Alberta Design Blog

Well, it’s election time again in Canada and Canadians are busy listening to the parties and their platforms. Now, it may be more efficient if the parties would wait a bit longer before calling an election, we seem to get elections more often than we get spring, but we all have to play the hand that’s dealt to us, and get out there and vote.

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Well 2011 is upon us with a (snow bound) bang, with all the yearly predictions going around, we thought we’d best offer our own. After an intense session of divination research, we’re ready to reveal some rather startling predictions. Don’t blame us, science doesn’t lie.

1. The internet will die.

Like all outdated technologies, we will no longer be required to fumble around worrying about read more

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A month or so ago, the gang here went up to Edmonton to the Graphic Design Association of Canada’s Edmonton Chapter’s charity auction “a Creative Cause“. It was an art auction raising funds for a notable shelter in Edmonton. It was awesome.

I love art auctions. My wife and I used to go to the Red Deer College “Affairs of the Arts” read more

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OK, so let’s be honest here. Advertising, marketing and design are crafts that constantly drive towards the next “innovation” or the next “big idea”. Market segments are competitive within themselves to attract customers, and these days the holy grail of advertising is a spot going viral. I personally think this is good and bad at the same time – good because you can reach a market far bigger than you can with standard media, bad because the game is that much harder, and innovation is that much harder to come by. Well, maybe not bad – maybe we should just call it harder. But the game remains the same:

1. analyze the creative brief
2. drink coffee
3. shine brilliance upon the problem
4. drink coffee
5. use adept mastery to produce visuals
6. watch viral media do 90% of your work for you
7. drink coffee
8. watch the masses stampede toward your marketing goal
9. receive key to the city, and perhaps a pallet of gold bars as well

Sounds simple. Well here is an example of something really innovative. And I find the best ads always seem so logical and natural and your first thought may be “How was that never done before?”

An ad for the Nissan Sentra does all this an maybe more. A car commercial showing how fun a car can be with no car. So logical, you’d think it would have been done before.  Have a look here:

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Many of you have visited the Redpoint office. It is bright, open, and even has a “homey” feel. It is a space that we love. It gives us room to grow, create, move, work, and hang out. On the negative side, the walls are in need of a paint job. The baby blueish grey washes out colour, and mixed with fluorescent light can make one’s complexion look blotchy and translucent. The colour also just dates the office, and hinders our creative environment. Or maybe we’re just being picky? An office makeover may be in the works… so we have to ask the question, to paint or not to paint? read more

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Some milestones are worth noting – graduations, weddings, first steps – and we had one of those moments today. No,  it wasn’t a Cannes Lion, though that would be nice, we got a couch for the office! Thanks to the Brick’s Boxing Week Blowout, we got a red leather (read – pleather) couch.

Extravagant? Not really – we don’t have a lot of choices for seating here, and have really nice north facing windows looking out at Red Deer’s lovely parkade. This will give us a great spot to take a break when working on creative or just needing a break from the toils of graphic and web design.

Feel free to drop by and check out our new lounge, pending coffee tables and throw rugs, of course.

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