Starting bright and early at 7am this morning, the metal studs were cut to unite our two spaces. When I first called the office, Zak answered the phone “It’s a loud day here at Sandstorm” which made me laugh “out loud”. If you call Sandstorm enough and are fortunate to get him to answer, he’s always got a witty and generally funny phrase for the day. I could tell in the background that the noise was annoying pretty much everyone, so to thank them all for their patience and tolerance through the noise today, I took the Sandstorm team out to Jury’s for lunch. Yum!

Now it’s nearly 4pm and our construction crew is gone. We finally have some peace and quiet to do our interactive and marketing magic, and the huge draping plastic wrap is a unique creative inspiration. It’s actually so eerily quiet in here that it feels a lot like a serious corporate environment… I can actually hear the hum of my laptop and the slight clatter of a few keyboards.

Our new neighboring space was painted today (whoo hoo!), and has such a creative, fun, lofty yet still marketing and interactive agency look to it. The old walls were gray and electric blue, which was interesting, but didn’t have our more signature sandstorm look. Plus the gray made me sad, so I just love the new shade of blond that replaced it.

In addition, we are introducing “the fishbowl”. It’s one of two new huddle rooms with tons of glass windows, with interior walls painted blue, so it kind of feels like you are in a fishbowl when you are working in it. It’s going to be great to reduce the sound of the trains on conference calls, and is a great brainstorming room. Jon is donating some old floor lamps for ambiance. Thanks Jon!

And I can’t forget our newest lunchroom. Ah… no more having to clean up the conference room or usability lab last minute because a group decided to grab lunch together, and leave random things behind. Now we have a large, bright space that will probably always have hot sauce packets on the table or tables – we haven’t decided if we want a few smaller tables or one big one.

So right before Christmas we’re going to get just the greatest gift… A new and improved, much larger space for 2010! Thank you to my fabulous and dedicated staff and to our clients for making this possible as we continue to grow as one of Chicago’s emerging boutique interactive agencies. :)

We’re still working out the details, but it looks like we’re finalizing on our very first “sandstorm jammie bake-off”. Maybe it’s the competitive streak in us, or the crazy creatives at the office, or the random baked goods that some of us bring in, but it appears just one guac-off a year is not enough for us. We’re thinking February, when the snow has fallen, the ice is cold, and we’re all ready for spring to get here. Why not celebrate with a baking competition? Now the jammies, yes I mean pajamas, are a requirement to enter. And the dessert of your choice? Well, we’re still working on the rules there (and we’re not sure if we need them yet).

It’s a major break through moment for us. The tenants next door to our office are moving out this month. This is pretty exciting. This is our chance! This is our moment… to break into that space and commit to our explosive growth. It’s our opportunity to embrace change, and start to design the newly added space. (which is the really fun part).

So I am printing out floor plans of our current loft office and of the office next door for all of the staff to draw up what kind of space they need as we continue to grow. Do we finally need a full lunchroom? Do we need a game room? A creative brainstorm room outside of our kind of cool conference room. Someone mentioned huddle rooms? Do we need quiet rooms? Or maybe a nicer place for the fantastic contractors we know and love so they don’t have to work so close to the microwave and micro their brain waves out…

When we moved into this space 2 years ago I always envisioned that we would knock out part of the wall and make a curved archway into the new space. But after visiting the layout, I think the entire wall is going to have to go to really break through. My friend Ron told me that companies are the most efficient after a move, I’ll let him know how it goes.

The Client: National Association of REALTORS, Real Estate Buyer’s Agent Council (REBAC)
The Goal: Create a user-friendly web site that addresses the needs of multiple user groups.
The Solution: After conducting usability testing, user research, and establishing personas, we identified what type of information the different user groups required, and what features and functionality they were looking for. We designed a clean web site design and navigation that organized information by user group, and tested the navigation to ensure key tasks could be completed with ease. Important information and tasks were called to attention in the form of graphic callouts to engage users and ensure that they found what they were looking for. Cool blues and greens were added to round out their color palette, and subtle textures were incorporated throughout the design to add dimension. A coordinating advertising campaign, brochure, and tradeshow were launched in conjunction with the new site to drive traffic to the site and brand REBAC consistently across all mediums.

Ok. I admit it. I am stalling today. I have three proposals to write and I am blogging instead. I tell myself that blogging is marketing and it’s part of our social media and SEO strategy so it’s just as important, but I know in my gut that I should be writing those proposals. I should be grateful that I have proposals to write (and they are really cool ones from facebook application ideas to some web site interfaces utilizing our user-centered methodology) but I am struggling to actually write them. So how does one find inspiration in writing proposals? I already ate my bag of skittles.