Fast forward two years to present day and we are bursting at the seams. We have more people than desks, more screens than shelves, and most of our meetings take place off-site. It is incredibly difficult to thrive in this chaos.

So… we are moving to larger confines! We will still be in the East Village, in fact, we will still be on the same street. Our new space is situated between Jimmy Johns and The Continental, and will feature proper ventilation (no more fumes!), a conference room area (no more people up in your bidness!), a real bathroom (no more standing water!), ample desk space (no touching!) and several other tricks we aren’t quite ready to reveal yet (no telling!).

More info on the new space and the open houses will be dropping as we get moved in in early April.

We decided it was about time that our web and design work was put to the test. We think it looks cool, but what does everyone else think? Asking the question seemed a little baited, so we decided to be official and entered into the local ADDY competition. Put on by the American Advertising Federation, the ADDYs is defined by their website as “the advertising industry’s largest and most representative competition, recognizing and rewarding creative excellence in the art of advertising.” Fancy, huh? While we haven’t started doing billboards or commercials, we have done some solid creative work that some might even consider advertising.

Back in January we started looking at a few different pieces we thought would be up for the challenge and here’s what we came with:

Self-promo: Employee of the Month t-shirt…anyone rocking one of these? You know who you are.

Logo: The Cheese Shop…a new personal favorite location of ours.

Interactive work for the Arts: Public Art Foundation website

Book: Badowers Look Book

Mixed/Multiple Media: Badowers Rebranding Campaign….we can’t take credit for you being the best dressed at the party, but we did create the website, design the logo and work to ensure you know where to shop for men’s clothing in Des Moines.

What do you think? According to the ADDYs…all of those are ahem, award-winning. Gold ADDYs (which move up to the next level of the competition) went to the Badowers Rebranding Campaign and The Cheese Shop logo and silvers went to the rest. All in all, we were pretty pumped and glad to have some great clients to work with to make it all happen.

The Problem: Squeegees.

It’s easy to get them 95% clean. The last 5% takes a lot of paper towels, chemicals, and patience. Our storage situation dictates the squeegee needs to be 100% clean before getting thrown into the drawer. And most days, the squeegee is coated in ink again within a few hours. It’s an exercise in futility.

So here is what Shawn and I built. The important thing is that you can see the nail gun in the background.

Instead of casual Fridays, we occasionally have Formal Fridays or Kenny G Fridays where all we play is Kenny G (until everyone runs out of song vetos). We almost always have beer in our fridge and are free to drink it whenever we want. This doesn’t mean we hammer a 6-pack before noon and pass out on the lawn, it just means we keep some suds in our fridge knowing that someone might encounter the need to have a cold one in the middle of the afternoon. Instead of fostering irresponsibility and the desire to punch out at 4:59 to catch the tail end of some lousy happy hour, it encourages us to stay in the shop and enjoy overtime with our co-workers.

When we advertise for an internship, even a barely paid one, we don’t have just 3 or 4 applicants. We get almost 50 eager responses. That’s 5 times more people than our actual workforce. 50 kids ready to challenge themselves and work their hands to the bone for meager monetary compensation and the chance of a full time gig. We’re honored by this. We realize we have created an environment where people want to work and that’s the sole reason our turnover rate is so low. It could be all the fumes we’re inhaling, but people don’t mind coming in to work at 8/7 every day. Sure, some days we’d rather be snowboarding or at the movies, but for the most part a job that’s akin to all-day-art-class is hard to beat.

Of course with this power, comes great responsibility, as they say. We must be willing to respect and trust each other and work hard when necessary. It requires us to pull our own weight and at times the weight of others. This is how it should work.
And so far, it has.

I just returned from a 4 week paid sabbatical. I planned for myself a 5,000 mile roadtrip through the West, a drive I’ve always wanted to make. I hoped to get out of town and find some new inspiration, visit old friends, peer off into distant landscapes and meet new people along the way. Photography has long been a passion of mine, but I don’t have the time to indulge it fully. So I went to take pictures and see how others spent their days and lived their lives. I took thousands of images, I read books, wrote and played music with strangers. A lot of this you can find on the blog my fellow traveler, Carla, and I built to document our trip: www.reallykindofamazing.com

Countless other ideas, books and projects have spun off as a result of this extended time off. I look forward to pursuing all of them. I returned home and to work feeling more refreshed than ever. I left with the overwhelming need to get away and returned with the unmistakable desire to come home. I’m lucky. Really kindof amazingly lucky. I understand this. I wrapped up my jobs as best I could before I left and turned things over to the guys in the print department. They handled their current workloads as well as mine and I’m grateful for that. Their thanks will be returned to them during their months off.

We asked ourselves, “who else out there operates like us?” and “couldn’t this slowly spark a movement?” “what if more companies in America started doing this for their employees?” What if companies that experience slower months, especially in the winter, negotiated a semi-paid sabbatical and enjoyed lower overheads? What if they freed up space for a temporary intern to get their foot in the door? What if they invested in the long-term benefits of happy and healthy employees rather than the short-term ones? What if companies treated their adult employees like adults? That is, adults with other interests and passions beyond their love for balancing spreadsheets? It’s lofty, we know. But take it from us, it’s feasible and more importantly, it’s necessary. Bring it up in your next board meeting – we dare you.

A company not far from here in Chicago IL, has a benefits package that would make a Western European jealous. Red Frog Events rewards their hard-working employees with unlimited vacation days, one work-from-home-day per week, and a paid 4-week vacation (guest included) to another country, in addition to the outstanding package that already includes health benefits, 401k and birthday massages. And nobody in their industry told them they had to do that. No parent company prescribed to them their corporate culture. We, like them, decided that in order to get the most out of our employees when they are at work, we must make arrangements to manage when they’re not.

That to me is the mark of a strong and healthy company and the only kind of company that will ever employ me and my talents.
~Garrett Cornelison

“the CAPITALS” postcard series from my roadtrip