Each year, the American Dialect Society, which is a board of linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, historians, grammarians and other qualified individuals, publishes a list of “Word of the Year” nominations. It can be quite entertaining and it’s generally a good reflection of contemporary American culture. As expected, the trend for the last few years is that the nominations have been increasingly tech-related, especially with regard to social networking. However, at the end of 2009 it was time to decide on the word of the decade.
Here is the list of nominees, who can guess the winner?
I met Monica Getz, Hile Design’s copywriter, at a presentation she gave to my advertising class at the University of Michigan last semester. I was the sole English major floating in a sea of unenthusiastic communication and marketing drones with zero interest in the creative aspects of advertising copy. When she informed us that she was a copywriter (not a copyrighter, as my professor had previously told us) and a former English major at U of M, I perked up from the deflated late-afternoon nap I had grown accustomed to and experienced a spark of energy from the potential relevance the class now held for my life and future career.
A graduation ceremony combined with a two-month back-and-forth email correspondence finally got me an interview. I was brutally grilled in the darkened conference cave by the hotheaded Dave Hile and ice-cold Monica Getz about how I would contribute anything other than a waste of time to their company. Though I don’t really remember what actually happened due to blacking out from fear and stress (but appearing to remain conscious and functional—a skill I learned while dealing with project and term paper deadlines at U of M), it appears I somehow convinced them to keep me around.
Day one, while sitting at my (shared) desk as an (un)paid intern, Dave army-crawled from his office to my area and tied my shoelaces together. As I stood up to embark on finding the restroom (that no one would direct me to), I struck the ground fast and hard. In a daze, I saw Bob, Hile’s Director of Online Technology, approaching me. I met Bob last semester too, as he also came to speak to my class while plagued with swine flu and a sharp disdain for people in general that day. His presentation didn’t inspire the same (false) hope I left with after listening to and speaking with Monica. But I digress—getting back to Bob, I thought he was coming to help me up, perhaps in return for appreciation that I was the only person to ask questions during his “presentation.” He did show me where the bathroom was … but he dragged me there by my hair and then gave me a noogy, repeating something like a dark Gregorian chant with the words, “Welcome to Hile, now go make me some coffee.” I got back to my desk, and Art, Hile’s web programmer, came over to give me my new company email address, UMhotshotLoser@hiledesign.com. My computer also mysteriously crashed an hour later and has yet to recover. Art blames me.
(The above story is completely fictitious. But recently liberated from strict college paper guidelines, I took the suggestion of writing a blog post about my time here as far as I saw fit.)
So here’s the real story. My time here as an intern at Hile has been fantastic. Hile has given me a foot in the door to an industry that I didn’t really know how to approach, and I can’t thank them enough for going out on a limb and trusting my writing skills. Everyone in the office is friendly and willing to answer my potentially obvious and/or annoying questions, and even in my first week I have already gained valuable insight and portfolio work that I never could have received in school. I have never had a “real” job before, or rather, one that put my academic skills to use, and it’s exciting to be in an environment where I get to finally utilize them. I’m very much looking forward to future work and getting to know the company, and yes, maybe even eking out a minimum wage.
Hile Design is excited to host an open house with the West Washtenaw Business Association on March 30th at 4:30 in the afternoon. Coffee and refreshments will be graciously supplied by Coffee House Creamery. At 5:30 Dave Hile will give a short presentation on inexpensive marketing techniques.
One of the goals of our blog “HileItes” is to give people a way to get to know Hile Design staffers in a different way—less business, more personal. So how better to gain insight into each of us than to understand our musical tastes:
Many retail companies envy the almost cult-like passion that Ikea’s customers direct toward the Swedish manufacturer of designer home goods. But the company wasn’t prepared for the worldwide backlash it experienced recently when it switched typefaces in its venerated catalog for the first time in 50 years, from Futura to Verdana.
For those type neophytes who don’t know their Helvetica from their Times Roman, Futura has been one of the grand masters of sans serif typefaces since it was first released in the 1920s. It’s prized for its clean geometry and simple elegance. Plus, it boasts an extensive family of associated fonts: Futura Light, Book, Medium, Heavy, Bold, Extra Bold, Condensed, Oblique, Light Oblique—and on and on. Read the rest of this entry »
Is Dave Hile a compulsive hoarder or an inspired advertising guru? Only time will tell.
Do you collect things? My cousin collects anything related to penguins. The mother of a friend of mine collects owl bric-a-brac. Her house is packed with owl ceramics, art prints, aprons, snow globes, door knockers, figurines, pillows and anything else that could possibly get an owl image on it. I always wondered what the appeal was, and I found people who obsessively collected themed whatnots to be slightly bizarre (except, of course, my cousin who might someday read this blog). How far is the leap from being a collector to becoming one of those eccentric people who live in darkened houses, who never throw out their newspapers dating back to the 1960s?
Like I said, that’s what I thought. Until I became one of them!
I collect modern clocks. It started about four years ago. One day I felt like we needed a clock for our office. A nice big one so all the designers could keep an eye on their deadlines. But of course being a lover of all things modern I couldn’t just buy a regular clock. So I turned to the internet and began researching designer wall clocks—most of the ones that appealed to me were made in Italy, Holland, England, Finland or some other European country. I ended up buying the Contrattempo model by Rexite, an Italian product design firm. It was big and easy to read and really well designed with a cool red pendulum in place of where the numeral “6″ should be. Then a few weeks later I saw another really cool clock from an English company named Joseph Joseph. I figured the office could use another clock. I mean, there are all kinds of walls and corners in our office so another clock wouldn’t hurt, right? A week later on impulse I bought two more Joseph Joseph clocks. Four years later our office has eighty clocks. Oh, and the son of my (penguin) cousin bought me a clock on his last business trip to England. Yup, the circle is complete.
I take a lot of flack from my staff. Their jokes include not being able to tell the time from the clocks because of their modern, unique designs. Other jokes revolve around my being compulsive and my “hoarding problem.” I make our production designer, Lindsey, reset all the clocks twice a year because of the time change in our region of the country. It takes her an hour and a half to update them.
But I have developed a unique defense for my collection. It goes something like this, and I’ve actually used it with clients:
“See all these clocks?” (Client makes a 360 of the room.)
“All these clocks are created for the same purpose. Right?” (Client nods affirmatively.)
“But each one takes a wholly different approach with totally unique results. Some are clever and some are functional and some are funny and this one over here doesn’t even have any hands at all.” (At this point I show them the MOMA Timesphere clock that uses a little red ball that travels around the clock face in lieu of mundane and archaic hands. The client chuckles and increases their head bobbing.)
“It’s just like your advertising. What we have to do is find out what’s most unique about your company and the services you provide your customers. There are many creative options we can apply to your corporate branding, just like there are many different ways to create a timepiece.” (The head bobbing is at maximum capacity.)
Sure, I made this spiel up after I got all the clocks, but it actually is a good analogy. Each clock design is inspired in its own way and presents a completely different “attitude.”
I have to go now. The clocks are telling me I’ve got a meeting to attend. At least I think they are.
I am a normal, red-blooded American male. I like contact sports, fishing, dissing politicians, and fast cars. Heck, I went skydiving once (almost). But I have a secret so dark, so disturbing, that for years I hid it within the confines of my own home. My secret? I care about our curtains!
Oh, I’ve tried not to care. Actually for a period of nearly 15 years, earlier in my life I stifled (as Archie Bunker used to scream at his wife, Edith) the urge to care. But it inevitably came right back out. And it’s lonely. At times I’ve screamed within the inner sanctum of my brain, “STOP caring about the curtains! For the love of all that’s sane, STOP caring!” but it doesn’t help. What’s worse, I have a major jones for modern furniture. If I get near furniture designed by people with names like Arad, Castiglioni, Eames, Jacobsen, Nelson and Noguchi, I begin to get lightheaded. And the list goes on and on! Don’t even get me started on Panton, Prove, Rashid and Saarinen. What’s worse is my major fixation with Phillippe Stark! It’s a costly monkey on my back. Just go to Design Within Reach’s website and check out their pricing. (Thank goodness, there are less expensive knockoffs.)
My problem came to a head a decade ago when my wife and I bought a new home. Early on we went to Bed, Bath & Beyond to buy drapes for the house. I was trying to act as though the patterned drapes we picked out together were fine. Yeah, that’s it… j-u-s-t f-i-n-e. But once they were up in our home it became crystal clear to my inner designer that those patterns had to go! Couldn’t my wife see that the patterns screwed up the whole flow of the room? She protested. After that I can’t remember much except near the end of the incident, when she said that men weren’t suppose to care about “those kinds of things.” Ouch.
Hi, I’m Dave and I am an interior designer. There, I’ve said it. And you know what? I feel better. Yes, I care whether our curtains are patterned or not, and I am not going to hide in my house behind my (thankfully nonpatterned) curtains any longer! Do you hear me, world?
OK, let’s get this out in the open. I like McDonald’s “McCafe” specialty coffees. Since my affinity for McCafes has become known, staff here at Hile have responded in a variety of ways, most of them uncharitable, including accusing me of being unsophisticated in my coffee tastes, or conversely, accusing me of thinking I’m “too good” for the regular brew most everyone else imbibes a couple of times a day. One staffer thinks it’s amusing to add the prefix “Mc” in front of regular words when talking to me, for example, “Monica, are you doing anything “McFun” this weekend? Very McFunny.
McDonald’s is trying to combat consumers’ preconceived ideas about their coffee by running television ads urging consumers to avoid “snobby” coffee shops and take advantage of McDonald’s. One such ad shows two guys sitting in a stereotypical coffee shop, classical music playing in the background. “We don’t have to call movies ‘films’ anymore,” says one guy when his friend tells him that McDonald’s has cappuccinos. “And we can talk about football.” “I like football,” says his friend, while peeling off his black “artsy” turtleneck. “I like sitting and watching football.” Read the rest of this entry »
Hile Design is a full-service advertising agency based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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