Most of us are really good at doing our job. Our clients ask us to create some amazing work, and then we proceed to do it. But how often do we take time to show our expertise when no one asked us for it? 

Today I was blown away by such an instance when Kelly Eidson pointed me at agency Modea's holiday card. I've seen a lot of these kinds of efforts in the last few weeks but I'll bet you won't see a better execution than this. The card is a working iPhone emulator that asks the question, what would happen if you found Santa's phone? 

I talked to Jessica Harllee, a designer at Modea who was nice enough to offer me some insight into this project.

"What started out as a joke (what if we emulated Santa's phone?) turned into a really simple, funny idea for a holiday card that got us laughing and excited. Also, who doesn't have the urge to poke around inside a phone that they find?

Using an iPhone pleased some of the Mac fan boys and girls at Modea and allowed us to make fun of some of the interface design and oversimplified custom apps. Once we decided on a direction for our holiday card (which was probably the hardest part), production took about a month of work.

This is definitely a showcase of the talent at Modea. We had designers, Flash developers, and 3D artists all work on this piece. A lot of brainstorming happened to come up with creative content and a handful of unique applications were concepted, designed, and developed. We got to experiment with Facebook Connect, using real-time Twitter feeds, and Flash analytics. This piece shows our love of and interest in technology, pop culture, and getting a good laugh out of people."

Obviously putting this together wasn't an easy. It took many people and hours that obviously weren't billable. But part of me has to believe that even such a silly little application is going to get these folks noticed. This work requires a lot of talent, and they made the investment in resources to show us all what they can do. Personally, I'm beyond impressed. Enjoy their work live here: http://www.modea.com/lostphone/