D.C.

Decided to head back east for a week or so.

Working remotely is one of the luxuries of the job which others seem to covet and yet I tend to generally fail to take advantage of. But it's the summer so I thought it'd be good to get out of the house for awhile.

Picked up a new MacBook Pro battery from the South Coast Plaza Apple Store and hopped on the red eye toward the Nation's Capitol.


sunrise over midwest


pretty sure this terminal was in a p diddy video in the 90's


who answers these phone calls?


dinner in Georgetown

I'll try to pry myself from the computer tomorrow, mill around D.C. a bit and take some non iPhone pics.

MOVING

0484 has officially left the building.

Over the weekend, Matt and I moved out of our office inside the Pacific Tower in downtown Long Beach where we've enjoyed a space for the past year and half. (As you can imagine, it's hard for us to walk away from any office whose 'conference' table also serves as a pool and ping pong table)

In the fall of 07 I was approached by Andrew Anson, who works with a local marketing company called IM/TMA, about setting up an office space adjacent to theirs. The tenants would consist of a mix of creative businesses and freelancers who could work on their own and also collaborate with IM/TMA and amongst each other.

Andrew was a client whom I had met, back in 2005, in response to a CraigsList 'Graphic Designer needed' posting which he had listed. Back when I was in Film school at Cal State and still operating under the name GABE YEH DESIGN, I would periodically respond to various CL posts which I felt I was qualified for. Out of approximately 100,000 posts that we've ever responded to over the years, Matt and I have received about 30 email replies which have turned into three paying clients. (point being: CL works well for some things, like selling lawn chairs or sold out Miley Cyrus tickets, but in terms of finding design clients, it's a much different story; one probably worthy of it's own post sometime in the future)

Two of the three CL contacts, Andrew and Rokenbok toy company out in Solana Beach, have become solid, long term clients for us. The third was a New York based online adult toy store for whom we designed a few t-shirts with questionable subject matter. I'm fairly sure, based on the few weeks of sporadic contact we had, that our contact at the company was abusing many different drugs and that his 'business' was actually a front to launder money for organized crime. Needless to say, a few months after we began working together, said client went completely MIA just as we were in the middle of designing packaging for a line of all natural, edible laundry detergents. -Listen, before you judge us for taking on this client in the first place, let me remind you of the CL odds and statistics I just mentioned. Trust me, if you sent out as many emails as we did, and 99% of them are never merely responded to, by the time someone actually emailed you back and offered to hire you, they could damn well be asking you to design packaging for anthrax-laced children's vitamins and you're at least going to hear them out.

Anyway, back more towards the point, in late 2007 we helped set up the IM/TMA design studio next door to the existing IM/TMA offices. We've had a good solid run the past 19 months or so and it was definitely a positive experience for Matt and I. We never needed an office space, but the networking opportunities it allowed for us helped tremendously to kick start the growth of 0484.

With that said, I personally just moved down to Newport Beach, and with Matt living in San Diego, keeping the space in Long Beach no longer made sense for us. But we will continue working with Andrew and IM/TMA and the relationship we've built with The ID Agency has been instrumental for us as well.

Please note our new mailing address and direct all checks, packages, postcards and fan mail to: 962 Baywood Drive, Newport Beach, California 92660

THURSDAY MEETINGS

Had a few meetings up in LA today.

First up was Legacy Games, located in the heart of downtown. Noticed they had a basketball court on the roof on the first floor of their building. Pretty legit too; 3 point line and everything.

When Matt and I were about 17, our Graphic Arts class went on a field trip to the famous TBWA/Chiat Day office over in Marina del Rey. They have an indoor full court with their logo painted on the floor. I can say with almost complete certainty that it was in that moment that I decided that design and advertising seemed like the right career path for me. I mean, I was always interested in design, but that office sort of showed me firsthand the silly amount of money that could be made from designing Pepsi cans and making Taco Bell ads. I'm pretty sure that basketball court was some sort of sign from God telling me what to do with my life. (He works in mysterious ways you know?)

Anyway, meeting with Legacy went well. Lunch at Wolfgang Puck Express then I drove down the street to meet with Victor, Marco and Mr. Cartoon.



Everything there went well. It was cool to meet Cartoon. I don't have any tattoos at the moment, but if I ever was to do it, I'd have to go with the best, right? Maybe I'll have a talk with Matt; see if he's down for some matching 0484 logo tats or something. (You never know...)

ICANBOMB

Our boy Jeremy Eichenbaum is out on an extended stay in The Holy Land.

I've known Jerm for awhile. We both served time together at Cal State Long Beach. We've worked with him in the past and he's shot stuff for a couple of clients of ours. In fact, he shot some photos for us when we first got our office that are on our current homepage now.

Sometimes I think people with regular jobs look at Matt and me like we're crazy for doing our own thing without all the fancy perks and safety nets (like getting paid) of traditional 9-5 jobs. And sometimes it seems like they might have a point, but then you look Jeremy's blog and he's out on the other side of the world snapping photographs, sleeping in a tent in the middle of the desert and it makes us seem like corporate robots. So, you know, it's all about perspective.

Anyway, check out his photoblog at icanbomb.com

REP KOBE VIDEO

A couple weeks ago Matt and I launched this little REPRESENT KOBE project.

Before Finals Game 1 we headed out to Staples Center along with our boy Jordan Warren. We handed out some posters and Kobe tees. Downtown LA was nuts that day. Of course everyone was there for the game, plus the E3 Video game convention was going on. Anyway, if you have 3 minutes to kill, check the video out.

Sorry for the overall suspect production quality of this vid, I know my old film school professors are going to cringe when they see this. It's a YouTube video, gimme a break.

Also, we submitted the video to this little competition run by the LA Times, so there's a chance it may play at the upcoming Los Angeles Film Festival. We'll see what happens...

SUPERBRACKET WRAP UP

So, the Finals are over and the bracket results have all been tabulated.

Our boy Albert is the big winner. He was the only one who correctly predicted the Lakers over Magic in the Finals. Incidentally, had it been the Lakers over the Cavs, our little contest would have ended up in like a 20-way tie, so it's good everything worked out the way it did.

Anyway, we now owe Albert a $25 Chipotle gift card and a REPRESENT KOBE shirt. (Albert, e-mail us and let us know if you'd like the gift card in $1.25 installments over 20 years, or as a lump sum, one time $12 payout. The choice is yours buddy.)

Thanks to everyone else for playing. Wimbledon is right around the corner, so maybe if I can convince Matt, we'll throw a bracket together for that. But, you know, don't hold your breath or anything.

REP KOBE: BEHIND THE SCENES

printer issues





kobe wallpaper





do-it-yourself screenprinting

HEY

So, this is the official 0484CREATIVE blog.

Basically we're planning to use it to post random work-related news, disseminate our radical viewpoints on topics which are of little interest to others and possibly share the occasional YouTube video.

We don't want to make too many promises, but we'll try to update it as much as possible. The main challenge will be making our lives seem readable or blog worthy. Unlike all of those other blogs you always read, where the authors go to all the hottest parties and hang out with the Black Eyed Peas and have brunch with Ben Affleck, then blog all about it and post a bunch of blurry camera phone pictures of their glamorous lives; our blog won't be like that. We're just going to try and keep it real.

And if that doesn't work, then a month from now we'll start heavily name-dropping and post a bunch of fictitious rumors about Jon and Kate Gosselin or that Miss California chick and then we'll see what that does for our blog traffic. Either way, we're determined to make this blog a big hit. Stay tuned.