COMMERCIAL CREATIVE
Eric Jordan

Founder of the hugely successful 2Advanced Studios, arguably the industry’s most influential web design agency

Much of the appeal behind Flash has always been its promise of allowing designers to dream – although few of its devotees have dared to dream quite as big as Eric Jordan. He’s the man who was so inspired by what animated vector graphics could mean for the fledgling internet that he took his own visions and formed a commercial venture to deliver on them. 2Advanced, or 2advanced.com as it was initially, started life as merely a personal showcase for Jordan’s own creative projects, which inspired enough recognition to give him a voice in the emerging community. A guest chapter in 2000’s seminal New Masters of Flash book, which also starred Yugo Nakamura, drew interest from clients offering Eric numerous interactive projects – signalling the perfect motive to start his own agency. Secret ambitions to “build a team of the best and brightest web developers from all over the world” were consolidated by formally starting 2Advanced Studios LLC with cofounders Tony Novak and John Carroll in 1999. “At that point, project leads started pouring in for interactive work from all over the globe”, Jordan recalled to c4dcafe.com. “I knew I could not take on the work alone, and I was dealing with some difficult career issues at the time that actually provided the catalyst for me to turn 2Advanced into an actual company. I left my position as creative director for an web design firm in Orange County, and partnered with two very dear friends and colleagues.” In the years that followed, projects for AOL, Bacardi, Bombay Sapphire, Ford, Fox, Nintendo and Mattel confirmed enough success in 2003 to open a sister venture offering hosting solutions, 2Advanced.net. Three years later, the company went global by opening a Tokyo office, while in 2008 2Advanced announced plans to switch its Californian headquarters, with Jordan planning to personally design all the new office interiors. This bold attitude pretty much characterises the ethos of the firm, and an enviable arrogance has enabled the studio to hand-pick projects it feels offers them a challenge to relish, down in no small part to the expert staff of 27 it boasts. There can’t be many agencies that can name other web design luminaries like Shane Seminole Mielke as creative director. “One reason we’re able to pull off the sheer amount of work we do is because we are all passionate, self-sacrificing, hard-working, multitalented overachievers”, Mielke told the fwa.com. “Some studios focus on finding individuals with one main skill and limiting their work on all projects to that skill. This definitely works for others, but we’re not like that. No one at 2Advanced has just one creative talent or outlet.”

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