I’ve finally got some time to think about the holidays,
so, in the true spirit of Christmas, I submit to you my wish list:

Macromedia Studio 8. This little package will keep me busy. After all, idle hands are the devil’s Texas hold ’em.

Petzl Grigri. It looks like they stopped selling the Grigri at REI…but I still like it.

The Nixon Rotologue. So I’ll never be late to work again. And the watch is partly biodegradable.

15″ PowerBook. Think of it as an investment instead of a toy. But wait until they’re powered by Intel. And run on flash memory. And have LED instead of LCD.

Yes, I’m going for the “something blue” motif. Next year, we’ll do “something borrowed.” I know what you’re thinking…none of this is possible, and that’s ok. I believe in Christmas miracles. And I still love hot cocoa. And orange juice. But not together. Oh, and the ink on my printer is running low, so an HP94 and 97 should do the trick. Or, anouther route would be a new HP Designjet 5500 large format printer. Either way, i’m easy to please. Merry Christmas.

All my ads had been created, so I didn’t expect the process of assembling them into one book to take me until 5:30am. And I didn’t expect all the orange juice I was drinking all morning to give me o.j. poisoning. But it did. I think I have orange juice sledge building up in my lungs.

My problem with the portfolio is that I had to resize all of my ads- there’s got to be an easier way than with that dumb tool in InDesign. Or maybe I just need to learn how to use it better. Anyway, what was probably even more difficult was trying to figure out how to sandwich content between two covers in a spiral-bound type book and make sure everything is facing the right way…at 5 in the am. But I finally figured it all out after 11 straight hours. It was complete and I got to sleep 2 hours before submitting it.

There’s a town…a city that used to be the city in Utah. Now, its a seemingly neglected industrial city that’s become known as Utah’s crime center. But lately they’ve been puting a lot of effort into becoming the next big destination in skiing.

Ogden was apparently a cool place a long time ago. It was the filming location of: downtown Everwood, Drive Me Crazy, Con Air, The Sandlot, Three O’Clock High (mostly at Ogden High School), and Fletch.

But that’s not all- it was also the birthplace of The Osmonds, John Moses Browning, J. Willard Marriott, and of course Bill Allred of X96. Despite that impressive resume though, the town seems to have died over the years. Bill is the only person I’ve heard mention it still exists, and I’m suprised even he remembers it.

Then, today a friend at work gave me a skiing magazine and I flopped open to an article I’m amazed I’d heard noting about until now.

Already companies including Descente, Scott, and Goode have moved their headquarters or established offices in Ogden in anticipation of what some believe will be the next big thing. The plan is to build a $50 million gondola from the Ogden floor to “Malan’s Basin,” a non-existant (as of now) 1,400 acre ski resort that “falls off the northwest-facing expert glades and ridges of Mount Ogden.”

Sound crazy? Possibly, but in 2004, Descente bet their company on it by moving to Ogden in anticipation. Maybe the crazy thing is that it seems nobody in Utah has even heard of these plans–despite the fact Matthew Godfrey, Ogden’s mayor, has been talking about the projected 2007 opening date, saying “the potential is unprecedented.”

Look out Jackson Hole.

Three magazine print ads and a billboard. Radio, TV, and web redesign to come.

Yet another reason Paul Mayne is the best in the business. The site he designed for Mrs. Fields Cookies won the Macromedia Site of The Day award for Tuesday, November 29. And, we (me) thought he deserved one of our most prestigious awards as well: The 2005 IAD of the Year Award from bcrockett.blogspot.com. Oh, the honor must be more than he can bear. Congrats Paul.

Mother’s/Father’s Day Ads for Mrs. Fields. I wasn’t too fond of them to begin with, and they still need some adjusting, but they’ve been chosen to be presented to Mrs. Fields and their agency, Richter7, so I guess they;re not all bad.

Creating the ads taught me that life would be easier if you could just photoshop your socks clean. They look pretty clean, right?

Anyway, to top things off, I did a DVD case as an extra promo concept. The idea was for Mrs. Fields to partner with a movie shop in the mall. For a few bucks more, you could add the Mrs. Fields “DVD” along with your regular purchase. Inside, there was a coupon printed on a blank/recycled DVD good for a dozen cookies redeemable at Mrs. Fields. Notice the DVD cover doesn’t quite match the print ads (border…?), so that’ll have to be fized. Anyway, right now, its sort of a half-baked job…but I guess that’s fitting for a cookie campaign.

This one bothers me a little for some reason…It just doesn’t feel very congruous. Is that a word? Congruous? Anyway…cool fish.