How much good can you do in 24 hours if you put your mind, and most importantly­– your heart, into it?

Well on Sept 16, 2011. We found out, quite a lot.

The CreateAthon had a catchy name and the premise was good. 24 hours of creative blitz. What the heck? We’ve pulled all-nighters before, so let’s do this one for good.

So we did.

And the results have really been life-changing for us.  We realized that our talent does matter to the world.  As a “creative” in the business it’s easy to get burned out. Does it really matter how perfectly kerned that brochure is to the world? Does anybody really care that you crafted that just oh-so-perfect-turn-of-phrase for that quarter of a page magazine ad? Would the world still turn if advertising wasn’t around?

And then you take this talent that God gave you and you put it out there. And you present it to very deserving non-profits.  Then you look up from the work…and you see tears. Tears of relief that finally they have the materials they need to help their mission. And that mission, in one form or another, is about helping another.

We’re good at what we do. We should be, we’ve been doing this forever and have won a gazillion of awards. But that doesn’t motivate us.

What motivates us is bringing good into the world. And the way we get to do that is through our talent.

“Good” is a well-kerned brochure, because while someone may not know why, “it just feels right” to them that feeling translates into the fact they can trust this organization. (Kerning is a whole subconscious thing we can get into later) And that crafted turn-of-phrase may have just been the tipping point to make people take that call to action.

So while we continue this journey of bringing good into the world, in what ever form that takes, we are grateful and thankful we had the opportunity to help our community. We knew people would say thank you to us for doing it, but it truly has been the other way around.

We got a gift just when we needed it most. And for that we are humbled and more appreciative than we can explain without this blog post getting all touchy feely weird.