Gatorworks | Baton Rouge Web Design & Development

BATON ROUGE – The American Advertising Federation–Baton Rouge announced the winners of its coveted ADDY® Awards competition honoring creative excellence in advertising Saturday night during the award ceremony at the Louisiana State Museum.

With more than 60,000 entries annually, the national ADDY® Awards are the world’s largest and arguably toughest advertising competition. The ADDY® Awards represent the true spirit of creative excellence by recognizing all forms of advertising from media of all types, creative by all sizes and entrants of all levels from around the world. The American Advertising Federation conducts the ADDY® Awards through its 200 member advertising clubs and 15 districts. It is the only creative awards program administered by the advertising industry, for the industry.

This year’s local competition produced 446 entries from Baton Rouge professionals and LSU students. Judging was held January 16, 2010 at Lamar Advertising. Renee Miller, President/Creative Director of The Miller Group in Los Angles, Ca.; Jim Dudley, Broadcast, Copywriter, Creative Director of Dudley Creative in Roanoke, Va.; and Jimmy Ball, Art Director/Designer, Photographer, Interactive of Jimmy Ball Design in Dallas, Texas, served as judges for the competition.

Gatorworks brought home a Silver ADDY award for their client project, Santa’s Online Wishlist. Santa’s Online Wishlist is an interactive website where children can dress a snowman, have fun in Santa’s Toy Factory, view Santa’s Mailroom, and best of all send emails to Santa Claus. The website took approximately 6 months to hand-draw, custom illustrate, and then custom animate using Adobe Flash software. David Link, Creative Director and lead designer/developer on the project, said, “It’s really nice to be recognized for our hard work, especially in a community as talented as AAF.”

At the red carpet ceremony, 41 gold ADDY®s, 50 silver ADDY®s, three Special Judge’s Awards, a Mosaic Award, Best of Show and Best of Category awards were presented. Advertising students were also recognized with 17 gold ADDY®s, 19 silver ADDY®s, a Best of Show and Special Judges’ Awards. ADDY® 2010* also recognized professional excellence on the business side of the advertising industry with its Pinnacle Awards.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending Mele Printing’s 7th Annual “Krewe of Kookies and Kakes” where I had the opportunity to make my very own king cake! The day started off with a quick meet and greet with the 20 or so other business professionals participating in the king cake class. My friends Trammie Anderson and Mendi LeBlanc from Lamar happened to be in the class as well, so it was great seeing them. After knocking out a cup or two of coffee, we were ready to tour Mele Printing’s impressive 33,000 square-foot facility where we learned about their state-of-the-art prepress as well as digital and offset printing equipment. One of the things that really stuck with me was the cleanliness of their facility. I’ve been in a few other printing warehouses in the past, and they weren’t nearly as clean and organized as Mele. I felt like I could eat my lunch right off the floor!

Mallery Mele leads the king cake cooking class

After the shop tour it was time to make our homemade king cakes. Now, for those of you who don’t know, Mele Printing bakes thousands of cookies each month for their clients. Many of their clients plan to receive their printing order on a Monday or a Wednesday so they’ll be sure to also receive a nice batch of fresh cookies. Anyway, each of us was given a log of dough with cinnamon rolled in the middle. We worked our dough in the form of a circle and threw it in the oven.

Once we took the cakes out of the oven, we dug out a few holes with our fingers on the bottom of the cakes to create a canal to insert fillings. I put strawberry and cream cheese in mine. Then, we flipped the cakes over and drenched them in hot icing and topped them with sugar. It was a masterpiece!

The event was an innovative way for Mele’s clients to learn more about their company all the while celebrating the rich history and culture of Southern Louisiana. We’re proud that Mele Printing is one of our vendors, and we look forward to fostering a long-term relationship with them!

Brian Rodriguez bakes his first Mardi Gras King Cake

I wanted to take the opportunity to thank all our clients and strategic partners for a great year. We were fortunate to work with a number of really wonderful people and highly successful companies. We look forward to an exciting 2010!

Check out a small sampling of some of the websites we’ve designed, developed, and maintained throughout the last year.

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