iPhone from the Future

I know I just swore off Apple a few posts below, but I am cheating on my Vista PC with my new iPhone. I have been sneaking around surfing the web with real handheld browser, checking my email and taking great pictures. I can't believe that some people are out there bashing this device. It is truly amazing. Ra ra ra! Go Apple! I think my PC is suspecting something - gotta go.

The Von Maxwell Family Singers

I went way out of my comfort zone on this one. I have been taking Speech Level Singing lessons for a few months and a few nights ago was my first recital. I sang Round Here by the Counting Crows in an ampitheater at Wheeler Farm. It was a rush - I did pretty well considering I have never been a singer. My relatives (also shown but smaller because this blog is about ME) also did well - much better than me by a mile.

Afternoon with Travis Pastrana

Working on nitrocircus.com has been a blast. They are the best clients ever and there are a few perks. The most recent one was spending the afternoon with the Nitro Circus crew and Travis Pastrana. I was a little freaked out first meeting him, but after a few minutes I felt more comfortable because he is such a nice guy. We were doing a green screen shoot for his upcoming biographical film. I got to watch him for about 4 hours as they shot different green screen scenes and angles. He is a very good ad libber. I told him I thought he was good at it and I think he thought I was just kissing up. He sat by me for a while and I showed him my designs for a new site I am doing for them and he was very complimentary and genuinely interested. Also, a funny thing happened during the shoot. A cricket kept chirping on the soundstage that we were shooting in. I became the "cricket wrangler", walking around between takes clapping my hands trying to spook the cricket into submission. The reason I was there was to have Travis do a favor for me - I asked him to shoot soundbite for my upcoming Flashforward Film Festival Trailer. He did a great job heckling the other nominees - Travis style. The guy has class.

New Blog for My 3D Engine

Have you seen http://www.nitrocircus.com and wondered how I did the 3D effects? Well, have I got a blog for you! http://mattmaxwell3dengine.blogspot.com. I will be adding to it as time progresses. Check it out!

Flash Forward Nominee: NitroCircus.com!

The good news: My nitrocircus.com site and 3D engine is one of four finalists at FlashForward Boston! The bad news: I am up against Papervision3D. Papervision3D is an opensource 3D engine for Flash that is very powerful, has lots of support, and is very popular. I wish they would have put Papervision in the Technical Merit category, but that's life. And I still haven't seen too many implementations of PaperVision. Just a shark that swims around with nothing to click on. Still, it's an honor to go up against it. Please vote for NitroCircus (even though Papervision probably deserves it more - sort of David and Goliath here)

Richter7 Rumble Hardware

I designed the website component for a campaign (Richter7 Rumble) that won a national Gold Addy award. The inscription says:

2007 Gold Addy Award
Presented to Richter7
Self Promotion National Campaign
For Richter7, Richter7 Rumble Campaign

Nitro Circus Awards

Nitro Circus has far exceeded my expectations. So far it has been featured on 9 Flash award site home pages and was actually #16 last week on DesignCharts.com. What really makes this nice is that I just got an email from Adobe telling me that they have awarded it Site of the Day! This will appear on Adobe.com's home page and will then live in their archives forever. Thanks to Hugh and Jeremy for letting me work on this awesome project.

nitrocircus.com launches

I just launched something that I have been living and breathing for the last 2 months. This revolutionary Flash 3D engine and web site (www.nitrocircus.com) allows Flash elements to move naturally for the first time in 3D space. It uses a true 3D calculation engine for positioning and sizing of elements and it even includes distance-based illumination which adds to the illusion of depth. Every corner of this site is handcrafted to capture the quirky reckless rawness of the Nitro Circus brand and its unusual, colorful personalities (you have to see their DVDs to understand this site). The center of attention is Travis Pastrana, a superstar in the motocross and extreme sports world. He's the only guy in history to ever land a double back flip on a motorcycle. I went way over budget on this and enjoyed every minute of it.

Break Free Vocal Studio

My wife has been taking Speech Level Singing for over a year and has decided to start training to be certified SLS instructor. She has just christened a new studio complete with an amp, guitars, microphone, and keyboard. She will also be attending a 10 day SLS workshop in Los Angeles where she will rub shoulders with Seth Riggs (the inventor of this method) and other music industry greats. She has been asking me to prepare a logo for her venture for some time and I finally completed it. I am also her first student. I have been studying for a few months now and it is amazing how my voice has improved. I have never been a good singer, but lately I am starting to think I could be.

Father 15

Just completed 15 years of being a father. This lovely noggin ornamentational embellishment was expertly crafted by one of my beloved offspring. Being a father is awesome. Very satisfying. My kids are growing up fast and I am getting more clueless as I get older, but they tell me that's normal.

Darth Hybrid

Well, I get 51 mpg now - and get to use the HOV lane. I got a 2007 Toyota Prius. Feels good to be environmentally responsible.

“Today will be a day long remembered. It has seen the death of Corolla, and will soon see the end of the Chevron.”

National 2007 Gold Addy Award

I was honored with a gold Addy at the national level! Jeremy Oviatt and I collaborated on this campaign which included posters and an online Flash invitation. As an agency we did really well:


Gina Bachauer newspaper campaign Gold ADDY® Award
Lehi Roller Mills Syrup Label Series Silver ADDY® Award
SonicScrubber Street Cleaner poster Silver ADDY® Award
Richter7 Rumble mixed media campaign Gold ADDY® Award
Gina Bachauer poster campaign Gold ADDY® Award
Hogle Zoo ''Kitty Litter'' Poster Silver ADDY® Award

To give a little perspective, there were only four other awards given to Utah agencies, and they were all silvers. Also, agencies in our district won a total of 16 awards (5 gold and 11 silvers). In addition (okay, now it sounds like we're just bragging), we beat out several nationally recognized agencies like Carmichael Lynch, DeVito/Verdi, Team One, Ogilvy & Mather, DDB, etc. And we also came dangerously close to giant creative powerhouses like BBDO, Arnold, Saatchi & Saatchi NY and Leo Burnett. So congratulations to all.

No Longer an Apple Disciple

Well, this may come to you all (the three or so people that read my blog) as a shock, but I sold all of my Macs and bought a PC. I have been a Mac follower 1983 when my dad bought an Apple Lisa. I got my first job using Mac SE-30s, and I have been a Mac faithful ever since - until recently. Here are my top ten reasons why I went to Windows:

1. I was needing a new computer recently and the new Mac I wanted was $2500. A PC notebook at Costco with the same specs was $950 - and included a free carrying case, an extra power supply, an extra cordless mouse and a two year warranty!

2. I realized that Steve Jobs is just a good salesman. I was under his spell. Things that he has claimed to be Mac firsts over the years were exaggerations.

3. PCs are faster. Flash is dog slow on Macs. The software that I use works better on PC.

4. I refuse to pay $130 for a Mac power supply and $50 for a Mighty Mouse that is beautiful but very hard to use.

5. All of the new features on OSX of late are just bells and whistles that I will never use (Time Machine, Widgets, etc.)

6. I AM TIRED OF BEING DIFFERENT! No matter how much Apple claims, Macs are NOT compatible with PCs. If you don't believe me, just try and format an external drive to work with both a Mac and a PC. Microsoft Office files, fonts, and a lot of other stuff open inaccurately on a Mac.

7. Vista is awesome! Everything works and it is much more user friendly that OSX. When you plug a monitor in for example, a nice screen comes up and visually shows you what you can do with that monitor - and it remembers the next time you connect it. No fiddling with the fuction key to get the monitor to work.

8. It links to my XBOX 360 - seamlessly - I immediately knew what to to and now I can see pictures and videos from my PC on my HDTV wirelessly.

9. I get to watch designers who are still under the Mac spell squirm and look down their noses at me like, "you poor apostate, how could you have forsaken Steve - you are no longer a real designer. Only real designers use Macs."

10. I can use all of the software and games that were not available for the Mac. The selection is enourmous.

My Claim to Fame

I made it into Time Magazine - sort of. My bald spot made it. My dad was lucky enough to turn his head when the picture was taken. Thanks, Mitt for this moment in the spotlight.

Adobe CS3

Just got CS3 in the mail and installed it in Vista and it is awesome. They have really improved the user interface of Flash, Photoshop, and Illustrator. They are all very alike now and easier to use.

Flash CS3 is worth the upgrade cost alone. The palettes can be turned into a osX style dock of icons that collapse on the edge of the screen when not being used. The tools pallette can now be shown in one column instead of two. These two things recover about 40% of the screen real estate on my laptop. There is now a lot more room on the screen for the stage and timeline and I open the spring loaded pallettes as I need them then they spring back into icon form when I am done. There are tons of other enhancements that make using Flash 8 here at work excruciating.

The only thing that concerns me is that ActionScript 3.0 is very geeky now an a lot less intuitive for regular people. I understand why they did it, but I am afrait that they have geeked it so much that it will turn off designers. I personally am freaking out that it is now too elaborate and tedious for my brain power to handle - and I am a really proficiant ActionScripter.

Overall, CS3 is a very cohesive-feeling package. Adobe did a great job on this one.

Newpark Resort

We just launched our latest web site. This site was designed to promote Newpark Resort, which is a condo rental community and modern town center near Kimball Junction in Park City. The home page is an interactive introduction to the resort and there are some nice picture flipper flash modules in the Virtual Tour section.

Richter7 Medal Count

Saturday night's ADDY Awards went very well for Richter7. We won awards for 13 clients (the next nearest agencies tied with 5 each). We won 12 golds (the next nearest agencies tied with 8 each). We won 40 silvers (the next nearest agency received 21). And we received a total of 52 awards (the next nearest received 24 total). We also got a special judges award for the Gina Bachauer campaign.

We have a lot to be proud of--especially the fact that so many of our clients were represented in the show. Specific awards (golds and silvers) are subjective, but winning that many awards is a very good indication of overall quality and a great effort. So congratulations to everyone.

Four Silver Interactive Addys this Year

Richter7 did very well last night at the annual Utah Advertising Federation Addy awards. We out-medaled every other agency in town and scored four interactive silvers this year. I was involved in some way on all of these. I designed and programmed the Rumble invitation.

Polynesian Cultural Center Banner Campaign
Richter7 Rumble Invitation
BSD Flowers for Hope
Polynesian Cultural Center Web Site

George Orwell Writing Tips

George Orwell has earned the right to be called one of the finer writers in the English language through such novels as 1984 and Animal Farm, such essays as “Shooting an Elephant,” and his memoir Down and Out in Paris.

George expressed a strong dislike of totalitarian governments in his work, but he was also passionate defender of good writing. Thus, you may want to hear some of George’s writing tips.*

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

One can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

* From “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell.

On TV with Big Budha

Got up early and went to the fairgrounds to participate in the Utah Advertising Federation Addys Peoples Choice event. We were put into groups with members of other ad agencies and Big Budha gave us an idea for an ad campaign. Our assignment was to invent a Big Budha diet program. After brainstorming and drawing for a few hours, we ended up with the Budha Blender. At the last minute I got roped into presenting our concept on live TV. I didn't screw up, but I looked like a nerd. It was kind of weird to see myself on TV.