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San Diego freelance copywriter Anne McColl shares tips and insights on copywriting, running a small business, marketing trends, writing websites, and design.
Tonight was the kickoff reception for Social Media Marketing World at the San Diego Natural History Museum. What do you get when 1,000 social media marketers invade a collection dinosaur bones and fossils? All of these images were created live on mobile devices.
Oh, I can't believe I haven't shared this yet. Truly, one of my favorite freelance copywriter projects from last year. The Fandom Marketing video. The animation was done by the very talented Todd Anderson of Switchfoot Creative.
It's funny how every Y-Conference seems to reflect an underlying theme. This year's was that side projects and pro-bono work can lead to other assignments. Wayne White spoke how he played with puppets and that led to his work on Pee-wee's Playhouse. Brian Singer shared his many side projects including 1000 Journals. Eric Thoelke shared how doing work for the local opera company evolved step by step into more client work. And Josh Higgins shared how his pro bono poster work led to working with the Obama Campaign.
Below is a selection of images that I live tweeted during the conference including sketchnotes of presentations and highlighted quotes. All design done live during presentations. (Yeah, I felt weird, one of the few non-designers in an audience of designers tweeting designs but all very much of the moment.)
So do you think the Internet is an amazing thing? A depository for all of our collective knowledge. It is. But it's not the first. The great library at Alexandria in ancient Egypt was the first time when all the the world's knowledge was actively collectively organized, and more importantly, organized. In this clip from the program Cosmos, Carl Sagan walks us through the great library that contained over 1,000,000 scrolls. When commercial ships can into port, they were searched for books. Agents were sent to travel the world, to borrow and copy scolls.
The library is no longer with us and Sagan ponders just how much information was lost, from a Mesopotamian historian's account of stories from creation to the flood, to the daily musings of Egyptian priests.
What would happen if we lost the Internet? How much would you lose? (Do you have a backup?)
Part of The Year of Procrastination Project.
Nothing can bog down your blog post more than a boring, predictable visual. (Hello iStock.) So what is a blogger to do? Well, look no further than your iPhone. There are some amazing apps that make creating a visual fun and easy. Here are a few of my favorites.
Over
Over adds text to photos. You can select fonts, alignment, size and color all within the app. (No more layers in Photoshop.)
Take a picture. That's right. Don't be shy. Draw on notepad, a white board and post.
Vine Vine is a new six-second video app.And it makes making stop motion animation easy! How could you use it? Pin up your products one by one?
Are you content with your content? vine.co/v/bvdWh7gdXaL
— Anne McColl (@annemccoll) February 11, 2013
I gave a short presentation at the Hera Hub Writers Lounge on generating ideas. Really it was an exercise in trying out the new Haiku Deck app, which lets non-designers make cool Power Point presentations. Then I took the slides and turned them into a video. Yes, all copy AND design by a freelance copywriter. If I can do it, so can you. You can see both below.
How are you going to start off the year. A fun piece I created with JennDavid.com for AIGA San Diego. All incidents based on real life.
As an interactive copywriter, the expected holiday greeting is to send a witty, holiday themed email or video. But this year, I wanted to do something different, something precious. Something that people would keep out on their desks year round.
After several creative meanderings (most of which involved large amounts of chocolate,) I came up with Instagram origami cranes. (The crane is a symbol of prosperity and luck.) It's the ideal collision of digital and real world. For my social media and marketing clients that I followed on Instagram, I designed customized square grids using their Instagram photos and then printed it on my HP printer. I cut each square to size and then folded a crane. I attached a ribbon with a gift tag: "May the New Year unfold with peace and joy." Clients could hang their Instagram cranes on a tree or in their office.
The response was quite positive.
So why am a doing this? A litte creative crosstraining.Sketches, photos and lettering all help my words as an interactive copywriter come alive. And thank you Lisa Congdon for developing Petit Lisa. Learn by doing.
What's my creative project for the year? Simply to document my creative procrastination. (Let's just call it creative crosstraining – sketchnotes, illustrations, photos, and the occasional fold.) As an interactive copywriter, sometimes I do everything but write. So this is a formal documentation of those creative meanderings. But often, I find the answer I am looking for in my doodles rather than within the linear thought patterns of writing.
Can you accomplish a lot in 5 or 15 minutes? Not always. But after 365 days, there's quite a body of work.
The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life. – Jessica Hische
All freelance copywriters know that if they want a lot of retweets, they can just turn any post into a #StarWars post. John Willshire said it best in his presentation on Advertising in 2020: "Star Wars is the last refuge of a creatively bankrupt marketeer." Of course, they have to have some pretty deep pockets to pay George. Still, I'm pretty proud of my origami Yoda. And so is Yoda.
Whenever I write about brands with great personality, Photojojo tops the list. And I wasn't disappointed this year. They make every interaction with their customers a joy.
Have you ever seen a receipt that was so much fun.
And the tracking device? These guys are great. (Dear niece and nephew I hope you don't read this post.) 
I remember one of my first all-nighters as a young advertising copywriter involved Twinkies and Red Bull. Not a good idea.
Oh, the glories of the Internet. A poster from back in the days when chicks on boards were a rare thing. My payment for this was two Sector 9 longboards, back in the day when longboards were kind of a rare thing. (Now my daughter and I cruise together.)
Well, Interactive Day San Diego keeps growing with over 800 people attending this year. In my continuing exploration of how to blog an event without writing, I did more sketchnotes.
I attended two session on mobile marketing that dovetailed nicely with each other.
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Then after lunch it was more creative territory. Yay!
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Of course, by happy hour I was no longer sketching.
Yay, design hero Svante Nilson and I partnered on a book for client EdHive. It was just featured on Behance for Typography. Real proud of the visuals on this one. (And the copy ain't bad either.)
Over 100 San Diego women turned out for the launch of Founder Friday with Women 2.0 in San Diego. Some familiar faces and a lot of new ones. I think I may have found a few collaborators. Isn't that what it's all about?
This spring Star War Episode 1: The Phantom Menace was back on the silver screen in 3-D. So after watching Phantom Menace, I ended up watching Episode 4: A New Home within the same week. Comparing the plotlines of the two movies got me thinking about the importance of the big idea when telling a story. (Whether you should begin with the prequels or original triology is a whole other blog post.)
The original Star Wars, A New Hope, is a classic story of good vs evil. We follow the quest of young Luke as he grows as a young man. The end of the movie is an adrenaline rush as we watch Luke and the other pilots make the assault on the Death Star and blow it up.
Contrast this with the ending of Episode 1 The Phantom Menace. Who are we rooting for? Well to start with we have the froggish Jar Jar Binks leading the Gungans into battle against the Trade Federation battle droids.
Then we have Princess Amidala leading the capture of the palace.
Anakin ends up in the sky and blows up the control ship thus disabling all the droids.
And finally, Qui-gon Jinn and Obi-wan Kenobi battle Darth Maul.
Did you get that? Now imagine if this was a marketing campaign. With A New Hope, you can name who the hero is – Luke Skywalker.
Now quick, who's the hero of the Phantom Menace?
If you stuff too many details in your messaging people end up remembering nothing.
Live long and prosper.
May the Force be with you.
What drives you as a designer? Fame, glory, money (not), the chance to influence people?
A couple of weeks ago I attended the AIGA San Diego 17th Annual Y Design Conference. The line up of speakers was fabulous. I was particularly charmed by Andrew Byrom who talked about how he financed some of his own projects.
You can find my account on Storify here.