Green goodies + Professional Russian blowing things up = St. Patty’s @oakley
If you haven't seen his videos, check ‘em out on YouTube
This one in particular is quite entertaining:
New Installation at 1 Icon.
More than 1000 sales reps from around the world are gathering this week for our Global Sales Meeting. What better time to put up a new installation that showcases some of our core values as well as some iconic products throughout our history. This is an interactive display. No, not digital, but employees will get the chance to write and comment on the walls regarding that Oakley “is” and “is not.”
Day one is at headquarters, so as usual, it’s a festive atmosphere. I love walking up to the building in the morning and being able to hear the DJ pumping music all the way from the lower lot. There's only room for 30 flags on the building, but over 100 countries are represented here today.
A few snapshots from the 1st Annual Oakley Derby of Doom.
A pirate ship flanked by filthy wenches. A bathtub and toilet on wheels. Aliens flying past Uranus. Even a mini-tank in homage to our very own Oakley 453 tank. This is how Soapbox Derby is done at Oakley. The Web department entered 2 vehicles, one of which almost bottomed-out on the jump and the other flipped upon descending the launching ramp. Fortunately, both managed to finish the race, but neither had very impressive times. All-in-all, a great very entertaining afternoon to end the week. The winning team will compete in the Red Bull Soapbox Race.
Here’s a shot of the winners with their car, “Fire in the Hole”
The trophy was designed by our ace 3D artist, Sean Reilly. Unfortunately, “Fire in the Hole” took home all 3 trophies so we don’t get to keep one of these in the web dept.
More pictures available in this Flickr set.
Oscar Pistorious shows off his carbon fiber prosthetic leg.
Listening to Oscar Pistorious (aka Blade Runner) is always inspiring. The South African native was born with a medical condition that required both of his legs to be amputated below the knee at 11 months old, but despite this disability, he has managed to earn the distinction of the "fastest man on no legs." I had already heard much of his story when he spoke at Oakley HQ a few months back, but I'm just amazed at how many sports he participated in as a teen. The man is incredibly humble and is always a pleasure to listen to.
One of my favorite stories was the one he told about his mother. She had gone to 12 different doctors and based on reputation and accomplishments narrowed the list down to the top 3 to perform the procedure on Oscar. However, one of them had indicated they should just amputate at the knee since he "wouldn't be able to use it anyway" which kind of infuriated her. Needlesstosay, they didn't go with this "expert" but after she received his bill for consultation services (which she paid), she sent him a bill back for her own "expert" consultation on the topic of her son's condition.
After his speech a bunch of us from Oakley went out to dinner with him and I found out he is a big auto enthusiast. No surprise the man likes speed, but it was awesome to hear about his love for his Bimmers (135, E46 M3, E92 M3), Mini, and Porches. His favorite right now is his heavily customized 135.
He's close to his quest to be able to compete in the 2012 London Olympics (against "able-bodied" athletes). Hope he makes it!
LogoGarden must die. Another ripoff spotted. This time, mine. #LogoGarden
I found out about this miserable website thanks to a tweet by my friend @hemeon. They sell “Do-it-Yourself Logos for Entrepeneurs” on the cheap by letting any schmo off the street composite their own using a flash application.
It’s bad enough that the concept of this site completely trivializes the design industry, but they make it even worse by ripping off the work of real designers. I realize every business can’t afford to hire a professional designer, so there probably is room for this type of service – although I despise the concept. However, the old addage “you get what you pay for” is not playing out here. In this case, they’re getting a helluva lot more. Surprisingly, the site includes “variations” of some pretty well-known designs…yeah, WWF and Time Warner won’t notice…
Image source: RockPaperInk
Marc’s tweet prompted me to go through the LogoGarden site for about 20 minutes and I witnessed a bunch of attrocities while looking for anything that I might recognize. After wading through a ton of pages of badly hacked-together logos, I began to think I wouldn’t find anything of mine. However, once I realized I could see a lot more by trying out their “free” sample build, it didn’t take me long to come across this:
I designed the logo circled in red probably 18-some-odd years ago. It was a concept for a pet insurance company named PetNet, and although it didn’t get bought, it's been on my porfolio site for maybe 10 years or so (yes, the site is that old, thus the crappy design, UI, and ugly URL). Here’s a closer look:
I’m a little late to the game, since apparently there are a lot of other posts about this topic. Here’s a few for your reading pleasure:
- More Logo Thievery (Iconify.it/Scott Lewis)
- Thoughts on the LogoGarden Controversy (Dani Nordin)
- How Low Can They Go? (LogoLounge.com)
- Perils of DIY Logo Makers (Logofactory.com)
- LogoGarden’s Bitter Harvest (Logofactory.com)
- Grand Theft Logo (Judity Mayer/NWICreative.com)
- LogoGarden.com harvests logos from pros (LogoMotives/Jeff Fisher)
- LogoGarden Should be Plowed Under (Prejean Creative)
- Love Thy Logo (Rock Paper Ink)
- Facebook page
- Twitter trend #LogoGarden
If any of you fellow designers find your logos being ripped off by LogoGarden, report it to their webhost, Rackspace and let’s hope that this shady operation can get shut down.
(hat tip to Brent Pelloquin for his post: How To Get Your Logo Removed from LogoGarden)
Oakley Design Team 2’s Amphibious Cyborg Tank FTW!
We had a Design Team Building Event today at Laguna Beach, where VP of Design, Peter Yee gathered troops from the Product, Graphics, and Web Creative teams together to challenge our thinking and pit brains, brawn and creativity against each other.
Along with the group discussion, we were split up into 4 teams (mixed departments) and given 3 challenges:
- Sand Castles
- Beach Activities (Tug-o-war and other water + sand related things)
- Pictionary Death Match
I was a member of Team 2. Unfortunately, due to some previously scheduled meetings, I had to run back to the office and missed the Beach Activities Challenge. Probably a good thing though, since my back was completely worn out shoveling sand. Fortunately, I was able to participate in the other two.
We conceived of the following idea for our Sand Castle: A Mechanical Frog Tank. Of course, some Jupiter heritage merged with some Oakley military design. A great group effort here. A quick round of brainstorming and sketches, then we were off to dig, pack and sculpt. Didn’t take me long to realize this 41-year-old body couldn’t dig and drag big buckets of water very long. This is going to be a pain-filled weekend. I unfortunately didn’t get any pics of the final completed sculpture though since I had to split about 20 minutes before it was done.
Here’s our winning sand castle, in various stages of completion:
Some details worth noting: Gear on back. Cigar. Tracks leading out of the water. We also had some seaweed that was going to be used for “skin” and camouflage. Since I left early I’m not sure if that ever got done. Will just have to wait to see the final photos.
Team 2 also won Pictionary Death Match by a narrow margin of 8 to 7 over Team 3. By winning 2 out of 3 events, each member of Team 2 earned a paid half day off. I’m sure I won’t be taking advantage of that, but at least @DicksonFong will be able to. He was the only other Web team member on my team.
We don't do “regular” trophies at Oakley, so here’s some photos of the hand-sculpted ones made by non other than Oakley designers.
The Frog was awarded for the best Sand Castle, Pineapple Grenade for Beach Activities, and Winged Skull Torpedo for Pictionary Death Match. Team 2 will be sharing the Trophies, rotating them throughout everyone’s desks. Might be hard to secure time with them though…not sure anyone is gonna want to give them up ;)
The hallways in this hotel remind me of The Shining. Red Rum...
There was talk of a haunted floor 6 here, but I'm on 4, hehe.
Which photo do you like better? I'm undecided.
3D without the glasses. Hat tip to @progressiveone
This is hilarious, and has got to be a hoax of some sort. It's brilliantly done though. Over 2.8 million views in 4 days, and will probably get to 3 million before the day is done. I wonder when the site JonathanPost.com will be updated?
I really want to know who is responsible for this since they are helping to make the case for why passive 3D glasses (like the ones we sell at Oakley and the ones being used in most movie theaters) are better than the active ones that are mostly being used in the home consumer electronics market today.
Hat tip to @progressiveone.