<Previous| Volume 2: Issue: 2 | February 2, 2007 |Next>

They really like us!
Sposto wins davey gold
By Mandy zerr

Our Davey Awards arrived and they are beautiful. The Daveys are approximately 1-foot tall, and weigh about 5 pounds. I supplied the dimensions, because size matters to the people at Davey Awards. The story of David and Goliath inspired these folks to reward small firms for creating big ideas.

The trophy design for 2006 is a stylized version of David’s slingshot. Each statuette comes customized with details of the winning entry and the person or firm honored (enter the battle?).

The International Academy of Visual Arts judges the Davey Awards. This academy invites many of the most respected members of the media to decide the winners. Members include executives from Alloy, Coach, Estee Lauder, HBO, Monster.com, MTV, Polo Ralph Lauren, Victoria's Secret, Wired, Yahoo! and more.

We received gold Daveys for our work with Calvin Klein, Yahoo! and State Farm. We were also given a silver Davey for our work on the Lutron Ecosystem project. If you have not seen these awards, they are by the front door and displayed under our ADDY certificates. Check out the Davey site here.

Use More Than Words This Valentine's DayBy Carol sposto

The Scripps Valentine’s Day Page (in case you missed it) had many sizzling suggestions. From the very beginning of our relationship, Mr. Sposto has often stopped in the middle of whatever he was doing to give me an intense look of complete astonishment. He has never explained this, but it is safe assume that it is because of my considerable romantic power.

Scripps inspired me to start thinking now about that fast-approaching February 14th. Here are a few ideas:

Say it with food...Three ways to bond to your Valentine’s arteries.

Heavenly heart-shaped  scrapple
Better-than-sex turducken for two
Subtle strawberries in chocolate shells with raspberry sauce, marshmallow fluff and sprinkles

Say it with educational gifts...Who needs a night out?

Personal chemistry set
Sea (of love) monkeys
Voice-activated light switch kit

Say it with games...Bring out their inner cutthroat rival quality.

Strip Parcheesi
20 suggestive questions
Smutty charades

Say it with crafts...Gifts from the heart. And your recycling bin.

Edible necklace out of Cheerios
Sexy quilted oven mitts
Fantasy mask from an egg carton

Directory

Spotlight On :
Valentine's Day Package for scripps
By Mandy zerr

We might just be getting over Christmas and New Year's, but Scripps Networks is already thinking Valentine's Day.

On Wednesday, we delivered a Valentine's Day package for HGTV.com, featuring "Six Ways to Play Cupid." The package included a Valetine's Day-themed page and some static ads that will appear internally on HGTV.com and some of their other affiliated sites. The site goes live on Monday, but until then, you can check out the page here.

"It was a straightforward project," said producer Brian Follweiler. "But it was fun."

It was also an open-ended project with very few guidelines for the designers. Brian says Scripps came to Sposto Interactive, gave us the content that would go on the page and said, "OK, go."

"The most interesting part was the mocks," Brian said. "They [the designers] each went in a totally different direction."

Kent Eisenhuth (a.k.a. Huth), Jason Ritz and Shawn Long each designed a mock. Ritz went with a classic HGTV presentation, while Huth focused on giving his page a homey feel. Shawn's mock was all about the "raw passion," as Brian puts it, of Valentine's Day.

In the end, Huth's mock was chosen, but it sounds like it was a tough decision.

"[Scripps] liked them all," Brian said. "They had nothing bad to say about any of them. It was just the charm of Huth's mock, I guess, I don't know."

Huth's design features lots of his own illustrated graphics. In fact, he illustrated all the little details of the page: the hearts in the background, the lace, the "ornament thingers," as Huth calls them. Anything that wasn't a photo, Huth drew.

"I went through HGTV to get a feel for their site," he said. "You know, it's home and garden. So I designed it in a style that had a more homey feel."

He mixed home materials (like molding accents) and Valentine's Day norms (like hearts and lace) to create the experience of a romantic evening at home.

"The whole project went so smoothly," Brian said. "They approved the mocks with almost no revisions. We hit it right on the head."