Published: March 17, 2025
by Justin Difazzio
We thought the previous year’s list was packed full of winners, but 2024 surpassed it in almost every way. The challenges we faced were more creative, the contenders for favorite projects were all amazing, and now that we’ve considered everything we did last year, we’ve got the definitive list—and by definitive, we mean completely subjective and based on vibes alone. Enjoy our favorite projects of 2024!
Sara
My favorite project of 2024 was the Sorrento’s Restaurant “Hallway of History”. For their 50th anniversary, the design team worked with owners Kevin & Anita to create panels with timelines and images placed along one of the main hallways in the restaurant. It was interesting to read stories about the previous incarnations of the family-owned business and how it came to be the Sorrento’s we know today.
As a person who didn’t grow up in this area, I was fascinated to see older photos of the building. The now spacious establishment was once a tiny structure! Many local friends of mine have been going to Sorrento’s with their families for decades. It’s great to know that guests both local and coming from afar will be able to see our work to showcase this lovely history.
Katie
I was a big fan of everything we did for Bleu Works. Jenny is baller. It’s always good to work with her. Combining her personal art, her creative and amazing art classes, and a new facet of business she was starting was no easy task, but she loved her rebrand! Spoiler alert, so did we.
It was a challenge to sort everything and find a way to explain all she did, come up with unique color schemes for the different services that felt cohesive across the whole site, and design a home online for all her awesome undertakings. I’m glad she trusted our team to come through for her again!
Meredith
My favorite was also the new Bleu Works website! It was a fun challenge pulling together all of Jenny’s different businesses and making them cohesive on one website. I had to make a new custom color palette that encapsulated colors from all of her brands, custom icons, watercolor backgrounds to add some pizzazz and interest to the pages.
We even added some fun elements to her site, like the button designs and custom bullet points that use the star element from the new Bleu Works logo.
Leslie
My favorite project of 2024 was the Proven Winners leafjoy terrarium illustrations and accompanying care tips video. It was a great example of collaboration between the design and video departments! Not to mention it was one of the more creative and unique projects we were able to work on this year.
And these were just a few of the illustrations needed for leafjoy videos last year. I drew a ton of plants!
Rachel
My favorite is also the Leafjoy Care videos. Leslie designed the illustrations, and Dan Kapper did the animations. There are 3 different versions. H2O plants, In-soil plants, and terrariums. If I had to choose, terrariums would probably be my favorite!
These were created for an audience of plant buyers to inform on how to care for these indoor plants. The animation style makes it really clear, simple, and fun to follow along. It was a creative change from the usual “talking head” videos we do for Proven Winners. I personally have brought home one of these plants and wasn’t entirely sure how to best care for it. I actually pulled up one of these videos to get the info I needed!
Darren
The project I enjoyed working on the most in 2024 was the Blain’s “Toyland Holiday Gifts” lifestyle production. It’s always great to film something on location, and it’s even better when you get to decorate it for the holidays a few months early.
The Harcar family was the perfect family for the project, and filming it in their home allowed us to use several different rooms as filming locations for different scenes.
Austin
I would say my favorite project of the year was Proven Winners Certified. I’ve probably picked this before, but it’s always fun getting to spend the day in the studio with the Proven Winners team.
The team is great, and they make the production feel like it’s shorter than it really is. They are always flexible when things don’t go perfectly as planned and work with us closely to put out the best video every year!
Amy
I think my favorite project from 2024 was for Blain’s. We were filming for two of their new Estate brand lawn care items. We got to use our own Austin as the talent and film at my house. Because it was early spring, we had to paint the lawn green with an environmentally friendly lawn paint to make it look better, which is always fun—but so messy!
Outdoor shoots can be a little dicey, with weather and light constraints, but the videos turned out great. We all had a good time, too, which seems like a win to me.
Lynn
Because I actually never get involved in the projects that the rest of the team does (unless invoicing the clients counts), I really don’t have a favorite project. But I do get to be a part of proofing the You Resource for Living magazine articles, so I guess the Resource Bank magazine would be my favorite project!
I do, however, really enjoy getting to see the other team members’ projects when they are finished and can be seen by others, such as a new website or a new video! We have a fantastic, talented group here at OC, and it is wonderful to be a part of the team!
Brian
My favorite project of 2024 came in at the end of a busy year—our holiday song! We’d done so much all year long, and this was a breath of fresh air and a laugh we all needed. It was awesome to have a local band perform and record it so we could share it with all our friends.
What made it so special? We continue to step up our game with these song parodies and we take time to do something creative for ourselves. Not only did we do something on our socials, we also did a blog about the song-making process. So cool!
Justin
I called it last year when I said our April Fool’s photo shoot would be on this list. If Brian hadn’t mentioned the holiday out-of-office song that I wrote and the accompanying blog, that would have occupied this spot on the list.
What can I say? I’m biased. But I still can’t get over the goofy hilarity of our April Fool’s glam shots. You can see them under all our names on this list. There are SO MANY outtakes that maybe we’ll share them this year.
June
I liked getting to do the IGC Testimonial Videos and Connectspace launch videos for Proven Winners. They were pretty connected projects, so I’m picking both of them.
I feel like I got to do some nice storytelling about all these different people that are connected through Proven Winners. Makes me realize just the scale of Proven Winners across the country.
What a collection of talented folks doing awesome work! We’re proud of all we accomplished in 2024, but this list is the vibes-definitive list of what we’re most proud of. It’s a whole new year, though, and we’re thrilled to take on the projects that will become our favorites of 2025!