Apr 11, 2012 by Ellen Roche
Instagram may have saved my sanity.
A lifelong fear of flying and my spirit of adventure found me traveling cross country earlier this month by rail from DC to a Free Range retreat in Oakland. My 8-day-round-trip trek took me through sixteen states and all nine circles of Hell. I'm only mildly exaggerating when I say that Instagram salvaged my sanity. When the angry drunk with the knife was ranting, Instagram was there. When we crested the Sierra Nevadas, Instagram was there. When we rolled to a remote stop in Arizona at midnight and they led a few of my fellow passengers off the train in handcuffs, Instagram was there.
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Jan 20, 2012 by Amy Hartzler
These days everyone is talking about telling stories — which is great, because we’ve been refining our storytelling methodology for the last 13 years. But the sudden popularity has also challenged us to define what that really means, as our once-esoteric field has become more crowded. Nearly a year ago today, we recognized that we needed to rebrand.
We knew we couldn’t build a coherent brand without a deep understanding of how we do what we do, and why. We needed to unpack the magic and the science behind our work, and we needed a new story to define what it means to be makers of media that creates a more positive future. And each of our new brand expressions, from an updated logo to this website, needed to reinforce that story.
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Jan 19, 2012 by Drew Beam
Ever been in a “brainstorm” that’s more like a braindrizzle? At Free Range, we have pretty stormy brains — always on the lookout for unexpected creative solutions to client challenges. Here are a few techniques we use to get the best ideas from ourselves. Please add your own best practices to our list in the comments! And if you have a particularly horrendous brainstorm experience to share, happy to hear what doesn’t work!
1. Act “as if”
Envision the end result, and imagine experiencing what that feels like. Come at it from an emotional/spiritual place. Ask: “If people need to feel this way in the end, what do I need to create to make it happen?” Don’t worry about the “how” first — the “how” will flow naturally from this process. Try imagining that you are the client, or the user, or the experiencer of the end result — what do you see, feel, experience? Don’t worry about the gaps yet!
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Jan 12, 2012 by Eric Smith
Last summer I represented Free Range as a judge in The American Institute of Graphic Arts' national design competition “365: Design Effectiveness." When I walked through the glass door of AIGA's storied headquarters on lower Fifth Avenue, in a sense it was like coming home.
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The next great story is yours™
