So we over at Fastspot, like many of you, recently stumbled upon Yearbookyourself.com. Our Art & Technology Director Curt Kotula found it on Tech Crunch, and immediately sent us all a yearbook picture he made of himself. It was an instant hit throughout the office, with all of us making our own yearbook pics while laughing hysterically at the ones that kept showing up. There are a few reason why we think this idea and execution is so brilliant, and I will go through a few of the top points in our book.

1. Simple Idea / Memorable Name (and URL) - I really don’t need to further explain this point.

2. As you create your photo, it gets added to your friend’s yearbook! This is one of the best parts of this idea. Not only can you log in and make your own ridiculous looking picture, once you opt to save it, it gets added to the page where your friend’s picture is at, along with all the other people who got the link from that friend - thus creating a customized yearbook page with all these people you probably know.

3. Easy to control tools. Not everyone out there is a Photoshop genius, and the tools these developers and designers put into place are easy enough for most people to use to get their image looking as good as possible.

4. Hysterical. Humor is underrated, and the fun factor in this site is just right! There are enough fun options for variety and you can really customize your yearbook look to match your contemporary personality.

5. Integrated Advertising. The advertising in this site is almost so integrated you can miss it. Each era has style tidbits and trivia, and links to explore contemporary counterparts at stores like Hot Topic or the Gap. Not to mention the links to the actual Malls that are referenced when you are selecting what I can only imagine is the mall you want to presume you got the photo shot at? Regardless, you are invited to explore and learn more, with links to advertiser’s sites. The way it is integrated doesn’t make you feel like you are being marketed to, rather it encourages you to revisit some of those funny styles that inevitably make it back into popular fashion. This is the kind of advertising that doesn’t offend, and doesn’t interfere, and that’s the kind we like to see!

6. Portable. While I would have liked to have seen a built in Facebook link to send the pic directly to user’s Facebook feeds, or the ability to create an instant AIM icon, us power users managed to do it regardless by saving the image and porting it to where it could be easily shared with friends, co-workers and family. Half of our office is currently using their yearbooks pics as their AIM icons (slightly disturbing but great for keeping the fad alive).

Overall it’s just a brilliant site, and carrying on the tradition of Office Max’s elfyourself.com(…does anyone even remember that this was an Office Max project?) and our recent project for Discovery’s Shark Week, sharkyourself.com. Seems the fun in placing your image into compromising situations will never get old!

We had a great off-site meeting this past week at Henderson’s Wharf, where we took some much needed time away from the office and our client work to focus on how Fastspot is doing. Our meeting started with a hour long slide show for the newer people on our team, helping them understand the evolution of Fastspot over the last 10 years.

It was clear from the slide show that one of our biggest passions is in application and experience design. From the beginning, back with our Flash Forward presentation in NYC 2001, we have had a love for creating innovative interactive experiences that do much more than share information. Even while more “marketing-centric” work was being done, we were always looking for projects (external and internal) where we could push the technological boundaries in order to create a new kind of experience.

As web 2.0 programs and mindsets have finally become commonplace in the industry, we find ourselves at the perfect point to put those years of passionate exploration and brainstorming into action. It was a perfect transition point to move into the second half of the meeting where we focused on dream clients, dream projects, and lastly - concept pitches.

Of course, dream clients included museums and galleries, clients who are already developing beautiful objects and imagery, innovative companies who are pushing technology and social networking, and close to home favorites that allow us to help advertise our beloved city of Baltimore. And then the dream projects, with iPhone applications leading the charge, we also heard about everyone’s interest in data / catalog projects, mashups, travel or experience related projects and movie or music based projects.

After our “dream” session, the best was yet to come. We headed into an hour long pitch session, with everyone invited to pitch an idea that Fastspot would fund over the upcoming months to turn into a reality. While I can’t share the sensitive and extremely innovative pitches that were presented, I can say that there were at least 10 amazing ideas that have real possibilities. Keep an eye out for Fastspot to release our own set of applications and interactive experiences in the coming 12 months, brought to you by the creative and brilliant minds I have the privilege of calling co-workers and friends.

Welcome to Fastspot’s official blog! We will be using this space to post on topics of interest within our agency, and we welcome everyone’s feedback and comments. Fastspot is an Interactive Design Agency and most of what we post about will be focusing on the realms of creativity, design, business and technology. We look forward to sharing our thoughts with you, and hopefully engaging in some interesting conversations!

Best Regards - Fastspot