Project Ginger
View the Project Ginger Presentation

While a little dated, Project Ginger was the first award-winning site I had a hand in. It also comes with a pretty decent story.

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When I was 17, I was working at an advertising and design school in Minneapolis called Brainco. I'd been there for awhile, and it was a great job. Previously I'd worked as a bag boy in a grocery store (which I actually liked) and before that, a landscaper (which I didn't like), so I was very lucky to have a relevant job so early on. When Spring came around and the One Show was gearing up, Ed (the boss) asked me if I wanted to compete in the One Show's young creative professionals competition. It was in New York, so I didn't even think about it when I said yes.

I believed, whole-heartedly, that I had no chance of winning. I didn't really know my team mates and I was still very young. I went to get my hair cut on the first day in the city and told this to a barber named Mario. He insisted that, one, I needed to have wild hair because I was young, and two, that my team would win despite all odds. At the risk of sounding like an inspirational Disney movie, I believed him. Not only did we win, but we finished half a day early so I was able to spend the rest of the time helping the other teams fix problems in their Flash movies. I think we won because of karma, because the site isn't that exciting by today's standards. Then again, this was in the time of Flash 5. Flash 5 isn't that exciting by today's standards either..

The goal was to come up with a promotional web site or CD-ROM for Dean Kamen's Segway. Back then it was called Project Ginger, and we knew just about as much as anyone else did. It was supposed to revolutionize transportation, but we weren't clear as to exactly what it was. We had to design a site without ever seeing the product, so we used that to our advantage and illustrated the change the product would bring instead.

The biggest challenge was putting together a Flash site while knowing very little about Flash. I'd never even touched ActionScript, so I spent every bit of free time I had taking apart example after example to learn how it worked. I certainly wasn't an expert afterwards, but I was able to put the site together and debug errors for other people.

I was very tired when we arrived at the One Show. I fell asleep when they called our name as the winner of the interactive category and didn't realize we'd won until I was half way to the stage. It was a crazy experience, but there's nothing quite like putting something together in a short period of time. You really get to know your team and have a great time together. It's also really cool to see your name in a design book before you graduate high school :).