The Puny Empire

The empire resides behind a couple of deceptively humble storefronts on East Hennepin Avenue between Fifth and Central Avenues.

 

But it’s there that Shad Petosky and his design/illustration/animation/etc./etc. company, Puny Entertainment, produce an amazingly vast trove of design hilarity: posters, animation, video games, TV shows, comics, art installations, augmented reality, screenprinting, Web sites, even New Yorker illustrations. (Puny also created the graphics for the freshly opened Haute Dish restaurant, as well as both the name and graphics for the très cool Black Sheep pizza emporium.)

 

How can so much come out of a shop of about 20 or so people that’s been open only since 2007? Talent, absolutely. But founder Shad Petosky implies another reason: No plan. Well, at least that’s what I’m inferring. Puny seems to run on a high-density fuel of pure inventiveness. (The company also runs one of the most entertaining blogs in town.)

 

“I do a lot of different things poorly,” Shad jokes. “My main skill is in being distracted.”

 

He started out with one hand in computer programming, another in comics. He freelanced for the fun-loving interactive gang at Ham in the Fridge, then decided he wanted to pursue the mobile content realm, which looked in the mid-zeros as if it would be a next big thing. Thus the name “Puny,” for “puny screens.” Smartphones put the kibosh on that, but Shad took all that he had learned (mostly on his own)—interactive, animation, marketing, graphic design—and mixed it up into a new business.

 

What has really made Puny huge locally (and beyond) is its animation and Web design for the intensely hued Nick Jr. show Yo Gabba Gabba!. Shad credits networking in the rock poster scene and designer Jess Ledoux with networking Puny into the show. It was a major gig, but like all of Puny’s work, it never occurs to Shad to be daunted by an opportunity.

 

“Clients call us and ask if we can do something—games, augmented reality, whatever,” he says. “And we say, ‘Yeah, we can do it.’ Then we go figure it out. That’s always how I’ve done things. We’ve always had that do-it-yourself attitude.” Sometimes he finds out that people on his staff actually know how to make a project happen. “I always forget all that we can do,” he says. (Here’s an example of a gaming/Web/advertising hybrid it developed for General Mills—Trixworld.)

 

These days, “I just run the business,” Shad says, “so I don’t do anything.” (I’m betting that’s not completely the case.) That business has, as always, innumerable irons in innumerable fires. Shad says that he’d like to do more game development and more TV work. (The company has developed and pitched a couple of pilots.) He also expects Puny to put together branded entertainment for corporate clients.

 

Puny remains the center of the empire, but there are a couple of other territories that add their own buzz, both connected to the Puny work space. There’s a storefront gallery called Pink Hobo; when I was visiting some weeks ago, Pink Hobo was showing an exhibition of QR code art. More recently, friend-of-Puny Kristoffer Knutson moved his designer toy shop RobotLove into an open storefront next door. (Thanks to Shad and RobotLove, I now know about the, um, unconventional art mag Hi-Fructose, which I really dig but/and don’t understand.)

 

The gallery and the shop add a certain noise and distraction to Puny’s offices. But to Shad, it all adds to the energy that makes Puny go.

 

In any case, if in the past few years, Minneapolis somehow seems more fun, it’s partly that massive Puny energy you’re feeling.

P.S.: Shad recently sent an e-mail updating Puny’s latest entertainments: “We just put the finishing touches on some work on a second feature film. Director James Gunn had us hired back-to-back, first on Super, starring Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, and Liv Tyler, and then on a we-shouldn't-talk-about-it Farrelly-Wessler comedy starring everyone in Hollywood.”

Autumn Cool Trend

I haven’t posted much lately: We’re in between top editors here at TCB. But I’m starting to taxi on the runway for another takeoff.

Because of my work level, I won’t be able to attend what promises to be a fabuloso event—the annual MIMA Summit, organized by the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association. I was there last year and had a blast. But the fact that I won’t be there doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be. It’s all happening September 27 and 28 at the Minneapolis Hilton.

Look who’s going to be there, speaking and interacting: Nationally known digirati like Xeni Jardin, Olivier Blanchard, Baratunde Thurston, and Gary Vaynerchuk, among others. Local heroes like Lisa Grimm, Aaron Landry, Cecily Sommers, Garrick Van Buren, Don Ball, and Mykl Roventine, also among others.

Join more than a thousand of your closest professional friends, including many you didn’t know you already had. I’m there in spirit, interactive sisters and brothers. As for you: Be there or be rhomboid. Click on MIMA Summit link above, yo.

**
Also noteworthy on the local marketing scene: Five, count ‘em, five local ad/marketing shops are up for the 4 A’s O’Toole Awards this year: The Twin Cities are back on the ad map, if they’ve ever been off.

This week’s The Line (referencing Richard Florida and the Atlantic) suggests why those O’Toole nominations are no fluke.

Back to Work

As a so-called knowledge worker whose fix-it skills (my wife can confirm this) are—um, did you say “skills”? Whatever, I find myself admiring more and more the ability of people who can actually make stuff, and make it well.

With Labor Day approaching, it’s time to think more seriously about work. Real work.

You don’t need me to tell you that as we’ve put too much emphasis in this country on consumption and not enough on production—production of socially useful items, that is.

Making things and working with one’s hands are making at least a small comeback in prestige, while a lot of “knowledge work” may not be so valuable or mentally compelling as its boosters like to think.

Recently, there’s been some good news on the manufacturing side. (Though there are some qualifications.) Many small and midsize Minnesota manufacturers—like Despatch Industries—are seeing the clouds part. These are trends to build upon.

There’s no need to get all gooey and nostalgic about manufacturing in general. A lot of factory work can be tedious. And manufacturing companies are (justifiably) always looking for ways to trim costs, which tends to translate into more machines and fewer workers.

But there are plenty of exceptions to the tedium, especially for higher-value products that require skilled people at the machinery. And there are organizations like Enterprise Minnesota doing great work supporting forward-thinking producers.

Making things the world wants is really an essential strategy to crafting a real economic recovery.

Enough talk. Summer’s almost over. Time to get up off that chaise lounge.

Next Books

With prominent thought leader and fellow cleanhead Seth Godin in town today (he was in Minneapolis Thursday morning, for those joining us late) and summer reading season winding, it’s a good time to talk about books. My springboard: Mr. Godin’s recent post about why he’s no longer going to publish his books the traditional way.

Me, I think it’s just fine if most books become digital-only. I’m 52, so I prefer to read things on paper rather than on screen—my brain’s gotten used to reading that way. I can better concentrate on the material.

But I’m also a business book reviewer (for Delta Air Lines’ Sky magazine), and a lot of those books—like most thrillers, romances, sci-fi books, and other fast-consumption reads—don’t need to be enshrined in paper. For environmental reasons if nothing else, most books should migrate to the iPad, Kindle, Nook, and whatever other digital readers arise.

This isn’t to say that a book that’s digital-only is a “lesser” experience than a paper one. I suspect digital books could evolve in all sorts of interesting and useful ways—incorporating links to online articles and video, as well as visually stimulating graphics. A lot of magazines could move to digital-only for the same reason. (I’m skipping the monetizing question for now.)

“Hard-copy” books won’t disappear. Allowing for my old-bald-guy mental prejudices, I’d say the paper-book experience lends itself to thinking that’s slower, more thoughtful, more contemplative. (My brain, as the writers I’ve edited will tell you, operates a lot like Lt. Columbo: I’m always coming back with questions I didn’t think to ask earlier.) At their best, hard-copy books promote a slow, deeper reweaving of one’s neurons.

Most business books can go digital simply because they’re more like voices in an ongoing, fast-moving, ever-shifting conversation. They’re more about quick thinking and quick response to other books, ideas, and voices (and blog posts). Again, not a “lesser” experience—but different. Maybe less permanent—or permanent in a different way.

I’ll leave the last word to Internet marketing guy John Gaffney’s recent post on the “compression of content.” (Straw-hat tip to friend-of-Seth Jennifer Kane for the link.) Talk amongst yourselves.

The Spunk Storefront Design Machine

“We’re not the best-dressed guys,” says Jeff Johnson of himself and his 10-person shop, Spunk Design Machine. “And we’re kind of hairy.” Jeff refers to his own look as “Russian mystic trucker.”

Myself, I think they look fabulous. Their work absolutely does. Big clients like Target, General Mills, the New York Stock Exchange, and the University of Minnesota certainly concur.

But I’d say Spunk’s not about big. About 60 percent of Spunk’s work is for “small, innovative companies that are trying to compete with larger ones,” Jeff says. And as relentless local business journo and frequent TCB contributor Dan Haugen reported recently in The Line, the shop has made something of a specialty of “mission-oriented” work, for nonprofits like the Seward Co-op and Augsburg Fortress’s innovative Sparkhouse division. Spunk’s one-stop-shop capabilities include naming, logo design, interior and exterior design, product packaging, and interactive design.

What’s more, as Dan notes, Spunk’s been booming the past couple of years, despite the recession. Perhaps, I’d guess, because of it. Not that Spunk is the cheapest shop around. But its overhead is low, and it knows how to do more with less. And its projects are about more than making things look good—they influence for positive change. For instance, Spunk helped Galactic Pizza create a compostable pizza box that’s also a $1-off coupon (in order to get customers to return them for composting).

Jeff founded Spunk in 1996 while working at Fallon. “If Pat Fallon asked me to lay down in traffic, I’d gladly go and lay down in traffic,” he says. Jeff would do likewise for another early mentor, Joe Duffy. Both guided the North Dakota expat fresh out of Moorhead State University.

(Moorhead State, by the way, has produced a remarkable number of top local designers: Besides Jeff, they include Tim Larsen, Sharon Werner, Haley Johnson, and Travis Olson.)

Jeff originally opened Spunk in the Warehouse District. Seven years ago, he realized he didn’t need to be in that traditional creative center. Thanks to digital technology, “I can do what I do in a box in the desert, or on an ice floe off Greenland.” He moved Spunk to a former florist’s shop in Nokomis. It’s now another storefront business (in a way) at a neighborhood node that includes a shoe shop, supermarket, Italian restaurant, dentist’s office, bakery, bank, post office, library branch—you get the idea. It’s also close to his home: In fact, he gave up his car five years ago.

So Jeff’s a neighborhood guy. But a neighborhood guy with a very broad vision—and not just because his shop’s clients include companies in Switzerland and Hong Kong. He also loves to talk about agricultural and food policy (he owns the family farmstead south of Fargo), economics, and clean energy. He’s got informed opinions that are provocative, progressive, and fun. No reason why those traits can’t all go together.

Much of Spunk’s mission-oriented work reflects that mindset—I call it Spunktivism. Check out a recently went-live Web site called Fair Food Fight, in conjunction with a steady Spunk client, feisty Boston food cooperative Equal Exchange. Best known for its fair-trade coffee and chocolate, Equal Exchange has recently introduced fair-trade bananas—a fruit whose “production” has a less-than-appetizing history. Spunk’s work includes Web site design, point-of-sale materials, and a number of ancillary products, including this awesomely provocative T-shirt (the allusion’s to Harry Belafonte’s Banana Boat Song).

Another Spunk project is a Web site for Principle 6, a kind of cooperative of cooperatives that will combine the purchasing power of several food coops (including Seward) across the country. (The name is derived from the list of cooperative principles as articulated by the Swiss-based International Cooperative Organization).

There's a lot more going on. Spunk opened a Brooklyn office a few years ago to accommodate a couple of valued employees that wanted to move to NYC—they’re spreading the Spunk gospel there, mostly with smaller clients. Jeff’s also gearing up for the next version of the Poster Offensive, which unites politically oriented poster artists from around the country, many of them local. (“The Twin Cities are a capital of poster design,” he says.)

With all the awesome technological possibilities for building new, innovative, socially responsible (and responsive) businesses—including his own, Jeff is enjoying himself in the right here right now. “I'm glad to be breathing at this point in time,” he says.