How do you celebrate 40 years in the ad biz? For GSD&M’s 40th anniversary, we decided to declare the 40 Best Things We Ever Did. The ads and the people, the antics and the legends, all the little things that could only happen here. Our designers and art directors were given complete creative freedom, and in return they gave us a series of 40 posters that tell the story of who we are better than any manifesto ever could.

Check out the full stories behind the poster series here: http://40best.gsdm.com.

Here’s a gallery of what we created:

A few weeks back, we celebrated our 40th anniversary. Bringing together some of our long-time GSD&Mer’s, we started looking back at some of the agency’s biggest moments – stand out campaigns, internal celebrations, the little things that made a big difference.

We asked our talented pool of designers and art directors to take on each of the 40 best things and create a poster for each one. Check out the first ten at 40best.gsdm.com. We’ll be releasing the rest over the next month, so be sure to come back soon and see the rest.40 Best Things We Ever DidShout out to our designers Marc, Simon, Stephen, Maria, Bret, Morgan, Jennifer and Gerren for some awesome eye-candy.

If you know me at all, this title is jarring and hypocritical of what I’ve spent the last few years preaching to the agency and our clients. “It’s not enough to have a site that works on your PC. It’s not even enough to have a site that is built in HTML that will render decently on your mobile device. You have to build a mobile specific site to create a good user experience…” If I died yesterday, you could have put that on my grave. A live declaration, via QR code.But today, I’m singing a different tune. Responsive web design, baby. Designing for flexibility, in other words. Building something that will render perfectly regardless of size and space or device. Is it possible? Definitely. Are people doing it? Yes. In fact, our most recent site work, featuring the 40 best things we’ve ever done as an agency was designed and built responsively. Check it out. Here. On your desktop, on your phone, on your tablet. It will look great, regardless!

And here is a great article by Ethan Marcotte, from May 2010 (GASP!) that talks about how and why we need to press on and embrace the transience of the web. To start you with a quote…

“The control which designers know in the print medium, and often desire in the web medium, is simply a function of the limitation of the printed page. We should embrace the fact that the web doesn’t have the same constraints, and design for this flexibility. But first, we must “accept the ebb and flow of things.” John Allsopp, “A Dao of Web Design”

We’re nearing the end of our countdown of the 40 Best Things We Ever Did. The final posters will be revealed over the next 24 hours and they are the agency-defining, live-on-forever kind of moments. Hearing these stories recounted are a rite of passage over here at GSD&M – if you were even alive during these occasions is irrelevant. This stuff is engrained in everything we do.

We’ve featured a few legendary people on the list including Sam Walton of Walmart, The Clintons and Walter Cronkite, but there are certain employees that fall among this list of stars. And Bonnie Hunter is one of them.

She came to GSD&M in 1974 to keep books for us. It was just to ride out the recession until she could find a job with more “stable” people. But our own charming brand of insanity grew on her (as it does with so many people). And she stayed 22 years. In that time, we became her family. Every employee was a favorite child. And she was a second mother to each of us. After all the love and trust and faith she gave us, naming our grandest conference room after her was the least we could do.Bonnie Hunter PosterCheck out the other posters at 40best.gsdm.com.

If you haven’t been following our countdown of the 40 Best Things We Ever Did, it’s time you do. We’re just over half way there and the designers are just getting started! The latest posters recap epic stories of the entire agency rallying together to pitch Southwest Airlines in 1990, the ever-growing AT&T brand and hiring the unforgettable Gwyn David to name a few.

It’s no secret, we are proud to be located in Austin, Texas. Our beloved city is deeply engrained in the foundation and personality of our agency. It’s who we are. Over the past 40 years, we’ve done a lot of work for the city of Austin and the state of Texas. Whether you’ve been to Texas or not, it is no secret – this ain’t just any other state. So we wave our Texas flag high and proudly say “It’s Like A Whole Other Country.”Texas: It’s like a Whole Other Country. Poster

Check out the other posters at 40best.gsdm.com.

We’re continuing to roll out posters for the 40 best things we ever did. Our most precious moments include everything between Walter Cronkite, The Wall Street Journal, a Cannes Lion and a tree.

1998 was the year Seinfeld ended, A Tribe Called Quest called it quits and things were looking grim for the Lone Star Pecan Tree too. But we knew that this was not the end for this fine foliage – this was just the beginning. The Lone Star Pecan was the largest tree ever moved in Texas and it lives on through this awesome poster. (And don’t worry… A Tribe Called Quest got back together too!) Happy endings are fun.The Lone Star Pecan Tree Poster

Check out the other posters at 40best.gsdm.com.