Via Kottke I just skimmed an interesting article about the sort of test subjects that 3D artists use when creating their work (see the article here if you’re interested: http://www.artfagcity.com/2008/07/28/img-mgmt-20-archetypes/).

It made me think about the sort of FPO (which stands for “for placement only“) images and text that Buk uses in our projects. Of course there’s Lorem Ipsum, which I’ve been grabbing from Lipsum.com now for years. I take for granted that the majority of people (marketing people even) have no clue what Lorem Ipsum is, and can’t help but chuckle a little bit when they ask me “site looks great, but what’s the deal with all of that weird greek text?”

But where we get to have a little bit of fun is regarding FPO videos and graphics. It’s rare when a job is designed with the final assets; there’s always photo/video shoots to be produced, final logos to be delivered etc. And where we really get to flex our “FPO chops” is when populating a client’s new site’s CMS with test content.

So to that end, I am proud to show you some of our developers and designers “Island of Misfit Content” of sorts that we use to populate our sites and CMSs, most of which never see the light of day. (Note: some of the more scurrilous and NSFW images will remain locked deep within the http://locahost vaults of our more devious devs; we can’t put everything on front street!).

Centerfolds have their favorite lists, this is what web-centerfolds have.

Robert

Favorite FPO copy:

• poop
• pants
• pirates
• ninja

Favorite FPO images:
This is a French singer named Alizee who’s dancing inspired the Night Elf /dance in World of Warcraft.

Ben

Favorite FPO copy:

• Nuke

Favorite FPO images:

• Anything found by Googling “burning buildings”.
• Yacht Rock - Ed. note: if you haven’t seen Yacht Rock, stop reading my silly post and watch it now!

Mark

Favorite FPO Audio:

• Bottom Dwellers (of course!)

Favorite FPO Video:

• Anything from Tim and Eric, especially Uncle Muscles.

Favorite FPO images:
To quote Mark, “uptight clients get these kinds of photos”

And “easy-going clients get these”

Greg

Favorite FPO images (most of which are Photoshop funnies, which I will compile in another post):

Aaron

Aaron uses the most professional method, a nice snippet of code.
img {
border: 1px solid #000;
background: #553344; /* I get creative here! */
color: #000;
line-height: 75px;
font-size: 72px;
font-family: "Helvetica", Arial, sans-serif;
}

Jeff

Favorite FPO images (like Greg, Jeff’s are mostly Photoshop funnies):

What do you use for you FPO?

Hey internet folks who read our little blog (thanks btw).

I’m sort of old school I guess when it comes to checking blog updates on my favorite sites, I don’t use RSS.

Rather, I use “Open in Tabs” on a folder called “Fun Stuff” in Safari’s Favorites toolbar. How 2003, right?

I intended this post to be more about how the lack of updates here has been because we are all so busy on some amazing projects for Dragon, Microsoft, Red Ledge, 2K and more, and not about my silly Favorites situation. We’re doing some amazing work and will be posting it soon. Hold on to your internet hats, we have some bangers coming out!

Ok, so now that’s out of the way, back to my digression!

So when I click “Open in Tabs”, I normally then go back to working, and let the 30 or so websites open up and make for one huge-assed tabbed window. It’s sort of like popping cookies in the oven…and then DING, my websites are ready!

I then go through each site (http://www.achewood.com has been my first tab for years), read what’s new and more often then not, just quickly hit Command+W and move on to the next one. I check out the usual stuff from Google News, Wired, Kotaku, Kottke, Penny Arcade, FWA, etc. including Buk’s own blog, on which I saw Mark’s old-ish post about Kill Start. And that’s what made me write this weird post, thinking that we needed some fresh content (the definition of content, used pretty loosely if you’ve made it this far in my post).

Lastly, I don’t use RSS because of, believe it or not, banner ads! I like to look at them, see what’s new, what’s cool. I owe it to my clients and my industry to see what’s out there, and RSS doesn’t deliver that.

What are your browsing habits? –DAN

Once again we descended (or maybe ascended) upon Tahoe for our annual retreat. We had a monster four-story house with a pool table, ping pong table, “sauna”, etc. It was bittersweet, for if we continue to grow as we are, this might be the last time the entire Seattle and Sac crews can become as one, like a web designing Voltron.

We rocked out, worked hard, snowboarded, gambled, drank, ate and were quite merry. In lieu of a slideshow, I thought I would show some photos with my own commentary. The first are from the Sac office before we embarked.

Mark, Robert and Garrett talking about Ground Control.

Ryan, Josh and Matt probably talking about nothing important.

Vics, Koa and Max in the ‘waiting room’.

Greg doing some shit.

ML on the case. Project, managed.

Greghog Day, popping up in that ass.

The super group BKWLD

It’s not often that we get to direct and shoot photos and videos, so we really sunk our teeth into a fun project with did in conjunction with Runyon, Saltzman and Einhorn out of Sacramento. The project was a website for the California Department of Education, State of California & California Community Colleges (quite a mouthful).

The site is about showing the amazing pathways and opportunities available to students, who might not realize they can ‘profit from their passion’ by going to a California Community College.
In order to harness this idea, Jeff came up with a great design that didn’t feel ‘corporate’ or ’state-y’, to help resonate with the target. We wanted to give the feeling that it was made for students, by students.

We also included testimonials from some real graduates and students of the CA Community College system, to help reinforce the story even more. Greg, Jeff, Josh and I shot the videos in our own office, to give it a less polished and more grassroots feel.

Here’s a few photos from the shoot and of Jeff busting some Photoshop madness.

Been too long since my last post! Which is pretty indicative of the amount of work and traveling myself and fellow Buk-caneers have been doing.

Last month, Josh and I had the opportunity to go to the Outdoor Retailer Show in lovely Salt Lake City, Utah. We got to hang out with one of our favorite clients, Kelty, as well as meet and greet just about every other outdoor company in the world. From Marmot, to Northface, to Solomon, to Oakley, to Helly Hansen, etc. Other than the usual “we make websites that melt faces” talks, we were showing off our Visual Merchandising Tool (which is the cat’s ass, trust me. Don’t trust me? Email us about it.)

Here’s a couple photos of Kelty’s booth:

There was tons of beer drinking at the booths; Josh rose to the challenge:

As did I, along with a boatload of swag from Kelty:

Been meaning to post this for days, just a little shot of our Buk Turkey Day party up in Sac.

So I thought I would do a bit of nerdery here and put my Xbox Live gamertag:

Don’t let my score fool ya, I’ve been playing games for ages, all the way back to pre-windows CGA Dos crap. I urge my other fellow Buk heads to post theirs, and if anyone wants to add us, please do!

The gamertag was a stroke of genius on Xbox’s part. Being able to easily show friends and the world what I have played, how thoroughly I played the game, who my friends are, etc. adds a level of ‘bragging’ and fun that I didn’t expect I would be so amped on.

And the coolest thing is when you’re playing the game, when you do something that’s ‘achievement’ worthy, you get a little pop-up that tells you that you’ve gained some points, and your gamerscore goes up. I love that shit! When I see it happen, especially when I am not expecting it, it’s such a pleasant surprise. All gamers talk shit, and love to rub their accomplishments in each others’ faces. Now there is tangible proof of said ass-kickery, and it rocks.

Another ‘trophy’ of sorts one can spread with their friends is the amazing system that Halo has built into their site & game. It’s a genius move of a game developer spending tons of time and resources tying their game into their site, with actual things people want to use. I’m going to post about that soon, and show some great shots of Robert, Ben and I blowing each other up in game, at super hi-res. –DAN

For the past few weeks, Robert and I have been working suuuuper hard on the site http://www.windowslive.com/smile with Wexley School for Girls. The best part was that everything culminated with a super cool live event in NYC, where we built the interface for photo booth kiosks, that snapped people’s photos while they learned about Windows Live. Firstborn and Digital Kitchen did some visual wizardry with the actual photos acquired by the booths, by projecting them onto a huge-ass sphere, and we also sent the photos to the site’s interactive map (check out NYC and LA on the map page).

Overall, it was a really great experience to have one of our site’s launch with an actual event. Typically when we launch a site, the only fan fare it gets is a special launch song from Ben, followed by a few congratulatory emails/phone calls from the client, so it was really special to be able to drum up site traffic the old fashioned way, with some good ol’ mouth talking.

So to help with such activites, Robert and I made the red-eye flight to NYC to lend technical support and finish up the final pieces. Needless to say we spent waaaay too much time holed up in our hotel room working (this is what kept us sane), but Robert and I had a blast working hard, screwing around and hitting the city late at night since we never got off of west coast time. It was my first time in NYC, so I especially had a good time.

I shot a bunch of photos you can view here.

This whole trip definitely has me thinking more about ‘launch events’ and the sort of fun, viral and ‘earned media’ type of stuff we could be doing when we launch sites. I think we’re missing some definite great publicity stunts that could coincide with the sites, especially for our clients with deep pockets and senses of humor. I think the difficulty is actually digging into those deep pockets, and showing that planning an event shouldn’t actually come out of the web budget, but out of the overall marketing budget. Web is already so under-budgeted, I think having to ask a client to shave off a bunch of cheese for a ground event would be pushing it.

This is the same conversation we sometimes have when explaining to a client that keyword/search engine buys should really fall out of their media budgets, and not their web ones. But I don’t have to tell you that there’s a definite shift in marketing priorities going on, I think that’s abundantly clear to any web user who sees that every company and their mom has a MySpace, a Facebook and a ‘minisite’ of their own as they all try to crack the viral code.

Holy cow what a digression!! Anywho, BKWLD Heart NYC.

Come Monday, BKWLD Sacramento will have a new home in an amazing new space in Downtown Sac.

Call me crazy, but it’s a little bittersweet.

Del Paso Boulevard will always hold a special place in our hearts. We’ll certainly miss our local liquor store and its owner Sam. Joy, next store with her coffee. The motley crew of hobos, beggars, gangsters, pimps, prostitutes and ‘Johns’ that gave us so much enjoyment through our one-way window.

We’ll also miss Little Joe’s, Frenchie’s, The Dos and all of the other terrible-ass restaurants we braved a handful of times. As well as the small, (and I mean SMALL) handful of yummy places like the Taqueria, Uptown Cafe and Refugio.

Call me sentimental, but more than just the neighborhood, I think we have a lot to thank ol’ 1901a for. Our current office’s open floor space and culture has a direct correlation to creating the tight and closely knit crew we are today. There’s a reason why we do such great work, collaborate so well and love what we do. Certainly a good deal of that is because we love the web and our clients, but more than that, we care about each other and have enjoyed our time here.

Now that I am going to be in my own office and not smack dab with the creatives, I am going to miss being in the thick of things a bit. I am going to miss the omnipotent stereo, and the constant hum of people typing, talking and thinking. And as nice as the privacy and quiet that the office will afford me, I am sure I will find myself wandering out to the creative area very often, lap top in hand, looking forward to the buzz and energy.

So now we look onward! The new office certainly looks to capture Buk’s same fiery dynamic, in a much better suited location, full of even better coffee shops and sandwich joints. The Seattle office as well is busting at the seams of its office, and will shortly be having the same change Sacramento is making, leaving it’s intimate and cramped space, for a new and kick-ass one.

So to Del Paso Boulevard: Thank you for helping to make BKWLD Sacramento the team we are today.