React Training
This past week we put the development in professional development! Our dev team completed an intense week-long training that sharpened their coding skills
Category: Posture Interactive
Staying creative in the New Year
Some people are gifted with the innate ability to come up with brilliant ideas and innovative solutions effortlessly. The rest of us, however, are forced to work with the complexly (and sometimes clunky) mechanical minds we’ve been given. They grind along well enough if we oil them frequently, but it’s easy to get behind on mental maintenance. Creativity requires vigilance and lots of self-care. It’s almost like taking care of your car but deserves a little more thought.
Here are our tips for keeping your creative mechanics sharp and running well:
1. Preventative maintenance
Keeping cognitive creation at it’s prime requires preventative maintenance like a cars oil change. Instead of chugging the nearest 5W-30 caffeine, make sure you’re paying attention to how well your engines running, and be sure to take measures accordingly. If you’re feeling drained, don’t push yourself more than necessary.
2. Refuel often
A good day’s work of creative output comes from a lifetime of creative input. Your creativity is based on your lifetime of experiences that have led up to this moment. So keep living your life and feeding your creative side. Make sure you are participating in something you are passionate at least once a day.
3. Rotate your tires regularly
If you’re constantly wearing on the same old tricks you’ve always used, you’ll get worn down. You need a new perspective from time to time, and that requires some time and effort. Whether that’s throwing a new
4. Just get in the car, damnit.
Half the battle is showing up, getting your pen on the page. Chuck Close put it best by saying “Inspiration Is for Amateurs—The Rest of Us Just Show Up and Get to Work.” Most of the time while we’re simply waiting for something to spark our creativity, we could instead be putting effort into creating using what we already have in front of us. Sure, you’ll have some days where you’re fired up and roaring to create, but other days you’ll have to make do with what you can get.
5. Drive with confidence
When you’re out on the road, there are a bazillion other things you could focus on, but it takes a bit of focus and self-confidence to really hone in on driving your creativity to the finish line.
You can do it, now get out there and drive!
Party on…and keep the Arts Alive
I knew pretty early in life that I would pursue a career in something related to visual art. Whether it was drawing banners or building crafts as a kid, I was always pretty artsy-fartsy. I identified and thrived in this area because I was exposed to it and given the opportunity in school and at home to be as artistic as I could. I was lucky. Not every kid has those opportunities.
Research shows the arts offer benefits far beyond creativity — they increase productivity and focus, they boost confidence, teach problem-solving and so much more. Regardless of their benefits, budgets and curriculums in our public schools make it difficult for our children to be exposed to visual and performing art.
So when our team started thinking about what local organizations we wanted to support this holiday season it was only natural that I thought of something that has had an impact on me personally. I’ve had the pleasure of working hand in hand with Arts in Education NEPA, a partnership organization of The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and NEIU 19. Their mission is to advocates for arts education in schools and communities. They administer quality learning experiences in the performing and visual arts.
The most widely known AIE NEPA program, Arts Alive, is celebrating their 26th year this summer. Arts Alive pairs professional working artists and students in grades K-12 for four intensive weeks each summer. And the outcome is nothing short of remarkable. They create a safe space where no one feels like an outsider and anything is possible. Students self-esteem skyrockets and the boost in confidence trickles through all of their studies improving their grades and attitudes with lifelong lessons they will take with them throughout the year.
What’s even more remarkable is the effect these programs have on children with more serious needs. I’ve personally met autistic children who entered the program as a nonverbal student and have found their voice through Arts Alive… literally and figuratively.
Support of AIE NEPA provides scholarships and transportation to students that otherwise wouldn’t have access to quality educational art programs.
Show your support for the arts and build a virtual gingerbread house for AIE NEPA!
Join the Posture House Party now through December 31st and share your house on social media with #PostureHouseParty to vote for AIE NEPA as the winner of our grand prize — a cash donation plus design and digital support totaling $5,000!
Start building here.
Dip your toes into Our Pocono Waters with Posture’s House Party
Our Pocono Waters is dedicated to protecting the exceptional value streams of the Pocono area. What’s an exceptional value stream? I’m glad you asked. An exceptional value stream is a classification given to streams that have the cleanest and highest quality of water. In the Pocono’s region, we have over 80% of the state’s exceptional value streams, and a lot of the streams are threatened by bad environmental practices. Our Pocono Waters wants to help protect these streams.
Our Pocono Waters is also important to me personally too. I grew up out in the woods messing around, falling in streams, building forts. Now, I spend a lot of my free time outside fishing or hiking around these same beautiful streams and outdoor spaces.
They’re a source of endless inspiration and relief when nothing else suffices. You really can’t beat standing in the middle of a stream with a fly rod in your hand. It’s a magical feeling hearing and feeling the stream flow around you. When you’re out there like that, you start to get a sense of how important a small stream can be to the local environment and the people around it. Pristine beauty like the streams of the Poconos need to be protected for generations ahead of us to experience. I’d hate to think of a future where kids couldn’t spend their time alongside a babbling brook. If you want to learn more about their organization visit ourpoconowaters.org
Support the protection of a local resource by
building a house for Our Pocono Waters
Join the Posture House Party now through December 31st and share your house on social media
using #posturehouseparty to vote for Our Pocono Waters
as the winner of our grand prize — a cash donation plus design and digital support totaling $5,000!
Start building here.
We’re having a party… and you’re invited!
The Posture elves have been busy working on something really fun for this holiday season — we’re having a house party, and you’re invited! No need for a covered dish or party clothes, you can join in the fun right from your couch if you like.
The Posture House Party is an interactive gingerbread house building extravaganza!
We’re asking our friends, families, clients and the community to build their own digital gingerbread house and share their holiday creation on social media. But what’s even better is each house built will be a vote for one of our favorite non-profits. The organization with the most houses shared in their honor will be awarded a cash prize and a boatload of our time for their design, web, and digital content needs — all totaling $5,000!
The Posture team put our heads together to identify the causes we care about most — as a result, we’re thrilled to be partnering with Arts in Education Northeast Pensylvania, Blue Chip Farm, Geisinger Janet Weis Children’s Hospital, The United Way of Lackawanna and Wayne Counties, and Our Pocono Waters.
We’ll be partying on until December 31st and we’ll announce our winner in the new year!
What are you waiting for? Start building at PostureHouseParty.com
SEO: The Internet’s Dewey Decimal System
SEO: The Internet’s Dewey Decimal System
In the Google-plex universe of the internet terms like SEO, API, and algorithm are thrown around, but what does it all mean and why is that important to you as a customer?
Internet jargon is all the rage nowadays, but it’s shrouded in mysterious overtones. In the Google-plex universe of the internet terms like SEO, API, and algorithm are thrown around, but what does it all mean and why is that important to you as a customer? First, it should be noted what SEO stands for: Search Engine Optimization.Put simply: SEO is the underlying system that helps search engines create relevant results on websites like Google.com. Even that sounds vague and very intangible, though. It becomes a lot easier to understand when you think about it in terms of physical objects.
So let’s imagine the whole internet is in a library, and all the books within the library are the websites that inhabit them. These books have images, text, and tons of info within them that are managed by the Dewey Decimal System. When you look for a book at a library, the librarian can look up the book on their computer or uses the Dewey Decimal System, which is a system created to organize books by their subject. When it comes to the internet, you have Search Engines like Google or Bing instead of a librarian. Rather than using numbers to find your website, like the Dewey Decimal System, these search engines use metadata. Metadata is the information that defines what kind of topics are within websites. Meta is a Greek derived term meaning “beside” or “alongside.” So its all the data that naturally appears alongside a website as its developed that gives it content
All of this content has to be logged and indexed in search engines like a book would if it were to show up in the dewey decimal system.
…its all the data that naturally appears alongside a website as its developed that gives it content
Best practices these days consist of someone combing through and editing the metadata to correctly inform the Search Engines what all the content is, or the search engine will define it however it sees fit (or sometimes not a all). So it’s important to have someone go through and make sure the content throughout the website is correctly formatted to communicate with the Search Engine effectively to show relevant results for the customer.
You might be thinking: why do I need someone else to do that for me? First, you might need to edit direct HTML in the websites code. It’s not impossible, but can sometimes be risky, frustrating, and time consuming. Someone who is intimately involved with websites can do this more quickly and efficiently. Secondly, there are ethical guidelines for the internet’s metadata. Back when Google started out, you could simply trick the search engine into bringing your results up first by jamming a bunch of keywords into your metadata (known now as black hat SEO and VERY much frowned upon). This meant your end user might get unrelated results because someone packed their website with poor quality metadata.
Google is a little bit more complicated now, and uses an algorithm that actually tries to get around these SEO tricks that manipulate the search engines. Google actually encourages people to report improper use of SEO, so its important to keep your metadata ethical and full of truthful and quality information.
Have any questions or need help with your SEO, drop us a line: Contact Posture
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of the Internet
Well, Google, net neutrality affects everyone.
As we celebrate our independence, we couldn’t help but think a bit on this summer’s changes in rules regarding a “free” internet. On June 11, when net neutrality officially expired, and we were trying to find the latest updates , Google suggested: “How does that affect you?” Well, Google, net neutrality affects everyone. it’s just that the internet is so populated with news sources reporting different aspects, that the “how” gets drowned out. It seems no one knows what to make of it.
Here at Posture, we are most interested in what it means for us as a team and the clients we serve. Will it slow traffic to the web applications we create? How will we know? Will it limit people’s access? How will clients need to evolve in order to stay current with any trends or consequences that result from the Net Neutrality expiration? For the most part we don’t have definitive answers. We do however, have a hell of a lot of ideas.
The internet was created as a government program during the Cold War to bypass wired communication, in the event of an attack. Essentially, the government set up what we would call servers in order to send and receive very limited amounts of information. These bits of information would later be used to transmit scientific data, and later the servers would expand and grow to become the “World Wide Web.”
Essentially, the government set up what we would call servers in order to send and receive very limited amounts of information.
At the time of its creation, the World Wide Web was the epitome of human communication, and obviously in many ways it still is. The expiration of net neutrality marks an end of the World Wide Era in the context of information freely flowing without limit.
Now,companies and profits can be prioritized for certain levels or access to services instead of the users being free to experience any service they wish. Many companies made statements assuring customers of their loyalty to customers. It’s a hard place to be, the crux of two impasses: customer loyalty and making money.
At Posture, we want our clients to be happy, which means we provide the best possible products and services in order to fulfill their goals. We expect no less of our internet providers. We’ll keep our information on this topic free flowing as we learn more.
At Posture, we want our clients to be happy, which means we provide the best possible products and services in order to fulfill their goals.
Seed to Farmacy Branding & Experience
Planting the seeds for a successful fundraiser experience
We were first presented the opportunity to work on this project by designing the invitation and donation collateral well before the virtual garden concept had been born. This was an exciting design challenge in itself, as the client wanted to carry over the farm-to-table theme into the actual design and production of the invitations. We sourced sustainable parsley seed paper as the branded piece that held the invite, reply card, and inserts together, which could then be planted in the recipient’s’ own garden at home.
To carry the sustainable planting concept through to the Virtual Garden experience, we then designed and produced seed “tickets” on more parsley seed paper that each donor at the event would take to our physical garden. They would then rip and plant the “seed” design of the ticket and keep the stub for planting at home. At the end of the night, the garden was filled with planted parsley seeds – the virtual garden reflected this in all the plants that appeared on the screen. This garden was then taken to the Fresh Food Farmacy in Shamokin, PA to produce parsley that could be used by FFF patients in healthy meals.
The physical garden design was a collaborative process involving custom vector art, branded signage, an adventure at Home Depot, and a garage-based construction session. Building the physical box along with the electronic components was a great opportunity for the Posture team to showcase their maker skills. The box itself was prototyped first, and built using ¾ inch plywood. Measuring in at six feet long and two feet wide, the planter was designed to accommodate a large amount of plants.
The electronics side of the planter ran on a MakeyMakey. We drilled holes throughout the planter with an exposed copper lead coming out of each. Donors used a small metal shovel, which was wired to the MakeyMakey, to plant their seed paper tickets into the planter. The soil was measured out to cover the exposed wires and was kept damp to maintain a consistent level of moisture. With that, donors could complete the circuit with the grounded shovel and the leads inside the soil.
Figuring out how to handle such an interactive experience was an interesting challenge to overcome. We’ve previously used Processing for Generative Art installations, but we knew we needed to find a tool that could handle concurrent processes and animations better. We landed on Phaser, an open source “Desktop and Mobile HTML5 game framework”. We were able to use a fast and modern Javascript framework to handle the animations, reading from an API and listening for user input. The entire front end was designed to be modular and completely customizable by using Javascript ES6 classes and the Phaser 3 syntax.
We knew from the start we would need some sort of database and admin area in order to capture and seed the game (pun intended) with donation information. Once we became more familiar with Phaser and its capabilities, we decided the best approach would be to create a PHP wrapper to encapsulate the game and use a standard JSON file to pass data back and forth between the game side and the admin side. This project required a custom built MySQL database architecture to tie all the data together, and so we chose CakePHP as our framework to rapidly build the foundation of the admin area and to easily interface with the database. We then built a locked down website to prohibit outside users from potentially accessing any parts of the game, since it would be publicly displayed on a large screen at the event. The admin area included a section for inputting donor information, as well a customized troubleshooting section, to provide added redundancy in the event of a connection, software, or hardware issue.
We were also on hand the day of the event to set up, run final testing, and execute the experience for users as they arrived. Setup included fully filling the garden with the soil, interfacing our computers with a large display, and feeding our video feed out to one of 4 main wall projectors in the event space. During the event, we guided users through the garden, helped the client keep track of donations and amounts, and ensured that our build ran as smoothly as it did during testing. Ultimately our station was one of the highest trafficked tables at the event, and generated a high amount of donations for the Fresh Food Farmacy.
Validation is Nice. Recognition is Humbling. Let’s Push Further. Posture Interactive at the Addys.
TL;DR : Posture won some awards at the Addys, enlightenment ensues.
This past weekend our agency had a stunning experience at this year’s American Advertising Awards, the annual ceremony where creativity’s effectiveness, judged by folks we respect & recognize, is acknowledged and ultimately rewarded for excellence at the Addys 2018.
Now that it’s been a few days, I’ve had a bit of time to try and understand what that night signifies for our team, processing how we got here, and looking forward to where we’re headed. I apologize in advance for the windy road below and appreciate the time your eyeballs are on loan to these words….
This year’s Addy awards yielded us the type of acknowledgement that gravity sort of pushes down onto you like humid air…a blissful, nervous, overwhelming, ultimately self-conscious state of being where you aren’t sure what to do or say, how to feel or what to make of it.
We ultimately won eight awards (listed below in order of category – client – award):
- Sales Kit – Marzio – Silver Addy Award
- Collateral Materials – Metz Culinary “Our Recipe” Employee Guide – Silver Addy Award
- Packaging Campaign – Electric City Roasting Co. Cold Label Packaging – Gold Addy Award
- Branded Content Entertainment Campaign – Breaking Benjamin Social Teaser Video Campaign – Gold Addy Award
- Digital Self Promotion – Posture Interactive Company Website – Gold Addy Award
- Judge’s Choice – Electric City Roasting Co. Cold Label Packaging
- People’s Choice – Electric City Roasting Co. Cold Label Packaging
- Best in Show – Breaking Benjamin Social Teaser Video Campaign
Addys 2018 Takeaway #1 – Validation is Nice.
To a certain extent, falling into the category of recognition for anything that we put out the door makes me do a double take. Years and years ago when we formed this little strange-brew human triad of a designer, a programmer + and a business director, we had no idea how we were going to *do* anything.
We didn’t have much, but we had what we needed.
We had a strong, rapidly evolving knowledge base of core design and development beliefs and best “practices” with the chops to back it up. We had a deep, neural understanding of the need to execute the client’s vision in their best interest no matter what, and ultimately how to build the foundation of long-term, healthy business relationships.
Posture was built culture-first. I don’t care how freakishly talented some rock star developer is. If they are an asshole, I don’t want to be around them a bazillion hours a day (and I certainly don’t want to make cool shit with them). If we can we have a conversation that produces something meaningful, and the skillset is chasing close behind, we’ll gladly cultivate that mindset and grow *with* you. The rest is cake: Just don’t be a dick.
This many years later, I never dreamed I would be so fortunate to have had the opportunity to hire and surround myself with such talented people that are just…*better* than me in every sense of the word: I’m made aware & encouraged every day to be a better artist & builder & thinker, to develop more tasteful business acumen, and to strive to actually become the person I’m prone to convince myself I think I am.
I get to work and grow with these incredibly talented people every day to produce some of the most creative, challenging, and engaging solutions our clients have come to know and depend on us for.
It was only after I ran this dialogue back in my head (quite a few times) that I was able to get a grip on why people put so much weight on being validated and why it matters.
When I wrap a project, if I’m cool with it and it has met or exceeded the client’s business objectives, that’s as far as I can let myself define a “success” for our team. Taking some time the past few days to dig into how I reflect on work we complete, more often than not at some uncomfortably blistering pace, makes me think I need to be open to understanding and accepting validation more in general.
We work in an incredibly competitive, feverishly paced industry. These awards represent projects that span the breadth of our core competencies and were in some way or another touched by every single team member doing the best that they possibly could to help make our clients successful.
I realize now that these awards signify that *in addition* to meeting our client’s goals and helping write their success story, our work is being appreciated by other creative talent in our industry as well…peers that understand the hustle and what good hard work is when you see it.
If this is what feeling validated is like, sign me up all day.
Recognition is Humbling.
This speaks for itself, but we are truly humbled to have been recognized to this degree by the American Advertising Federation. A jury of fellow creatives singling out our work out of the battering ram of submissions is incredibly rewarding and we couldn’t be more grateful.
None of it really comes easy for any of us, and I’ll spare you the cliché agency nonsense masquerading as team-building or business growth …such gems as “Excellence is a habit”, or “you can’t choose which projects you go all in on or which you push through the pipe – go all in every time and be inspired!”……it’s all bullshit.
We’re a team and a family. We fight, bicker, bitch and moan. We burn ourselves out on the grandest of scales. We’re all incredibly guilty of not seeing beyond the closest Deadline o’Clock coming full throttle, but also staring it right down to not only our own mental nerve-endings but of those around us as well. It’s intense, it’s challenging, it’s relentless, and I wonder on occasion how we didn’t implode or collapse on ourselves completely by now…
Why is calling ourselves out like this so important? Humility. It’s all rooted in Posture’s commitment to getting the absolute best solution for the visions and goals that we are fortunate enough to be trusted with by our clients.
My mind loses sight of that, and we just need to remind ourselves every now and again that we are never pushing for the *wrong* solution, or the *easy* way out when it gets tough. We are pushing for the new, the best, the most abstract, the brightest…we’re pushing further.
We were recognized and rewarded for our take on the creative spirit of excellence in the art of advertising.
I can’t tell you how proud that makes me to say, and with just a smidge less self-consciousness this time around the bend.
Let’s Push Further.
We look forward to what this year may bring, having the opportunity to be pushing new boundaries, exploring new tech, creating new types of content and solutions for our clients…virtual reality, 360° video, Blockchain development…the sky is the limit, and I’m looking for 2018 to be a pretty rad year.
About the American Advertising Awards/ADDYs
Conducted annually by the American Advertising Federation (AAF), the local chapter is the first of a three-tier, national competition. Concurrently, all across the country, local entrants vie to win ADDY Awards – recognition as the very best in their markets.
All local Golds get automatically forwarded to the second tier where they compete against winners from other local clubs in one of 15 district competitions. District ADDY winners are then forwarded to the third tier, the national stage of the American Advertising Awards.
The ADDYs 2018 is the advertising industry’s largest and most representative competition, annually attracting more than 40,000 entries.
In It for the Long Haul – v3
Think it. Build it. Ship it. Tweak it.
So here we are, late 2017, and the first iteration of our new web presence is officially out there. To me, Posture v3 really wasn’t just another redesign. This was a vehicle to show how we’ve grown, how our team works together, how the scale and process of the work we’ve done has increased and improved, and most importantly as a vessel to convey how we help & work with our clients throughout a project cycle and the journey that follows.
We have obstacles, failures and successes throughout our projects, and feel we demonstrate admirable problem-solving skills quickly when under the gun.
We have become partners in crime with our clients. We use collaborative tools to manage our workflow alongside their internal teams. We are a resource to offer perspective and ultimately solutions when a new project arises.
We are trusted to take on complex projects and manage their digital presence, no matter the scale or requirements.
This evolution of Posture Interactive is the beginning of a much larger story we are telling. Iterative, organic…a pulsing piece of our culture you can feel if you dive in.
Our goal now is to treat this new home on the web much like a software product – we have our MVP (minimum viable product) now, the bare bones basics to be built and iterated upon.
As we release v3.1, 3.2 and so on our goals will align, we will identify improvement points with the site, how to better design for our users when we are trying to get them to complete an action, and what steps need to be taken to fix and maintain both.
Think it. Build it. Ship it. Tweak it.
I’m proud of where we are today, and we are only getting started…
_mat
