Welcome to Second Story
Second Story creates enchanting, informative, and entertaining media experiences with innovative technologies that empower connections to ideas. Explore our work.
TEDxPortland After-Party 2012
For one night only, guests at the Portland TEDx after-party had a chance to interact with a floor-to-ceiling interactive sculpture that transformed body movement into new landscapes. View Project
Top Honors at Italian Conference
The future is hungry for ideas. Second Story principal Julie Beeler delivered a feast of ideas as a speaker at this year’s OFFF International Festival of Digital & Web Arts in Pescara, Italy. The studio was also honored with the top prize for non-Italian designers at the PWI webfest awards.
NAE DocsTeach iPad App
Our DocSteach iPad app is an iTunes AppStore selection, featured in the “Education” section. The app helps teachers bring materials from the National Archives into the classroom. View Project
2012 AAM MUSE Awards
Second Story was recognized with two honors from the prestigious MUSE Awards, given annually at the American Association of Museums conference. “Once again, the quality of entries has been exceptional,” said Jack Ludden, chair of the committee, “representing the brightest and best digital media projects in the museum and educational world.”
ArtClix won Gold in the Mobile Applications category and Vault of the Secret Formula took home a Bronze in the Multimedia Installations category. You can check out the full listings for the awards here.
ArtClix Wins Museum Awards
The ArtClix mobile app, created for the High Museum of Art, was recently honored at two museum conferences. The photo-sharing application won Best of the Web: Mobile at Museums and the Web and took home the Gold MUSE Award for Mobile Applications at AAM. The app features social media, community conversation, and visual recognition for the Picasso to Warhol exhibition. You can download it here. View Project
Vault of the Secret Formula
An immersive media experience challenges visitors’ ideas about what is fiction and what is truth about the secret formula for Coca-Cola. The project recently won the Bronze MUSE Award for Multimedia Installations. View Project
University of Oregon
Explore the towering “cascades” inside the UO Ford Alumni Center that reveal the culture, legacy, and vitality of this great university. The project was honored with the Content Award of the Year at the 2012 DSE Expo in Las Vegas. View Project
Ford Alumni Center Honored by IxDA Award
For the first annual IxDA Interaction Awards, the University of Ford Alumni Center takes home an award in the “Engaging” category.
How we think leads to what we make. Above all, we think about how to tell a story—what will engage and entertain audiences in the most direct and beautiful way?
Interactive Storytelling
We create media experiences that harness deep sources of content and tell compelling stories. We start with content and concepts and build stories that guide people through a journey of their own choosing.
Media Strategy and Planning
We transform abstract goals and objectives into clear pathways to engaging technology, interface, and storytelling solutions. We help turn raw ideas into a realizable vision with the power to move people.
Interdisciplinary Design
Our diverse design team provides comprehensive creative for every dimension of the experiences we make, from high-level user experience design to interaction design to visual and environmental design.
Multi-platform Digital Publishing
From mobile apps to Web sites to immersive environments, we create interactive media in a variety of formats and for most every platform.
Comprehensive Software Development
The technology team’s depth and range in software development inspires our creative and delivers innovative results. The quality of our software is defined by our process, which combines best practices and flexibility.
Hardware Engineering and Prototyping
Our team of engineers and makers design, define, develop, and deploy hardware systems that house and support the software and interfaces that serve our stories.
Our work...
- Communicates brand & institutional values
- Entertains & inspires creativity
- Preserves & transmits heritage
- Informs decision-making
- Interprets & visualizes complexity
- Facilitates dialog & connections
- Provides access to archives
- Promotes products & services
Through...
- Digital environments
- Kiosks & installations
- Web sites
- Tablets & mobile devices
For...
- Consumer brands
- Museums & cultural institutions
- Government organizations
- Entertainment & themed attractions
- Educational institutions
- Retail & trade events
- Media & publishing
Blog
FEATURED POST: Take a trip with Creative Director David Waingarten and crew on their whirlwind tour of North Carolina to capture stories of real citizens speaking about real issues. It’s all for an interactive exhibit and web app launching later this year.
Hey, #wvpdx peeps, be sure to catch @westert talking about the evolution of immersive storytelling tomorrow http://t.co/GAeJJ6yU
A river in Tokyo appears to be filled with aquatic fireflies: http://t.co/VAixCatd Anyone seen a video of this piece?
“I’m interested in invisible things...” http://t.co/dCmsR09S Nice process video about a sculpture that appears to float (by @walleyfilms)
The Listening Machine creates minimalist music out of Twitter data in the UK. Beautiful: http://t.co/TapLUSXB. via @snarkmarket
Google Docs has just added a research sidebar, making life that much easier: http://t.co/edSgg7sV
Elmo, Grover and other fuzzy friends pop up in our latest interactive, made for Sesame Workshop: http://t.co/nL58ouI1
RT @westert: My #wvpdx talk is this Friday at 3:30, I will talk on steel wires, threadmills, horses, eidophusikons, zoetrope's etc http://t.co/7sdjf2LY
In-Depth Storytelling http://t.co/GcuFx2OG
Team
Our diverse team of innovators brings specialized expertise and cross-discipline capabilities to the studio’s collaborative organizational structure.
Partnerships between three core areas of design, technology, and production allow project teams to work across disciplines and engage dynamically with clients throughout a project lifespan.
Our Studio
Since 2006, we’ve occupied our current North Portland studio on the second floor of a converted warehouse that we designed from the inside out to serve our creative enterprises.
Studio members work in teams across disciplines in open, collaborative seating. The core of the studio is comprised of a two-story structure supporting offices, private meeting areas, conference rooms and a living room. The compartmentalized design of the structure was inspired by cabinets of curiosities or Wunderkammer, the proto-museums that appeared in the 1500s displaying strange artifacts from around the world to amazed crowds.
Lab
Both a place and a special unit within Second Story, the Lab explores the use of technology for innovative interactive storytelling.
Led by the Innovation Director Thomas Wester, the Lab is an incubator for new ideas and projects that demonstrate new opportunities for Second Story and our clients. This flexible part of the studio enables us to experiment, prototype, and test unique hardware configurations throughout the concept, design, and development timeline.
Careers
We’re a group of creative people from diverse backgrounds: visual artists, engineers, wordsmiths, filmmakers, planners, thinkers. We all share a love for technology, storytelling, and a desire to make great things. We offer rewarding careers, internships, artists-in-residencies, and contract opportunities.
Open Positions
Internships
Each year Second Story provides paid internship opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students from around the world. We provide mentorship and collaboration through diverse projects to students across all disciplines for two to six-month internships.
Apprenticeships
For recent graduates exploring new opportunities for their career, we offer three to six-month apprenticeships where an apprentice works under a senior designer, developer, or producer to develop their skills and explore professional opportunities in this industry.
Artist-in-Residencies
Housed in furnished cottages in our neighborhood, established designers, architects, developers, and media artists come to Portland and collaborate in the studio on specific projects through this program.
Please send an introduction, your resume, and a link to your work to careers@secondstory.com.
History
“Looking through Second Story’s portfolio is like watching a compressed history of the interactive industry.”
“SECOND STORY,” Communication Arts, Sam McMillan, January 1998
“The evolution of media means the story no longer flows in one direction, from the one to the many. Through a framework of possibility that visitors use to weave their own story, the narrative is only visible in hindsight—when their path is revealed—the path that was their history, their story—that is the second story.”
—Brad Johnson, Founder
Recognition
Second Story has received over 400 awards and accolades in competitions, festivals, and events, and our work has been featured in many books, magazines, and articles in both the trade and popular press.
AIGA 365 (4)
American Association of Museums Awards (23)
Art Directors Awards (10)
Communication Arts Interactive Design Annual (20)
HOW Interactive Design Awards (32)
I.D. Annual Review (12)
IXDA Interaction Awards
Museums and the Web, Best of the Web Awards (10)
One Show Interactive (9)
Print Digital Design Annual (8)
Webby Awards (7)
Two of our projects were inducted into the Smithsonian’s Permanent Research Collections in 1999 and 2003, and several Web sites have been featured and awarded in the SXSW and Sundance Festivals. We were recognized in 2004 at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and at the White House for our decade of work as part of the National Design Awards. The studio was the subject of a feature story in the New York Times in 2006, and was profiled in a creative inspiration video series by lynda.com in 2011.
Contact
Location
714 N Fremont St, No 200
Portland, OR 97227
Directions
Connect
(503) 827-7155
info@secondstory.com
Inquiries & Opportunities
Second Story is always looking for new opportunities to collaborate with partners on projects under development, or contribute our expertise to planning interpretive strategies and defining new ways to implement interactive media. Please contact us to discuss new opportunities for collaboration or to learn more about our capabilities.