Wall to Wall

Red Crown Productions, a New York-based development and production company founded by Daniel Crown and Daniela Taplin Lundberg that produces independent and studio-partnered high-end films, debuted Goats at the Sundance Film Festival.  Red Crown also launched the company's website, www.redcrownproductions.com, in concert with the film premiere at Sundance. The website was designed and developed by Wall-to-Wall Studios and includes the integrated branding firm's custom content management system (CMS).

Goats is directed by Christopher Neil, written by Mark Jude Poirier and stars David Duchovny, Vera Farmiga, Graham Phillips, Justin Kirk and Ty BurrellIn. The film's storyline has fourteen-year-old Ellis leaving his unconventional, luxurious desert home to attend the rigorous Gates Academy, where he reconnects with his estranged father.  Read more about Goats in the Sundance Film Guide or the Red Crown website.

Almost all of us are subjected to advertising, branding and marketing messages on a daily basis, whether we want it or not. Most say this type of messaging is annoying noise that clutters our lives, and much of it ends up being forgettable.

Consumers are able to tune out a “hard sell” message and ignore or skip it completely. However, making an emotional connection can often have the opposite effect: A consumer may choose to remember the brand or messaging, because it perhaps was unexpected, made them laugh, or even made them cry.

On Wednesday, January 25th at the IABC Pittsburgh PD After 5 event, partner and creative director from Wall-to-Wall Studios, Larkin Werner, will share some client case studies that utilize humor, emotion or wit to stand out against the competition.

Register for the event at the IABC Pittsburgh website.

Wall-to-Wall Studios would like to wish everyone a very Happy Holiday.... and to share some holiday fashion tips to help ensure happiness throughout the season.  Thanks for a great 2011.

View the Wall-to-Wall Studios 2011 Holiday Card.

The Honolulu Chapter of AIGA held its bi-annual "Hawaii's 5-O Design Awards Show" at the Bishop Museum last month, celebrating the State's best in Print, Environmental, Packaging, Web and Student Design. This year's national judges were: Sean Adams of AdamsMorioka, Lucille Tenazas of Tenazas Design, and Christopher Simmons of MINE SF. Wall-to-Wall Studios was selected for the following 11 honors:

Hawaii's 5-O Design Awards of Excellence:

     - Ballet Hawaii's Nutcracker Poster 2009

     - Ballet Hawaii's Nutcracker Poster 2010

     - 'Imiloa Astronomy Center of Hawaii Website (www.imiloahawaii.org)

     - Jet Graphics - "This Should Be Bigger" Campaign

     - Philpotts Interior Design website (www.philpotts.net)

     - REHAB Hospital of the Pacific - Annual Report 2010

     - REHAB Hospital of the Pacific - Capital Campaign Brochure

     - Shidler College of Business at University of Hawaii - M.F.E. Brochure

Top 5 Judges Choice, Print + Environmental:
     - Leather Soul - Retail Branding/Collateral
 

Top 3 Judges Choice, Web + Interactive:
     - Children's Museum of South Dakota Website (www.prairieplay.org)
     - Jet Graphics Website (www.jetgraphics.net) 

Some of the Judges' comments about their Top Picks include:

"Sometimes good design doesn't have to be yelling. It doesn't have to be boisterous. It's very thoughtful and much more considerate." - Lucille Tenazas on Leather Soul, branding design.

"This, we all gravitated to pretty quickly as a successfully executed system. Really exquisitely done." - Christopher Simmons on Leather Soul, branding design.

"I wanted to see how it worked. I wanted to dig around in it and find things." - Sean Adams on JetGraphics.net, website design.

"It's a very functional site and at the same time it's very attractive. There's an excellent sense of scale and the color palette is very restrained." - Christopher Simmons on JetGraphics.net, website design.

"It feels like it's so appropriate, but at the same time, smart." - Lucille Tenazas on Children's Museum of South Dakota, website design (prairieplay.org).

"The cow, it's fantastic! I want a cow on my website! I think that's so great!" Sean Adams onThe Children's Museum of South Dakota website design (prairieplay.org)

Congratulations to all of our clients and collaborators who made this possible - MAHALO!

Wall-to-Wall Studios designed and produced multiple videos for SC11, the preeminent conference dedicated to supercomputing. SC11 was hosted by the great city of Seattle, WA in November 2011, and continues a long and successful tradition of engaging the international community in high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis, and for 2011 placed an emphasis on bringing together communities to facilitate information exchange, discussions and new collaborations for research and education related to innovating high performance computing applications and advancing scientific discovery and scholarship. The opening video produced by Wall-to-Wall Studios, There's Something in the Air, provided an overview of conference's key components. The other videos produced by W|W included a :30 edit of There's Something in the Air that was used for promotional purposes, and an Exit Video used to help attendees navigate the conference after the keynote address by Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder of NVIDIA. In addition to providing concept and design, Wall-to-Wall Studios also handled all editing, animation, motion graphics, titles and some filming.

View the full length video for There's Something in the Air

View the SC11 Invitation Video.

Wall-to-Wall Studios designed the event branding and integrated marketing campaign for Arbor Aid 2011, Tree Pittsburgh's key fundraising event that features incredible art created from salvaged wood. Tree Pittsburgh is an environmental non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing the City's vitality by restoring and protecting City trees.

View the Arbor Aid integrated marketing campaign.

On Oct 16, 1992, James Nesbitt drove his slightly rusty Volvo down from Boston (filled with artwork, art supplies, a fax machine and dirty laundry) arriving at the doorstep of Bernard Uy's tiny apartment on Walnut Street in Pittsburgh (filled with cheap furniture, Mac IIci + 13" color monitor, coin-op laundry machine) to launch a partnership that was a mash-up of fine art and communication design.

About 10 days later, we chose a name for this startup. Our very first self-promo postcard was designed to (a) be cheap to produce, (b) amuse ourselves, (c) make best use of the labcoats we had just purchased for important meetings, and (d) was pretty much inspired by this.

Some trivia for those of you who are still reading this:

W|W's first paying client: Pittsburgh Dance Council.
First assignment: Mikhail Baryshnikov & Twyla Tharp at the Benedum Center.
Budget for design + illustration: +$500
B&W (300dpi) laser printer: –$1000
Art supplies: –$30
Groceries & toilet paper: –$50
Starting a business to earn less than minimum wage: Priceless.

Nineteen years, many clients and two office locations later, I'm still proud to say that this has all been made possible because James thought it would be a cool idea.

Thanks James.

Thanks everyone, especially our amazing Partners and incredible Team.
Happy 19th Birthday, Wall-to-Wall Studios. 

-Posted by Bernard.

P.S. "And remember, there's never a fee until we bill you."

Wall-to-Wall Studios continued its branding collaboration with the Frick Art & Historical Center (aka The Frick Pittsburgh) via the design of the integrated marketing campaign for the upcoming exhibition, Faberge at The Frick. "Faberge: The Hodges Family Collection" comprises more than 100 objects made by the legendary House of Faberge, goldsmith and jeweler to the Russian court. In addition to all of the promotional materials (logo, save-the-date, invitation, signage, website, advertising), W|W also designed the exhibit microsite, www.FabergeAtTheFrick.org.

View the Faberge at The Frick case study.

View The Frick awareness campaign case study.

Wall-to-Studios created the poster and promotional video (concept, motion graphics and animation design) for MADD Hawaii's Annual MADD Cab Affair fundraiser gala.  The secret speakeasy fundraising event takes place on Saturday, October 1, 2011.

Wall-to-Wall Studios created the promotional design (logo/identity, marketing materials) for HomeFrontLine at the Silver Eye Center for Photography.  HomeFrontLine explores the far-reaching effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—both on and away from the combat zones—on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, and examines the ways in which photography shapes our perceptions of conflict and its consequences. The exhibition features images and multimedia projects by eleven leading documentary photographers and photojournalists. Curated by Leo Hsu and Ellen Fleurov. Photo Credit: Benjamin Lowy, Untitled from the series Iraq/Perspectives I, 2003-2008. Courtesy of the artist.

REFLECTIONS ON TEN YEARS OF WAR SINCE 9/11
SILVER EYE CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY
SEPTEMBER 13 – DECEMBER 10, 2011
OPENING RECEPTION: SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 3:00 – 6:00 P.M.

The Wall-to-Wall Studios sponsored "NOISE" kicks off tonight, August 25th, at the Lava Lounge. NOISE is a concert series showcasing musicians with day jobs that relate to design, web, advertising, printing and more. The inaugural NOISE event features:

يصم الآذان أردية الفج: An ethnomusicological obscurity from the far corner of the cut-out bin.

The Velcro Shoes: Infectious, pounding and unabashed, the band you remember wanting to see.

The Wakening: Pittsburgh’s inescapable surfing zombies invite you to a beach barbecue…and they won’t take no for an answer.

Wall-to-Wall Studios is sponsoring "NOISE", a concert series which showcases musicians with day jobs that relate to design, web, advertising, printing and more. The first NOISE event takes place at 9pm on Thursday August 25 at the Lava Lounge on Pittsburgh's Southside.

Here's a sneak peak at the behind the scenes of "NOISE", the first of a series of concerts showcasing musicians with day jobs that relate to design, web, advertising, printing, etc.  Wall-to-Wall Studios interactive developer Maurice Rickard built up a Nebulophone kit--it's a sound synthesizer on a little circuit board. It's tiny, but it has a lot of the niceties you'd find in a much larger instrument (arpeggiator, LFO, glissando, five waveforms, a couple noise modes...). It's based on the open-source Arduino platform, for extra creative-technical cred. Maurice will probably work it into one or another of his electronic music projects. All we know is it makes one hell of a noise.

What sets your business apart from your competitors? How can you craft a “personality” for your business (and why)? How can technology and social media help drive your business success? Why is it important to build a brand and how can you do it? Are brands only for big businesses or can a small business build a brand too?  

We hope to tackle these and other questions when we join small business owners for the next SmallBiz Lunch and Learn on Friday, July 22: “Leveraging Technology and Social Media to Grow Your Small Business” by Hawaii Business Magazine. Wall-to-Wall Studios co-founder Bernard Uy will be participating in a panel discussion with Cyrus Driver (VP of Oceanic Time Warner Business Class), Roxanne Darling (partner at Barefoot Studios),  and moderated by David Tumilowicz, Publisher of Hawaii Business magazine. See you there!

Event details here.

Follow along via Twitter - #HBLunchLearn

Wall-to-Wall Studios designed the event branding, website, posters and promotional animation for the 14th Annual Black Tie & Blue Jeans Fundraising Gala.  The fundraiser supports the American Heart Association of Hawaii and will be held on July 16th at the Edition Hotel Ballroom. Black Tie & Blue Jeans is one of Hawaii's most popular annual events and has the dress code built right into the fundraiser's name. See you there!

View the Black Tie & Blue Jeans 2011 video.

Learn more and purchase tickets at the event website.

View the AHA Black Tie & Blue Jeans case study.

Almost all of us are subjected to advertising, branding and marketing messages on a daily basis. Most say this type of messaging is annoying noise that clutters our lives, and much of it ends up being forgettable. However, making an emotional connection can often have the opposite effect: A consumer may choose to remember the brand or messaging because it was, perhaps, unexpected, made them laugh, or even made them cry.

On Sunday May 29, FLUX Hawaii Magazine presents their first TALK STORY SESSIONS - an all-day workshop event "designed to educate, evolve and inspire the local creative set through interactive dialoguing." Wall-to-Wall Studios co-founder Bernard Uy will host a session called: "I Laughed, I Cried, I Remembered," sharing some of the company's client case studies that utilize humor, emotion or wit to stand out against the competition. No kidding.

See you at the swanky Waikiki Edition Hotel's Crazybox Lounge.

Follow @walltowall