Ballito programmer scoops two Loerie awards

Brett Garvie designed a Facebook connect development that won him two Loerie awards this year. The prestigious awards are presented annually to honour South Africa’s finest brand communications specialists in architecture, direct marketing, live events, video, digital media, design and print and radio advertising.

Humble and unassuming, the Ballito man was not even aware the work he had done on the Skittles “Smuggle the Rainbow” campaign had been entered and said he was totally surprised when he received a phone call about his amazing achievement. “I won programmer of the year and information architect of the year and my company, B4SHAW Development Studio is the second best digital agency of the year,” said Garvie. B4SHAW outshone renowned agencies like GLOO Digital Design, Pier2Pier and Saachi & Saachi.

Garvie studied 3D animation and spent some time doing special effects for music videos and TV ads. His rookie project was the music video for Mean Mr Mustard’s hit song “Buttercup”. Unfortunately 3D animation was still a newborn in South Africa in the early 2000’s and work was hard to find. Garvie said he started receiving requests to do internet work and he accepted the challenge. “Google became my new best friend and I became a self-taught programmer.” Some of the creative marketing campaigns that B4SHAW programmed to life include McDonalds ‘Mc Cafe’ and ‘Remembering Tata’, Dickies ‘Pop-up Shop’, Converse ‘Get out of the garage’ and Lyle & Scott ‘140 years’.

Explaining what was special about the Skittles “smuggle the rainbow” project, Garvie said “it was a very technical interrogation room style project, incorporating facial recognition and motion detection. The computer finds your face and the user had to play the ‘smuggle the rainbow’ game on Facebook without touching the computer.” Garvie said because his work is internet based, he and his family were able to leave Johannesburg for a better quality of life in Ballito. “We have fun taking the kids to the beach and walking on the boardwalk. I have also taken up a bit of surfing and enjoy deep sea fishing.” He said the work his company does is quite unique in Ballito and he hopes winning these Loerie awards will open doors for more local work. Garvie said he gets most of his projects from big media and advertising agencies like DDB, Havas and Halo.

Source: North Coast Courier: http://northcoastcourier.co.za/28396/brett-is-top-creative-talent/