About
I found myself waiting to order a beer at the aptly named bar, "Black and White" in the East Village. Behind me, I can hear indistinct noises of a man attempting to hit on a woman who is clearly unamused. Several times I hear him use the word "translation." And I've been sort of listening since the DJ denied my request to hear Bloc Party and I was not completely interested in the new wave songs they were spinning. He had not used the word "translation" in the context of converting one language to another and I begin to put the pieces of this man's pick-up lines together. I finally turn around and say "I'm sorry to interrupt, but where do you work?" At this point, the woman finds her escape plan and she bails. I can't remember his exact response because I, too, had consumed multiple beers at this point, but his answer was along the lines of, "I work at an ad agency called translation." To which I said, "That's what I thought! I designed your website!"
His response caught me off guard, "The new one or the old one?" In my head, I thought, "What the fuck are you talking about, the new site isn't even live yet, how can there be yet another new site." So I get out my phone and pull up the staging site, "This one." His response was a letdown, "No, that's the old site, we're working on a new one." At this point, I was quite disappointed. Translation was the first website I had a major impact on the art direction and was able to design with the guidance of my design director, Miguel Buckenmeyer. On top of that, I had received news earlier that day that this site had been selected as Site of the Day on Awwwards. For the three years following that encounter their website was I originally designed it—I think the man was just drunk.