Bullseye Creative Blog

Yes, we really do. Literally. We’re in the business of developing long-term relationships (that rock) with our clients that extend beyond their brands and campaigns. What our clients love about us, besides our (rockin’) work, is that we become a part of their lives, and they become a part of ours. Every few years or so, we throw a party to celebrate our company birthday and we always invite our clients to be a part of the celebration.

Our favorite party to date, and one that our clients talk about most, is our “Bullseye Turns It Up To 11″ party.  Planning began many months before the big night. We held many brainstorming sessions with the creative crew discussing exactly how we’d like to wow our clients, friends, family and ourselves this time around. We chose our party’s theme for three important reasons. First, because our Bullseye family was 11 years old. Secondly, Bullseye is Seattle’s loudest Rock n Roll firm – so we needed to represent that in the creative. Lastly, we are lovers of pop culture.  For the uninitiated, the phrase “turning it up to 11″ or “this one goes to 11″ is a popular line from famous mockumentary, “This is Spinal Tap”.  Wikipedia describes “Up to eleven” or “these go to eleven” as phrases from pop culture which have come to mean anything being exploited to its utmost abilities (which is what we do).  Similarly, the expression “turning it up to eleven” may refer to the act of taking something to an extreme. (Like marketing, and great creative!) This made a Spinal Tap themed party the obvious choice.

Watch this video snippet and you’ll see what we mean.

In true rock fashion, we sent out signed and numbered screen-printed concert posters as invitations, with a follow up online RSVP. We prepped our office, turning it into a rock club and painted rockstar quotes and a 13-foot winged and flaming Bullseye logo on our walls.  We hired The Great Nabob as bartenders and brainstormed specialty rock drinks as well as contracted Gallucci’s Catering to design, cook and serve our rock menu.  One of our favorite rock-star quotes, “For Those About to Rock, We Salute You” (AC/DC) stands as a testament to how we see our clients – as those about to rock. Our clients had a great time that night – they got an opportunity to see a different creative side of Bullseye, and we got to show them how much we appreciate them. Bottom line is, we rocked it.

We created an online post-party site. Check it out. Stay tuned for news of the next over-the-top event!

Seattle's Loudest Rock-N-Roll Creative Agency

Over the last couple of years we’ve seen an incredible rise in types of social networking. It’s gained such popularity that it’s now almost virtually accepted in media and advertising, as well as interpersonal relationships for which most of it was originally intended. I don’t think anyone argues the impact Twitter had on the Iranian elections this last summer or the sort of national news coverage Facebook received when it changed its privacy policy recently.

As the market for these general mega social networking sites cools down (though new startups are always welcome into the field) more specialized websites will start to filter into the cracks that bigger sites leave in their footprint. These newer sites have the potential to become their own mega networks over the next few years, and the following are a few we’re keeping an eye on.

Daytum

www.daytum.com — Daytum is a free social network site with a twist: It allows you to collect and share data about anything you’d like (most users record personal information) and graphs it, charts it, and keeps it in many customizable data sets. My first reaction to Daytum when I heard about it a few months ago was that it seemed awfully demanding. It certainly requires logging information regularly but it’s only to the depth that you want it to be.

I started out with just a few small charts and realized, to my complete surprise, at the amount of fun I was actually having. I increased the number of things I recorded and now look forward to my daily updates. I’ll use my own profile as an example, where you can see my general entertainment consumption, food and drink consumption, and how long I spend on my commute and the sorts of cool cars I see while driving it.

Taking a look around the site reveals that some users keep track of how many times people hug them, what sort of movies they’ve recently watched, what celebrities they’ve spotted, and the number of reps from their latest workout. There’s a catch, though: The site allows for no direct communication between users. I would say this is a big hang-up, but I’d be lying. I’m tired of a “comment wall” attached to every social website out there, especially for sites that don’t really need it.

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After my last post on Apple logo wallpapers, I’ve been feeling the itch to create my own. I wanted something that certainly captured the retro feel of the old logo but was clean enough to leave up on my desktop to use as a work space. I sat down this morning before lunch with some ideas in-hand and whipped up something I could use at work. I wanted to write a quick post here to share the wallpaper for your personal use.

The image above is linked to the 1920 x 1200 resolution, but the 2560 x 1600, 1920 x 1080, and 1280 x 1024 resolution sizes are also available.

We have a lot of Apple computers in the office, but I’m very likely the only “Apple snob” here; though I should note that with full disclaimer I only have one iBook from 2002 at home. We know I can’t be a true Mac fanboy then, right? Sure. But that doesn’t stop me from slapping the little Apple sticker I got with my Sixth Gen iPod Classic (White) to my car’s rear quarter-panel window.

As such, one of my favorite things to do is dress up my desktop each month with a different Apple logo-themed desktop wallpaper. I’ve come across many over the last few years, but I sat down and finally came up with a list of my favorites. Below are 40 wallpapers that you may have encountered before, but I’m hoping many are new to you. I’ve attempted to hunt down and credit each one to its original author (I really hate internet thievery), so each thumbnail below will take you to the download location for that wallpaper. Keep an eye out for “view full size” and “download” links.

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When I sat down to create a decade in review for our blog, my original intentions were to list some things we had all forgotten about and arrange them in a way that “looked nice.” The idea drifted around in my head for a week, slowly evolving to segment the information by year, color-coding, and eventually laying the phrases, quotes, and words out into the shapes of the years they came from. What follows is the child of that idea, a complicated arrangement of glyphs and characters.

The words contained in the shapes of each year are arranged (mostly) by chronological order, though some are moved to where they reached a fever-pitch and not where they were started or founded (Facebook, for example). A few years have a special section that encompasses a specific event or series of events. I’ve attempted to arrange those chronologically as well. The size of the word is loosely connected to its relative importance, similar to a tag cloud (which, as a term, did not make the cut). This is all subjective, of course, so you may agree or disagree with my choices. The ultimate intention of this piece was to present stories, people, movies, music and news in a way that let you reflect; parts of the image are purposefully abstract in the hopes that you will use the Internet to do searches or ask friends, family or colleagues to find their meaning.

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I love to play with interactive video like the one’s you can find at JibJab. I decided what better way to use my full access JibJab account than to create a “holiday” video using some Bullseye crew faces. Unfortch, JibJab has created videos that only allow a max of five faces per vid, and Bullseye has eight on the crew. So to those of you that were left out: Don’t worry, your vid is coming soon.

“Snowball fight”

It’s that time of year again; the time when the air gets a little colder, snow flakes fall from the sky, and it feels great to bundle up under a nice warm blanket on a cold winter’s evening. Wait -

No, it’s not that time of year (yet). It’s the time of year when sticking your hands inside a freshly-opened squash and pulling out its slimy tangled guts seems like a really good idea. So, in the spirit of tradition, Bullseye employees rolled up their sleeves, removed watches (almost), and got to work creating the best jack-o-lanterns in Seattle.

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app apple art bullseye creative bullseye staff comic book comics creative process creativity customer support design facebook fonts fun funny iphone list logography montage new years review seattle social media user-interface video

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