Wow, one year since Substance came into being… as good a time as any to look back over the last 12 months, see what happened, and look ahead for what 2008 will become. If you’re a regular visitor to the site, you may have heard all this before (or if you subscribe to our News & Updates email list). For you newbies, this will catch you up to where we are now and where we’re going.
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Goals for 2007
We set some fairly modest goals for ourselves for 2007:
1. Be able to support our families and pay our mortgages. Yes.
2. Being profitable would be nice. Yes.
3. Make meaning and change the world. We’ve started. But there’s a lot of world left.
We’re putting together our goals for 2008. And as we build Substance, we’ll keep these 5 questions in mind from this Mavericks at Work post. Because if we answer “no” to any of them, we’re not creating Substance.
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Work We’ve Done
We’ve been fortunate that we’ve had many exciting projects and client relationships over the last year. Three highlights…
Portland Trail Blazers – Oden or Durant
Just in time for the NBA Draft, Substance helped the Portland Trail Blazers build a microsite around their first round draft decision between Greg Oden and Kevin Durant. With up-to-the-minute updates using Twitter, and uploaded videos, photos, and podcasts, Trail Blazer fans were invited to vote on who the team should draft. Ultimately, the team decided to draft Oden, who through an unfortunate turn of events is sitting out the season while rehabilitating his knee… in the meantime, you can still view the microsite at trailblazers.findsubstance.com, though voting is now closed. They’ve already drafted Oden. Oh, and we’re flattered that Adobe recognized the site as their Site of the Day on July 9th, and it was recognized at the Roseys on November 8th.
Cinco
Cinco Design Office needed a way to communicate all their greatness to the world. Substance came in to build Cinco’s first site in years. Working with the wunderkinds at Cinco, we put motion and interactivity to their stories, and created a custom content management system that will allow them to keep telling stories for years to come. Check out their amazing work at cincodesign.com
Authenticity
Jim Gilmore and Joe Pine, the authors of the Experience Economy, were coming out with a new book: Authenticity. The book introduces the idea of authenticity in business, but they wanted something that would continue the conversation. Substance created the site that would continue the conversation through the Real/Fake matrix, the Axiom Violation Gallery, Real Links, and the Authenticity Journal. Allowing people to contribute their own content and comments has provided the authors with an entirely new forum to publish and converse with others to share ideas of what authenticity means. You can contribute your own ideas at authenticitybook.com
And if you’re looking to participate personally in Jim and Joe’s thinkAbout conference in the fall of 2008, you can see what a great time we had this year as a preview.
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Work We’re Doing
Later in Frank Lloyd Wright’s career, he was asked what his favorite design was. Wright’s reply was, “my next one.” Keeping this in mind, here’s some of our future favorite projects for 2008.
bambu
We’ve started working on the new digital brand for bambu, a Shanghai-based company that designs and creates contemporary products for the kitchen and home using renewable materials like bamboo. To quote the client after our initial concept presentation, “There’s nothing that we hated.” So that’s a good start. The new site is scheduled to launch toward the end of January, 2008. If you’re not familiar with bambu, they have a great video profile featured on the Lexus Hybrid Living site.
Portland Trail Blazers
We’ve been doing some research on what it means to be a Portland Trail Blazer fan. We’ve also been thinking about how people come together to support a team… the players, coaches, broadcasters, Blazer dancers and fans together form a community around the Trail Blazers. For 2008, we’ve been challenged in rethinking what it means to be a community, and how this can be expressed through a digital brand.
Arakawa
Technically, Arakawa “supplies quick-release cable grippers to retail stores and fixture manufacturers, exhibit builders, galleries and museums, and general contractors.” But what they really do is create solutions that show stuff off for their clients. We’re currently working on Arakawa’s digital brand and how it plays into their 2008 marketing strategy. Beyond simply a web site design, the digital brand represents how easy it is to find the right products, and how Arakawa helps craft solutions. Phase One hopefully launches in January or early February of 2008, with Phase Two set to release sometime around President’s Day, 2008.
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Work We Hope to Do
One of our goals for 2007 was to build our reputation as the passionate voice for digital brand strategy… and one of the ways we determined we could measure this goal was to obtain as much business as possible through no-bid projects. A no-bid project is one where the client comes to us because they want to work with us based on our ideas and reputation. A huge percentage of our work in 2007 has been no-bid, and now that our reputation is becoming more known, we’re finding clients are including us in their Request for Proposal (RFP) process. Puts us in an interesting situation in that we’re competing against other agencies for projects. We’ve decided it would be unfair to these clients to not respond to the RFPs that make sense. We’ve also decided it would be unfair to these clients to simply respond to their RFPs with what we think they want to hear. Finally, it would be unfair to respond in the same ways that the other agencies are responding… that’s just not how we do things. So we’ve taken the Substance approach of responding with what we believe. How has it worked out so far? We’ll have to wait and see. Fingers crossed.
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Offices
Over the last year, Substance has moved three times, which has made it difficult to keep up with us. Starting in January 2007, Substance was cohabitating space with Owen Jones & Partners. But after 3 months, it was getting crowded so we moved to a cozy space above FUSE. Based on the idea of a campfire, our central table was the hub, and we each contributed our ideas, opinions, thoughts, and plenty of favorite YouTube clips. We lived in this office for about 5 months, but as we grew, we needed more space, so we moved again to our current location in Suite 107 at the Ford Building (2505 SE 11th). With the recent installment of our 37″ LCD TV for presentations (along with the XBox 360 and Guitar Hero 3… Rock Band to come) and Mr. Coffee hooked up, it’s become the comfortable, relaxed and busy Substance World Headquarters we hoped it would be. And we’re all sitting around the new, improved campfire table that is one of the guiding principles of Substance. Stop by sometime and check it all out.
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The People of Substance
Substance has doubled in size since January 2007. We’ve added Todd Moritz as a partner and Chief Operating Officer, and Shaun Tinney as our Director of Experimental Projects. 2008 has many great opportunities ahead, and we’ll be looking at continuing to build our stellar team of idealists, daredevils, and believers who want to change the world. With that in mind, we’re always willing to sit down for coffee and discuss your beliefs… so if you’re ready to change the world, drop us a line at “info (at) findsubstance.com”
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Our Thinking: findsubstance.com
We set out to create our own web site as a place to share our ideas, thinking and opinions. With over 230 posts, we’re accomplishing that goal. More importantly, we’ve been able to share these ideas with over 12,500 visitors from 100 countries, and 100+ people subscribing to our site feed for daily updates. We’re truly honored that you’ve stopped by the site and participated in this experience with us, especially the 165+ comments you’ve left. By sharing ideas, we hope to encourage each one of you to realize your own dreams, passions and beliefs. And from the number of you who we’ve heard from that have started new adventures since we started Substance, we’re incredibly proud of you for believing you can.
Along with the thinking on our site, we’re transmitting our beliefs via Twitter at twitter.com/Substance, plus Stephen, Todd and Shaun have their own Twitter goings on. David has wisely stayed away from a personal account. There’s also the Substance group on Facebook that we’re still playing around with. And some of our favorites on del.icio.us, YouTube, and Flickr.
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Our Thinking: Out and About
Besides on our site, we had the opportunity to share our ideas in person with people across the country. David spoke at Flashbelt in Minneapolis and at the Art Institute here in Portland, David and Shaun presented at FITC in Los Angeles, and Stephen spoke at Career Jam and Ad2 in Portland, acted as a judge for the Rocky Awards in Boise, ID, and was a featured profile on Communication Arts web site. We’re looking to continue this trend in 2008 by meeting as many of you in person around the world as possible. Closer to home, David will be teaching the Web 3: Image, Interaction, Experience at PNCA starting later in January and Stephen continues his participation on the board of the PAF.
Want to invite Substance to voice their opinions, either through presentation or as a judge? Email us at “info (at) findsubstance.com” or call us at 503-445-0482 and we’ll be happy to help you out.
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The Future
Along with everything we’ve mentioned above, there’s plenty of “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns” for 2008 and beyond. Of course we’ll keep you informed of all of these events in the upcoming months right here on findsubstance.com.
We hope your 2007 was as exciting as ours, and 2008 offers unlimited potential. And if there’s anything we can do to help with your potential, give us a call (503-445-0482), email us at “info (at) findsubstance.com” or stop by the office.
with love,
Stephen, David, Todd, Shaun and the people of Substance
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