Name: Happy Cog
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Articles By:

Greg Storey

We know where passion comes into play and where to put it in check.

Posted on 7/24/14

One day a phone call came in from a large, amazing hospitality brand. They were preparing for their annual shareholder meeting and needed some environmental and wayfinding work done in a hurry. It was 2004 and I was a designer at a studio in Southern California. The studio was small, and the team was small, but we had a big passion for great work and cool brands. There wasn’t much that we couldn’t handle.

Our passion for this particular project was pretty intense. We were collectively excited; not only by the type of work, but for the brand as well. Nights and weekends be damned, this project was going to kick ass. And it did — but not without its bumps in the road and small anxiety attacks. Communication started to breakdown and frustration started to take over. The client’s trust in our ability to see the project through started to evaporate.
And They All Look Just the Same

Posted on 4/24/14

The article’s title is borrowed from Malvina Reynolds’ song, “Little Boxes.” No doubt, many of you have heard the lyrics, though sung by a different artist than the original songwriter. Malvina wrote the song to protest the mass conformity of home development taking place in a suburb of San Francisco in the early 1960s. If you have ever driven through the area, you can still see all the ticky-tacky, little boxes dotting the hillsides and throughout the area. Though Daly City provided the inspiration for the song, Suburbs of Sameness are prevalent throughout the country.
Cognition Roundtable

Posted on 3/20/14

We’re back with another Cognition Roundtable—a casual conversation about process and the web industry recorded by Happy Cog folks. This time, CMO Greg Storey leads a discussion with designer Sophie Shepherd, developer Brandon Rosage, and VP of Technology Ryan Irelan about how and why we’ve started experimenting with a more development-focused project process. In under a half hour, they cover topics like:
Audio: Cognition Roundtable

Posted on 1/29/14

Pop on your headphones (or why not be that coworker who “accidentally” plays over your office’s sound system). Welcome to the first installation of Cognition Roundtable, where we have a casual conversation with Happy Cog folks.

In this 24-minute session, our VPs of Project Management, Design, and Technology sit down to discuss changes we made to our process in 2013 and how we’re going to apply what we learned to make improvements in the new year. During our conversation, we discuss how adding HTML wireframes to our arsenal has helped us illustrate responsive behavior and how more modular design systems, accompanied by the right documentation, are better future-proofing our work. Changes like these have fostered a stronger partnership between our own designers and developers, and they’ve enabled us to collaborate more effectively with our clients.
Make, Do.

Posted on 1/9/14

This is for everyone who wants to achieve greatness, tries too hard, and ends up driving their efforts right into the ground.

In my life, I’ve had a few notable personal achievements which I believe merited a celebration—champagne, a ticker tape parade, wild applause—but went relatively (okay, completely) unnoticed. Two come to mind:
It's About Damn Time

Posted on 8/15/13

The last two months have been a whirlwind of activity and positive evolution for Happy Cog.We have been on a small, carefully-planned hiring spree for almost all of our departments. We put a lot of mileage on our Authentic Jobs account, put our personal networks to good use, and ended up hiring eight new people. With the latest acceptance letter received weeks ago, Happy Cog has hit the 30-person mark, and we’re still not done; we’ve got a few designers to hire for the Austin office.
Walkie Talkie

Posted on 3/14/13

“Pick up the phone!” That is my phrase of choice when I hear about a co-workers’ failed attempts to communicate through every means except calling those they are trying to reach.
A Mind Forever Designing

Posted on 6/14/12

The conference room. It’s a silly name, really, because these rooms never host a conference. It is a room for meetings, a place to duck into for a private conversation or an ad hoc boxing bout between the CFO and the top sales guy.
I Went to Site Week and All I Got Was a Better Future.

Posted on 2/16/12

I grew up in the small farming town of Palmer, Alaska. Aside from Alaska being Alaska, not much happened that made the evening news. Not even our weather was exciting enough to ever be called out as “the coldest spot.” That honor was always reserved for villages hundreds of miles up north. We finally landed on the map one winter when a group of developers, contractors, plumbers, electricians, painters, interior decorators, and furniture store owners attempted to break a world record by building an entire house in 24 hours, just across the street from our high school.
Turn On the Da Kine, Yeah?

Posted on 9/15/11

In the last six years I’ve done a fair amount of business travel. On occasion, there have been a few memorable trips due to the flight (Nashville, I don’t know how you deal with that kind of turbulence), the destination, the clients (like good old “Poet’s Eye”), or just the circumstances of our meeting. The last two years have been especially busy and I’ve built up a good catalog of stories from experiences on the road from Lansing to Birmingham, Bend to Boston, and beyond.
Waterloo.

Posted on 5/19/11

A month ago, after drinking a few Sundowns in celebration of turning forty years of age, I bought myself a pair of Old Gringos. They are a worn-in light brown and are adorned with a fierce phoenix stitched in the front of each boot. For those who know me, they’re thinking that this purchase was completely influenced by a tequila fueled mid-life crisis, but they would be mostly wrong. For you see, I acquired this tall footwear after being advised that you can’t do business in Texas without a pair of cowboy boots.
Contempt and Caring

Posted on 2/24/11

“The last thing you need to do is see Jim Avery. He’s two doors down.”

That was the department chair’s way of saying that our meet-and-greet was finished and that I needed to go. She was polite about it, but my stomach was still churning from nerves and stress. Thirty minutes prior to this meeting, I had decided to abandon my long-ago-decided path of pursuing an art degree in favor of a degree in advertising because 1) Advertising was the only department that offered a few graphic design courses and 2) the Art department had just royally pissed me off.
Internal Memo: #415-09W

Posted on 10/21/10

re: Not Red Dawn but Almost

All: It’s 4:00 AM and I am both wide awake and completely exhausted at the same time.

First, I want to say that last week’s Halo game was inspiring, informative, and productive.

Greg Storey
@brilliantcrank
CMO / Partner

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