Hughes Leahy Karlovic

I remember watching the movie Strange Days when I was younger and being struck by how cool it seemed. If you’re not familiar with the movie, Ralph Fiennes (who I remember as Jeff Bridges) is a former cop who deals in bootlegged discs with recorded memories. Users put on a helmet, a lot like the VR machines from those days, and experience a whole new reality. It was basically a movie about how virtual reality could screw up your existing reality and blur the lines between the two, generally making you crazy and ruining your life.

The movie seems loosely prophetic now, when companies like Google are dabbling in augmented and mediated reality. The concepts are similar to Strange Days but not nearly as dark and not necessitating nearly as cool a http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4f7dc16f6bb3f7224a000085/forte-vfx-1-virtual-reality-helmet.jpg">helmet to experience them.

One such example is an app I downloaded recently called “Zombies, Run!” It is an exceptionally cool app that mixes running and story telling in an interactive way. Instead of telling zombies to run as t...

I started at Hughes three and a half years ago. Seems like a really long time now. A little more than two years ago, I was tasked with designing a new website for the agency. At that time, we were growing as a company and putting more focus on digital, so the design needed to reflect those initiatives. It needed to be really fun and entertaining, but also speak to some of our more reserved clients and audiences. It had to pay tribute to our heritage and lay the groundwork for the future of the company at the same time. And on top of all that, It had to be on time, and on budget.

For a 23 year old kid fresh out of design school that seemed like a daunting task. I think my exact words to the partners at the time were “No pressure or anything...” With the help of some very talented people that have since moved on, we accomplished something that I was truly proud of. We had a awesome concept come to life in the form of an introduction video that lived on home page, an impressiv...