If the quality of the design surrounding an F1 team was a key variable to the performance of the car; Marussia Virgin Racing would be winning races. Visit the POKE portfolio for more info.
Company culture
In the article Culture Club, Andy Polaine combines his excessive agency experience with his curiosity to what makes some of these agency a success and other… less so.
The initial insight is that it’s not down to a process — many agencies have a same process and that it’s rarely unique. No, the assets that seems to set them apart is; a great company culture.
It’s lovely to see that Andy mentions POKE as an example. I had the pleasure to work at POKE for nearly 5 years, and during all those years I did have loads of fun as well as given the chance and opportunity to do good challenging work.
The quote below is polled from the article, and I think it highlights one important piece in the puzzle — diversity in personalities.
Simon Waterfall, ex- co-founder and creative director of Poke and founder of fashion label, Social Suicide, previously explained that Poke made a particular effort to choose its mix of staff. “You never want to have three people the same, because they can all do the same thing,” he advised. “When you see something that you can do, there are only two responses. One is, ‘Ooh! That’s better than I can do [it],’ or ‘Oh, that’s worse than I can do it’. When you see something in a completely new field by someone else, something in you goes back to that childhood experience of, ‘F**k me! How did you make that?!’ You’re allowed to be generous of spirit, you’re allowed to have that wonderment. Choosing the most diverse group so that they don’t step on each other’s toes and have enough goodwill to be able to work together – that’s great.”
The photo I’ve chosen to go with this post is taken by Marc Davies on a day when the POKE office decided to rename the company to the initials of the partners (RFB&H) and dress up as if they were an Ad agency in New York during the 60′s (Mad Men inspired). I had left POKE when they had this day, but this wasn’t a “one-off”. I remembered one week when the whole studio were color coordinated. If I remember correctly, the Red Day was rather intense.
Shaping a company culture
Culture Club is an interesting article by Andy Polaine. In the article Andy mentions POKE as an example of an agency who have managed to create a great company culture. I concur.
“You never want to have three people the same, because they can all do the same thing,” he [Simon Waterfall] advised. “When you see something that you can do, there are only two responses. One is, ‘Ooh! That’s better than I can do [it],’ or ‘Oh, that’s worse than I can do it’. When you see something in a completely new field by someone else, something in you goes back to that childhood experience of, ‘F**k me! How did you make that?!’ You’re allowed to be generous of spirit, you’re allowed to have that wonderment. Choosing the most diverse group so that they don’t step on each other’s toes and have enough goodwill to be able to work together – that’s great.”
Lee Alexander McQueen
On the 11 of February the world lost a visionary — fashion designer Lee Alexander McQueen. Truly truly sad. We are in need of more people like Mr McQueen, not less.
I had a pleasure to work for him while being part of the small team at POKE who designed and build the previous incarnation of www.alexandermcqueen.com. The project ended up winning several awards, including a BAFTA for best design. I like to believe that the magic ingredients in the project was that we adopted his extreme attention to details.
To me Lee Alexander McQueen was a source of inspiration. Someone who made his own path. Paved his own road. Took no shortcuts. He also managed to find a healthy balance of being both artist and designer. Which, sadly, isn’t the easiest thing to pull off.
David Elsewhere and Motorola
One of my last projects at POKE was to design and build a tiny page for Motorola. The website ended up being quite a bit smaller, quite a bit different and took quite a bit longer to finish than initially planned. This is the kind of thing that might happen when dealing with large bureaucratic companies across the atlantic. However, the most important ingredient in this creative execution wasn’t the website though.
To demonstrate the features of the new Motorola E8, Poke enlisted the help of legendary mover David Elsewhere (to call him a dancer doesn’t really describe the half of it). We worked with Motorola to find a way that could combine content and product demo in a fresh way. Maybe even making it interesting enough that people might talk about (and distribute) a product demo…
And yes (before you ask); David Elsewhere has been used/seen in advertising before. Most famously the VW Golf remake on Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in the Rain dance. But browse youtube and you will find quite a few more.
To have a look at the website and the other four new videos of David Elsewhere visit:
http://direct.motorola.com/hellomoto/rokre8/experience/
Day 1727
Friday two weeks ago, 4th of July, was my 1727 day, and last, at POKE. For the day I made a special t-shirt to mark the occasion. A t-shirt listing the time elapsed since I joined in different formats. From top to bottom: 149212800 seconds, 2486880 minutes, 41448 hours, 1727 days, 246 weeks, 56.57 months and 4.71 years.
Sooooooo… Bye, Bye, Miss Shepards Pie
After 5 years in London. I’m leaving. I’m leaving POKE. I’m leaving London. I’m leaving England. I’m not leaving Europe, though.
Willow and I have had thoughts for quite some time about “going somewhere else for a while“. I, being half Swedish half Italian; living in England, have had the fortune of working and living in an unfamiliar culture and therefor find a lot of insight and enjoyment in the smaller things. Willow, on the other hand, is half English half American living and working in England.
When we’ve discussed about potential destinations we have loosely talked about New York, San Francisco, Vancouver, Oslo, Zürich and Genéve. The tricky bit has been work and languages. I speak three languages (Swedish, Italian and English) and Willow speaks two (English and French). We agreed that for both of us to learn a new language would be too much of an undertaking. I think the strongest contender was Vancouver.
But then I suggested Willow should apply to a masters at Konstfack in Stockholm, Sweden… and she got in!
The program, titled Experience Design, is a interdisciplinary course over two years.
Sounds amazing and i’m jealous.
So, in August, Willow and I are moving to Stockholm.
We still haven’t found a place to stay. So anything is of interest. We are probably looking for something in the outskirts, but that’s cycling distance to Sodermalm. Preferable a part of a villa with a garden for the cat and parking for the car we are planning to buy and drive over.
I am also in need of a job. So again, anything is of interest. I am looking for opportunities to work with creative people on challenging projects. I am open to all possibilities, that require an experienced online / new media person. This includes, digital agencies, freelance, client-side and advertising agencies.
Willow will probably be up for some freelance between all the studies as well, so please have a look at our portfolios, Willows on doublevay.com
and mine on portfolio.nuzzaci.com.
I’m really exited about all this. It definitely spiced up 2008.
Obviously i’m extremely sad about leaving all my friends and POKE behind. 5 years is a long time. You don’t stay in one place for 5 years unless you really like it.
I know from experience that it’s hard (or even impossible) to keep in touch when your living far apart, let alone in another country. It’s true you know — long distance relationships never really work out. My friends in Sweden know that. So does my ex-girlfriend. But with some people there has grown a special bond, and i’m sure that when i’m over in the UK, we will pick up where we left off as if I’d never even left. My friends in Sweden know that. Not sure my ex-girlfriend does, though. ;)
The World’s first internet ballon race
I’m personally not involved in this one, but many of my friends and co-workers are working their asses off to make this project happen.
The lead flash developer on the project, Derek ‘Dezza’ McKenna, told me at lunch time that this will be the last ever project where he incorporates a countdown on the pre-launch website – a countdown that simultaneously reminds him every time he looks at the site how the deadline is creeping closer and closer and closer….
tick tock tick tock.
playballoonacy.com will be special.
Ottolenghi
Through POKE I was given the lovely opportunity to work with the great people at Ottolenghi and help them to design and build their new website. When working for a medium-sized company such as POKE (approx. 50ppl), where larger clients take up the majority of studio time, these kind of smaller/independent clients and projects come as a long awaited breeze of fresh air on a hot summers day.
A few words on the design:
Working with the Ottolenghi brand was difficult — or maybe ‘challenging’ is the correct phrase. They are very minimalistic but still carry a personality. So the difficulty / challenge was to keep it very slimmed-down but still engaging.
The above screen is of the current homepage.
The design is based around a simple 8 column grid (show / hide grid). I decided to left align the page to give use of the browser edge for a “full bleed” photographic treatment. Another repeating photographic treatment is the overlaying and slightly anti-top-aligned treatment that can be seen on all top level pages (except the blog) and on recipes where images are in portrait instead of horizontal format.
A few words on the build:
I also did the front end build of the site, while the back-end was delivered by Nilesh Ashra. It was my first project using the jQuery javascript library and the first project i’ve been involved with that uses the “Death Star”, which is a Model-View-Controller approached PHP framework developed by Igor Clark and Nilesh.
If I knew what I know now, I would probably have used the MooTools 1.2 (currently in beta) javascript framework instead of jQuery 1.2.3. Not because jQuery didn’t get the job done or was hard to work with; at the time I hadn’t tried either of them, or given jQuery a chance. Since then I have worked on another project and given MooTools a chance and it turns out that MooTool suits me a bit better.
Working with Nilesh and the “Death Star” framework worked out great. It made me hungry for more Model-View-Controller approached PHP and I am now looking into what codeigniter can do to please that part of my brain.
So, wrapping up,
I’m pleased with the result and the project was a real pleasure to work on. No other client has offered me such good meeting snacks and lunches as Ottolenghi.
One of the few downsides about working on this project was that it kept me constantly hungry. I thought that working on the GoodFood website last year had made me immune to fooling my body that the glycogen level of the liver has fallen and activating the hunger feeling by looking at food photos on screen.
Thankfully, in a few weeks, their new cookbook will be out (which I have flipped through and can confirm looks amazing) so that Willow and I can cook all the dishes I have been drooling at for the last couple of months.
