Alberta Design Blog

Everyone loves the cloud. We love the cloud. The cloud is that imaginary place where all our business problems disappear, our IT costs vapourize and everything and everyone has the a rosy red glow of ecstasy on their faces. But have you ever actually thought about what the cloud is?

The cloud is really a series of high tech data centres all over the world. People own them. Shareholders, actually, own them. Shareholders don’t generally like free services. Your company financials are sitting in a data centre in Virginia, or Mumbai. Your proprietary technology is in Africa or China. Those cloud servers physically reside somewhere.

Now, Google is the king of everything free services. Almost all of our clients use Google services. Recently, Google delisted their free apps for business. Now, new users must pay $5/month per user. Let me put this into perspective: My email has 10,000 or 11,000 messages in it. Those messages reside in Google’s data centres. Should they decide my “free” cloud-based email is no longer free… what could I do? What I can do is pay to access “my” email.

Now in an attempt to not sound cynical, so many cloud/open source products are so cool: Drupal, CiviCrm, Salesforce (NOT free!). These products power so many things, and cost so much less compared to building from the ground up. Heck. They are so free and easy, we’ve kind of forgotten people build this stuff, and eventually need to get paid to do it.

Apple is rapidly expanding iCloud, and happily offering paid upgrades, dropbox => paid upgrades, Google => paid upgrades.

I suppose the morale of the Google Apps tale is two-fold:

1. Get while the gettin’s good; and
2. Strongly consider what is safe up there, in the cloud.

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This past weekend I heard about a book – Start with why by Simon Sinek. The summary of the book rocked my concept of business. Rocked. My concept. The book (which I have not read yet) assumes that we are in business not to make stuff (how & what) but for something (why). I’ve been looking for something to polarize Redpoint’s vision, as well as articulate what we really do here. Truthfully, we design stuff, just like the other shops in town (what). But why we do it is far more nebulous. read more

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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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I visited the retirement swaré for a long-time client yesterday and it was a bitter-sweet experience. It’s sad to see friends retire, but it’s good to think of the times we’ve had working together over the years.

Redpoint bids a fond adieu to Lois McPherson of Red Deer College after 22 years of admirable service. Here’s looking for the third hole in one!

The laughs and smiles at events like that are always heart warming. It’s great to hear the stories and laugh at the tribulations people have endured. I was standing listening to the account of a woman who has had a large impact on my career (mostly by booking photoshoots that require me to sprint from one end of the Centrium to the other multiple times) and I found that as I wiped the obligatory tear, I was moved by the impact each person has in their careers, communities & colleagues. I don’t think we as designers, creatives, and communications people realize what we are doing most days. We are creating visual history every day we come to work.

read more

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As another year come to a close, it’s worth looking back at ‘08. We aren’t much bigger than we were in January, but this has been a year of monumental change and growth. With bad economic news coming every day, we are keeping and even keel and trying our best to weather the storm with everyone else. Some new initiatives in the spring should invigorate things for a great ‘09!

We wish Herb all the best in new endeavours! Thanks for the memories!

We had some sad news today – our friend and colleague Herb Kennedy of Kindopp’s Digital Printing has retired. Herb has been around for a lot longer than us, but has been a mentor, friend and supplier for years. Of course, he’s just retiring to work, so we wish Herb all the best, with a smile and a touch of sadness.

As we enter a new era in Central Alberta – business without Herb, I hope 2009 turns out to be prosperous for all our clients and friends the province over.

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We were contacted a few months ago by a team building the brand new Konductor Website Content Management System, built on the chassis of the new Adobe Air Application. We were lucky enough to get in on the development beta team and have been toying with the new software for a while now. It’s been awesome to see bleeding edge technology developed in front of your eyes, and we haven’t fully touched the capabilities of the beta software we’ve got access to.

Straight away, the software eliminates clumsy CMS interfaces like Joomla that seem to serve mostly to confuse the average user and replaces it with a visual drag-and-drop-style environment. The core text editor serves the same role as most editors out there – add rich text, images, links and the like with relative ease, but one nice feature is the extremely simple form builder that allows the average user to add web-based forms with ease. read more

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Today was an amazing day. Sonya and I took in the launch of the Central Alberta Historical Society’s book launch for “Settlement Tales of West Central Alberta – The Markerville Story” – a coffee table history book about the characters in and around the Markerville area. We designed the book, but we certainly don’t deserve a lot of the credit for such a fine final product. We first started this project almost a year a go, and Sonya toiled through almost 300 pages of content to create a remarkable anthology of life and history. read more

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We took in the Festival of Trees Opening event – the Celebration of Lights last night. All the sponsors (Redpoint was a Gold sponsor this year) were treated to a private viewing of the event that will take over Red Deer this weekend.

I think the humbling thing I noticed (after eating the yummy dinner) was that for our meagre contribution, we are “GOLD” sponsors… but the hundred of volunteers and board members whose passion for the event has promoted some to volunteer 15 years in a row! When you consider how much it would take to be involved for one year, 15 is unbelievable.

The charity supports the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre and it certainly is worthy of our support. So take in the festival, buy a raffle ticket and enjoy the desert event friday night! The dessert event is Friday night. So remember: the dessert event is Friday night!

Merry Start-of-the-Christmas Season and remember to thank the Festival ED Tanya if you can find her this weekend!

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Finally! We’ve been waiting for almost two months for today! We completed a re-design of the downtown Red Deer street banners in the summer, and our task was to replace the previous set which had been in use for almost 4 years. The wait while the banners were in production was like waiting for Christmas… and if that’s true, today was the day we got just what we asked for.
The banners were going up today along Ross Street and 49 St. and should be rolling out throughout the downtown over the next few weeks.

Our reaction? Honestly – I was shocked. I really didn’t expect something like a banner to brighten the streets that much. I know the theory and rationalization behind bright and welcoming street signage. I understand the improvements resulting from CPTED initiatives. But I completely underestimated the impact in real-time. Sometimes the emotional result of our design efforts transcends the theory, planning and strategy. It’s wonderful.

For me, downtown Red Deer just became a happier place.

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