Paul Castro - A Creative Director working in the Kansas City area.

@darthvader "Thinking about making Taco Bell's Black Jack taco the official fast food of the Empire."

Featured Content

May18th

Illustrated Motivation

Posted in: Design, Illustration, Inspiration, Leadership, Management, Motivation

Until a friend forwarded me this video, I had never heard of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA). From what I can tell, they are the British version of TED. The RSA encourages “public discourse and critical debate by providing platforms for leading experts to share new ideas on contemporary issues.” One of those experts is Dan Pink who is the author of four books about the changing world of work. His speech, which was taken from his book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, is amazing in and of itself and will change the way you think about work. But the RSA did not stop there. They set his speech to someone drawing on a whiteboard, a la the UPS guy, which takes it from amazing to mind-blowing. And for those of you who are visually inclined like me, this makes it really easy to comprehend. Read More
February6th

Dodge for a Cause 5

Posted in: Advertising, Commericlals, Design, Photography

This year I had the pleasure of helping develop the Dodge for a Cause ad campaign for Perceptive Software‘s annual charity dodgeball tournament benefitting the Kansas City chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). And by helping I mean letting them use my ugly mug to throw dodgeballs at. It was a lot of fun and I think it turned out really well. Also, my daughters Mia and Sophie are in the commercial as well (they are the ones at the breakfast table).

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January10th

Mad Men

Posted in: Advertising, Television

After hearing about AMC’s Mad Men for a couple of years now I decided to see what all of the hullabaloo was about and I have to say that the critics are right–it’s one of the best shows that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been depressed ever since Deadwoodwent off of the air.

In case you haven’t heard of Mad Men, AMC says the series revolves around the conflicted world of Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the biggest ad man (and ladies man) in the business, and his colleagues at the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency. As Don makes the plays in the boardroom and the bedroom, he struggles to stay a step ahead of the rapidly changing times and the young executives nipping at his heels. The series also depicts authentically the roles of men and women in this era while exploring the true human nature beneath the guise of 1960s traditional family values.
December24th

Why “The Phantom Menace” sucked hard.

Posted in: Film, Star Wars

OK, so I know it’s been over a month since my last post but I’ve been crazy busy with the holidays and what not. A few days back, a friend of mine sent me a link to one of the best, most thorough movie reviews I have ever seen in my life. And it’s about a movie that I initially loved when it first came out: Star Wars, Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.

Now, I’m as big of a Star Wars fanboy as it comes. I have two weimaraners named Jedi and Leia. But over the last ten years, I’ve liked it less and less. There were little things about it that annoyed me but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. RedLetterMedia has and they created a humorous, 70 minute, NSFW video review you can watch after the jump.

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November23rd

Thinking of switching from Windows to a Mac?

Posted in: Apple, Microsoft

So often, people ask me if they should switch to a Mac. Being a user of Apple products for over 25 years, my first being an Apple IIe, it would be very easy for me to shout “YES!” but I don’t. I usually start just by asking a simple question: “Why?”. I’ll be the first to tell you that Macs are not for everyone. I was recently in a meeting with a couple of developers along with my fellow user experience team member and one of the developers stated that he hates Macs. He told me that they weren’t as configurable as he wants a computer to be. He liked to make modifications to his OS so he could have it function just the way he wanted. But he then said he would buy a Mac for his wife. I asked him why and he said because that he would have to spend little time customizing things and he wouldn’t worry about viruses as much. It was pretty much just plug and play.

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