Celebrating Enthusiasm, Our Worst Days & 25 Years of Atomicdust
It was a Wednesday. Which, admittedly, isn’t the best day to throw an office party. Everyone in the corporate party game knows that Thursday is the day. And definitely not Friday! Ha. Friday? You’re crazy. Thursday is the day.
But May is an insanely busy month. People always say that, but I never really thought so until this May, when my oldest son graduated high school, had lacrosse playoffs and a couple proms, and my youngest finished 5th grade, leaving elementary school behind. With it came parades, musicals, clap outs and all kinds of other once-in-a-lifetime things you can’t miss.
So, yes, we chose a Wednesday evening to host a party celebrating Atomicdust’s 25th anniversary.
Erika was not happy with this decision.
But on a lovely, ordinary, Wednesday night in Midtown St. Louis, our usually empty street filled with cars—a dream come true for the parking enforcement officer who stalks us daily.
Atomicdust had very humble beginnings. First, it was just me, saving ragtag art files and html code to a folder on my desktop named “Atomicdust”—inspired by the philosophy/religion class I had before my computer-aided graphic design class in community college.
I don’t want to bore you with my romanced version of our company history, and I’m terrible at tooting my own horn. So I’ll just say that what started as a very passionate hobby in our early 20s somehow became a creative agency—one that’s been lucky enough to work with wonderful clients on interesting projects, and attract (and repel) some of the most talented creative people in the industry.
It’s now been two and a half decades of design, stress, laughter, frustration, problem solving, eurekas!, late nights, jokes, rejection, high fives, winning and losing—together.
And I am thankful for all of it. Our worst day is someone’s dream day.
So yes. We had a big party and invited all our clients, friends, family, competitors and team, past and present. We got catering with a million tacos, and the Clementine’s Creamery ice cream truck, and a photo booth with grey wigs and thick-rimmed glasses so people could pose as me and my business partner, Jesse.
Our team’s racked up a lot of great stories in 25 years. Those stories deserved to be celebrated too, so we printed out little descriptions and mounted them like art plaques you see in museums, and hung them around the office. Like a self-guided tour through time.
“The Tooth” | 2013 | Human bio matter — It’s not every day you find a real human tooth at your office. But an Amazon package was delivered and we got more than we’d ordered—a real, human tooth (root and all) was stuck to the packing tape on the box. Where did it come from? Whose tooth was it, and was it removed with their permission or without? Has the original owner gotten a fake tooth to replace it? We’ll never know. But Jesse still has the tooth, and if you ask nicely enough, sometimes he’ll bring it out and show you.
“Hot Dog Meets Death Fan” | 2020 | Mixed media: industrial fan, all-beef hot dogs — The pandemic made everyone do strange things. And Mike and Jesse had been joking about it for years. So one day, at the height of lockdown, while hanging out at the office with their sons, they decided to go for it: they turned on the large industrial fan everyone calls “The Death Fan” and slid raw, all-beef hot dogs inside. Minced weiner guts flew everywhere. The windows were glistening with glizzies. Mike videoed the whole thing and sent it to Blaise to post on Atomicdust’s social channels. She refused—spewing franks during company time wasn’t the look. But it made one hell of a story.
“Face Off Against Hunger” | 2012 | Mixed media: commercial photocopier, printer paper, Jesse’s face — Jesse and Katie were working late at the office, racing against a deadline and getting a little slap happy in the process. Jesse had an idea: scan his face, rolling it from one side to the other as the scanner moved across. It caught on, and eventually everyone on the team had done it. We posted it on Facebook (remember when Facebook was cool?) and invited people to join: for every face scanned, Atomicdust would donate $5 to St. Louis Food Outreach. It was a hit. Tons of people came to join in—including then-Mayor Francis Slay and a news crew from Channel 11. The best ideas start as jokes. The best fundraisers start when Jesse smushes his face on things.
“In life, all I want to feel is jacked up.” | 2017 | Joie de vivre — Erika drops inspirational platitudes like this without even trying. It’s so common, most of the time we don’t even remember their origins. This one is a favorite; almost a team mantra. We remind each other of it weekly.
A client surprised us with cases of beer from a local brewery, printed with a custom label for our anniversary. Seriously, our clients are amazing.
We gave away new Atomicdust merch, printed with our first-ever tagline: Makers of Fine Products for Print and the Internet.
We had an ice sculpture that was also a shot luge. Lots of people did put their mouth on it. Yes it was disgusting. But we had to. A lot of businesses never even dream that such a thing is possible.
And yes, anything is possible. After 25 years in business, I think the secret to it all is enthusiasm. Having raw, unabashed interest in what you do. Being able to generate energy when others might not, and pouring that into life and projects.
Eminem called it “rage and youthful exuberance.” That might describe every successful project we’ve been a part of. It is not just being creative. It’s not waiting for anyone else to have an idea. To take risks. To make something great.
Thank you for your support over the years. Thanks to clients, friends, family, frenemies, partners and whoever gave us all this luck.
Beyond our name, the thing I took from that college philosophy class was this: everything in the universe is made up of atomic dust. With it, you can build whatever you want.
