 ”Holy crap.” That’s pretty much all I have to say about a year that’s quickly coming to a close. I often find that New Year’s Eve is filled with regret for things I haven’t done. This year however, I can only be grateful. Personally, professionally, and just all around, this past year has been a very nice one. Let’s quickly look over some of the things we noted and experienced in 2006.
As I can best recall, we started our firm with two key motives: The first was to generate enough revenue to allow ourselves more control over our destinies; the second was to establish a venue within which we could make design that somehow mattered. Be it the difficult financial climate that we began in, or our pragmatic tendencies, we often made choices that gave preference to that of financial stability.
So, I figure it’s time to finally do it. I’m going to write a little about the “Creative Within” campaign. It was one of the strangest experiences I’ve been a part of, and now that the noise has died down, I feel I can comment without seeming like I’m trying to justify our efforts. Back in the spring, we were really wrestling with the idea of a promotional piece for smashLAB. With most other projects, the conceptual process seems pretty straight-forward; however, with this one, we kept spinning in circles. As most of our work is relatively conservative, we wanted to mix things up by doing something playful and cheeky.
In the late summer, Tim, Peter, and I started to work on the new smashLAB brochure. These pieces have become a bit of a mission for me. I feel that the way we present ourselves gives a strong representation for how we are working, and the directions which interest us. By the time that this particular brochure came up, we had spent several months working to stretch the conceptual directions in our work.
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I’m Eric Karjaluoto (some just call me “karj”). My friend Eric Shelkie and I run a digital agency called smashLAB. We also make things like MakeFive, shiftCMS, undrln, and Design Can Change. I’m currently in the process of finishing my first book: Speak Human. I live in Vancouver with my lovely wife and our two little boys. View my speaking schedule.
