Things have been rolling along in Chicago. The career is underway, and it was time to try something new…

If you know me, I’m a big (BIG) fan of <a href=”http://www.devour.com”>devour.com</a>, which got me thinking… why is there nothing like this for the ad world? There are bazillions of ad sites full of annoying opinions, drawn out blog posts and pages of comments. Why isn’t there a simple site that posts the best commercials, with no BS?

A couple weeks and a few outsourced hours to a Sri Lankan-friend later and Adnomaly.tv was born. The response so far has been good and it will be fun to grow the site over the next month or two to see where we get.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

A cool post I found via @barbariangroup. Amazingly well done infographic about the bloodlines of virtually every advertising agency around.

via vitamintalent.com

Last June I put up a Facebook PSD template for designers and art directors. Turns out I wasn’t the only one with a need for a fully editable Facebook PSD template.

Anyways, Facebook has changed the layout a little bit lately. I had a bit of free time so I created an updated (all new) PSD template to download. Download and enjoy it!

The new template features fully editable text on everything from the Ads to the search bar. I also included every major type of wall post: Text, Youtube Video, Wall Photos, Picture Uploads and even an editable poll.

Everything is easily moveable and editable with guidelines as well. Enjoy!

Download Here

This time: More focused. More work. More awesome.

Its been a little while since the last update and it was about time to get the new work online. Hope you enjoy it! (There will be some tweaks soon including a mobile version)

I’m pumped to share that I’ve won a few advertising awards over the past semester from ADC, The ADDY’s and the Dshow!

Patrick Seidel and I were named ArtDirectorsClub National Merit winners for the Popcorn, Indiana: Tips for your Maximum Enjoyment Campaign.

At the AAF-ADDY awards, Sharpie: Drawing in Public took home the first student gold for best in show. The second student gold was for my work on Motorola Exist: Social by Nature, along with my teammates: Rebecca Frick and Bruna Camargo.

I also talked about going to the D show this past winter, but I never posted up the results. I ended up walking away with two ‘Student Best of Show’ awards: One for Innovative media with the Sharpie: Drawing in Public Campaign, and one for Craft/Special Effects with Car Jumping.

Overall, I am honored to walk away with five new awards this semester. Congrats to my teammates and classmates who also had a great final semester!

I’m getting the new portfolio together and ready to launch. In the mean time, I just finished up my 2011 Showreel and added some new campaigns (Popcorn, Indiana and Motorola Exist) and also through in some stuff I’ve never shown before! Check it out.

–Inspiration–

The CSS Awards

Think the FWA for web standards/for the rest of us. The CSS awards is a gallery of some of the best all around websites out there. They take all categories into account, from Design, to UX and coding, and then rate them. It is a great source for Inspiration as well as checking out up and coming trends.

The FWA

Speaking of the FWA, it is also a great place to pull some inspiration. Another daily gallery of premier websites on the web. It is mostly dominated by flash websites though. Cool stuff on here nonetheless.

Inspiration Feed

A site dedicated to giving you inspiration. Updated on a very regular basis with a lot of “Top #” lists. A great resource for logo design inspiration as well.

–Design Blogs–

Smashing Magazine

Probably the best design blog of them all. Smashing Magazine always has in depth, interesting articles on all aspects of web design and development. They also have one of the best twitter feeds around! Absolutely worth a follow.

Six Revisions

This blog leans more towards development than design. Updated frequently and it has a lot of great articles for breaking into new web languages.

The Design Cubicle

Brian Hoff is a brilliant mind when it comes to anything design. The design cubicle may not update with new articles every day, but you can bet the articles are in depth and very thought out.

Web Designer Depot

Another very popular web design blog with a huge following of it’s own. Great articles and frequent updates.

Astheria

Kyle Meyer’s personal blog with some great, in depth design case studies and articles.

–Tutorials, Templates and Other Sites–

Computer Arts

A UK based magazine with a HUGE database of tutorials on almost any design software you can imagine. Computer Arts is also an amazing magazine in print form if you can find it here in the US.

TutorialZine

Web development tutorials, resources, and articles.

I’m honored to say that I’ve been nominated in 3 categories for the 2010 D Show, Detroit’s premier advertising awards show!

The first nomination is for the Dr Pepper’s Area 23 Campaign, and is in the Integrated Branding Campaign category. The second, the Sharpie “Be Heard” Campaign for Innovative Marketing Communications. Finally, Car Jumping for Video/Special Effects. Wish me luck!

I’ve also been brought on by Doner Advertising here in Detroit as a new creative intern for the Fall. I’ll be working there as well as finishing up school.

Seth Priebatsch’s TED talk on ‘The Game Layer’ was just released. Could this game layer the answer for interactive advertising looking forward?

Priebatsch makes an important distinction between the Social Layer — owned by Facebook and built by many over the past decade — and the Game Layer, which will be built over the next decade.

It seems that every brand is obsessed with being social, and ruthlessly hurling themselves into the Twitter and Facebook echo-chamber by any means possible. Now we already know that throwing yourself into social media without a plan is a recipe for failure, but maybe social media isn’t the answer at all. If Priebatsch’s right, maybe social media is no more than just the plumbing.

The game layer is still very much in its infancy, but Priebatsch is absolutely right when he explains the power behind it. Simply look at the growth on the location gaming platforms Foursquare and Gowalla, where there is rarely any real reason for “checking in” besides getting virtual badges and items that hold no monetary value whatsoever. Or take the Farmville example from his video, where they could change the world by simply tweaking how long it takes before the virtual crops wilt.

We’ve seen new companies emerge that seem to have a grip on the game layer, and of course we’ve seen brands leech on to them with unoriginal and uninspired ideas just to say “Hi. We’re here too”, but I don’t believe that any brand has successfully leveraged this concept and truly influenced their target consumers. I’m a big believer that when it happens, the interactive world will sit up and take notice, and that the first brand(s) to do it will have major success.

So the question is, how can brands and advertisers harness the influence of the game layer, and why hasn’t anyone done it yet?

Jason Santa Maria is calling for a new application that focuses on web design. While the web is a very young medium, especially when compared to print and television, it has been around long enough (and isn’t leaving any time soon) that a dedicated app is much needed.

If you think about it Cascading Style Sheets have been around now since 1996, and heavily adopted by around 2000. Web design has made amazing strides forward and continues to do so every day. Yet we’re still designing in applications originally intended for photo editing, print, or illustration work. It’s time for a new application to emerge, and I truly believe the first ones to do it well will be rewarded heavily.

In his article, Jason Proposes a few simple ideas that are completely do-able by todays standards. These ideas include:

• Grids – One of most important features of web design today. But grids in web design differ from grids in print or anywhere else. A web design grid needs to be fluid, and needs to adjust with elements that may expand or contract for example. Not to mention different page states, and different pages in general.
• CSS Type Styling – We’ve all run into it, we get a page laid out in Photoshop, then decide the links don’t look quite right. We then have to go back and change each individual link by hand, then repeat the process if it still isn’t right. An InDesign Character and Paragraph Style type of tool that allows us to set the h1-h6, links, strong tags, etc would save tons of time.
• Font Stacks - Similar to type styling, being able to set font stacks, and cycle through them to see how the page looks on different OS’s and screens would be great.
• Fluid Design – Browsers aren’t static. Being able to set basic rules such as a centered layout with a dynamic background, that would adjust to window size could help a lot in the design process.

This is just a quick summary of a couple of ideas Jason proposes. Head on over to his blog to read the full article. With the large amount of designer/developer hybrids out there, an application like this could truly be a game changer, and help raise the standard for web design.