I first came across the Matterial paper line during an open studio party, over the course of the night a good portion of the crew at Matter was hard at work, printing and packaging up some of their goods for the Matterial line, there were samples of each offering displayed. The entire range of products are designed, printed, and packaged in-house at the Matter studio. The line uses recycled paper, packaging, along with reused/repurposed elements. Other adornments are also done in-house, such as letterpress and the silk screening. It’s a pretty wild and energetic set-up, the products being produced as a result of it, are just as inspiring to draw in as they are to look at.

Outside of helping to organize your week, or simply helping you squeeze out that little burst of creative joy, Matterial also helps to draw the connection that we all share, in the products we consume and their direct impact on the local environment & economy. With these products the Matter studio has cranked out a body of work that is aesthetically pleasing & engaging, along the process of creating they have also managed in a small and unique way to do their part in contributing a solution to some of the larger issues we face today.

Check out the Matterial website for their line of consciously created tablets, drawing pads, composition books, and an assorted collection of other creative driven oddities & blunt objects!

Created by designers, for designers and other thinking persons.

Josh Wills, Creative

Although I’ve practiced my Oscar acceptance speech in the bathroom mirror a thousand times (”I can’t believe I’m the first one on stage to thank the Weinsteins”) I am fairly certain that this blog entry is as close as I’ll ever come to actually delivering that kind of speech to an audience.

For geeks like us, the Webby Awards are our version of the Academy Awards. This week texturemedia was honored to have two of the websites we produced win People’s Voice awards for the Webbys. Pentax Photo Gallery won in the Best Use of Photography category and King Tut won in the Events category. A third website, Politics West was an Honoree in the Politics category.

We are delighted to have clients like Pentax, AEG and the Denver Post that give us the opportunity to do really exciting work.

And in the case of Pentax Photo Gallery, we are also delighted to have an enthusiastic community of Pentax photographers who have contributed their art to make the site so visually rich.

It has taken hundreds of hours of work done by dozens of people to create these sites. I am certainly honored to be working among a group of hooligans as talented and dedicated as the bunch here at texturemedia.

I can hear the music playing. I think they’re pulling me offstage.

I’ll see you at the Vanity Fair party.

Dan Fox

The Olympic torch reached the top of the world Thursday in the hands of a Chinese mountaineering team. Political controversy aside, what’s really impressive is the investment by China’s state broadcaster CCTV, who apparently built a television studio at basecamp, then several relay locations throughout the ascent. All in the effort to broadcast it live. A live broadcast is cool, but a live interactive broadcast via the internet would have been even cooler. After all, it’s a global event, right?

Here’s the full article.

David Schell

If you’re anything like me you probably spent a good portion of your childhood forever burning the images from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show into your brain. Well there’s no doubt in my mind that Christopher Lee definitely did. He’s a young buck working for Buck in LA and he’s bringing back that Dudley Do-Right vibe with a vengeance and I’m stoked. There’s plenty of retro styled illustration in there as well as some killer stuff that’s totally his own steez. It gets me feeling all warm and fuzzy clicking through it. I just hope Snidely Whiplash isn’t behind all this or I’m going to have to tie his top-hat wearing ass to the train tracks.

www.thebeastisback.com

Matt Schreiber, Creative

The limited edition, artist series sneaker seems to be growing even more popular than sport-specific shoes. To take advantage of this trend, Adidas Originals partnered up with 180 LA to create a web based series called “The Left-Right Project”, that will be rolling out this Spring and Summer. Using car-sized shoes, and artists to represent the respective American coastlines, West coast artist Sam Flores is painting the Left shoe, while New York based Surface to Air is making the Right shoe.

So why is this relevant to interactive? Well, it’s spectacularly relevant web-based content that has been lighting up the blogosphere. The site provides videos, and photos, etc, but that content spills out onto YouTube and other Social channels, but more importantly, all the right blogs have picked it up to make it a pretty intense EPR campaign. I want one to paint!

David Schell, Creative

This year texturemedia is fortunate enough to have two of our sites nominated for Webby Awards, The Pentax Photo Gallery in the best use of photography category and the King Tut exhibition site they created in the event category. Politics West, a site we produced for The Denver Post, also was an official honoree.

Both of the nominated sites are also up for People’s Choice Awards, which means that you can help us and cast your vote now! Of course we hope the sites win, but just to be nominated is a huge honor. This year the Webby Awards received over 10,000 entries from all 50 states and over 60 countries! Less than 5% were selected as nominees. Congrats to everyone on the project teams!

David Schell, Creative

I love the web. I love how quickly things change, and how a single innovation can open up a whole world of ideas. Take this site, for example. Publicis & Hal Riney’s newly redesigned site allows you to navigate using your web cam. How fantastic is that!

Check it out here.

David Schell, Creative

I have been part of many conversations with interactive folks talking about starting a national ‘committee’, ‘association’, or ‘network’ for Interactive professionals. Low and behold, sounds like SXSW had more to offer this year than the “nuclear disaster“, that everyone is talking about. A new society for Interactive agencies and professionals ‘those selected to participate’ was announced, http://www.societyofdigitalagencies.org/. I have to say, better late than never - but let’s hope they get down to business right away.

SXSW is dear to our hearts for another reason this year, we were nominated for an award in the Interactive CSS category, love those folks down in Austin.

Allison Kent, New Business

Interesting site that breaks down the before and after on some major brand identity redesigns. I find it interesting to flip through, and see whether the changes work for the better, or were even necessary to begin with. They also update the site regularly, so bookmark it for your next brand identity redesign.

http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/index.php?page=1

David Schell, Creative

While staring at pixels all day might be what we enjoy at texturemedia, we also have a fine artist side that occasionally needs to come out and play. As the Creative Director at texturemedia, I rarely get time to pursue one of my true passions, which is painting. I created the 30 days 30 pieces project, with the help of our Grandmaster Flash, Miles Fenn, as a way to force me to do one piece of art a day for a month. A bunch of friends across the globe also liked the idea, and joined in. Check out the 30 days 30 pieces project here. So far we’ve been randomly picked up on designer blogs from Brazil to the UK. If you think you’re up for the challenge, and want in on the next month, please contact me off of the 30 days website.

David Schell, Creative