Founder and Creative Director, The Wonderfactory
www.thewonderfactory.com
Judging Category: Interactive
David Link is a Founder and Creative Director at The Wonderfactory, a NYC based interactive creative agency that focuses on developing addictive experiences for publishers, media companies and advertisers. Over the past 2 years over 50% of The Wonderfactory’s business has been about designing new content and storytelling experiences for the iPad and other tablets. Some of the iPad apps that TWF has collaborated on with their clients include Sports Illustrated, People, Time, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, BHG Celebrate and The Weather Channel. In November TWF worked closely with Barnes & Noble in developing and launching the new Nook Color tablet experience. Currently The Wonderfactory is co-developing a comic book & Film transmedia product working across tablets, internet enabled TV’s and smart phones – reinventing storytelling and remixing video, print, and merchandise.
Some of the large website projects The Wonderfactory has developed include work for Zagat, National Geographic, WebMD, Martha Stewart, Food Network, the NBA and various projects for NBC.
David held the position of VP, Creative Director in the 300-person internal creative organization at America Online. While there, he managed the creative teams that were involved with the complete redesign of every AOL channel, including (but not limited to) News, Sports, Movies, Music, Games, Personal Finance, Kids, Teens, Latino, Black Focus, and Community. He was also responsible for building the creative team responsible for the creation of AOL’s Broadband Service, which grew from zero to industry leadership in two short years.
Most significant of David’s achievements at AOL was his partnership with Joe McCambley and many others to transform AOL from a “walled” community “protected” by its proprietary Rainman technology to an open community enabled by standard Web technologies. Transitioning to standardized technology allowed AOL to cater to the needs of advertisers and increased AOL’s advertising revenues by nearly a billion dollars.
Prior to joining AOL, David held the position of VP, Executive Creative Director at Modem Media, the world’s first interactive advertising agency. During his 7 years at Modem, David developed and managed their creative offering in various U.S. and European offices and worked with large brands such as Kraft, Delta Airlines, AT&T, John Hancock, Hasbro, JCPenney, Lego, Unilever, General Motors, Mercedes, IBM, Intel, 3COM, Lucent, Philips, Heineken, Kodak, Citibank, Orange, The Financial Times of London, UBS Warburg, General Motors Europe, Deuche Bank, France Telecom, Intel and Vodafone.
David cut his teeth in the industry at Hauser Design, a Los Angeles firm focused on the entertainment industry. While there he managed art, design and copy teams that produced poster key art, film titles, print campaigns, film trailers, advertising concepts and development for major film studios. His clients included: Orion, Universal, Disney, MGM-UA, Imax, Warner Bros., Twentieth Century Fox, New Line Cinema, Continental Cablevision, Epic, Carolco, Circus Circus, and Trimark.
