Joshua Hirsch, Big Spaceship and a Few Hours of Inspiration.

Wednesday night at the Denver Art Museum was definitely the place to be for anyone remotely interested in the creative process and digital media. Joshua Hirsch, Big Spaceship’s Minister Of Technology (and a really chilled and cool dude by the way), took us all on an exploration of his agency’s processes, philosophy and culture. And yes, we loved it.

Josh spent most of the time exposing us to an agency culture that had most of us drooling. At Big Spaceship, creative ideas and initiatives are encouraged. Even if it is unrelated to the day-to-day business, you can tee it up and see if you can make it fly. One such project, called Hope Vs. Despair, is a mechanical device that tracks moods (emoticons) on Twitter and gives you a rough idea of whether people are feeling happy or sad. It cost a few bucks to put together, and it is an interesting experiment in the fusion of old and new technologies.

And that “fusion of technologies” was also a common theme throughout the evening. In fact, if there was one idea that most people took away from the evening, we would guess that it would be this melding of old and new. From stop-motion animation to ink in water and smoke machines, Big Spaceship does a surprising amount of work using techniques that were prominent decades ago. Case in point, their end title sequence uses every trick from the old special-effects book – the guys even built their own dolly to make the camera transitions smooth(ish).

Other great personal projects on display included the pre-loader website (you must check that out) and an intro for a made-up film called Stryson. They really know how to have fun and be creative at this place.

From work on major websites for movies, to Nike, Adobe, Corona, Target and some groundbreaking work for HBO Voyeur (a project so newsworthy it generated way more PR than they could have dreamed of), Big Spaceship’s portfolio is crammed with examples of the way things should be done. Check them out, there’s a lot to see.

Oh, and at the very end of the talk someone asked Josh what traditional ad agencies should be doing to keep up with new media and create good digital work. His answer…hire a great digital agency that does it day in, day out.