If you know anything about Broadway, you know that Brian d’Arcy James is one of the pre-eminent performers and singers in the nation. He’s been nominated for Tonys, he’s appeared in a slew of films, and also happens to be one of the most talented folks around. After a successful run originating the role of Shrek on Broadway, Brian jumped into “Time Stands Still” and “Next to Normal,” both critically-acclaimed juggernauts. It was a treat to work on Brian’s site, which is built on the very flexible WordPress. Full disclosure: Brian’s my brother-in-law, and we co-created a television pilot called “Shiny People,” which you should absolutely DVR once it gets picked-up in about a year. Check-out Brian’s site and say hi!
The Strongbox Wine Cellar is one of Chicago’s longest-running wine storage facilities. Owned and operated by the Loft Development Group, headed by Owen Deutsch and Dan Kaplan, the Strongbox is well known for it’s, well, top of the line wine storage facilities. We met with Owen and company to discuss the options of creating a blog — and how we might help them enhance their web presence through original content and this video. Check-out the blog and watch out for some great giveaways. If you’re a wine enthusiast, visit often, as this site is quickly growing into it’s own. Enjoy!
In late 2009, PERL founder Ken Perlmutter and I approached the folks at Conlon: A Real Estate Company to create a new partnership by combining efforts in social media. Traditionally, the lender-realtor relationship is based on efforts through advertising and at open houses — and PERL, Conlon and MC took this a few steps further by collaborating on a series of online projects, the first of which was building and launching the new Conlon blog. Their blog incorporates a design by Desme and funnels Conlon’s active social media network in a variety of spots. They’re up and running on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube — and have an ongoing radio presence on WLS. Big thanks to Ken, Benjie, Drussy and Andrew for inviting us to join in on the fun. This project was actually the basis for a presentation earlier this week at Mid-Town Tennis. Congrats to our friends at Conlon!
Kate James is a founder of the sketch group Schadenfreude and a writer / performer for Second City Communications. She also happens to be my wife. Anyway, she needed a new website and after meeting with numerous potential solutions corporations, she went with Marshall Creative. Nice. Check out her site, the videos and everything else. Fun stuff. Yet another site produced by a crack design and programming team that keeps it simple and lean by using a structure WordPress (which is free, by the by) for flexibility and easy updates. Congrats Kate!
Well, we just finished rolling out a new design and layout for my new personal site and I figured why not promote my own personal site on my company website now that I’ve hired myself as a client and put my own name in my own Basecamp as it’s own separate project. Fun. My new site SandyMarshall.com features a bunch of my film and directing and Schadenfreude and “other” work. My favorite stuff on here by far is the “Action Figure Says” section where I get a kick out of writing what action figures are probably saying. It’s consumed way too much time over the years and it’s now becoming an inside joke at MC that we’ll spend more time programming and reworking the bucket-like organization of Action Figure Says for the next 25 years. Anyway I hope you enjoy it! And for the record I was a pretty good client and was pretty diligent at getting back to myself on email. I’d probably hire myself again. We’ll see.
