This fall, we flew our two remote team members, Andrew and Matt, up to Montana to join us for our first ever Gecko Designs retreat! After much planning and deliberation, it was decided that we would spend our time together about 2½ hours north of our home office in Missoula at a beautiful house in Whitefish. Located at the base of Whitefish Mountain, the gargantuan house overlooked a smattering of conifers, many of which were in transition to winter and glowed a bright golden yellow. Just beyond and nestled in the trees rested the always gorgeous Whitefish Lake. To say it was picturesque would be a gross understatement.
It was the first time the entire team has had the pleasure of physically being together. And we took full advantage of it. We kicked things off here at the office – popped some champagne, cranked the music, and got to work on our M&M masterpiece – all hands on deck.
Let’s back up a little here. To be clear, we’ve had a vision for a paperless Holiday announcement for quite a while. We came up with some concepts early on, iterating on the design and how we would deliver it. After ordering custom M&M’s for a client’s trade show booth display, we were like, “wait… you can customize M&M’s? They have a whole library of colors to choose from? Hold my beer!” We immediately got to work on a large “paint-by-numbers” wintery Santa Gecko scene design onto which we would place our custom colored M&M’s when the team was all together. More hands make lighter work, right? With all 20 of our hands free to help out (minus those holding champagne glasses) we dove in and built the giant 5-foot by 4 ½-foot Gecko winter scene, one M&M at a time.
Accompanied by laughter, conversation, loud music, and a little alcohol, we all got to know each other better – in-person – over thousands of M&M’s and a few days of work and play in Northwestern Montana. It was truly one for the books.
We would like to wish you the happiest of holidays from our team at Gecko Designs! Here’s to more collaboration, more creation, more team-building, and more partnership opportunities in 2022!