Journal • EMRL

Reflection, growth, culture, and promise.

It’s a new year. Bear with me while I reflect a little. EMRL has had an amazing run. Produced amazing work for a ton of amazing clients. We’ve evolved and grown a ton. Sometimes though, it’s a little too easy to get distorted ideas about things; things like how good we are and how easy…
We are looking to hire a production designer who likes cats.

We want to hire someone who understands that design is storytelling, folk art, and applied philosophy all rolled up in a ball, and designers are the fuzzy kittens playing with it. We want to hire someone that will fit into our workspace – we are an agency yes, but we are also a workshop. This means…
On microwaving eggs

There is an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s show No Reservations where he eats and drinks his surly way around some Canadian province and at some point lays waste to an epicurean dreamscape prepared in a minimalist kitchen of only electric hot plates and microwaves. Floyd “hates exposition,” but there it is. Stephen likes to buy…
A moment of appreciation for the lofty expectations of dreamers

Every once in a while, you push through and see pressure turn into real results. Sometimes large, sometimes small. Always meaningful.
Pull this dumpster over, I’m getting off

It feels super weird not spending today getting ready for the NYE party we like to host each year.
Went for a walk, took some pictures

Walked around downtown. Took some pictures with a ridiculous 500mm lens.
Meditations in an emergency

Imagine what an astronaut on the moon must feel like, crossing the terminator from daylight into night. One minute in bright sunshine, the next minute in shadow, temperature dropping by hundreds of degrees.
28 days, and

So here we are, day 28. The 28th day we’ve been in exile. Sheltering-in-place. Whatever you want to call it. There’s not a lot to say this week, we’re all still working from home and doing our best to deliver great work for our clients. It’s not been easy for us to adapt to all the…
Empathy, vigilance, acceptance, and action

Hey there. Last week was a rough one. This week will probably be rougher. We’re all going a little stir crazy. All of us at EMRL are still working at full capacity, and while we had originally planned to be back into the offices tomorrow that obviously isn’t going to happen. We are taking things…
None of us are sitting still

Welcome. It’s the start of what will surely be another surreal week. Each day that passes during this virus I’m more and more grateful that, as an advertising agency, EMRL has been able to roll with all of this lockdown stuff pretty well. Everybody on our team is snuggled up safely at home and is…
Taking inspiration from our friends at home

It’s been a full week with all of us working from home, and it’s easy to feel a little bonkers from the disruption, the stress, and simply feeling stuck indoors. One lovely side effect though is it gives us more time to bond with our little friends at home. Hopefully you’ve all been finding something…
Keeping our clients up and running during COVID-19

What a weird time. We’re all still coming to grips with understanding the reach, risk and impact that the global COVID-19 pandemic will have on us, our loved ones, and our economy. While we get through this, we want to ensure our clients that they will receive uninterrupted continuity of service from our team at EMRL. Moving…
It only took seventeen years

During the holiday break I decided to finally put a sign on our building. Our doorway has traditionally been a little scuzzy, and although I kinda liked the humble anonymity of not having a sign, it sort of made our building look unoccupied, and the locals would assume our doorway was a good place to…
Forgotten, but not gone

Many years ago Stephen and Floyd let me store my drum kit up in the EMRL attic. We all played them now and then, but eventually they became forgotten. Time passed and I rarely ever thought of my drums. During the forgotten years pigeons broke in to the attic. In time the pigeons moved on,…
I’ve got a fever

I love running shoes. I have seven pairs. I don’t buy them for running. I buy them for comfort, and for style, and for how they make me feel when I wear them. I’m not a shoe whore by definition, but I am regularly distracted by thoughts of buying more. I’ve got a fever, and…
Is it summer yet?

The pressure is on, we have challenged ourselves to write a blog post every week for the shop and naturally mine came after everyone else. I’d like to ask a question, where does inspiration come from? My muse is travel and opening myself up to new experiences, talking to new people, making new friends and…
Get Stuff Done™

One of the greatest things in life is enjoying satisfying work. Something you can come home from and feel good about doing or completing. For some this might involve volunteering where there is a need, or running a business focused on a passion of theirs. And of course it doesn’t just have to be one…
A love letter

Joe’s blog post really got me thinking. It’s hard to believe I’ve been at EMRL for almost three years. Three years ago, I was a newbie to Sacramento and very unhappy at my current job. EMRL, specifically Stephen and Floyd, saved me when they decided to hire me. I never could have imagined working at…
Board games are cool

One of my talents in life is being able to absorb historical information like a sponge. The other part of this is I have a relentless need to share the information that I have learned with the world. So here you go. Buckle up buckeroo. Recently, I learned the history of board games in America, the…
Do I contradict myself?

In Song of Myself Walt Whitman wrote: Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) I assume that when he wrote this in the 1800’s he specifically had me in mind, reading it well over 100 years later. That’s the feeling I’ve gotten several times over the…
Seconds please!

You don’t need to hang around me for very long to realize that eating is one of my hobbies. I think a part of it has to be credited back to growing up in Australia and how big food plays a part in our culture. Not only is it one of the things I miss…
Thanks guys

Okay, my first blog post for EMRL. I’m going to knock this out easy. Ya, no. I am in my eleventh writing hour and my third day of writing and rewriting. Building and destroying. Every time I awoke the last few nights this blog post was on my mind. SO you know what? I finally…
The trouble with touch screens

Touchscreens are great, but right now my productivity is down by 12.75%.
SF Store opens today! Congratulations Ginger and Tom!

Their goal was always to open a store in San Francisco and almost exactly ten years after Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates opened in mid-town Sacramento we are so excited to see them expanding their into one of our favorite cities.
Star shine, moon glow you’re all that I can call my own

I ❤ my work and how it works, and every year when it starts turning to autumn and I can feel the end of the year coming, I like to troll our shop’s project management system and run lots of different work reports to see how we’ve grown and changed. I wrote about this way…
I want a ticket to anywhere

I’m at that age where all my old friends from Missouri are getting married, having babies, and buying houses. It’s a path I’m not quite ready to take myself, but I’m happy for my friends that have made that leap. I’ve lived in California for a little over 2 years now and each and every…
Hobbits and Disneyland

One fine summer, for my husband’s birthday, my best friend (who worked in Disneyland at the time) and I decided to surprise him with a trip to Disneyland. We first bumped into our friend Sean (you might know him as Sean Astin; he stars in popular films such as The Lord of The Rings, The Goonies and…
How to speak australian

It’s been almost three years since I’ve moved to Sacramento from Sydney. It’s pretty amazing how quickly time flies, and I think I’ve assimilated to the American culture pretty well. But every so often, I find myself stuck with the same issue over and over again. People just don’t understand me. For example, when I…
Almost too fragile for this world

We’ve been working on a really neat project with Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates for a while now; a snazzy custom mold for her chocolate bars. It has been really fun to fire up some CAD software and draft a real, physical object – and after a whole mess of revisions and a rather large stack of 3d printed…
Barely there

Not long ago, we designed a new coffee bag for Temple Coffee; it’s been out in the world for a few months now. If you’re a coffee aficionado there’s a chance you may have already noticed. If you haven’t noticed it, that’s okay. It’s not really designed to be noticed. It’s designed to be barely there.…

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