Hello Viking

Dan, the intern

Dan Spillman joined us on Monday. He's our summer intern. Dan goes to MCAD, and is tall. We're excited he's with us. Dan's going to help us with our first birthday celebrations, and various client projects. Welcome, Dan!

2007 in friends and music and other favorites

Hello Viking started six months ago.

Since then, we've had the opportunity to collaborate with wonderful people at Spring, Dentsu America, Venables Bell, 1nteractive, Arnold, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Pinnacle Air and BlueCross BlueShield.

Thank you David, Shannon, Ted, Trish, Rey, Mike, David, Colleen, Lissette, Pierce and Woody.

And thanks to all the amazing people who collaborated with Hello Viking, sharing their skill, wisdom and experience. We look forward to working with you all in 2008!

Amidst all the excitement, we chalked up a few other favorites:

Cornelius' Sensuous
(Especially love "Fit Song")

Common's Finding Forever
("Drivin' Me Wild" might be our single of the year)

Fountains of Wayne's Traffic and Weather
(Okay, "New Routine," "Strapped for Cash" and "Yolanda Hayes" might also be our singles of the year; and we really dug the FoW show at First Avenue)







The Police reunion tour
Okay, so the crowd on the floor was 45+. But these guys were on fire.

The Sea & Cake at the Varsity Theater
We love seeing Archer and Sam. They were fantastic, in a fantastic venue.

moo.com
They love to print and we love the work they print. Beautiful website interface.

Michael Clayton
Might be our film of the year. Tony Gilroy's script was awesome.

Must not forget Basecamp. Or HighRise. Two brilliant web applications from 37Signals. Hello Viking probably wouldn't be as organized (and thus as successful) as it has been without these two awesome applications. And we found ourselves almost totally in agreement with Jason Fried when he spoke about 37Signal's process and products at this year's MIMA Summit.

And we got geeked about Twitter.

And Flickr.

Curse you, Guitar Hero III. You threaten to curb productivity in 2008.

This week in Inspiration

Every time we get a call to collaborate or bid on some work, we end up collecting a bunch of reference links. Looking across multiple projects, these links are totally unrelated to each other. But maybe you'll find something useful or inspiring in the list. Here's our recent grab bag-o-links:

k10k.net
Our pal Sung said, "it still holds its own even though the design is almost 8 years old. On the backend, it has lots of dynamic feeds so that's really nice." This is a great resource for design.

WebCreme
Got this from our pal Cole. A nifty resource for design ideas.

Schematic
Another great combination of intuitive architecture and great design. Love the metaphor. And the main control nav system is very smart.

CenterPlan
Awesome navigation interface. Thanks for the link, Jamie! (The site takes a bit to load, but it's worth it.)

Facebook | Volvo C30
Kristina at MIMA sent us this link. Good reference for the evolution of marketing on Facebook.

Firstborn
We dig their new site design. The info architecture is awesome. And if you don't hire us, hire them!

CSS Zen Garden
We love Flash, but we love CSS, too. This site does an excellent job of demonstrating how simple CSS can dramatically effect design. And it works great on the iPhone, too.

Web 2.0 how-to design guide
This is very well organized and thoughtfully written. Lots of useful insights and guides for strategy, architecture and design.

Panic
Really great product site design. So simple. Check out the download arrow, upper right. You just drag/drop one of their product icons to download it. (And it's not built in Flash.)

What's your inspiration? Please share a link or two with us.

Subaru goes to CL

Congratulations to Carmichael Lynch on picking up the Subaru account without a review. The good people at 110 N. 5th Street deserve the win. And the Minneapolis advertising community definitely needs the good news.

Note to RGA (current incumbent for Subaru interactive): Watch out for Herb, Sean, Wex, Mike and Dan!

Thanks, Apple

We dropped iPhone #1 last week.

Granted, we've dropped iPhone #2 several times and it's been fine. (Of course, now iPhone #2 gets carried around in a lucite case.)

But iPhone #1 got hurt. The glass cracked. Totally our fault.

And Apple's response has been nothing short of outstanding. The people on the phone were kind, efficient and understanding. Clearly, Apple's worked through this process and trained appropriately. How many companies bother to prepare for these inevitabilities of customer error? Not nearly enough.

The loaner iPhone showed up this morning.

Apple sends you a new paperclip to assist with opening your broken iPhone. They send you a paperclip!!! They send brilliant, simple instructions. They send packing tape to seal up your broken iPhone in the return box.

Clearly, Apple has bothered to think about us, the end users, working throough even the most mundane scenarios.

And for maintaining this keen, deep-reaching eye on customer experience, we're going to thank Apple by continuing to buy and recommend their products. We're also going to continue purchasing more of their stock.

Huzzah, Jan Ulrik Leth!

A fearsome Viking congratulations to our friend Jan Leth on his recent promotion at Ogilvy to Chairman of Vice or some such thing. Well deserved, Jan!

And thanks to Jan's vast knowledge of viking lore, we now bask in the glorious understanding that Bluetooth wireless technology was essentially named after the Viking King Harald Bluetooth.

Persuasion

We had a fabulous lunch today at Barbette with Dion Hughes and Mark Johnson of Persuasion Arts & Sciences. (Thanks, men!) The food, the art (seen here) and the conversation were quite wonderful.

It's really interesting to hear the perspectives of two guys with decades of experience who helped make Fallon, Ammirati and a whole slew of traditional ad agencies rich and famous. As they put it, the struggle Mark and Dion face now are the antiquated definitions, methodologies and procedures of the very ad industry that made them famous.

Where are the marketers and ad agencies willing to step outside the established "norms" of strategic development and production integration? There's money to be saved, and effective ideas to be had. Just ask Mark and Dion. Or us.