employees
posted by Operations
For this edition of get:ting answers, Operations Coordinator Katie sits down with Web Developer Chris to get his thoughts on development, marketing and more.
Katie: What is your specialty at thunder::tech?
Chris: I can work on many different projects at once. Since updates and/or site fixes get high priority, I can drop what I'm doing and switch over right away. I can always pick up my thought process where I left off really easily. Basically Web development to the ‘nth’ degree.
K: You seem to be the go-to guy for fixes and updates. How many different projects would you say you work on in a day?
C: On slower days, probably about three to four, on some busier days, it can go up to 10 a day, depending on what needs to get fixed right away.
K: If you could trade places with anyone else in the office for one day, who would you be and why?
C: That’s a good question…………….I wanna be me! Quite honestly, I like what I do so much that I wouldn’t want to trade with anyone else.
K: During last year’s thunder::tech Christmas Party, you won a thundee award as ‘Most Likely to Beat You at any Video Game’. Do you think it’s true?
C: For most of the Cleveland area, I would have to say so, considering I have a record for how many people I make quit games because I’m so good - the person gets so frustrated. I have a real competitive spirit when it comes to video games, where I try to better myself at any game for competition’s sake, because it’s fun to play against other people.
K: Do you think marketing within video games is can be a successful strategy?
C: I believe video game marketing is successful when games incorporate flat billboard ads that actually do add to the experience. If marketers push any further, they will be met with a lot of resistance. An example of good marketing is in a racing game I recently played; they had raceway billboards over the track that advertised the Fast and Furious DVD, which just came out. An example of bad marketing is another racing game that forces you to watch a commercial before every new race.
Chris and Katie battle it out on the set of Street Fighter
posted by Design
For this edition of get::ting answers, Art Director Dave chats with Flash Developer Ben.
Dave: Describe your typical day at thunder::tech using only words that start with D or rhyme with awesome. You can have unlimited "the's" and "and's."
Ben:
Depart the dwelling and during dash down the drive;
Dialog the dodgy designer Dave dealing the draft;
Down delicious drinks;
Devise the device dialect and derive the deliverable;
Doctor the dire domain designation disaster,
Disappear,
Directly drop possum dead.
D: You have a unique opportunity w/yr position where you work on both a Mac and a PC...so, think different or is yours really here?
B: Actually... I miss MS-DOS. Macs and PCs, despite the advertisement wars, have about the same amounts and types of problems. These days, they're both too glittery.
D: If a flash banner got in a fight with an animated gif (but not any normal animated gif...one of those beveled and embossed spinning ones that has flames shooting out of it, and maybe an asteroid rotating around), who would win?
B: Like everything else, it depends on the circumstances. Normally I'd say the gif, but you have to account for the possibility that someone with taste could always come along and delete it before the banner got beaten up too badly.
D: A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. What do you gotta do, Ben?
B: According to the Rally's commercials, I gotta eat. I simply cannot argue with that logic.
D: Finish this joke: "A designer and a developer walk into a bar..."
B: They both ordered drinks and were served. The designer was under 21, however. The bar has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. Would you like to tell Microsoft about this problem?
The designer and developer shortly after they walked into the bar.
posted by Design
Greetings from your favorite thunder::tech designers! You may know us as the guy that designed your Web site, or the girl that created your accordion-fold brochure, but on a day-to-day basis we do so much more. Ever wondered what a day in our trendy shoes is like? Well, wonder no more::
7:30 a.m.
We wake up, check our calendars for meetings, then we drive/bike/run to the office. After we walk/jog/huff our way up five flights of stairs, we play a little game of lunch box Tetris with the fridge, and power up the computers.
9:00 a.m.
We all start our mornings with a cup of strong coffee--as long as whoever made it remembered to actually put grounds in the machine. We typically go through our voicemails, our emails and our blogroll before the hour turns to double digits.
We supply the tunes for the entire fourth floor—and that's no easy task when you have designers, developers, PR and a couple clients to please, but we manage to get the job done. Connie usually kicks it off with the Minnesota Public Radio Song of the Day, then she'll turn on WOXY, or a last.fm station. Since we work in a musical democracy, we take requests through something we like to call tRL: thunder Request Live.
10:00 a.m.
Then it’s time to get down to business: we'll work on a logo design, look at some design books for inspiration or draw by hand before we even touch the computer.
Noon
It’s lunchtime and we either:
brown bag it, mooch a ride to Subway, call in an order to Danny's for a tuna melt, prepare a salad from organically grown ingredients or hope for a lunch presentation with the added bonus of free pizza!
1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
So its back to work for these designers! We might:
- Get feedback from our team on our latest brochure, which is actually quite easy since we sit so close together
- Ask a developer for feedback on a Web site design
- Eat 99 dum dums
- Throw in a little email checking and responding
- Attend a client meeting or two or three
- Play rap if it’s a Friday afternoon
- Cross completed goals off our white board
- Shrink down our staff to the size of "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" to dance on our conference room table
- Fill up our water bottles, Starbucks mugs, or tiki heads, because it’s that time of day where if we're not careful, Robert Goulet will get us
- Work on an ad layout and send it to the client to see what they think of our masterpiece
5:30 p.m.
Is it that late already? Time sure flies when you're Illustrating, InDesigning, Photoshopping, and Fireworking like it’s your job. We shut down our computers, turn off the lights, fly/walk/jog down five flights of stairs, and run/bike/drive back home. Time to ret::tire for the evening, then do it all again tomorrow!
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