Create Matter Blog

Want to join our team?

We've got a couple opportunities posted in our new Employment section, and wanted to share them with you here as well. 

Design Internships

We're looking for a few great designers that are interested in paid internships. That's right, we said 'paid.' Other perks of the job include afternoon snacks, monthly chair massage day, and maybe sitting next to a guy with a removable beard. Oh, and designing cool stuff of course. If you're interested in joining our design team, send your resume and samples of your work to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Both full-time and part-time positions are available. No phone calls please.

Freelance Developer

The internet is a big place and two developers just can’t make the whole thing on their own. That's why we are looking for a freelance web developer to help out when a tidal wave of work hits us. Regular work for our freelancers normally includes coding XHTML/CSS pages from scratch, small changes to current Wordpress and Expression Engine based sites and lots of table-based email templates. If you’re interested, drop us a line with some samples of your work at, you guessed it, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Qualifications & Experience:

• Codes semantic, standards compliant HTML/XHTML/CSS.
• Comfortable in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
• Familiar with Content Management systems such as Wordpress and Expression Engine.
• HTML Email best practices

For all the most up-to-date employment news from Atomicdust, make sure you subscribe to our employment page. 

Improving St. Louis… Twenty Slides at a Time

Last week, we attended the latest Pecha Kucha St. Louis gathering at the Schlafly Tap Room.

I bet you’re wondering what Pecha Kucha is, right? And, more importantly, how the heck do you pronounce it?

Basically, Pecha Kucha is a night for groups and individuals to make a short presentation on their ideas to improve St. Louis. They have 20 slides, with 20 seconds to spend on each slide. 

Last week’s topics ranged from the benefits of organic farming to a case being made for more bike trails in St. Louis, as well as a brief history of photobooths, two brothers who make St. Louis-themed apparel and an impassioned initiative to make St. Louis even greater. 

We had a great time and want to thank the sponsors of this event and the groups and individuals who educated, inspired and amused us. As for that pronunciation? We’re still working on it...

If you’re interested in learning more about Pecha Kucha St. Louis or seeing a schedule of future events, check out their website. And if you're wondering where that lovely picture came from, check out Jay Fram's photos from the event at Pecha Kucha's Facebook page. 

The Great Freelance Search

Things can get really busy around here... especially with all those Chick-Fil-A runs we've been making. Seriously though, we're looking for freelance designers and copywriters interested in helping us out with our expanding workload.

Copywriter Requirements:

• Extensive copywriting and editing experience
• Demonstrated ability to develop concepts and ideas, then manage start-to-finish executions of a wide-variety of traditional and digital materials
• Demonstrated knowledge of B2B and B2C marketing
• Strong communication skills- written, verbal, listening
• Self-motivated and able to manage multiple projects and priorities within specified deadlines
• Must be able to work on-site in our office for easy collaboration

Designer Requirements:

• Proficient design principles displayed in both print and web formats
• Demonstrated ability to develop designs based on concepts and ideas. We like thinkers.
• Understanding Adobe Creative Suite
• Must be able to work on-site in our office for easy collaboration 

If you're interested in this opportunity, send your resume and work samples to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). 

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

And that’s exactly what the St. Louis Cardinals did (short of actually buying us peanuts and Cracker Jacks of course...).

On September 16th, the Cardinals hosted their first Social Media Night. Tickets were offered at discounted rates ($15!), and attendees, including a couple of Atomicdust employees, were treated to a special presentation before the game. 

We’re no stranger to social media events, but this was a bit different. Instead of focusing on social media use in marketing, advertising and public relations, this presentation focused more on how it is used in the sports' world. We heard from MLB.com’s Matthew Leach and St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Derrick Goold on the balance between breaking news on social media and providing quality coverage; from the St. Louis Blues’ Beth Schwartz on how the other hometown team is using social media to promote events and reach out to fans; and we even got some candid scoop from Cardinals' GM John Mozeliak and President Bill DeWitt. They also raffled off prizes like tickets to upcoming games and a Busch Stadium chairback signed by some of the Cardinals' finest. 

While we may not have one any of those special prizes, we did walk away with some great new insight on social media, one of those delicious bacon-wrapped hot dogs and, most importantly, a Cardinals' win.
 

Music to Our Ears

Over the last few months, we’ve had Atomicdusters skip out early on Fridays to go off and enjoy music festivals in far off cities like Chicago and Tennessee, so imagine our relief when we found out the next big music festival would be right here in our own hometown. 

On August 28th and 29th, several Atomicdust employees spent the weekend in Forest Park at the inaugural LouFest Music Festival. The festival featured eighteen bands on two stages and included both local and national acts. A few Atomicdust favorites were Broken Social Scene, Fruit Bats, She and Him, and Jeff Tweedy (who is pictured here). 

Besides music, Loufest had food, ice cold beverages, and local vendors touting everything from CDs and T-shirts to wireless data plans. And while the official gear may have been blue and orange, this festival was as green as it gets- with water and recycling stations, valet parking for bikes, and an EcoZone featuring local organizations committed to conservation, recycling, and clean energy.  

And one of our own, Jason Stoff- designer by day, concert photographer by night- had the pleasure of documenting the event. You can see his images on Flickr and read more about the festival over at the Riverfront Times. 

Thanks Loufest. You gave some of our employees a great weekend of live music, and allowed them to hold on to one of their coveted vacation days. 

Now Hiring: NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPER

Now Hiring: New Business Developer

Atomicdust is hiring a New Business Developer to actively seek new and exciting accounts. If you have excellent business and presentation skills and a great personality, this is the job for you. Read more to find out more about the requirements and responsibilities. 

Now Hiring: PROJECT MANAGER

Now Hiring: Project Manager

Atomicdust is hiring a Project Manager to help plan and execute design and marketing projects. If you can successfully juggle numerous projects within a planned timeframe and budget, we'd like to hear from you. Read on to find out more about the requirements and responsibilities. 

This One’s for the Birds

In the process of cleaning out our back room, we came across some plastic capsules we used for a client a while back. We posted a message on Craigslist looking for someone to take them off our hands (free of charge, of course) and, to our surprise, were immediately flooded with responses. We had about 50 inquiries regarding the capsules, and this afternoon, Sharon came by to pick them up... and she brought a friend!

Sharon rescues birds, like this 5-year-old cockatiel named Lily, and thinks that the little plastic capsules will make great toys. Good thing plastic lasts forever, because these birds can live to be as old as 80!

Just goes to show, you never know what treasures you'll find laying around a dark, abandoned room (not that we are encouraging anyone to go digging...). 

For more pictures of Sharon and Lily's visit to our office, check out our Facebook page. 

And the Winner is…Atomicdust!

So Danielle, our resident social media guru, is up in NYC. Lucky for us, she will be back next week. For those of you who don’t know, Danielle had been handpicked by MTV to compete in their quest to find their first ever TJ (Twitter Jockey). After graciously accepting their invitation, she competed for two weeks in a series of Twitter-based challenges for a chance at a one-year, $100K contract to join them in New York. Like most of the other candidates, she played to win. But unlike many of the others, she did it while holding down her full-time gig, changing the world one member-based service provider at a time. Long story short, the field of contestants was trimmed to five and Danielle’s quest to become MTV’s first TJ very quietly came to an end.

Meanwhile, freelance copywriter and friend of Atomicdust, Amanda Zahnweh was in the throes of a little competition herself. She cracked the short list of finalists in another Twitter-based challenge, this one thrown down by Saatchi + Saatchi LA, billed as "The World's Shortest-Form Writing Contest." Amanda’s entry was one of a handful that were selected by the mega-agency’s Creative Director to be voted on by the public for a chance at a position worth $70K. Finishing third unofficially, she will not be running off to Los Angeles and that’s quite alright with us...officially.

Bittersweet as it may be, the winner in all of this is Atomicdust. We get to hang on to them both (for slightly less than $170K/yr). It added up to a pretty cool experience, not just for the girls, but for all of us. It sort of validated this notion that we’ve got great people capable of doing great things. That, and it gave us something to check out online other than stock photography and Google Analytics.