In addition to my freelance work, I also work for The Creative Group, which is a staffing agency for creatives. I like it because even when the project at hand is something pretty familiar to me, it’s always with new people and in a new place, and after 18-odd years of being in this line of work, that keeps things interesting.

But occasionally TCG will send me on an assignment that’s just pure, unabashed fun. Last time it was to a balloon factory to familiarize myself with the product so I could do some renderings. This time, it was to Colle+McVoy, a Minneapolis marketing agency that just won a Webby award for their development of the Yearbook Yourself website.

I had seen these yearbook photos around on Facebook and such and did wonder where people were getting them. Now I know! And I’m working with some very nice folks at C+M to create new templates for the 2009 version of the site. These are the templates based on old yearbook pics into which people will insert their photos to create the retro looks. It’s super fun, especially when you take friends’ and family’s pics and retro-ize them. I often end up chuckling to myself throughout the day as I’m working on this.

I don’t have a date for the 2009 site launch, but you can sign up here to be notified when it happens.

Update: I’ve finished my work on this project, and they are wrapping things up at Colle+McVoy the latter part of this week. The site launches the week of the 20th! Check it out! There are some great new images, and some nice additions this year that make the end result even more convincing and fun.

I worked with some fantastic people at Hazelden — project manager Dawn Carlson, writer Teri Ryan, marketing director Lisa Neary — to produce Hazelden’s 2008 annual report.

Hazelden’s vision, while not easy to achieve, is simple and beautiful: “All who seek recovery will find it, and the stigma of addiction will be overcome.”

In keeping with this, we paired simple but beautiful imagery with a simple but sophisticated layout. I’m very proud of this effort.