Neither of us had been before and the experience with the birds and the people was amazing. The Cascade Raptor Center does two important things. First, they have a medical rehabilitation center where they see and treat between 150-200 sick, injured and orphaned birds of prey each year. Second, they have a robust educational center with about 65 permanent residents who live in large outdoor aviaries surrounded by woods and wildlife.
Screech Owl in rehabilitation at the Cascade Raptor Center
Since my partners and I created Blue Collar Interactive, we have lived our philosophy of tackling every challenge head-on, without fear or reservation. This approach is one that my colleagues and I have always agreed on without debate. It’s just what makes us tick. Does this approach come with a significant level of risk? Would we be where we are today without having held ourselves accountable to this model?
The answers to these questions are found within the daily challenges we face while developing a cutting-edge digital agency. Our perseverance is often tested, but one particular example stands out in my mind as an important milestone in our evolution.
Why is it that some ad agencies cloak the loss of an important client? Is it the feared reflection of a failed relationship? Or driven by concern for the agency image in a rumor-hungry industry? Perhaps it comes from concern of degraded morale amongst the troops. These very legitimate concerns are likely the driving factors behind an agency’s actions.
We are Blue Collar working in a white-collar world.
While there is a general perception in our industry that great creative is a high-octane commodity, the effort it takes to make the secret sauce is commonly underestimated. While some get what it takes to develop a strong creative concept or design, few truly realize how painstaking a process it can be to get there.
Be it a motion design piece, email campaign, website design or brand identity project, one cannot think about the end-result before taking inventory of the projects’ key components. Great creative requires 100% focus on the details of refinement.
The process typically starts with raw asset assessment. What do we have to work with? Is there existing materials or is a photo shoot necessary? How will the copy be written and how will it dance with the visuals? What’s the application of usage? How do technical specifications carry the quality through execution?
Perhaps none of these creative tasks are as important as unswerving focus on the details. The creative process must consider every option for refinement, such as type selection, consistent use of design elements, alignment on the grid or balance of image compression.
Like the shiny Cragars, the vinyl top is essential to the classic look of the Charger.
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Blue Collar is excited to introduce our new Director of Business Development, John Burton. A transplant from Maine to Oregon in 1998, John calls the Northwest home, and as you’ll see in the photos in this post, he loves water! Whether he’s pitching a Board of Directors or formulating strategy for potential clients over lunch, John’s got an easy going attitude, sales and marketing roots and a passion for the digital space. Learn more about him with a little John Q&A.
How did you get involved with Blue Collar?
I’ve worked with each of the founding partners in the past, on both the agency and action sports side. It was a very organic migration—it just made sense. Besides, we were skiing and biking together anyway.
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In the spirit of the blue collar hero, we’d like to present Miir with The Balboa, an award bestowed to brands that stand toe-to-toe with challenges and overcome them with creative thinking and good, old-fashioned elbow grease.
Thanks for helping solve the world's water crisis, Drop by Drop
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Did you know that today, nearly 1 billion people lack access to clean, safe drinking water? They can’t just turn on the tap like you and I. Everyday, women and children walk up to 6 hours to the nearest water source and carry a 40-lb load of water back to their village. The worst part about it is that the water they collect and carry is likely contaminated and will probably make their family sick. In fact, every 19 seconds, a mother loses a child to a water-related illness.
This past holiday, we decided to do something to help solve the global water crisis, so we created Drop by Drop—a Charity Water campaign to raise $5,000 and give 250 people clean water for life.
During the course of the 90-day campaign, we achieved 60% of our goal, and raised $2,920. Together, we provided 146 people with clean water for life. This gift goes deeper than clean drinking water—it allows little girls to go to school instead of collecting water. It’s all about the growing the opportunity for success of future generations.
A ginormous THANK YOU to everyone who donated to Drop by Drop. Even though it’s a small contribution in the grand scheme of things, Blue Collar is committed to helping make the world a better place—one good deed at a time.
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. ~Helen Keller
2011 was a year of perseverance, hard work and growth. As our team fills out, it’s critical that we make really awesome Kool-Aid® and serve it up right (a.k.a. Work really hard to grow a like-minded team of experts, and take care of them). Our Work First mentality keeps us focused on doing the best job possible, and our collective passion and drive keeps it fun.
Our work—growing our clients business