Well, I decided to share some of a pet project i’ve been working on at lunches and after hours wherever possible.  The idea is to build an interactive walk through of our new office space for customers who haven’t been here before and would like to see the environment we work in.  Now the environment is cool but pretty basic so it’s more about capturing the details

and aesthetics of it all than a “walk through”  really.  To do this, my first choice is going to be to develop the office environment in the Unreal Engine using Maya for the 3d modeling assets and the Engine to handle the first person style walkthrough and all the lighting/rendering bells and whistles.

Here I’m just posting a quick screen cap from Maya to get wet your whistle.  If you want to see more check out the MudBrick Facebook page where we’ll be sharing renders throughout the process as well as development notes etc.  Love to hear any feedback you have or ideas as we go through the build out, should be a lot of fun.

Our  Facebook Fan Page to see future renders and notes!

This was a very interesting perspective on creativity and our adult education.  Definitely worth a watch if your a creative and frustrated by our school just never getting it.

So tell us something, are you a rockstar? Are you so good at what you do, that you just draw attention like a magnet? Well if so we want to talk to you.

MudBrick is currently on a search for a Designer and/or developer who can blow our minds with creativity and quality. In order to help weed out a bit of what we are “NOT” looking for in these two areas, we have provided the information below, feel free to review and see if you have the backbone and desire to join our crew for 2010 and rock the bells!

Designer Criteria

Things we are not looking for are listed below.

1. Any designer with Microsoft Office or any of it’s applications listed on their resume under “Application Proficiencies” or “Skills”

2. Any designer who is “working on their online portfolio”. You either have one and take your profession seriously or you don’t.

3. Any designer with the following terms in their resume or vocabulary “Above Average, I’m Ok at It, I’ve Used It or I had a class in it”.

4. Any designer who doesn’t know what the letters “UI” stand for.

5. Designers who list design awards they may have won in college or through ad clubs, no offense but we’re an interactive agency who take what we do seriously, college is over and ad clubs…well we’ll just leave it at that.

6. Finally, designers who can’t draw.  You need to have at least some rudimentary artistic talent, no seriously….

What We Are Looking For:

1. High quality designers with a thirst for learning.  If you’ve ever thought that learning a 3D app would increase the unreal shit you can do with your work or thought that with the addition of After Effects into your skillset you’re flash work would go to that next level, then you are a candidate! (These are just two of many examples)

2. A designer with personality who’s not afraid to speak up and make their presence felt.  We’re not looking for a mindless automaton who can regurgitate “Helvetica, color theory and grid systems” on command.  We want attitude, personality and the boldness to be an impact player.

3. Finally we want quality work.  In the end if your work kicks ass you know it, and we’ll know it.  Show us your best stuff, kick our teeth in, and make it that we can’t help but add you to the mix.  We want someone who we don’t want to see working at a competitor shop.

Developer Criteria

What We are Not Looking For

1. Any developer who has spent more than 50% of his development life working in cubicle hell or on the same project.  Basically this means all of you comfortable types need not apply.  We want a developer who loves to get dirty with multiple projects, platforms and creative avenues.

2. Any developer who lists anything like “.NET Nuke or PHP Nuke” on their resume.  Sorry, can’t take you seriously.

3. Developers who have been a party to any project that involved taking an off the shelf product, claiming development of it,  and re-branding it.  It doesn’t matter if your boss said it’s genius, in the end it’s that kind of shit that gives developers a bad reputation and paints us all into a hole with customers.

4. Any developer who can’t answer the following question with at least one example and a sample that backs it up: “What MVC’s have you worked with?”  see also: ” What API’s have you worked with?”

What We are Looking For:

1. A developer who knows their shit, but doesn’t feel the need to constantly make everyone else know it.  Know it alls are awesome, know it all’s that don’t beat us to death with their knowledge are a dying breed, know it all’s who constantly give everyone recommendations on “The best way” we should all do things are assholes.  Know your shit and be productive with the knowledge.

2. A developer who says “Hell Yea”, if we throw a game engine in front of them and say we want to use it for a project. We want a developer who isn’t afraid to do something they may have to spend some time learning.  New technology and the possibilities of using it makes us happy in places we don’t talk about at parties too, so be one of those guys who lives for those opportunities.

3. A developer who can speak intelligently.  I know this is a tough one.  Some of you out there grew up i front of CRT’s and didn’t learn the social skills, bottom line, we need to be able to sell not only product and services but “You”  to the customer.  Make eye contact, speak intelligently and don’t stutter, you know your shit, make sure that’s reflected in your demeanor.

Well that about wraps it up. This criteria is just a baseline of course and somewhat humorous baseline at that, but should help you to measure and see if MudBrick would be a good fit for you.  By all means take a chance anyhow and send us your resume and contact info…we’re tough but we’re understanding….

Send resumes and samples to:
getdirty@mudbrickcreative.com

Just thought I’d share these with everyone.  A unique style of video production using what looks like a combination of stop motion and multi track camera’s with some CGI to get a very stylistic look.  Totally awesome stuff and worthy of a blog post to show off what could be a very unique replacement for the old school Bullet Time.

I have to start out by saying i think SEO and social media are useful tools.
I think if done correctly SEO can drive business/traffic to your site and add value.  I think also, that if your social media is on point and you pay attention to it,  it can be a valuable tool to give you insight into your business and your customers needs.  With that out of the way, i can get to what i’d like to talk about, the SEO and Social Media companies that basically sell this as a service full time where it is their business model.  Every time i talk to either a salesman or a CEO of one of these companies i feel like i’m being sold an old Dodge Dart with no warranty.  We get the phone calls consistent,”Sell our Services to Your Customers”.  But in almost every case what we find when we ask why, is a bunch of rhetoric and buzz words with little meat.  Worse still, when you inspect their websites further you find rehashed articles from other sources talking about the importance of the service but nothing that really states what the vendor is really capable of.  It’s annoying.

To put it into perspective a bit, we are a design agency, in order to sell this as a service to our customer, normally we have to prove without a doubt that we will kick ass on their project and that we have the creative chops to overshadow other vendors.  Customers want to see success, value and return on investment.  So why would I be any different?  I don’t want to see articles on your site that someone else has written about keyword density.  Nor do i want to read about the importance of using twitter as a tool for customer service.  Honestly we don’t sell this as a service and we know these things already, what does that say about your service? If your going to call us, claim to be an expert, and want us to use your service you need to be able to show data, and  prove to me you can deliver.  Don’t try and batter a veteran over the head with buzz words,  just because you say it’s important doesn’t mean I’m going to immediately believe you.  It’s almost as annoying as those quickbooks agents that call all the time to sell us support and software.

Last but not lease, get a respectable web presence, if your using a Wordpress as your site, at least get a custom template i haven’t seen 1000 other places.  Take yourself seriously before you expect me to….ok, end of rant!

-Paul

Customers come to us all the time with a need for a new website, a need for shopping cart functionality, blogging and social media.  Customers want high end design and functionality rolled up with a nice little bow on top.  Rarely do they ever approach us with specific technology in mind however.  Usually they have seen a site or two that they like and want to piggy-back off how it works or looks etc.  So as sales people it’s our job to not only inform them, but also spark their imagination a bit.

We have to show the customer what might be possible that they may not have considered.  Give them a choice of how far they would like to push the envelope on their budget.  Rich Internet Applications (RIA’s) are the top end of the interactive spectrum.  Customers being able to truly interact with your site will bring them back.  Not only will it bring them back but it will get them to recommend a site to others.  And that’s the golden egg. RIA-infused websites can mix dynamically sourced data, video, audio and other rich media creating better user experiences and return on investment for organizations deploying RIA solutions.

So what does having a RIA site give you? For one, a much more intuitive experience for your users if done correctly.  Not only can they interact with the site on a much broader level, but you can delver to them rich media content.  Let the user watch an embedded video in the section they are viewing and make it a seamless piece.  It’s all about engaging the user.  Sleek streamlined interfaces with custom controls and interactive elements to tie them all together.  Why wouldn’t you build a site this way?

Cost, it’s all about the dollars usually.  We’re not here to say it’s cheap, or that this type of site is even for everyone, but if you take a look at the samples below and think about the overall success your site could have it’s worth considering.  The nice part is it only takes a phone call and some discussion to find out just how much this kind of development project will cost and if it fits within your budget.

Some good RIA Examples:

http://nikeid.nike.com
http://www.scion.com/#home
http://www.scion.com/rsxd/
http://www.fastandfuriousmovie.net/index.html
http://www.smallworlds.com
http://listen.grooveshark.com/

-Paul

We’ve been noticing more and more lately, at least on a local level, that some design shops do their best to either downplay Flash or totally avoid it entirely.  They talk to the masses, extoling the virtues of simplicity and a more non-interactive approach.   They speak about it like it’s a bad thing to have high impact graphics or a rich user interface.

Personally when i hear things like this, it brings to mind the old George Carlin comedy bit regarding people who complain about abortion being people you wouldn’t want to sleep with in the first place.  The only reason to downplay this technology that is starting to truly permeate the web, is if you can’t do it.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using flash as part of the development of a website.  Many developers will use the SEO angle or lack there-of, to explain away using flash.  That argument holds little or no water anymore (see…http://www.adobe.com/devnet/seo/).  There is plenty of info on making your RIA SEO friendly.

So customers don’t be afraid, MudBrick’s got your back on the Flash side.

To all the fellow designers that read this blog. 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU9YeOQm3Y0

-Tyler

DJ Mad Hatter Productions

I just finished up knocking out a couple comps for our buddy Mad Hatter Productions. There is a couple liberating aspects to this project, first off every DJ site I have ever seen looks like digital diarrhea, so it feels great to actually get my hands on one and make it look like a professional is behind the turn tables. Another really cool part of this project is that Mad Hatter deals with the majority of the DJs you see at the night clubs throughout downtown harrisburg, so the “HEY DJ” feature I came up with yesterday is going to be super slick. Basically it works like this, say your heading out to the clubs and you have a couple song requests, its almost impossible to request a song to a DJ in a crowded loud club but if you use this feature you can send a request straight to the DJ even before you go out so its all ready in the mix when you get there. And you could do this for multiple locations on the same night so if you bar hopping then your covered. I can’t wait to get this bad boy live.

Well last nite in my search across the Internet for new and innovative ways to assist our customers i came across a little gem on Yahoo.  Yahoo of course sells tons of banner ad placement for their customers for everything you can think of.  In this case we have a banner ad done for HP which if I didn’t know better looks like it was done with papervision as the interface reacts to mouse placement and rollover on the screen exactly the same as WhiteVoid’s killer UI. (http://www.whitevoid.com/application.html)

Anyhow check it out.  Very cool stuff and a technology that MudBrick is digging our grubby little fingers into slowly.

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