So we did a thing. As a small, Fishers marketing firm, we haven’t really had the guts to submit our work for an award up until this past year. It’s hard to put your work on the line in that way, especially in this crazy digital age where everyone is carrying around 12 different electronic devices. Still, for a long time, we’ve been wanting to do it. Finally, last year, we plucked up the courage to throw our hat in the ring. Hey… what’s the worst that could happen, right? So we gritted our teeth and submitted two of our favorite websites from that year. Then, we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
If we’re honest, by the time we got the email reminder that winners would be announced, we practically forgot all about our submissions. Then, the day came. We got an email saying both our submissions were selected for awards. We were like kids at Christmas – it was really exciting. We get to put some pretty badges on our site, call ourselves “award-winning” (for something OTHER than our chili cookoff awards from Launch Fishers), and we even get a shiny trophy or two.
EXPLORE MORE ICONIC DESIGNS
Because we so often have our noses to the grindstone, we wanted to take a minute to appreciate how far we’ve come as a creative agency. A few years ago, we were camped out at a temporary table in Launch Fishers. Now, five years later, we have our own office, an office dog, our very own coffee machine… and some hardware to celebrate our hard work?! Pinch us, please!
We couldn’t have done it without the help of the clients who were involved in these projects, though, let’s be real. Both of the clients we worked with on the award-winning websites are amazing customers with an awesome vision for their respective businesses. We wanted to share a little bit about each of these projects…
FAIL FEST
W3 Gold Award For Website Features – Visual Appeal – Aesthetics
A few years ago, John Wechsler waltzed into our office and told us he had an idea for this thing called Fail Fest. When he told us that he wanted uber-successful entrepreneurs from our area to share their stories of epic failure, we got pretty amped up. What he wanted at the time was pretty basic: a logo… but he needed it super fast because he wanted to put the idea out there to some of his potential speakers and he was hoping to have something to show them. We started thinking about failure, and we read a great quote from Douglas Adams: “There is an art to flying, or rather, a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” From there, we designed our own flying machine and gave it the scrappiest little pilot we could come up with.
The first Fail Fest was an enormous hit. You could literally feel the energy in the air. There was a huge sense of camaraderie as we all listened to some of the most well-respected business owners in our area talk about falling on their face… over and over again. By the end of the day, people were already begging to know when the next Fail Fest would be.
Since the inaugural Fail Fest, John Wechsler has built quite the Empire of Failure – we mean that in the best possible way, John. Fail Fest has grown quite a bit, and they are cropping up all over the country. Last year, John came to us and asked if we would be able to build a website that has the same, scrappy vibe of the original logo.
We gleefully put pen to paper. Unlike the goofy little flying machine we designed for the Fail Fest logo, we took the angle of finding epic failures from successful people across history. We can’t take credit for the contraptions themselves, but we loved doing the linework for this project.
The Fail Fest team is quite literally awesome. They work so hard and they have brought so much to our community. On rainy days, the Fail Fest message provides a lot of hope to companies like ours. As Douglas Adams would say, we’ve thrown ourselves at the ground plenty of times. Is this W3 Award a sign that we are maybe learning how to miss? Fingers crossed.
Stay Tuned…
Coming later this week, we will be sharing more information about our second award!
