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Mascot Madness: Round Two – Wichita V Gonzaga

Gonzaga Bulldogs VS Wichita State Shockers

It was a close call for the Gonzaga Bulldogs with a possible Cinderella coming from Southern U Thursday evening, but the number one seed pulled through.The Wichita Shockers were a slight upset in stats, but not in play, to Pittsburg earlier in the same day as the Gonzaga game. As a result of their victories, they will play each other in the next round, but today I’m going to put their mascots and logos head to head.

Wichita State University’s mascot is WuShock, or just Wu. And despite Wu looking like the “big, bad, muscle bound bundle of wheat” he is – he’s actually over 60 years old. His name was determined by a winning vote after a Freshman suggested it in 1948. But the premise goes back to 1904. This is farm town and players back in the day would actually harvest – or “shock” wheat – on the off season. Coach Kirk came up with Wheatshockers to intimidate the Chilocco Indians for their upcoming game.

Not so scary back then. Wait is that the scarecrow from the wizard of Oz?

Now upon first viewing of this golden jock I thought it was pretty lame. Wheat? However, I have to say after looking at different pictures of this guy I’ve developed a soft spot for this farm boy. I mean look at him here in the fall with a pumpkin. Adorbs.

The Gonzaga Bulldogs were originally “The Fighting Irish,” and thankfully changed before Notre Dame inevitably would have battled that out with them. A reporter is the legendary person responsible for the switch, saying the players were fighting like bulldogs. So it literally started with a Bulldog named Spike, a literal living dog – not the same one I’m sure (sad face) – as a mascot until 1980.

It switched after 1980 to Captain “Zag” all due to a student putting on a cape and declaring himself the name. Somehow that stuck for five years (seriously) until another student dressed up like a dog in ‘85.

The Bulldogs – or Zags as they’re commonly called – are one of the top teams this year. The Bulldogs have a winning record. The logo suggests a pretty mean puppy. But is also a bulldog, and well who doesn’t think of this guy from Looney Tunes?

Big tough guys always have a soft spot for adorable things.

So decision time – Bulldogs V Shockers. Colorwise Bulldogs win. Navy blue, white, red have more authority than, the Shockers yellow and black. Both logos have a pretty mean mug and are leaning in for the fight so – I get it, they’re angry. However, Wu looks like the days if harvesting have given him wrinkles and well a bulldog is still a dog. Wichita State really has developed a brand with Wu and are pretty dedicated to him; that has to mean something – I mean students can’t just dress up as something else here and the college is like “okay,” like some other guys.

With my new found love (just throwing that word around now) for Wu I didn’t think the Bulldogs stood a chance. Nothing beat small town charm right? Wrong. Puppies win all. Gonzaga wins.

Would really say he isn’t a winner?

What do you think? Did Wichita mess up your perfect bracket too? Do you love the long blonde hair of Gonzaga forward Kelly Olynyk?

About Christina Pfeffer

Christina attended the University of Cincinnati where she majored in Communications (with a focus in Mass Media and Rhetoric) and minored in Fine Arts and Art History. She worked at the Cincinnati Art Museum in Institutional Advancement where she managed volunteers and fundraisers, until jumping ship to advertising.

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OFFF Cincinnati was ONNN

Posted
March 12, 2013
Categories
Advertising
Branding
Design
The Creative Life
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I attended the OFFF Cincinnati conference last Wednesday and it delivered. It’s main message? Play. That’s also the focus of the coordinating exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center which opened on Friday with a big party, and many contributors in attendance.
The conference started early with coffee and then went right into introductions. Hector Ayuso came out – the organizer of it all, along with AIGA Cincinnati – and explained his excitement and introduced the first speaker.

Here they are:

Ramon Escola

Escola was hilarious in his humble delivery and young-hearted enthusiasm for what he does. And he does it well. He integrates photography and video with animation and digital work that not only communicates well, but is hilarious. He brought in another theme throughout the conference – collaboration – encouraging all those in attendance to work with as many people as possible to expand their work.

Jon Burgerman

My favorite presenter of the day. Burgerman is an artist, but he should also just add comedian/entertainer to the CV. His presentation was a slideshow of not just his work, but random video and images that contributed to what could have been seen as an extemporaneous discussion (but considering the preparation, it was not). Certainly a crowd pleaser, switching between pizza drawings and kittens in cleavage Burgerman got the play theme across pretty well.

Brendan Dawes

Switching paces to the bit more serious, Dawes was the next to speak. His work focuses a lot on visualizing data, and using technology and electronics to generate actually quite emotional pieces. One of my favorites (I think I might buy one even) was his Lissajous Iteration print. Using code and only change one part from image to image he generated the series pictured below.

He stressed how this relates to the practice of just continuing to work. By only changing one single element of code between them sometimes results were drastically different than the multiples preceding it; similar to the idea that you have no idea where you can end up if you keep producing work. Further he said one line that has resonated with me probably the most from the whole day. “What if the next one could make you cry?” We’ll never know, but you have to stop at some point – often due to time or client budget – but you can’t keep going forever you have to know when to go on to the next.

James Paterson;

Paterson is an artist, animator, and programmer of Montreal. He talked about his three types of drawing (meditative, imaginary, and charts/graphs), and his virtual animations. He was fascinating for his extreme devotion (certainly all presenters had this quality to some degree) but he almost seemed to get caught up in thinking about the work while he was explaining it, ever the improver.

We took a break for lunch (where OMG I saw Jon Burgerman outside!) and then started off the afternoon with more coffee and the first (and only) female presenter.

Sara Blake

An intense illustrator with sleeves of tattoos and a soft voice Blake discussed and showed multiple videos of her laborious process of illustrating and adding colors/textures with Photoshop. She too pushed the idea of collaborating to reach new levels of your work you couldn’t on your own. Interesting too she shared that her first internship in NYC was in the fashion industry, despite her lack of interest (it was a family contact just to get her in NYC) in the field; but how she now has a textile company. She remarked on this as an example of how you don’t know where you’re heading, or what could happen – a thought that I always appreciate others to grasp.

Multitouch Barcelona

The Spanish design studio Multitouch Barcelona deal mostly with how people interact with technology and then each other. Doing large scale installation of an interactive Space Invaders, or the current project Gif Me, Multitouch Barcelona wants the end result to be people having lasting interactions with the art, make new friends, and to think about how technology can be a resource in these interactions.
Technology proved to be quite the conference saver when the next presenter could not attend and we used Skype to still see his presentation.

Onur Senturk

The designer/animator most well known for doing the opening titles for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, presented from what seemed to be his living room with a cup of tea and his cat. Senturk let the video speak for themselves for the most part. Below is the opening titles he did for the OFFF Cincinnati conference.

OFFF 2013 Cincinnati Opening Titles from Onur Senturk on Vimeo.

James Victore

The guy with all the really huge clients (Moet & Chandon, Esquire, TIME, etc.) Vitore talked about the importance of working for yourself, and to stop feeling like a victim of the economy or of your job. To just do what you want. His work is great and the work he presented was incredibly executed (see below a poster for the New York Probation Department); however I found him to be preachy with his ideals.

I do have to admit though it could have been the copious amounts of coffee wearing off and the hunger starting to creep in after the long day.
In the end I was thoroughly impressed, inspired, and enlightened by the presenters and look forward to next year – the conference, and the work I come up with until then using play, and collaboration.

About Christina Pfeffer

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Simplifying from the Inside Out

Posted
January 14, 2013
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Advertising
The Creative Life
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One of our New Year’s resolutions at the Creative Department is to seek solutions that ultimately make our work lives easier. If we can uncover tools or methods for doing something more efficiently then we can spend more time being creative and more time enjoying life outside of work.

Last Friday we were presenting wireframes for a Client’s new Sharepoint site I shared an article I had read in the Harvard Business Review about Lunch Roulette (You can view a similar app developed by Code for America here).

Since our Client is charged with engaging the employee population across multiple operating companies and over 40 locations, this was exactly the kind of thinking they were looking for to make everyone’s job easier.

What about you? What ways did you make your or a co-worker’s job easier last week? How about for a Client?

About Sean Biehle

I’m a Taurus who enjoys rainy Sunday afternoons, open source technology, and unicorns.

ProKids Community Builder of the Year

Posted
November 21, 2012
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Advertising
The Creative Life
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The Creative Department’s Christina Pfeffer, Lauren Anderson, Steve Deiters, Stacey Hudson, and Chris Fryburger at the 2012 ProKids Soiree.

For more than 30 years, ProKids has been changing the lives of abused and neglected children in the Greater Cincinnati area who have been removed from their homes and placed in the foster care system. A nonprofit agency that recruits, trains, and supports Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA volunteers), ProKids helps give a powerful voice to kids, and the Creative Department has been privileged to raise our megpaphone to help amplify this voice. During the organization’s annual soiree, Tracy Cook, Executive Director of ProKids, named the Creative Department as the 2012 Community Builder of the Year.

Because The Creative Department helps us tell ProKids’ story better, we can mobilize more of our community to break the vicious cycle of abuse and neglect – one child at a time.

Steve Deiters, one of the Creative Department’s founding partners, accepted the award.

We are honored to be receiving this award from ProKids. But in many ways, it doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t seem right to receive an award for doing the work that you ought to do. ProKids is an amazing organization doing phenomenal things for children in need. And affecting lives the only way you really can. One child at a time. We’re proud to support that effort any way we can with our skills in communication.