Matt Kyte and Keegan Brown talk web at a 2013 PETE.
“If copy doesn’t matter anymore, why aren’t your headlines ‘lorem ipsum’?” – so asked Lori Archer-Smith, Associate Creative Director/Copy, in her presentation on the role words play in the digital age. An animated Q & A immediately followed as writers, art directors and social media managers battled over the pros and cons of today’s advertising trends, weighing in on what changes for good we can implement in our daily tasks to keep the demons of mediocrity at bay. And so went another PETE session. Insight, know-how, impassioned points of view.
Grassroots-style, PETE is a presentation series for the Peter Mayer creatives, by the Peter Mayer creatives.* It’s a short after-hours event where attendees leave the workday behind, grab a beer, and listen to two of their peers wax eloquent for 10-12 minutes each on such topics as the virtues of staying organized, creating nondestructive Photoshop files, or achieving optimal creative flow. Following each presentation is a question and answer period, which could be used to pose technical questions like “When is a gif better than a jpg?” Or it may provoke dialogue like “Why are more clients today asking for infographics?” Which is exactly what the planners had in mind when creating the event.
Inspired by TED and industry series CreativeMornings, a few designers and art directors decided they wanted to bring a voice of expertise and inspiration to the agency by tapping the well of creative minds already in the building. Such peer-to-peer interaction, they reasoned, would provoke collaboration and dialogue among the otherwise independent creative teams. It would give creatives from all disciplines an opportunity to share their strengths and points of view with their colleagues, while picking up a few tips and tricks of their own.
PETE has had eight sessions one year since its inception last November. In addition to the subjects listed above, topics have included Methodologies in Choosing Fonts, Accessibility in Design, Preparing Design Files for Web, Getting Creative with Social, How Good Posture Can Fuel Creativity, Restaurant Design, The Art of Presentation, Handwork in Design, The Mobile Point of Sale and Keeping the Creative Process Fresh. Want to see what we’ve done? Check out the slide presentations on our SlideShare page.
And the PETE credits go to…
Event design and creation: Tom Futrell, Adrianne Kimbell and Dan Tierney
Event management & production: Adrianne Kimbell, Ryan Page and Reba Joy Billups
Speakers to date: Adrianne Kimbell, Tom Futrell, Ryan Page, Thom Henkel, Matt Kyte, Keegan Brown, Jenny Carbonell, Shira Pinsker, Chris Just, Reba Joy Billups, Melissa Lama, Summer Fiedler, Lori Archer-Smith, Jill Norman, Matt Shamblin and Mitchell Wallace.
*Of course, “non-creative” creative thinkers are also welcome to attend.