Anabliss Creative Sketchbook

So it’s official. There is a new person on the team…and it’s me! Yes, they made me write about myself! My name is Andrea and my first day was actually on my birthday back in March. I slept on my friend’s couch for the first month which was a trial period to see how I fit in (I think they were just testing my dedication). After what I hoped was impressing the team for three weeks, I got the official offer and here I am.

I moved down to Denver from just outside of Vail where I had been working as a magazine designer and art director for the last three years. Prior to that I worked at a little three person design firm in Oklahoma City for a couple years. So I’ve got just over 5 years under my belt with experience in a variety of different design fields. I still love designing without a budget in mind…just going crazy with creative ideas and then toning them down once I realize that it’s really not feasible to have a $100 business card. I can always dream though, right?!

I’m really excited to be a part of the Anabliss team. Now that we are in our new office I have my own desk, my own phone and even my own stapler!! So if you haven’t met me yet, come say “hi” next time you’re in the office. I’m the one usually wearing the gigantic headphones (and maybe even dancing in my chair a little).

It took nearly five months to renovate after the flood, but we’re finally back into our new/old space, and we’ve made some improvements!

Improved layout
We took this opportunity to really rethink our layout, and we are loving the new floor plan. All of the creative staff is now upstairs (free from the interruptions of deliveries and meetings downstairs). And we’ve added a new creative space complete with a thick rug that you can really bury your toes in when you need get outside of your box and be creative! But perhaps the biggest and best addition is the new conference room on the first floor. Now we can have client meetings and don’t have to worry about clearing the kitchen table.

Lighting
We added 40 can lights (on dimmers for when we want to chill)

When we first moved back in, we couldn’t believe that we ever fit all the stuff in here in the first place. There were boxes everywhere and so many filing cabinets you would have thought we were some kind of filing cabinet storage unit. With a little bit of organizing, a lot more throwing stuff out and muscle to move heavy things up and down the stairs, we were looking pretty good after just a day.

And now after almost a month in the new space, we have hung all of our pictures again, purchased some new furniture and are back and even better than before!

Here is a look at our new, improved office.

We’ve received a few awards in the last six months that we forgot to mention, so we want to recognize some of our achievements and the great projects we have worked on. First off are two projects we did for the University of Colorado Denver. The awards are for Higher Education Marketing. Here is a little bit about the award selection process. The Admissions Advertising Awards is the largest educational advertising awards competition in the country. This year, over two thousand entries were received from more than one-thousand colleges, universities and secondary schools from all fifty states and several foreign countries. Our pieces were part of group four which includes schools with 10,000-19,999 students.

We received a Silver award in the Publications category for Views Magazine. Views is a yearly publication for the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Public Affairs. We were tasked with refreshing the overall look of the magazine and giving it a more dynamic, contemporary feel. Through the use of interesting visual techniques and bold typography, the magazine received rave reviews. In addition, each of the three feature stories within the magazine was given its own unique design style, adding a bit of flair and unpredictability to the format of the publication.

We also received a Merit award in the Special Publication category for our Mid-Program Report of the Rocky Mountain Middle School Math and Science Partnership. This was a 24-page publication that was used to inform key educators and donors about the amazing progress that their new interactive math and scienceprogram has achieved in its first 2 years. The concept we came up with was a design that allowed the audience to interact with the piece. This was achieved with spot gloss varnishes of math and science elements throughout and short trimmed note-like pages to exhibit stories of people who have participated in the program.

Secondly, we received awards from the National Association of Government Communicators (NAGC) in their Blue Pencil & Gold Screen Awards Competition. These awards salute superior communications of government agencies. Over 575 entries in 49 categories were received this year including international entries.

The first award was first place in the brochure/booklet category for the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) Philadelphia Exhibitors brochure. The purpose of this brochure was to entice vendors to exhibit at the 2009 annual meeting. Rich, black and white photographs with a metallic metal effect printed behind them were used to communicate the rich history found in Philadelphia. These were placed opposite of colorful photography of the current city to highlight all of the fun things there are to do there.

The second NAGC award was first place for our New Orleans Main brochure which was entered in the Special Purpose Publication category. The purpose of this brochure was to convince legislators to attend the 2008 annual meeting in New Orleans. The design captured the rich colors and history of New Orleans (food, jazz, culture). We stayed away from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and instead focused on colorful photography of the city and the culture there to show that New Orleans is still a place to visit.

Finally, we won two 2009 District VI Institutional Awards from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. We won a gold award for the cover, and a bronze award for the overall design, of Pinnacle magazine. Pinnacle is a yearly alumni magazine published by the University of Colorado Denver’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. This was the publication’s first year of existence, which makes the awards even more special. Bryan Leister, assistant professor of UC Denver’s College of Arts & Media, created the winning illustration for the cover of the magazine. For the interior design, we created a collage-like aesthetic that gave the magazine a unique feel helped bring the stories to life.