My involvement in the Integrated Design Wheel project at CK spans over a year but the project as a concept is years older than that. In my time it took the form of being purely a website, then a Flash website with animation and voice over, purely a video, and then finally where it is now as a combination microsite, Frontline-esque documentary. The website is launched at designsynthesis.betterbricks.com and is slowly beginning to be promoted.

I shot the footage with a small crew, lit with 2 Diva-Lite Kino’s and for being talking head footage I’m very happy with how it turned out. Follow the link to see it all but I’ve pulled a few of my favorite clips here.

As part of Coates Kokes’ work with Clean Rivers and Streams we manage their social media program – releasing little around the house tips and tricks for keeping a healthy water system. We proposed a series of low budget videos that we’d shoot on a Flip camera and then release via Twitter and Facebook. It’s an ongoing project but I wanted to share a couple.

My first opportunity to shoot on the RED camera, this was conceived as a single shot that with it’s stark simplicity would feel unique and grab some attention. Of course it was far more complicated to execute than it appears. Shot off speed first full of stuff with the door closing, then multiple takes with the beach ball that was eventually slowed to 80% full speed, then much later in the day shot with the garage empty.

Creatively, once I was brought into the project as the director I realized in order to really sell this as being one moment we had to have some element carry over from the full garage to the empty. We shot a few different elements but ended up using a rubber ball.

Karl, the copywriter on the project, and myself shot a behind the scenes video walking through some of the complicated compositing we pulled off.

The task was to show the principles of Coates Kokes at work, highlighting the capabilities of the agency. I tried to stylize it and give it some personality and pop, bringing some light on them to try to highlight the thinking that goes into the process of working through a creative problem.

Earlier this year we were working on an experimental website for PUSH Your Business, a consulting firm that helps businesses maximize their value throughout the entire life of the venture. Part of the concept for the project involved an opening animation of character pushing the letters in for the logo. We shot this footage to eventually turn into a simple vector animation but never had the opportunity to actually include it in the site.

I don’t know if it will ever see the light of day as a final project but I thought it was worth posting up here.

Coates Kokes is working with the city on marketing for the Portland Plan.

The Portland Plan is a people’s plan to help our city prioritize investments and shape what Portland will look like in 30 years. Get involved. Great things rarely happen by accident.

I shot the photo we’re calling Granny Franny. Very pleased with the personality I was able to bring through and how the color worked out. She was fantastic to work with, as well as very focused on making sure we got something to drink on the way out.

This video was put together as part of a pitch for the Portland Timbers. Unfortunately it didn’t go our way but the video was still a fun little piece.

As part of the redesign of our Coates Kokes website we wanted to shoot new portraits of the entire staff that shows them in a sort of light and unique way. We wanted to convey a sense of authenticity and honestly while trying to buck the normal corporate headshot style.

I shot them over a couple days and have been happy with how they’ve turned out. Here’s a few selects from the 19 portraits. Check out the rest of them at www.coateskokes.com/people.

CK has been hard at work with Hartmann&Forbes on both print and web projects. We recently launched phase 1 of a brand new website for them that better matches the direction the brand has gone as well as provides a more graphical presentation of their product. The website runs on Drupal with a fair amount of custom templating and configuration.

We’re working on phase 2 now that will provide a secure back end for their customers to make printed product books and brochures a thing of the past.

Check out the site at www.hfshades.com.

Shot this photo in Waterfront Park right outside our old town offices. Has an almost painterly quality to it thanks to a nice angle, some distance, and the sort of strange bokeh signature of the lens I used.

The other to the right here is a Mother’s Day ad for local Portland Boutique shoe retailer Imelda’s. Photography by me, design by Laura here at CK. Imelda’s continues to be the best place to find unique shoes in Portland and is a lot of fun to shoot ads for.

An updated take on the ’07 spot from the Regional Coalition for Clean Rivers and Streams. With a new campaign beginning featuring a series of useful tips for day to day activities we wanted to do a refresh of the PSA spot that was the first project I shot at Coates Kokes. This turns the video into a sort of VH1 style pop-up video and is ended with my favorite part of the project – the new end tag.

Really no budget on this one at all, but I think we’re all really happy with how it came out. It starts airing on Monday.

A new project we’re working on is for a company called PUSH. It’s still early in development but we shot some video for the site on a stage and figured I’d share it here.