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Every once in a while you get asked to do something totally different.
I've been working as a graphic designer for more than 25 years and in that time, I've done a lot of different things: print, packaging, corporate identity, exhibition, video, interactive, and so on. These days, I mostly I spend my time working on the user experience and visual design of our website and other online experiences, including the KODAK Challenge website. I get asked all the time for related pieces of work: posters, ads, etc. You name it, I've done it, or so I thought.
This week, I got asked to do something I have never done before... I got to make the million dollar check given to the winner of the Kodak Challenge.
You know these things, people proudly standing behind them at charity events, lottery press announcements and the TV commercials with some guy knocking on the lucky winners door. My favorite, of course, is the collection of them piling up in the back of Adam Sandler's car in the movie 'Happy Gilmore'.
I'd never really thought about before. It's not a hard job, pretty basic stuff but I'd never really looked at what needed to be there. It is, of course, not a legal document, no bank name and routing numbers, etc. but there are some distinct conventions that we expect. Checks are a certain shape and certain elements: big logo in the top left, date, recipient name, signature and the all important amount. One meeeelilion dollars. $1,000,000.00. That's a whole bunch of zeroes.
I printed out a draft and left it on my desk for a while. Lots of people wanted to take it.
We didn't know for sure who was going to win so we had to make some extra versions. I guess those ones end up in a dumpster.
Kodak is working with YouTube on a great destination for moms - For Mom: Your Online Survival Guide. The For Mom site features lots of great videos with tips, advice and inspiration for moms, from moms. You can find videos under topics like "In The Home" and "Health and Beauty".
We also added a few videos with advice for moms... from kids. You have to take their words of wisdom with a grain of salt, but they are very funny and very cute.
Madlen Nicolaus
Kodak's Social Media Representative in Germany
With this blog post I am starting a new series about German traditions and traditional festivals that bring together friends and family. These are very popular photo opportunities and the snapshots are happy memories for years to come.
When I checked my facebook account during the last few weeks, it was very obvious what was happening in Munich: Lots and lots of new photo albums - people evidently wanted to mark a special occasion and share it with the world.
People were tagged in photos as Bavarian lookalikes with big beer steins - the "Mass" - in their hands, wearing traditional Bavarian clothes, a "Dirndl" or a "Lederhosen". It was, of course, "Oktoberfest" time again, or "Wiesn" as the locals call it.
Photo by: Hendrik Nicolaus
The world's largest "Volksfest" attracts some six million people every year and is an event where friends and family from all over Germany as well as tourists from all over the world come together to celebrate one of the biggest parties in the world. For about 16 days, every hotel room, hostel bed and couch is booked in Munich. This festival even changes the look of the city itself. Everywhere you go there are people in traditional clothes - girls in Dirndl and guys in Lederhosen. It has even become fashionable for tourists to wear the traditional Bavarian clothes. Of course this look has to be documented by many many photos and shared with friends and family afterwards.
Photo by: Michael Lingelbach
Every year, new superlatives await: 5.7 million people came to Wiesn09, drinking 6.5 million litres of beer and taking millions of photos of course. Google Image search for Oktoberfest 2009 shows 2.670.000 photos, there are 15.838 Oktoberfest 2009 photos on Flickr and the Oktoberfest Facebook Fanpage has more than 23,000 fans. Some photos are really artistic, showing the rides and the enormous size of the "biggest beer festival in the world", but on most of them you can see people enjoying the party, smiling and having fun together - Oktoberfest time is definitely a time to smile. As part of the series "The big picture - News stories in Photographs" the Boston Globe showcases outstanding Oktoberfest photos.
However, Oktoberfest originally was not about pretzel and beer. The very first "Oktoberfest" occurred almost 200 years ago. For the commemoration of their marriage on October 12, 1810, Crown Prince Ludwig (later Kind Ludwig I) organized a big horse race on October 17th for Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen (namesake of the Theresienwiese festival grounds). Today, the Munich Oktoberfest starts on the third weekend in September and continues until the first Sunday in October - in these days always incorporating October 3rd, the German Unity Day. If you are interested in the full Oktoberfest history, you can find all details on the Oktoberfest - Wikipedia entry.
If you are a very keen Oktoberfest visitor you can already tick off the days until the 177th Munich Oktoberfest in 2010 - the Oktoberfest homepage shows the countdown.
Photo by: Hendrik Nicolaus
Kodak Germany created a Wiesn09 Photo group so if you have been at Oktoberfest 2009 don't hesitate to upload your best shots to the group. You have the chance to win a Kodak Z950 Digital Camera (Entry deadline is the end of October). Best of luck!
