People Doing Cool Things

I'm starting a list of people who are, in my opinion, doing exceptional work for hire. I will try to be specific about the kind of work.

Copywriting

The Lucky Oliver photo website (sadly, closing) was written with a wonderfully personal and quirky voice. I believe this was the work of Amy Hooker, who runs her own freelance outfit out of Wilmington, North Carolina. I don't know her personally, but I love how she writes.

What can I say about Alen Yen? This punk taught me everything I know about execution and discipline. He was a star at University of Michigan's Industrial Design program, got his M.Ed from RISD, where me and Mark Kern found him. We proceeded to hire him and corrupt him into the game industry. Afterwards he started freelancing and was quickly tapped to run operations at Interactive Factory, which he later took ownership of and steered through the rocky early 2000s until he sold the company to RDW Group. He draws, plays the guitar and piano, speaks with surety and uncommon clarity, and is one of my best friends. I would trust him with my life. If you're looking for someone to do the IA for your website, put some sense into your business model, or do concept design, I'd check him out.

I met Stacey Kamen online several years ago, and we got to talking shop. She's a graphic designer (print and interactive) that does very clean design...she has "the eye" for proportion and color. She's also a writer, so she can edit copy when she sees something that just ain't right. It'll cost ya extra, though :-) She freelances, and also frequents Second Life doing creative things.

I used to work with Brad Fitzpatrick (the illustrator, not the internet guy), and when he went freelance I was happy to see him go...wait, that came out wrong :-) I was happy that he was going to pursue his love of cartoon illustration. He's super busy, but you can check out his blog and see if you can't entice him with a big bag of money.

I stumbled upon Australian Sarah Dillon by following a comment back from one of my posts, and I really liked the open voice with which she writes on her blog. I have no idea what kind of translation she does, but I'm leaving a note to myself here.
I know Matt Alt through my buddy Alen. Together they founded the mighty force that is ToyboxDX, one of the first and most personality-laden Japanese Robot Toy sites on the Internet. Matt and his wife Hiroko run a translation company out of Tokyo (I think), and Matt himself loves to write about culture on his blog. He's interested in working on original story concepts too, I believe. His writing always gives me a lift.