Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Feb 8, 2012, 11:33 am
I can’t count the number of interviews I have done over the past year when a prospective designer sat in front of me in my office and didn’t try to show some version of their portfolio on an iPad. The only thing I can count on when I look at those portfolios is that the quality of that presentat...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Feb 6, 2012, 12:56 pm
I know that the last thing the world needs is another Super Bowl commercials top 5 list but since my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers weren’t playing this year I had nothing better to do. TOP 5 M&M’s “Just My Shell” I have loved the M&M’s commercials for a long time because they are so funny...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Feb 3, 2012, 11:36 am
I have been working on the concept of making the traditional all text resume into something more engaging through design and infographics for a long time. I believe in the idea so much that I’ve had a visual version of my resume on my portfolio site for the past five years. I had hoped that a conc...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Sep 29, 2011, 2:57 pm
As you can tell from the subject matter this post is getting finished a little later than I would have liked but my workload and travel schedule haven’t given me the freedom to write as much as I would like lately. There have been very few advertisers who have chosen to use 9/11 as the basis of a...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Sep 22, 2011, 9:39 am
Over the years I’ve seen a lot of different site and tools that want to help you be able to critique your web site designs and for none of them have been anything but a passing interest that I eventually delete. There is a new site I have found myself using quite a lot lately called SpurApp.com. I...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Sep 11, 2011, 9:18 pm
I’m so happy to be able to write that  “110 Stories” app which I previously wrote about launched today. The app recreates the Trade Towers through three principles – orient, augment and comment. You activate the app on your iPhone or Android smartphone and you’ll be guided towards the Wo...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Sep 1, 2011, 2:46 pm
Just a quick update that I will now be speaking at 2 different sessions during Adobe MAX 2011. In both sessions I hope to be able bring more thinking and strategy on how Adobe tools should be used from a creative and strategic stand point since than the rest of the sessions which will be filled with...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Aug 31, 2011, 4:43 pm
Anyone who has read this blog for a while knows that it is a well documented fact that I suffer from a debilitating problem where I’m rarely able to make it through a meeting without being able to describe an idea without having to draw some part of it. This historically meant that I carried a ve...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Aug 23, 2011, 3:26 pm
I have seen a lot of different brand visualization tools over the years but the most unique one I’ve ever seen is Brand Toys which shows the personality and online buzz of brands expressed through toys. Each toy design is driven by quantitative research from Millward Brown’s BrandZ study and ...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Aug 23, 2011, 11:44 am
Ralph Lauren has been one of the few real bright spots in the use of digital technology within the luxury fashion industry which has always painfully lagged behind other major brands. I recently found video and a short documentary of an incredible example of creating branded experiental content that...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Aug 10, 2011, 11:38 am
My education in typography was as old school as it could possibly get since I grew up learning this beautiful art on a cast iron letterpress in my parents basement. My father and I wrote, illustrated and printed my storybooks which was a truly magical way to start out as a young designer and typogra...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Aug 9, 2011, 10:56 am
Samsung is challenging people in the Netherlands to a staring contest with YouTube lip-synching sensation Keenan Cahill on their YouTube channel to promote their new series of Smart TV’s. You game uses eye-tracking to watch your eyelid movements through your webcam and your score is based on h...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Aug 8, 2011, 10:26 am
I found a new mini documentary series from PBS Arts called Off Book with the latest installment focused on typography. The piece is only 7 minutes long but in that short period of time there are interviews with typeface designers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones who outline the importance o...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Aug 5, 2011, 10:10 pm
There are a lot of different efforts being put forth for the upcoming 10th anniversary of September 11th. The best one I’ve seen so far is called “110 Stories” which is a personal vision and project of Brian August. He wants to build an app that will recreate the Trade Towers through three pri...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Aug 3, 2011, 9:08 am
I came across Gojee.com today which is a new cooking site that just launched. It’s simple design isn’t revolutionary but if you look beneath the deceptively simple design you see it has a powerful and well thought out user experience. The overall design direction borrows from so many photograph...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Aug 1, 2011, 8:35 pm
If you watched the extreme sports of ESPN’s X-Games that took place in L.A. over the weekend (or the thing between the mind numbingly repetitive Lady Gaga Shark Week commercial) you may have seen something unusual during the Moto X events. When the camera panned over the crowd there was an analog...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Aug 1, 2011, 1:08 pm
After being previewed for about the past year behind closed doors, Adobe released a preview of their new Flashless animation web tool called Edge this morning. They describe Edge as “a new web motion and interaction design tool that allows designers to bring animated content to websites, using web...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Jul 25, 2011, 3:29 pm
Thought this was funny and pretty much sums up a creative directors day-to-day job description.
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Jul 25, 2011, 11:27 am
So if you have been semi-concious for the past few weeks you have heard of, if you’re not already using Google+. It is Google’s latest move into the social networking space following Google Buzz, Google Wave, Orkut, Google Profile, Jaiku, Google Friend Connect and Dodgeball – all have had var...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Jul 20, 2011, 3:52 pm
I have been really interested in multidimensional search results for a while.  They are sites that start off like a normal search engine by take a single search term but return results in multiple forms (text, photos, videos, maps, blogs, etc.) from multiple sources on one page. Google has just lau...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Jul 15, 2011, 3:28 pm
I came across an interesting new site that is still in beta development this week called Klout.com that measures your overall online influence.  You log-in using Facebook or Twitter and after authorizing it to look at all your social media services that use 35 different variables to give you an i...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Jul 14, 2011, 10:47 am
I have always found American Apparel to be a fascinating brand that has been willing to push the boundaries of advertising to create their brand image. They have been rattling around in my mind again lately because I read an article the other morning about their recent financial performance since fi...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Jul 14, 2011, 9:31 am
Just a quick follow up on my appearance at Adobe MAX 2011 at the Los Angeles Convention Center this coming October. I wanted to bring a little something different to the event since there will be more than enough highly detailed and technical sessions at the event.  I will be talking about Using ...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Jul 13, 2011, 5:16 pm
It’s been the same fire drill at every agency and company I have ever worked for.  You are sitting around going through your day to day routine and you get an email from the Executive Creative Director’s assistant the the submission for Canne or the Webby’s or some big award show are due the ...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Jul 12, 2011, 2:30 pm
Twitter and Facebook have become engrained in the social fabric of society unlike any other technology since the invention of television.  That being said, they are two sites who have a huge flaw in that they have been developed almost completely from a consumers point of view and they need to take...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Jul 1, 2011, 10:58 am
Like most creative types I know, I suffer from a debilitating problem where I’m rarely able to make it through a meeting without being able to describe an idea without having to draw some part of it. This historically meant that I carried a velum tablet and Sharpie everywhere and the desks of my d...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Jul 1, 2011, 9:44 am
I found an interesting site today call NYC BigApps from New York City Economic Development Corporation and the NYC Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications that asks a simple questions – If you could have any application to make New York City better, what would it be?  The goal o...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Jun 14, 2011, 11:30 am
Billie Achilleos and Chameleon Visual have created 20 animals to promote their small leather goods line that recently debuted in the windows of Louis Vuitton’s New Bond Street Maison. I personally am not a fan other products but I continue to love and admire the risks they are willing to take wi...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Jun 10, 2011, 11:36 am
I was surprised to see that Denny’s had launched an interesting Web site re-design recently with a striking new visual design.  The content broken into 5 panels and uses html 5 to let you slide between them or use a visual main navigation to more easily jump around. There are some nice touches i...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Jun 9, 2011, 8:37 pm
I am very happy to be able to announce that I will be speaking at Adobe MAX 2011 at the Los Angeles Convention Center this coming October. Stay tuned because I’ll have more details about one and possibly two appearances at the conference very soon.
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Jun 9, 2011, 8:25 pm
There are some things that just belong together and once you experience them you will never forget the combination.  Peanut butter and jelly. Milk and Oreos. Bacon and a greeking text generator. You read that right – bacon and a lorem ipsum generator. Pete Nelson is the mad genus behind this meat...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Jun 5, 2011, 10:57 am
I love the thought and design that goes into a greta inforgraphic.  Two of the best I’ve seen lately came from the team over at Vitamin Tablet. The first takes a look at where to go once you have the great idea that will to take you to internet stardom – click here to see it
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - May 18, 2011, 9:36 pm
It was around the time I was finishing college that I really started to pay serious attention to high fashion and haute couture. But if I’m being honest even during that time I was aware of high fashion but I didn’t really connect with any of it.  It was too expensive, too stuffy and was
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - May 13, 2011, 7:29 pm
I’m happy to announce that once again some of the work my team and I have been doing is featured in the latest Adobe Photoshop Showcase for CS5 that went live today. Click here and then on Starwood Hotels to watch the video now.  
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - May 12, 2011, 6:26 pm
Once every few weeks I get an email that goes something like this – “Your blog has too many typos.” and these simple works of pointless email poetry are NEVER signed with a real name but instead the authors hide behind cute names like Concerned Creative or YourSpellingSucks1234. So let me publ...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - May 11, 2011, 8:31 am
I think that the use of augmented reality in the fashion industry continues to have huge untapped potential. Tobi.com showed up the potential about a year and a half ago with their virtual dressing room that would let you try on clothes from the comfort of their own home instead of going to the sto...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Apr 24, 2011, 7:52 pm
TweetingSeat is an interactive park bench that was designed by Chris McNicholl to explore the environments in which the bench is placed and the people whom it encounters.  Each time someone sits down, TweetingSeat uploads an image from two cameras to the Twitterfeed. One camera is located on the be...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Apr 20, 2011, 4:26 pm
For years I have tried to figure out why on earth Britney Spears has remained so famous. I’m not bothered by it because of her train wreck, paparazzi frenzy inducing lifestyle but rather because of the fact that she is a performer who doesn’t perform. She delivers a complete lie to her audience ...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Apr 20, 2011, 11:50 am
Getting people interested in pursuing careers in public health is an uphill battle for obvious reasons. This interactive digital bus shelter ad does a nice job of using a simple interaction to make people feel empowered and create that interest around public health professions.  
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Apr 19, 2011, 9:01 am
The UK ice cream brand Magnum had launched a very cool new microsite called Pleasure Hunt to promote their products. What makes the site so interesting is that you control a female avatar who starts on the Magnum site but then runs through multiple web sites including portals like YouTube and other...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Apr 18, 2011, 11:59 am
The one article last year that caused the most discussion and got the most media coverage of any article I hve written since I started this blog was The Inverse Facebook Experiment which documented my experiment on the sociological impact Facebook has had on society and our inter-personal relations...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Apr 8, 2011, 1:45 pm
For a long time, watching television was very straightforward. For as long as I can remember it has been sitting on the couch in the living room facing the TV with a set number of channels playing certain shows at a designated time. Technology has completely changed that concept with the introductio...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Apr 4, 2011, 9:03 pm
From time to time in my career I am presented with a piece of advertising that is bad on an epic scale. When I come to such a cross roads the only way I seem to know how to process these crimes against the profession I love is to write about them seemingly in the
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Mar 17, 2011, 11:26 pm
I am extremely happy to announce that I will be speaking at FUSE again this year in Chicago on April 11th. This speaker line-up looks to be one of the best they have had and includes the co-founder of WeFeelFine.org Jonathan Harris and designer Karim Rashid. More details on my topic coming soon! �...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Mar 17, 2011, 10:17 am
Over the course of my career I have designed A LOT of big, intricate, transactional, multi-lingual web sites and inevitably after you launch the site there is some piece of functionality that isn’t performing as well as you had hoped or isn’t being received the way you thought it would be by the...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Mar 14, 2011, 11:19 pm
In what is probably the best combination of print advertising and mobile technology I have ever seen Volkswagen has launched a new campaign that shows consumers the benefits of their cars without them ever going near a real-life car. It was all done by Volkswagen Norway who created an app which al...
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Mar 7, 2011, 10:12 pm
I learned typography on n old letterpress in my parents basement so saying I am a type hound is a bit of an understatement.  Typography s a dying art and most designers I come across these days don’t know an ascender from an arc of stem and that’s just wrong and sad. So do your
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Feb 23, 2011, 12:31 pm
I am a sucker for great simple advertising and Star Wars always been to be a great muse to create that kind of work.  
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Feb 22, 2011, 9:24 am
For obvious personal and professional reasons I have been a fan and a reader of Gizmodo and some of the other Gawker family of sites for a long time.  About two or three weeks ago they launched a re-design of all their sites and I wanted to spend some time with the new design to
Comment - Like

Stephen G. posted an article on StephenGates Interactive Design & Marketing Blog - Feb 21, 2011, 11:05 pm
Almost all of my speaking engagements revolve around trying to demystify how to be a successful creative director or running a successful agency or client-side creative department. This March I will be making a departure to speak about another passion of mine which is information architecture and us...
Comment - Like