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EMRL
1020 Tenth Street
Sacramento, California 95814
(415) 689-4820

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  • 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…

  • 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…

  • The trouble with touch screens

    Touchscreens are great, but right now my productivity is down by 12.75%.

  • 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…

  • 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.…

  • Waking up in a cold sweat with an idea, actually writing it down

    It’s always struck me how many Americans (at least those living west of the Rockies) will say that they are going “back east” when they are travelling to just about anywhere east of Chicago. Sometimes they are actually returning to the east – so the phrase makes literal sense. Many times they are not, so…

  • In which I was suddenly reminded we operate a radio station

    We have been running an internet radio station called Culture Failure for a number of years. It mostly just kinda runs and doesn’t need much human intervention except when its time to update the playlist. ]It’s kind of a weird playlist… everything from John Cage to Gogol Bordello. I haven’t listened to it in a while,…

  • People keep dying

    I read this morning that another person was found dead on the street in front of city hall. The second time in a week. That’s pretty horrific. Both of the dead men were assumed to be homeless. On the upside it seems the city is opening one of their buildings across from city hall to be used…

  • Well that was fun

    We made it back from our Redwoods trip. It was super fun. We went on some hikes, sat around campfires, visited a cheese factory, and didn’t talk much about work. I made everyone Corpse Revivers too. It was pretty fun being able to share one of my favorite areas of California with the people I work with.…

  • We are going to the redwoods

    We are doing something we’ve never tried before. Everyone at EMRL is grabbing their significant others and heading up to the redwoods for a few days as a group to hang out, go hiking, look at giant trees, eat some food, drink some booze, drive thru some trees, check out some big foot-inspired chain saw carvings,…

  • I made an analog mess

    Today I got to make a mess at work. Even more messy than my usual mess. A big happy sketchy drawing mess with paint and water colors and a lotta lotta pieces of paper. The only problem is my analog mess always ends up becoming a digital mess that takes me forever to finish. After…

  • Oops

    Sometimes I like to noodle around on instruments while I’m thinking. It used to be a Takamine 12 string acoustic guitar with only 6 strings on it, but last month I let myself be decadent and bought an old Rickenbacker 4001. In my book, those are the best bass guitars ever made, built so well, so…

  • First Assistant Camera

    Ken was my First Assistant Cameraman for a little over 10 years. He was 79 when I met him, and he was still freelancing on shoots whenever he could. Still lugging camera gear around. Still chasing after girls on set. Still being generally awesome.

  • Welcome to 2009

    So I’m back in the shop, enjoying the view from my drafting table. I’ve been working on and off throughout the holiday season, but actually managed to take some time to do other stuff too – I saw a few friends I haven’t seen in a while, went on some fun road trips, and threw…

  • Let’s Drown 2008 In Booze

    You may or may not already know about Sacramento’s big ball drop thingie happening tonight. Although they’re dropping a giant light-up ball, I thought it would be cooler if we dropped a cow (this is Sacramento after all) but I don’t think that would have made it past the committee. The event is happening in…

  • Merry Xmass

    Yesterday I heard this nutcake guy outside our shop yelling at the world. He was walking out in traffic, and clearly felt like he had something important to say. Most of it sounded like blah blahblah blahblah blah until I heard him say this: Every day spent above ground is a good day! A totally…

  • Faintly Macabre

    I was thinking of how cool The Phantom Tollbooth is. I think it’s one of my favorite books ever, certainly was my favorite when I was 12 or whatever. If a book has a character in it named Faintly Macabre, the not-so-wicked Which how can it not be cool? I remember Aunt Faintly getting all…

  • Film Came Back

    We got our film back from our last shoot. Looks pretty good considering the inclement weather, kind of gritty. We had it transferred to 1080p, exciting as this will be our first spot finished in HD. About time, considering old tv dies in February. Here’s a couple stills from the raw footage.

  • Uphill, Both Ways

    Last Saturday we shot our television spot for Californians for Patient Care. It was freezing and foggy. It started raining frogs and we were attacked by zombies. Despite these issues, I think we got some good footage and it should cut together into a neat PSA. Oh here’s a few still images as well. We…