To celebrate Red Door’s 10th anniversary this year (double digits!), we would like to share our personality, core values, and overall excitement through a series of “top 10” blog posts on the 10th each month.

Coming up with ideas on demand can be a challenge, but not when you’re armed with the right inspiration. Here, the Red Door Creative Department shares the top 10 ways they kick-start their creative thinking.

1. Change it up.

To me, change is so inspiring because it’s both scary and exciting at the same time. Change gives me something new to look forward to. Every time I experience change in my life, I learn so much from it and grow as a person and as an artist.

-Jeannie Fratoni, Design Director

2. Catch some z’s.

Sometimes my most creative thoughts come to me when I’m at the cusp of falling asleep or in a state of waking up, when my mind is most clear. So I always keep a notepad by the bed, just in case!

-Patrick Cinco, Associate Creative Director

3. Reach for some eye candy.

For me, there’s no better way to be creatively inspired than by losing myself in beautiful creative works—photos, fashion, ads, poems, editorials, songs.  And as much as I love my iPad, no techy gadget can ever replace the ritual of paging through a big, fat magazine.

-Hannah Malan, Copywriter Intern

4. Just breathe.

If you really want to go into the deepest possibilities of true inspiration, then awaken to the practice of conscious breath work. It’s where all creativity lives. It requires the absolute absence of resistance and the opening up to a state of full-on appreciation. Then and there, the ideas just download and flow right in. Try it!

-Lisa Schiavello, Executive Creative Director

5. Channel your inner elf.

I like to put Lord of the Rings on in the background while I’m working. The creativity that it took to produce such an impressive trilogy is so inspiring—the beautiful score, the well-written dialogue, the stunning visual effects. Not to mention the hot, sexy elf! What more do you need??

- Azenith Salenga, Designer

I like to seek out people who aren’t in the biz. You know…the “normal” people. Moms, dads, lawyers, scientists, yogis, dog walkers—anyone who can offer up a different perspective on a business problem. Most of the time, they remind me that simple is best. And that when all else fails, add a baby or a puppy into your concept and it’ll be golden.

-Sarah Hughes, Associate Creative Director

7. Embrace the darkness.

Sometimes I just need to sit in the dark. No sound, no light, just my thoughts. It’s a way of removing myself from the computer and other distractions so I can really focus on the task at hand. Surprisingly, trying to forget everything helps me remember the great ideas!

-Will Hansen, Senior Designer

8. Get outside.

Another great way for me to jumpstart the brain is to spend some time in the ocean.  Whether it’s paddling, surfing or even just a quick swim, nothing feels more natural to me than being in the water.

-Patrick Cinco, Associate Creative Director

9. Turn on some tunes.

I get so motivated by music. I select the music depending what I am doing, so it really varies. But when I need inspiration, my favorite is something that makes me want to dance.

-Jeannie Fratoni, Design Director

10. Come together.

Even though we all work on different projects and have our own assignments, we’re all in this together. Taking the time as a team to have lunch on the hill by the Padres Stadium or grabbing a beer after work gives us the opportunity to bounce ideas off each other and problem solve for each other’s “stucks.”

-Red Door Interactive Creative Department

Red Door’s Got Talent!… or at least we like to think we do. This summer has really blown by and the Red Door Interns have completely settled-in, staying busy with client meetings, internal projects and day-to-day tasks. We’ve come all the way from nervous newbies to pulling off a full-blown takeover of Red Door’s social media platforms. And in the midst of this coup, we’re organizing the first annual Red Door Variety Show! This internal event will give us a chance to showcase the experience and knowledge we’ve gained so far—from planning, organizing and creating the event to promoting it online through social media, measuring the response and finally participating in the actual show! Okay that last part doesn’t have anything to do with what we have learned at Red Door per se, but we wanna have fun too! And yes – Reid is already VERY nervous… But the even more important question is: What will his performance be?!

The show will take place on Monday, August 22 from 4-5pm, with a happy hour to follow. Doorie’s, our specially created awards, will be given out to winners in three separate categories. What’s a Doorie you ask? Well, let’s just say it’s a borderline fantastic prize that will allow you to picture your wonderful 2011 Summer Interns whenever you miss us in the future. Hint, Hint. Nudge, Nudge. Wink, Wink. The best overall performance will be given the Grand Prize—a $50 pre-paid Visa card. Winners will be determined by our high-tech, patented Plause-O-Meter, a.k.a. Lexi’s arm moving up-and-down according to the decibel level of each contestant’s applause from the crowd and passers-by.

So, calling all Red Door employees – what’s your talent? Singing and dancing? Holding your breath? How about juggling? Whatever it is, start practicing and get ready to show it off in a few weeks! We can’t wait to see it. Stay tuned for videos of the show.

Join Red Door’s Executive Creative Director, Lisa Schiavello, & the social summer interns as we begin the conversation about taking Creative Risks.

Want to join us? On Thursday, August 11th from 1 to 2 PM (PST) we’ll be tweeting via #creativechat  & @RedDoor  asking Lisa about some risky business!

Have some questions you want to create buzz about? Send ‘em to our Facebook or Twitter by August 10th!

Want to meet us face to face? Join us for our San Diego Speaker Series on August 24th or our Denver event on September 13th where the lively discussion around Creative Risks will continue!

Let’s chat.

Creative Risk Taking: When thinking outside the box just isn’t enough

The Old Spice twitter campaign. Subservient Chicken. Apple’s 1984. Great advertising has always been about taking risks. But it’s not just the creatives that push the envelope with their ideas. It’s also about the marketing leaders that are willing to approve work that makes them just a teensy bit nervous. Or the account director that provides proof points for why the risky idea is worth pushing through. Creative risk is a part of the process from start to finish and we all have the opportunity to take that leap of faith. Our panel of experts will discuss the importance of creative risk-taking and what it’s like to be the person who pulls the trigger.

Topics Include:

• What does “creative risk” mean to you?
• How do you and your team come up with that risky idea in the first place?
• What are some tools or exercises your team uses to break out of the creative norm?
• What categorizes something as a creative risk?
• How do you measure the pros and cons of taking a creative risk?
• What makes a risk worthwhile?
• What do you do if the risk doesn’t pay off?
• Once a risky idea is on the table, how can you convince the client, your team or yourself to say GO?

SAVE THE DATE
The Denver event date will be announced soon; and the San Diego event will be Wednesday,  August 24^th.

• 8:30 – 9:00 AM Registration, Breakfast & Networking
• 9:00 – 10:00 AM Presentation & Questions
• 10:00 – 10:30 AM Networking

Who Should Attend:
Creative Directors, Marketing execs, CMOs, Marketing Managers, Social Media Managers, Product Managers & Brand Managers for national consumer brands, retailers & anyone else interested in the topic.

Welcome to Red Door Interactive’s first featured artist post. Each quarter we will highlight the work of a different featured artist in our “Gallery” themed conference room. 

We hope you enjoy the paintings created by this quarter’s highlighted artist, Joanna Milo, and welcome you to stop by our Downtown San Diego office to see and be inspired by them.  

Drawing Inspiration from Featured Artwork:
Here at Red Door Interactive we often look to our unique office settings for creative inspiration.  Each office has conference rooms that are themed to make one feel at home and inspired. Our headquarters is in Downtown San Diego’s East Village, and each of the conference rooms here are named after rooms you’d find in a home – The Living Room, The Den, The Studio, The Kitchen, The Sunroom, The Balcony and The Gallery. The Gallery is complete with bright white walls, modern mid-century lighting and white furniture. We wanted a room where we could feature and celebrate local artists work to share with not only our employees but also with our clients. In our Gallery conference room we will now be able to enjoy the featured art work and the inspiration that each piece provides. 

Featured Artist: Joanna Milo
Our newest paintings are the work of Joanna Milo. She is a friend of Red Door’s and used to work in the advertising industry but nowadays you can find her painting in her Studio in Little Italy.Joanna Milo, born in Warsaw, Poland and raised in Europe until the age of 10, derived an early appreciation for abstract art with the help of her parents’ guidance. Joanna creates paintings that speak not only to the viewer’s appreciation and interpretation of nature, but also to ones emotion.

Artist Statement:
“From my very first forays into the creation of art, I have always been inspired by nature, specifically, the way the colors of the sea and sky change based on the time of day, the seasons, the weather, and the place. There’s a reason few of us can peel our eyes away from a sunset or from the magnificent clouds formed on the horizon after a thunderstorm. The beauty of sky and sea is captivating and fascinating.
 
Rather than attempting to replicate the color variations I see in nature, I strive to be inspired by it and allow my paintings to emerge organically. Using impasto technique allows me to blend and intermingle color rather than mixing and diluting it. I welcome and encourage my viewers to use their imagination to forge their own interpretation of my work. Where, I may have been inspired by the desert at dawn, the viewer may see a brilliant sunset over the sea. This is what has drawn me to explore abstract expressionism in my work. Each painting will reveal itself differently to each viewer, and the one constant I hope to share is the feeling of happiness and serenity found in nature.”

Fast Company
Reid Carr

What does a person deemed “creative” look like? You might picture a man with horn-rimmed glasses in a long-sleeved black mock turtleneck or a young woman, powered by caffeine, donning the latest fashions. They are certain to come up with the next big idea, the white knight, at each and every brainstorming session, or maybe not.

There is no question that some people are more inventive than others, but is that “right brain” a product of nature or nurture? I like to err on the side of nurture. Sure we have a creative team at Red Door Interactive, but we don’t believe in segregating them from the rest of the company. We truly believe that ingenuity can be learned by anyone, it’s just a matter of structuring an environment that fosters it. Here are a few ways we go about unlocking the unexpected.

Don’t babysit employees. We feel it’s important for managers to let each staff member identify their own path of least resistance, much like water. It’s not about a CEO setting the goals for the company. Rather, it’s about empowering teams and individuals to map out their own plans and objectives to help unleash what’s possible. That places an emphasis on creative problem solving right out of the gate. While this requires a great deal of trust and mutual respect, the end result can be a more motivated and inspired workforce.

Full Story >>

One of the best things about working at Red Door is that we get to serve extraordinary clients. The Maritime Museum of San Diego is a perfect example. Red Door Interactive was recently chosen to create their new Web site. The museum is great local organization and has been an asset to the community for decades.

The Maritime Museum’s research credentials and educational programs are second to none. Nautical books, seafaring music, and fine maritime art can be found in the Museum Store. Local residents and international tourists alike find visiting the museum to be an engaging day of discovery and learning. But the old Web site wasn’t communicating the experience well. This is a place where history and technology still live – not some manufactured presentation asking us to imagine how things once were. We wanted the new site to let visitors feel wind and salt spray. It needed to give a sense of the motion and power inherent in these ships that helped build California and the West.

Our discovery interviews revealed a diverse and growing organization with a broad range of needs. The old site was at least flexible, and was updated frequently by museum staff. There was a huge array of valuable content, but the museum was not being shown to its fullest potential. It was difficult for potential visitors to easily discover the variety of unique experiences available, from classes in celestial navigation to multi-day sailing adventures aboard tall ships. The new site retains the flexibility, while showing the excitement of directly experiencing a variety of historic vessels.

The site has more audiences than just museum visitors. Hundreds of dedicated volunteers and supporters keep the museum afloat. Literally. There are no buildings. The entire museum, even the offices, is aboard its collection of ships. The new Web site had to enable museum staff to communicate with their crews, the media, donors, other maritime museums, and historians. Now it can vividly convey the sense of pride and belonging these volunteers and supporters feel for their museum.

We’re very proud and happy to have been entrusted with this opportunity to help the Maritime Museum of San Diego communicate its world-class status, and we look forward to watching the museum’s continued development and success, supported by the new www.sdmaritime.org site.

Every year, Red Door enters top creative to the San Diego ADDYs Creative Show. We’ve walked away with numerous awards over the years, but never anything quite like this.

This year, the San Diego Ad Club decided to host the first annual Pinewood Derby contest where local agencies race in-house designed boxcars. The Pinewood Derby supports this years ADDYs theme “Your ideas have legs. Now let’s see if they have wheels.” There were four awards given: Fastest, Slowest, Most Creative and Best Representation of an Agency.

The Red Door Creative team got together to concept some original ideas for our car while enjoying some Fat Tires during Red Door’s Beer:30. Beer:30 is a weekly event on Fridays held to boost morale by claiming 3:30 as “beer:30” and encouraging employees to take a quick break while enjoying a nice, cold beer if they choose. So, with a few gulps of  beer in us, what better idea then to make a Beer:30 boxcar! Our own Red Door brew to race down the tracks at the derby. Thanks to Will Hansen, Interactive Designer at Red Door, and his mad dremel skills, here is the final product:

The car represents the recent addition of Red Door Denver with the Fat Tire cap, and an agency branded label designed by Jeannie Fratoni, Red Door’s Creative Director, and Michelle Peck, Interactive Designer.

There was much hooting and hollering at the ADDYs Raid/Pinewood Derby last Friday evening as our Creative Team watched the Beer:30 car race down the tracks. While it wasn’t the fastest car of the bunch, it definitely stood out in the crowd. During the award ceremony, with gag-gift like trophies such as a toilet seat and brick, Red Door took home the golden prize (or golden syrup bottle) of Best Representation of an Agency. So, I guess our slogan “The best hour for freshly brewed ideas” proved to be true at the Pinewood Derby.

Wish us luck. We find out if we receive an award for our creative work at the ADDYs Creative Gala on March 20th.

Recently, my six-year old daughter was looking over my shoulder as I was writing some ad copy.

She then said, “Hey Mom, you can’t start a sentence with and.”

“Well, Gina,” I said, rather at a loss for words, wondering how does she know this, “I’m writing Web copy. It’s okay to break the rules.”

My apologies to Gina’s first-grade teacher Mrs. Willis, I am one of those responsible for the decline of the English language. But as a copywriter, I’m not writing to please English teachers, I’m writing to strike an emotional chord with consumers in a hope to reach their wallets.

Occasionally, when a client reviews Web copy, they may question grammar usage. While overly formal, grammatically perfect copy may be a put off, overly casual language may look unprofessional. The idea is to find an appropriate balance.

In short, what’s the golden rule to remember? Consider your audience. When your readership is financial investors, the tone should more formal than when selling fish tacos.

Grammar rules that are okay to break:

1. Starting a sentence with “And” or “But”: Yes, it’s perfectly acceptable to start with conjunctions. Just remember that it is slightly more informal.

2. Contractions: Don’t. Aren’t. Isn’t. They’re all okay.

3. Sentence fragments: When you write like you speak, it’s okay to use sentence fragments for drama or emphasis. Really.

4. Slang: Go ahead and use slang, just be sure not to overdo it. Web copy for Jump Mobile, a pre-paid wireless service designed for  mobile-dependent, urban youth, is informal yet very light on urban euphemisms. Nothing is worse than a client trying to appeal to a target market and looking like a poser instead.

5. One-sentence or one-word paragraphs: This is particularly applicable to writing for the Web. Readers are typically skimming a Web page looking for a particular piece of information. Huge blocks of text can be visually intimidating and chances are, your reader will go click, click, good-bye.

So there you go. Write. Relate. Have fun. Get results.

Yesterday I  went back to an older post on this blog to watch a video of the Red Door creative department at the New Children’s Museum.

I was rather surprised to see a selection of related videos show up in the screen when the video was done playing. One of these videos was titled 3-D Interactive Sex Game as you can see in the screen shot below.

Oh my goodness.

Apparently, one of the prices you pay for streaming to YouTube for free is the ready availability of other content.

Which just goes to show you always have to be aware of the context in which your brand is seen online.

Now if you’re interested in watching either video, you’re going to have to dig up the old post for yourself.

I’m not going to make it that easy for you.