When I lived in New York I was always drawn to the Flat Iron Building. I couldn't really explain why, but there was just something about it I always loved. Then while talking to my mom one day she told me that her dad used to have an office in the building. More than likely a coincidence, but a nice one regardless.
I took a photo of the building years ago and decided to illustrate it.
I posted about my AIDC boxes on LinkedIn last week and the post had a minor blowup. 30k+ views and almost 250 likes with lots of well wishes and compliments. Not too bad for the investment.
If everyone is focusing on cold emailing and LinkedIn messages to reach out to people, maybe the way to cut through is to get something physical in their hands.
Enter the Artificial Intelligence Directors Club, a parody of the Art Directors Club. I built a welcome kit of sorts and targeted five high-level creatives at some of the top agencies in Los Angeles.
The AI Directors Club has created an AI based on each creative's career and that AI is being inducted into the inaugural class. The kit then invites the creatives to meet their AI doppelgänger (pictured in the included photo) by scanning a QR code. Once scanned, they are taken to a hidden page on my website with a personalized message, some bullet points about myself and my portfolio. An added advantage was that my site analytics could track if/when each journey was completed.
Each box took about 3-4 hours to make with an additional 2 hours each assembling all the other physical and digital components. Each base box was purchased from Michael’s for $7. I created a stencil of the design on card stock and then traced it onto each box. I then wood burned and carved the design before staining and lacquering each.
I used Brothers as my base font for the insert and modified it for the first name while leaving it standard for the last. I filled them with hatching to create texture. Four of the kits were oriented vertically with one horizontal, the insert layout was adjusted accordingly. I shredded black and white card stock (4:1 ratio) to create the base the frames would rest on. I used twine to secure each box closed and then attached a hand cut tag.
The portraits were made with Midjourney and finished in Photoshop. The frames were purchased off Amazon for $7 each.
The boxes went out on April 11. I dressed up as a courier and drove to each agency. Apparently nobody questions you if you are holding a clipboard and a semi-official looking form.
As of present 4 of the 5 recipients opened the box and scanned the QR code. That's nearly twice the standard open rate for most direct mail campaigns (42.2% according to the Print and Mail Communications Association). The open rate for e-mails is around 21.5%. I also talked to a recruiter from one of the agencies two days after I posted about the boxes.
Was at my in-laws last night and had my iPad so I started a doodle in Procreate and it turned into this.
For a few weeks now I'd been discussing with friends my frustration with agency leaders who had been dead quiet on what was happening in the industry right now. After some encouragement from my friend TJ Bennett I decided to go ahead and write about it.
I do wonder if me speaking up about about issues I see in the industry makes things harder on myself in terms of finding work, but I'm not the type to shy away from hard discussions. After all, we can't fix things we don't want to talk about.
It seems to have struck a chord though with over 13k views and 160+ likes. Apparently I wasn't the only person who had noticed.
I wanted a better way to show off my generative AI abilities so I built a new page on my site to showcase the things I've made. I also made a new image in my series of my daughter after a few months of not adding to it. You can see the page here and the new image below.
I've been playing with motion graphics on and off for like 11 years now. I wouldn't say I'm great at it by any means, but over time you do tend to pick up little things that can add up.
So maybe I'm not as terrible as I think, but I can at least do basic stuff. Or rather, I can figure out ways to make certain things in a way that I actually know how to do them. It's probably like this for a lot of people across different skill sets though. Nothing is super complicated if you have enough random know how to figure out how to deconstruct it and put it back together with the toolbox you have.
Took some time to digitally draw/paint a photo I found of San Francisco. Made this in Procreate.
Last week Squarespace posted about a new Sr. Art Director position in LA and honestly, on paper it'd be a great match for me. But none of that matters if I can't get an interview. So on Friday I threw together a page on Squarespace to make the case for why I'd be the perfect candidate. It mostly has to do with my history of designing websites (not professionally) and understanding the target demo. Plus to really make the point it took me less than an hour to get the page up. I posted it to LinkedIn today and broke 100 likes, whether or not that'll make a difference is yet to be scene.
It does bring up an interesting philosophical question though. The page received a good bit of traffic and a lot of messages of support telling me they loved the idea. Are stunts like these zero sum games in terms of success? If I don't get an interview out of it from Squarespace, is it a complete failure? Does grabbing the attention of other creatives mitigate that if I don't? We'll find out I suppose.
Despite the lack of updates since mid-December, I've actually been keeping myself fairly busy. The second half of January was dedicated to getting some stuff for Side Show online.
I had this idea awhile back for a resource library since people make helpful tools all the time, post them on LinkedIn, and then you can't find them a few months later. You can see that here.
I also wanted to create an updated database of all the agencies I could find across the country. I started making a list, broken down by state and city and was able to get that launched as well. That is part of The Library that can be found here.
Hope you'll check 'em out.
I wanted to make an invite for a birthday party I was putting together and ended up with this. For the record, the party didn't happen. I had to cancel after our babysitter got Covid and we couldn't find a new one. Bummer.
I like using Reddit to gauge my different theories about social media, how people use it and what they gravitate towards. Obviously, different communities will like different things but as a whole Reddit has some of the most skeptical users on the internet. I pulled a photo I shot at some point last year and posted it and sure enough it hit the top spot.
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