56 Months of Pantone Moods

If you haven’t already checked it out, the Pantone Moods Facebook application that was conceived and created by ERA404, has a history and trends tab. The trends tab shows current mood matches, based on color, mood blurb, gender, date/time of submission, and distance from you. It also compares your current mood color and blurb based on gender, location, color match, word match, and frequency. Lastly, it shows global mood trends with the most active gender (female) and color (21-1-7 C), most active location (São Paulo) and color (21-1-7 C), most popular color now (1-1-6 C) and of all time (21-1-7 C), and most popular words (color, blue, feeling, today, happy) and colors (21-1-7 C, 76-1-7 C, 1-1-6 C, 132-1-4 C).
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The Creative Process

The Creative Process

Oftentimes when approached by clients and agencies, we’re asked about our creative process at era404. While people can easily see a step-by-step diagram of our development process, broken down by time, cost and client interaction, we have never really outlined how the creative process works here. This is partially because development, which is creative in its own right, is considerably more objective, pragmatic, and analytical. The process is linear, relying on previous checkpoints to proceed to latter ones.

Design, on the other hand, grows organically and chaotically. It pushes forward and outward in untraceable trajectories. If one thinks of development as a relay race with the baton being passed at regular relay points, design is more like a quixotic multi-player game of capture the flag. It’s undoubtedly the most challenging, gratifying (and possibly frustrating) part of our job here, riddled with stops, starts, reorientation, redirection, hidden doors, trap floors, exploration, and trial and error, relying purely on experience and gut instinct to reach the goal. And while the description above sounds daunting, it’s the primary reason we love our jobs so much.

So, depicting our creative process in a linear diagram like our development process is impossible. But each design roughly follows the same objectives along the uncharted path, which, coupled with client feedback and critiques, act as polestars in guiding us to their completion. Below are those objectives, distilled and organized as they would be in a perfect world, free of the organic and beautiful growth of real-world scenarios…

Read the whole news article on the era404 site

A Decade of Lessons in Small Business Management

As we round third plate to complete our 10th year of business at era404, it’s impossible not to reflect upon the previous decade’s successes and lessons. In fact, despite the enormous pride we have for our successes—the awards we’ve won, the opportunities we’ve been afforded, the pieces we’ve created—it was in the lessons that our company grew the most. We can only assume that the same way the triumphs and tribulations of a child’s first ten years shape his or her personality, a business uses its own experiences to analyze the risks it will take and the directions it will pursue.

The first ten years weren’t always easy.  Read more