Marty

WHOA! It’s freaking 2012 … and we’re ready to kick off this New Year in style! Next week we celebrate going into our sixth year in business; that the accumulation of five years of CSS experimenting, client expectation exceeding, HTML rocking, Mario Karting, talent inspiring, BeerCamping ridiculousness that is our adventure. And now, we’re going all 3.0 in year number 6.

We’ve Moved!

As many of you know, we’ve moved (again). This marks our third studio since starting the company, always moving up. This time, we’re up on the third floor of an amazing space at 19th and M NW; just a block and a half south of Dupont Circle in downtown Washington, D.C.

It’s 6,000 square feet of awesome (if we do say so ourselves); well, this time we got to build-out and design the entire space, so we’re pretty proud of it. When immersed in a world of pixels and HEX values, it’s a fun (and sometimes frustrating) transition to be able to play in the land of square footage and paint swatches.

If you’re in the neighborhood, be sure to stop by our unofficial open-house this Saturday, we’re piggy backing off our belated holiday party: http://nvite.com/beta/holiday -- those coming to party get a sneak peek at something big we’re planning with our new space!

We’re Growing!

We’ve got two additions to the nclud team that we’re excited to announce as well. We’re always on the look out for talent and those passionate enough to keep us all inspired.

Meet Bryan Innes; Bryan is joining us for the spring term as our latest in what has been a very talented and successful line of interns. Bryan is now among the likes of Michael Dick, Lauren Moon and Ian Storm Taylor … the bar has most certainly been raised. Bryan is a senior at American University and has already caught the attention of the entire DC design community. Bryan is a true traditional designer with an exceptional interest in all things web and mobile. With a true diversity of talents, the expectations are high (no pressure though). Bryan will be with us for the Spring term, and we’ve already got a lot of fun projects lined-up!

Meet Kallie Seniff; Kallie is joining us full-time in a new role at nclud, “Community Manager”. Kallie comes to us from a stint at SapientNitro as an Account Executive. Kallie brings with her a ridiculously diverse background of experiences; from agency life to event planning and everything in between; she knows people and is heavily attracted to creativity. nclud has been a community-centric agency since inception; Alex and I have been involved in the community heavily even prior to starting nclud. Kallie is not here to “manage" what comes to us naturally or even corporatize what’s inherently just good-will; she’s here for something bigger; something beyond nclud and something bigger than just Alex and myself. We’ll share more on Kallie’s new role at nclud and on our upcoming community projects shortly. Those that make it out to our holiday party this weekend can meet Kallie and get a sneak peak on what we’re up too!

Re-re-designing nclud.com

It’s that time again, time to redesign; we generally believe a redesign should happen every couple of years … and, we’re over-due. This will be version 3.0 of our beloved home on the internet … and we’ve got something spicy up our sleeves.

Alex has once again out-done himself, out-designed himself, on the creative side of it all … not only representing who we are, but truly showing what we are. David DeSandro is up to his usual HTML5, CSS3, WTF mark-up that makes us go WOW and leaves us a little intimidated to “view source”. Brandon Vaughn is making miracles happen on the backend, this time on WordPress. And the rest of the team is complementing the effort in full with our almost daily brainstorming, inspiration sharing, creative collaboration.

Post-Holiday Holiday-Party

It’s still very much the Christmas season here at nclud. We have a long tradition of holiday parties at our studio. Since we missed the season this year while literally being under construction … we’re keeping the tradition going though. The Christmas tree is still up, the lights are still hung and the Holiday music is still streaming here at nclud. It’s January and we’re breaking out the ugly sweaters and throwing a Holiday Party! It’s also an unofficial open-house as well as a birthday celebration and welcome to our new team members. Needless to say, there is a lot left to celebrate and we hope you’ll all come out and help us toast to the New Year and a 3.0 nclud.

RSVP Online to the Holiday Part at:
http://nvite.com/beta/holiday

Wow, what a year … who knew our fifth year would be our busiest. There is a lot going on at nclud and it seems like we’re moving too fast to ever have enough time to share it all.

What we’ve been working on … we haven’t been updating that portfolio section very often, so what’s been going on in DC other than playing Mario Kart?

Well … we’re still kicking butt with our friends at Apple; while we can’t share exactly what we’ve been working on, just know they’ve been keeping us on our toes and really pushing our creativity!

The Kiplinger team is ready to launch their first iPhone, iPad and Android phone application that we designed and developed for them to complement their mobile web experience we launched earlier this summer.

Keep on the look out for a C-SPAN mobile initiative launch shortly … it’s pretty slick, we’re excited! It’s been submitted to the app store … any moment now!

On the local front, there is a Clearspring redesign floating out there somewhere that we hope to see launch shortly.

We’ve also engaged with the amazing team at HelloWallet, this is a project we’re really excited about … we designed and developed the their first iPhone app, which we’re happy to say is now available in the Apple app store.

Being the community oriented group we are, we’ve partnered with AIGA and ADCMW (Art Directors Club) with the launch of the AIGA50 website as well as the creative behind the new ADCMW DesignBrawl series!

And, of course we still keep it real with our start-up clients. We’re in anticipation for the upcoming launch of Profile.com; it’s fun, it’s personal and damn does it look good. We worked on the brand identity as well as the user experience design.

Check out the redesign for Greatist.com … it’s pretty snazzy, if we do say so ourselves!

Lastly, look for a redesigned Howard University School of Business website to launch before the end of the year!

And … we’ve moved! We’ve grown a bit this year and have unfortunately outgrown our amazing studio space on Florida Avenue. But, we’re moving-on and moving-up … our new studio is located in the 19th and M Street NW area of Dupont Circle. We’re doing a complete custom gut and design job … so, it’s going to be a few months before it’s ready; we’re hoping just in time for our annual holiday party … this time in January!

We’re going to go a bit radio silent until the New Year … we’ll be launching a completely redesigned nclud.com!

Wow, we love being inspired and thrive to inspire; it was the greatest honor to find out our website for BeerCamp took home “Site of the year” from .net Magazine’s “.net Awards” this year.

It’s what we do, we make websites … we try to be as unique, as creative and as innovative as possible; we’d like to think that we all strive for that. To be honored with “Site of the year” is truly the greatest honor that could have been given to us. Even though being nominated for “Agency of the year” last year was a pretty good feeling as well!

A special congratulations to our own David DeSandro; he was the lead designer and developer for the 2011 BeerCamp website. He also just got married last weekend … he’s most likely too busy on his honeymoon to even know he’s won!

We’re traditionally not big on awards here at nclud. But, that’s because we’re not traditionally big on the awards process. We don’t believe you should submit you work for consideration; we believe only great work should be considered for appreciation. We believe in the work, and more importantly, we believe in the talent behind the work; if we can win an award by doing nothing more than that, we believe everyone wins!

BeerCamp was a fun idea that came from poking a bit of fun at the BarCamp concept. We realized that we learned more from our peers by simply buying them a beer at a pub than attending anything from the formalized chaos that is something like a BarCamp or even SXSW itself. When you get a one-on-one with the likes of Andy Budd, Paul Irish, Carl Smith, Steve Smith or Garrett Dimon you get an unbelievable amount of insight, inspiration and encouragement that is simply priceless. We wanted something away from the podium, outside of the conference room and more conversational than a party; we created BeerCamp to be that something.

We’d like to take second to say “thank you” to the staff at Emo’s, a world-famous music venue and the home to BeerCamp over the years. They’ve been the best host; as many of you may already know, Emo’s is closing its doors at the end of the year. Appropriate timing, as BeerCamp will not be returning to SXSW.

In exciting news … we’re taking this show international! We’re keeping it super secret until the New Year, but BeerCamp 2012 will be hosted in Europe at a conference we’re very excited about. Look for details soon!

Today is “Take Your Dog to Work Day” … well, at nclud, everyday is take your dog to work day; and we love it. So, we thought on the official day that we’d give a little shout out to the only nclud’ers in the office everyday that never get to go to SXSW; the only nclud’ers that are allowed to lick the client, technically.

We’re all about creativity here and we know environment is a huge factor in fostering that creativity … environment and our co-workers. Preston the Puggle has been coming into the studio from day one; he’s been begging for lunch scraps before the iPhone was even invented. When Dan started at nclud he brought Lilly in occasionally and when Doris was negotiating, there was a verbal agreement that the day there were no more puppies in the studio, there would be no more Doris in the studio. Lauren joined the team and brought Shasta with her … and now of course the newest member of the nclud puppy crew is Brian Singer’s Tucker; still very much truly a puppy, to the core.

The ‘accidents’ are behind us, the dog hair is plentiful, but it’s their loving, curious and energetic nature that really makes it perfect. They bring with them big smiles, bigger appetites, and bit of needed chaos in an otherwise fairly routine day. We never imagined nclud would be so dog-centric, but we most certainly can’t imagine it any other way.

To the nclud puppies:

An exciting find in today’s mail at the nclud studio … the latest issue of this month’s .net Magazine, with a great cover feature written by our own David DeSandro. Look for the featured “Create a zoomtastic UI with CSS3” on your cover. It’s detailed look into the mark-up behind our ever popular SXSW BeerCamp 2011 site.

No spoilers here … go grab a copy and check it out.

Another big congratulations to the entire nclud team on one hell of an event, one heck of an inspiring website and an impressive reaction to the whole! Also, a big shout out to our own David DeSandro for a well written article published in the best of publications -- awesome work!

Another year has gone by, and as always, nclud continues to grow; the team continues to grow. We don’t just grow in size: our designs get stronger, our mark-up gets more advanced, our clients get more mobile and the plethora of Mario Kart cheating continues to run rampant. And now, we say hello to a new member of the nclud team and sadly say good-bye to another.

After two-and-a-half years of jort-wearing, sandwich-consuming, energy-bringing, story-telling, jQuer’ing, design … our own Lauren Moon is moving-up and moving-on. Lauren has the entire world at her disposal and the possibilities are endless, we’re excited to see where she ends up and what she does next – she’ll be doing a stint at U.S. News & World Report before moving onto her next big adventure.

We first met Lauren while doing a portfolio review at Boston University’s CDIA program in Georgetown … she was talented, ambitious and forward! She never skirted around the issue, she approached us and simply said “I want to work at nclud” … she didn’t just want a job, she wanted to be a part of nclud. And now, I’m happy to say that much of who nclud is can most certainly be attributed to the energy, passion, humor, and life that Lauren brought with her. Our web history’s are cluttered with YouTube links, our Adiums drowning in cat-references, our iPhones buzzing with jokes (most inappropriately involving cats) and our studio walls always full of laughter.

It’s not all jorts, jokes and Justin Bieber … Lauren has gone from student to intern to senior designer. From wireframing to Photoshoping to front-end to CMS, she has done it all and has never stopped exceeding the expectations of our clients; even the really really picky ones. It’s amazing watching someone go from good to great right in front of you, it’s been amazing having Lauren as a part of the team!

It’s been over two years, three SXSW’s, dozens of client launches, a plentiful of hangovers, hundreds of sandwiches, one cat, one dog, and an incident of ringworm later … Lauren will most certainly be irreplaceable.

Brandon Vaughan nclud’ed

On a lighter note, we’re excited to introduce a timely addition to the nclud team, Brandon Vaughan. Brandon will be joining nclud as a senior web developer, helping us get back to our roots and primarily lead our CMS development and implementation initiatives. We’ve got a very strong team in place to compliment Brandon and we’re looking forward to launching some very exciting projects in the near future … the first being the Howard University School of Business.

We’re Still Hiring

We are still currently looking for a “Web Designer”; basically a strong front-end developer with extremely strong visual design sensibilities. Or to be more frank … a designer who happens to love front-end and has already started experimenting with HTML5, CSS3 and life beyond jQuery. If you’re interested, just impress us, hello@nclud.com.

... A Classic Lauren Moon Moment

It’s extremely belated, but the excitement is still going strong … we’re thrilled to, finally, announce the two newest members of the nclud team, Wes Dimiceli and John Schulz. Both Wes and John are joining nclud as web developers helping us push the boundaries of the continuous advancements in web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 as well as JavaScript for mobile devices cross platform.

Wes is a web developer at nclud; focused primarily on native application development for both the Android and iOS platform as well as a lead with custom JavaScript development. Like much of nclud, Wes is young, ambitious and extremely talented; he’s been programming since he first got his hands on an Apple Newton – he’s been mobile since the beginning!

Wes comes to nclud from U.S. News & World Report, where he worked intimately within the information technology department and their development team to contributing to new and exciting initiatives. Wes’ experience with publishers and passion for mobile made him an instant fit; that and he’s a pretty quick study at Mario Kart. Wes’ strong and unique programming background brings with him a terrific perspective on web development that continually pushes the boundaries of web technologies.

John is a senior web developer at nclud; focused primarily on advancements in front-end technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 as well as JavaScript for mobile devices cross platform. John brings with him a wealth of experience both from the private sector as well as personal endeavors; where he has continued to innovate and push the boundaries of web technologies.

John comes to nclud from OmniTI, where he worked as a web developer on emerging technologies. John is also our fifth JMU graduate and third Marylander, commuting from Baltimore. John has developed a name for himself within the development community contributing to open-source projects as well as speaking at industry conferences such as JSConf and NodeConf. John is an extremely smart addition to the nclud team and there was an immediate appeal between his community-centric innovative development style and our own.

We’re thrilled to have both Wes and John on the team … both started just as we got back from SXSW and they’ve already made amazing contributions to our strategic mobile initiatives with clients such as Kiplinger, Apple and Oracle.

We’ll be welcoming Wes and John to the nclud team in our own traditional style, with a party! We’ll be doing a little Cinco De Mayo happy hour at Lauriol Plaza … details the come shortly; you’re all obviously invited!

P.S. We’re Hiring! We’ll be looking for a PHP Developer, Front-End Developer as well as a Web Designer … if you know anyone looking, there’s a $1,000 referral bonus in it for you!

Released during SXSW, we’re a bit belated in sharing our excitement over the launch of the National Journal iPad app. This is a special launch for us as it’s the conclusion to the initial phase of a compressive mobile strategy developed for the National Journal, one that has already proven extremely successful.

This iPad application also embodies months of creativity in creating a truly innovative reading experience for a traditional publisher on the iPad as a medium. The National Journal iPad application was inspired by print, powered by web, but designed for iPad.

Traditional publishers have not been taking full advantage of the iPad; they’ve been cutting corners, they’ve been cheating, they’ve been devaluing the experience. While the iPad is inherently digital, the experience shouldn’t be of the extremes from a PDF reader that repurposes print to a web-centric application that might as well just be a website. The goal is to bridge the traditional mediums together, creating a new experience, an iPad experience.

We’re extremely proud to present to the world, the National Journal iPad application:

The National Journal application is in fact a universal iOS app that is optimized for both iPhone and iPad. The iOS application is a part of a larger mobile strategy designed for the National Journal; a strategy that includes a mobile-web initiative optimized for iPhone, Android, Blackberry as well as WAP devices.

It’s Valentine’s day and we had some fun with it ...

We've even got a little iPhone love for you Apple lovers out there; from us to you:

Download directly to your iPhone: http://nclud.me/vphone/

Happy Valentine's Day!