Hughes Leahy Karlovic

I’ve been putting off writing this blog post for hours now. Partially because I didn’t know how I was going to follow-up http://www.hlkagency.com/blog/an-event-apart-seattle-day-one">Beth’s stellar recap of day one, but also because I am so overtaken by the wealth of knowledge that has been shared with us over the past two days. I seriously can’t figure out what to write about.

I think Beth nailed my biggest takeaway from the conference thus far when she said “This time, people actually wanted to be there, unified under a single objective: to make our work better” in her post yesterday. When we went through the fairly recent HLK rebrand, we set out to make sure that the work was always our top priority. We made a huge organizational pivot and empowered everyone in the agency to be creative and impact the work. From planning to final execution, we are always striving to advance the skill and expertise of the organization as a whole. Attending this conference has totally validated that outlook for me.

As an art ...

I started at Hughes three and a half years ago. Seems like a really long time now. A little more than two years ago, I was tasked with designing a new website for the agency. At that time, we were growing as a company and putting more focus on digital, so the design needed to reflect those initiatives. It needed to be really fun and entertaining, but also speak to some of our more reserved clients and audiences. It had to pay tribute to our heritage and lay the groundwork for the future of the company at the same time. And on top of all that, It had to be on time, and on budget.

For a 23 year old kid fresh out of design school that seemed like a daunting task. I think my exact words to the partners at the time were “No pressure or anything...” With the help of some very talented people that have since moved on, we accomplished something that I was truly proud of. We had a awesome concept come to life in the form of an introduction video that lived on home page, an impressiv...