Jason Rysavy, an accomplished veteran of digital design and technology companies, has joined Ditch in the new position of Creative Strategist. His hire was announced by Brody Howard and Eric Brusven, partners in Ditch’s digital division.
Rysavy joins Ditch from Clario, a retail-focused marketing analytics company that provides major retailers with software tools to utilize customer, purchase and marketing data to make better-informed decisions. Prior to that, he was the owner and founder of Catalyst Studios. Launched in 1999, Minneapolis-based Catalyst was one of the Midwest's first user-focused digital design studios creating unique retail experiences, both on and offline, for companies like Target, Kohl’s and Best Buy. Rysavy ran the studio for over 13 years until it was acquired in early 2013.
Ditch’s digital division was founded in 2015 when Howard’s post production company acquired a small web design and development boutique. Brusven, the boutique’s lead designer and developer, became Partner and Senior Developer for Ditch’s newly-launched digital and experiential company. It works directly with a wide range of clients and collaborates on projects with agencies such as Latitude, Duffy, Preston Kelly and Olson.
Howard and Brusven see an opportunity for Rysavy to make valuable contributions, both to the success of Ditch’s clients and to the growth of the company itself. “We’re building new interactive stories using creative content,” says Howard, “and bringing Jason on board will allow us to provide this service to our clients with a deeper level of problem-solving and insight.”
Adds Brusven, “Jason’s enthusiasm, the way he talks about the work and his approach to working with clients make him a perfect fit. He provides the missing piece of the puzzle – the strategic thinker – that will direct and drive our projects going forward. With his experience and our combined capabilities, we’ll discover some innovative ways to explore how storytelling can feed into interactive experiences.”
In his role as Creative Strategist for Ditch, Rysavy will also work with Ditch’s clients in its editorial and post production division (www.ditchedit.com). “We’re looking for Jason to bring new ideas to the post production process and a smarter way of thinking about content, particularly in the area of digital media options and solutions that we may not have thought of,” says Howard. “Our goal here is to be able to offer both digital and editorial solutions in tandem, building a holistic storytelling and content creation machine.”
Rysavy feels this is a powerful combination: “I’m excited to leverage concepts and content in new digital avenues and channels that haven’t been considered before,” he says.
Howard envisions a future where the distinctions between the digital and post production arms of Ditch become harder to pinpoint. His main interest, he notes, is in providing clients with the means of getting things done: “I like to build teams and pull all the resources together, and that’s what we’ve been doing by partnering with the music and post audio studio Grey Ghost Music and offering visual effects and color grading through MPC,” he explains. “Together we have a great offering, and with Jason’s strategic insights and digital expertise, I think that’s going to deepen on its own."
Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Cartoonist and Writer, Dies At 95
Jules Feiffer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer whose prolific output ranged from a long-running comic strip to plays, screenplays and children's books, died Friday. He was 95 and, true to his seemingly tireless form, published his last book just four months ago.
Feiffer's wife, writer JZ Holden, said Tuesday that he died of congestive heart failure at their home in Richfield Springs, New York, and was surrounded by friends, the couple's two cats and his recent artwork.
Holden said her husband had been ill for a couple of years, "but he was sharp and strong up until the very end. And funny."
Artistically limber, Feiffer hopscotched among numerous forms of expression, chronicling the curiosity of childhood, urban angst and other societal currents. To each he brought a sharp wit and acute observations of the personal and political relations that defined his readers' lives.
As Feiffer explained to the Chicago Tribune in 2002, his work dealt with "communication and the breakdown thereof, between men and women, parents and children, a government and its citizens, and the individual not dealing so well with authority."
Feiffer won the United States' most prominent awards in journalism and filmmaking, taking home a 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons and "Munro," an animated short film he wrote, won a 1961 Academy Award. The Library of Congress held a retrospective of his work in 1996.
"My goal is to make people think, to make them feel and, along the way, to make them smile if not laugh," Feiffer told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 1998. "Humor seems to me one of the best ways of espousing ideas. It gets people to listen with their guard down."
Feiffer was born on Jan. 26, 1929, in the Bronx. From... Read More