One evening, while sitting around visiting with friends, a comment was made which became the inspiration for fly-post.com - a Website dedicated to the art and utility of the promotional flyer. The comment was, “I miss the good ole days when you could walk outside, look at the telephone pole, and know what was going on.” The resulting discussion honed in on one important element missing from the plethora of event based Websites which have become so ubiquitous in the recent years - they aren’t any fun to look at!

Of course, I am biased. I went to art school at the Cleveland Institute of Art in the early 90s, pre-Internet, and where every occasion from house parties, to yard sales to impromptu gorilla art exhibits warranted a flyer bordering on fine art. Around that same time, bands like Nine Inch Nails were emerging and working with talented artists like Derek Hess to turn the promotional flyer from utility to collector’s piece.

We conceived of fly-post as something in between the local city paper, the bulletin board found inside an art school or other visually inclined location, the neighborhood telephone pole and an invitation service like Evite. We wanted to provide tools to help the flyer makers promote their event or service, provide ways for the community to easily find and peruse these visual artvertisements, and celebrate the art of the flyer by allowing users to rate and comment. Lofty goals indeed, but after many months of brainstorming, designing, programming and testing, fly-post.com (beta) has launched!

We have been letting the beta site gain traction organically while we evaluate user interaction, gather feedback, make improvements, and slowly leak the word out via Twitter and Craigs List. While we want to blast it out to every blog and tech magazine out there, we are also cognizant of the power of growing slowly and being flexible enough to make improvements based on our community and user requests. So far, so good.

Fly-post has already had over 6,500 visits, with users spending an average of 3:09 on the site since it launched in beta last October. Word of mouth has served to help grow the user base, with many local businesses and organizations located in our home town of Baltimore being some of the most active early adopters. Regular posts from The Walters Art Museum, Atomic Books, and crowd favorites Dr. Sketchy (figure drawing class meets burlesque) and local band We Read Minds. As of this blog posting, fly-post flyers cover over 140 cities nationwide.

The site offers users many tools to help them share and promote their event, or an event they are interested in. Easy links allow users to post flyers to Facebook, insert into their MySpace pages, or email to a friend. Soon we will be including Craigs List friendly code snippets, and additional sharing tools for Twitter, Digg, etc. Comments and ratings will soon notify the flyer poster via email, and we hope to offer analytics for flyer creators to track their traffic. We also have plans to significantly enhance the RSVP system. We are in discussions with “green” printers, so we can enable flyer makers to place print orders at the same time as they are uploading to fly-post, if they are so inclined. And yes, an iPhone app is in the works - for those flyer fans who spot good ones out in the wild.

While we quietly work away in the background, focusing on improvements and enhancements, we welcome the growing community that will turn fly-post into the Web’s very own local telephone pole. So, looking for something going on in your neighborhood or city this weekend? Check fly-post.com, now you know.

1. We contributed a chapter to Flash 5 Studio (published by Friends of Ed) on how to make your own music mixer using Flash.

2. Our first big client / job was for McCormick (the spice company) to create a motion graphics Flash piece hyping their new spice labels.

3. Our Art & Technology Director, Curt Kotula, once spent the night in a tent on the office floor, after an evening of one too many networking events.

4. After presenting a session at Flash Forward in NYC, 2001 - we were courted by Wieden and Kennedy to come out and collaborate with their Nike team.

5. The first award we won was a Flash Film Festival award for our online experience, Memoire, at the Amsterdam Flash Film Festival.

6. The name “Fastspot“, originated in 1998 from an idea that eventually television and the internet would be interchangeable, and motion graphics advertising online would be pushed as heavily as television commercials (spots), once the bandwidth caught up.

7. Our Senior Programmer, Tim Buckingham, eats Burger King almost every day for lunch. It was a pre-requisite for him taking the job that there was a Burger King near by the office.

8. After something triggered a false alarm at the office, police nearly blew the head off Elvis, thinking he was an intruder in the dark hallway.

9. We were once asked to design T-Shirts for Maverick Records and Madonna’s upcoming tour. For inspiration we had one full work day where Madonna music was piped throughout the office.

10. There are usually 3 dogs in the office, sometimes as many as 5 at one time. Office regulars are Truck, a Lab Shepard mix, Rufus, a Lab Pitbull mix, Leyla, a Boxer, and Stella, an English Bulldog.

11. There is a paintball gun and a target in the basement. The practice helped ensure our victory over Orange Element.

12. We like to take time out to kill each other in network Quake games, and Curt always wins - with the Rail Gun.

13. On a visit out to Tacoma to meet with our client, University of Puget Sound, we stayed at the wonderful Hotel Murano. Each floor features a glass artist and a collection of themed works, we ended up on the boob floor.

14. Our office was built in 1889 and you can see Baltimore’s Inner Harbor from the 3rd floor - confirming that Butcher’s Hill is really on a hill.

15. We talk allot about the beauty of restrictions - Being a painter, I like the limited palette metaphor.

16. There are several tattoos in the mix.

17. We are all borderline mysophobics.

18. Our “spot” for World Aids Day won first place in a competition run by MTVuk, and was aired all over Europe on TV and the Internet.

19. Fastspot “Fun Events” have included a Paintball battle with Orange Element, a trip to Dave and Busters, a rematch with Orange Element at Patterson Park’s Duckpin Bowling (we won), a trip to an Orioles game at Camden Yards, a ski / snowboard trip to Liberty, a poker tournament (Zach and his wife took 1st and 2nd place and all the money) and a BBQ / flower planting / happy hour. Of course, the happy hours are reoccurring fun events.

Do you know an interesting tidbit about Fastspot that you want to share? Just remember, some of our moms read this blog, so use caution!

Baltimore, Md (March 4, 2009)—Fastspot, a national interactive agency headquartered in Baltimore, has been selected by Dickinson College and the University of Puget Sound to redesign each institution’s Web sites, according to Tracey Halvorsen, creative director and co-founder of the firm.

“The critical role that Web sites have in the overall communications activities of colleges and universities has changed dramatically since most of them created their initial sites,” commented Halvorsen. “For example, potential applicants to colleges and universities now typically first experience a school through its Web site. Therefore, it’s really important that the site engages, excites and informs these applicants as well as establishes a foundation of trust.”

Fastspot is creating each site in collaboration with other marketing and communications efforts currently underway by each institution. “This team approach will ensure that their brand attributes are integrated through visual and message consistency,” emphasized Halvorsen.
Dickinson College, a four-year liberal arts institution founded in 1783 in Carlisle, Pa , has an enrollment of approximately 2,400 students. “We’ve been quite pleased in our work with Fastspot,” said Paul Dempsey, director of electronic communication at Dickinson. “They’ve provided a number of strong design options and have been very flexible with making things fit our unique needs. It’s been a very effective collaboration.”

“We’ve been pleased in our work with Fastspot,” said Paul Dempsey, director of electronic communication at Dickinson. “They’ve provided a number of strong design options and have been flexible with making things fit our unique needs. It’s been an effective collaboration.”
The University of Puget Sound, with an enrollment of about 2,600 students, was founded in 1888 in Tacoma, Wa.
Fastspot, with a recognized expertise in interactive communications for higher education institutions, recently completed a comprehensive interactive project for Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pa.

About Fastspot
Fastspot is a premiere interactive agency, widely recognized for its strategic award-winning work, collaborative approach with its clients and its ability to deliver successful, long-lasting solutions. Headquartered in Baltimore, the firm works with clients across the country who seek to develop highly creative and complex marketing, advertising or business solutions. The firm has a particular expertise working with associations, colleges and universities, museums and cultural organizations, architectural and technology firms. For more information, visit http://www.fastspot.com.