418QE

– Musings on Design

  • now I know

    For those of you who have asked me if I created another Christmas Snowflake book for my nephew, I have. I was just remiss in posting it. As each year passes it gets a little more difficult to create a brand new book and figure out what the idea for the new one should be.…

  • Design For Care

    Last year I had an opportunity to work with Peter Jones on a ground breaking book about approaching health care with a human-centered design approach. Many of the methodologies introduced new tools and techniques that would easily improve the lives of patients, allowing them more participation and better interactions with their caregivers and doctors. The…

  • Damn proud of the PM’s plane

    After publishing Keith Branscombe’s article about the PM’s plane, which quite honestly mirrored thousands of comments in the newspapers and on television albeit with far more flare, I was lucky enough to have the designer of The Government of Canada CC1-150 paint scheme email me a short but polite “Drop me a line”. So unlike…

  • Another federal design disaster

    My good friend Keith Branscombe is at it again. A couple of days ago he sent me a beautiful rant about the Canadian Government and its lack of thinking when it comes to branding our national image. This time it is about the new paint job on the Prime Minister’s military Airbus jet, the Polaris…

  • Designing Health Care Solutions

    It’s great to have modern health care in Canada, but we all know and have experienced that our Health Care System is excessively administered and not properly designed for people to understand and be empowered to lead their own health initiatives. In fact, we all have all found it to be overly confusing and too…

  • Fun in the Snow

    Usually my day is filled with similar strategy and branding issues for various companies. But things are slowing down as Christmas approaches even if the snow has yet to fall. For the last two years I have produced a children’s book for my nephew Nathan about the life and times of a snowflake. The first…

  • Strategically speaking

    I was asked the other day about strategy and what that meant for client engagements. Obviously an open ended question, with few parameters. There was no use case study to help construct a foundation nor was there any sense of timeline for this imaginary engagement. So I gave my best response at the time but…

  • A layout and design critique

    I have never included anyone else’s thoughts on 418QE before but after reading my very good friend and mentor Keith Branscombe’s rant, I could hardly resist. I asked him if I could publish it. His ‘rant’ makes some obviously valid points and it is certainly food for thought – enjoy!

  • “nationals” it is!

    Showchoir Canada were interested in a name change for their event. 2011 was their inaugural year and they learned a lot from their experience. Show Choir management were surer of themselves and certain of some changes they needed for 2012.

  • My Dream Time

    Well it’s that time of year again and even if the snow hasn’t fallen, Christmas is around the corner. Last year and around this time I made a children’s book for my nephew Nathan about the life of a snowflake. This was the first time I ever attempted to make a book of this type.…

  • Question what you ask

    In life we ask questions to elicit information we need. But the questions we ask may not motivate people to deeply reflect, or inspire a careful response. The idea of exchanging information through questions and answers is something that we take for granted. We don’t always think if the question is the right one or…

  • Show Choir Canada’s Glee

    Show Choir Canada’s mission is to play a vital role in the development and support of show choirs in Canada by creating opportunities, including live competition-format presentations, that inspire youth participants to not only work together through song and dance to achieve a common goal of excellence but also grow and develop as individuals while…

  • It has to be Readable

    There are so many key phrases in the design industry and for the last decade the technology industry has supplied the design industry with even more jargon. We now talk about sustainability, ROI, stakeholders, experiential design and usability as we have evolved from paper, to screen, to multitouch to gestural… and the list keeps growing.…

  • All this for 30 seconds

    For the last three days I have experienced what it is like to have a film crew come into my house for a one day commercial shoot. Over a year ago a friend of mine told me that my place would be perfect for filming, but up until this week, it had not happened. Since…

  • My Snowy Life

    A few weeks ago my family and friends gathered together to celebrate my birthday. One of the people in attendance was my friend, Keith Branscombe and with him he brought a book he made about his visit to Cuba. I was immediately intrigued and asked him how it all came about. To make a long…

  • Positive Deviance

    On Wednesday, November 10, 2010 I participated in a session that dealt with the practice of Positive Deviance (called PD after this). This conversation was facilitated by Erika Bailey who calls herself a ‘Human Systems Consultant’. I have had the good fortune of talking with her in the past but I never had the opportunity…

  • Appreciative Inquiry

    Appreciative Inquiry was first conceived in 1986 by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva while they were studying an organization. In this study they interviewed half the organization looking for “problems to be solved” and the other half looking for “miracles to be embraced”. What they discovered was that the information they collected was significantly different…

  • Help me first – more meaningful ROI

    Businesses always want to increase their ROI. This is a pretty straight forward statement and one which no one ever argues against. The question of “How do we, as a company, increase our capital within the confines of our set marketing and advertising budget?” is an issue every company has.

  • Family Photo Wall

    I have been prodded by several friends to showcase my ‘Family Photo Wall’ but I don’t really like the idea of placing my personal life on display. However a good friend suggested that I write a brief instructional of how I accomplished this task because they knew that I documented the whole procedure. (Actually they…

  • BookCamp Toronto 2010

    My initial thoughts about the day were: “Okay so it is supposed to be the first nice day this week and I am going to BookCamp Toronto 2010 to sit inside Robarts Library all day and listen to and participate in various discussions.” I was conflicted, I really needed a sunny day and I wanted…

  • ebook nausea

    I am part of an ebook group that began at OCAD about one year ago. We call our ebook the ‘sbook’, short for ‘smart book’. Our goal is simple: to envision the successor to the printed codex – not so simple.

  • Uffe Albaek speaks at DwD

    Late last year I attended a lecture in which Uffe Elbaek, founder and former Principal of the KAOSPilots – International School of New Business Design & Social Innovation, recounted his time with KAOSPilot and gave a talk on his challenging but satisfying role as the CEO of the World Out Games held in Copenhagen.

  • Discover Card Contest

    Remember when you were a student at University? Now do you remember the kiosks within the front doors of your educational institution. Well for me this all came rushing back while designing this Discover Card microsite. But I have to admit I would have liked this type of interaction better than the hard sell method…

  • Mourning the Suburb

    Every so often I get a last minute phone call for help from a friend. In this case Aleksandra needed a promotional poster for a symposium she was organizing to be held at the Prefix Institute for Contemporary Art. The topic was “Mourning the Suburb – A Symposium on Dwelling, in Transition”.

  • Design and Transformational Change

    Presently I am enjoying a informative workshop headed by Peter Jones of reDESIGNreSEARCH. Once a month a diverse group of us discuss how to best organize and assist people and organizations to make positive change using different methods of dialogue to engage them. Most of the time these discussions are limited to a three hour…

  • da Costa Talent Launches Website

    da Costa Talent recently decided that they needed an online presence. They have expanded over the years to the point where they have numerous agency clients (talent) that need to be quickly referenced by their industry clients. In a time where businesses are connected online, images of their talent on their own office walls was…

  • Spineless eBooks

    Ever look at someone’s bookshelf? It is one of the first things I do when I enter a room with lots of books at eye level. I start scanning the spines of the books and reading their titles. But until the other day I had never really noticed all the different logos that represent the…

  • The Seven Laws of Interfaces

    On July 28th I attended a talk given by Dr. Carlos Scolari about the Seven Laws of Interfaces. Carlos is a professor at the University of Vic in Spain. He is a media ecologist and a semiotician; he is a teacher and researcher and also holds a position at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. For…

  • Unique Circles

    This Thursday June 11th I attended a lecture entitled ‘Tools of an attention trader’ at KDMI (University of Toronto) given by Greg Van Alstyne who is an Associate Professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design. For the first half he lectured about various aspects of what a designer does and his toolset and…

  • Bookcamp Toronto 2009

    On Saturday June 6th of this year Bookcamp Toronto was held at the University of Toronto. It was the first time it was held and I believe the event surpassed the organizer’s expectations. They put on a wonderful event, brought in great speakers and were even able to provide everyone with a great free lunch,…

  • Corktown Newsletter

    After having moved back to Toronto I wanted to get involved with my community. I live in a part of Toronto called Corktown, which is an historic Old Town neighbourhood in the midst of massive changes. Corktown has immense potential and it is because of this fact that I decided to contribute my time and…

  • Framing the Right Questions

    I recently attended a workshop headed by Peter Jones of reDESIGNreSEARCH whose company focuses on better design through in depth research. He also manages a website Designing with Dialogue which promotes a Toronto-based ‘dialogue community of practice’ which advocates better methods for communication.

  • A Designer’s Many Hats

    Lately I have heard a lot of people describe and define what it means to be a leader, an entrepreneur, an innovator and a designer. Each of these requires various skills to succeed and each is hard to master. To an extent, each seems too complex to properly describe.

  • The Future of Newspapers

    I recently sat down with Gary who was writing his graduating thesis on the topic of newspapers. Because of my background in traditional and online news media he wanted to pick my brain about what I thought were the real issues concerning the future of the medium. This topic is of great interest to me…

  • Reading the Future

    Last week I participated in a sLab Exploration session identified as ‘The Smartbook Project: Rethinking the Book’ at the Ontario College of Art and Design. In attendance were a diverse crowd of people, from students, librarians (information sciences) and user interface specialists to a physics professor from the University of Toronto. And within the hours…

  • Jane Fulton Suri of IDEO

    I recently went to see Jane Fulton Suri speak at the Ontario College of Art and Design, she is the Chief Creative Director of IDEO which is a California-based design firm. She comes from a background in human factors psychology and architecture and is a one of the people championing and trying to evolve human-centred…

  • Designing a Better Gate

    I have always liked metal work and thought that most of what we see while we walk through our communities could be better. I also know that some areas, like mine, or most areas in New York City, have too much metal work and there needs to be a new approach. Now that is all…

  • Editorial Markup

    I realize that this article should be common knowledge but it bears repeating because not everyone is aware of standardized editing marks. I am sure anyone that has worked in a business environment has received feedback on something they wrote and had to figure out what the proofreader was trying to say.

  • Stages of an Online Project

    One of the very first important issues I had to deal with when starting my first business was how to effectively manage a client through a project. At first the jobs were relatively small, so I reinvented the wheel with each of my clients, but that quickly became tiresome and besides I was focusing on…

  • The Beginnings of a Plan

    Each day people have a great many articles to read. Whether it is for personal or professional consumption, the sources of information are virtually unlimited. Since there is so much information competing for our eyeballs, it is crucial for content providers to produce that information in a manner which is easy to find, read and…

  • Change Management

    It is important, or rather necessary, to detail any changes that you or your company make on the request of a client and you must keep a proper record of all changes implemented during a project’s lifecycle. More often than not it will be the duty of the Producer/Project Manger to ensure the implementation and…

  • Good foundations for eCRM

    Ever company talks about eCRM and in the late 90’s it used to be one of the industry’s most favourite buzzwords. Since then the hype has calmed down, possibly because there aren’t as many companies hopping on to the bandwagon. Nevertheless eCRM is just as important today but perhaps better understood. eCRM is basically a…

  • Naming Methodology

    There are many theories on how to best structure a site, but it suffices to say that it is best determined from the intent of the product or service and from the type of content. That is why this article will solely deal with a naming methodology for various sections and single content pages within…

  • Why 418 QE?

    How did I get here? I have always wanted to consolidate my work and my thoughts on the broad nature of design. But until recent years, the technology was not really in place. Of course the advent of computers being commonplace was a help but rich open source CMS software did not exist, much less…

  • Pfizer Sales Force Automation Tool

    The task at hand was to build Pfizer’s internal sales force application tool for their US sales team of over 45,000. This was a project that grew out of a need for better efficiency in sales within Pfizer and kept Thirst very busy for the next three years.

  • EngageMe: A Fresh Approach

    EngageMe addresses a key infrastructure shortcoming of today’s Internet: the inability to find people across social networks and communications environments based on interests that users have in common.

  • A Photographer’s Gallery

    An artist’s site always captures interest. Their online galleries are often windows into other times or worlds, real or imaginary.

  • E-zine Explodes Online

    This e-zine made its move to being an online publication and performed spectacularly well. The viewership numbers after the redesign were up substantially.

  • Sakonnet takes its Energy Online

    Sakonnet needed a first strike into the energy market to compete against longer standing risk management software firms. They hired Thirst to help them out.

  • Cahners Evolves its Vortal

    Cahners wanted to be the ‘E-business Portal’. They enjoyed a mix of advanced technology and they had a tremendous amount of wholly owned content to make it an ultimate business vortal destination.

  • Microsoft Rethinks MSN

    MSN asked for sketches for a new launch of MSN. It wanted people to have instant access to their content and they wanted it to be bright and attractive.

  • Rogers Communications Launches

    Rogers is synonymous with Canadian communications. The uber-media company needed to showcase their portfolio of companies and products and take their first serious move online.

  • IBM’s w3 Intranet

    A portion of IBM’s intranet had to be accessible by a dial-up connection but in keeping with the rest of their intranet. (also design by IAB) This particular micro site was to have everything to entice a sales associate to return regularly for updated information.

  • Gateway as a Moving Target

    Gateway was a continually large project. IAB helped with just about anything that Gateway could think of, everything from their internal sales application to an interactive marketing web-based operating system interface that was way ahead of its time. Gateway was not just exciting for its work but for its people and learning curve that it…

  • The Guardian UK Online

    The Guardian Unlimited hired Neville Brody to make the Guardian Online infinitely flexible and readable. In turn he needed help and called the IAB studious where John Schmitz and I fleshed out ideas and finalized the design.

  • Zoonlab Identity

    Zoonlab needed several logos to enhance the synthesis of its company and its products.

  • Univision moves Online

    Univision decided to make their move online. As a result, Univision’s new hispanic portal contains separate channels for content and an online shopping experience specifically designed for their culture. These designs enabled Univision to take new market share and solidify the hispanic market in the United States.

  • PHChapman Financial Logo

    The creation of a logo based on elegance for the financial world.

  • Newsweek moves Online

    Newsweek should be instantly recognizable for most people and because of this fact, the staff wanted an online extension that kept as faithful as possible to their print publication while establishing it’s own personality.

  • NetMarket gets Enhanced

    There were two basic tasks for this client: the identity was reworked – a simple colour reduction to help strengthen the brand’s image and the storefront was enhanced – quick previews and easy browsing for increased selling potential.

  • Law Firm, Hiltz Szigeti: A New Look

    This law firm wanted a more professional look for itself to bring it inline with its practise. They wanted a clean but traditional look. A standard package with basic stationary was included.

  • Galileo Interactive visual identity

    This was a start-up firm based in New York City that needed a visual identity for its new CMS product.

  • A Logo for Twentieth Century Fox

    Thirst creates another well received logo, this time for Twentieth Century Fox.

  • The New York Daily News Online

    This was a very involved online extension of a well respected and time honored print brand. The look and feel of the New York Daily News in its traditional printed medium is unmistakable to every New Yorker and so the task at hand was formidable. The starting point was the clean up of a trusted…

  • da Costa Talent Management

    da Costa was a small company that rose quickly, they soon realized that their fledgling ‘look and feel’ was unsatisfactory for its capabilities and thought that they needed a more professional image… to match their own. Thirst created a logo and mark for them that was highly visible and clean. Based on this new identity…

  • Peace Magazine

    This was an independent magazine (as you would think independent movie), lots passion and no money. This redesign and templating structure was voluntary work for a worthy cause. It was mass produced by photocopiers, hand stapled and distributed to the various magazine and book stores in Toronto.

  • Midas

    Midas hired Thirst for a lot of it’s internal promotional work and bilingual communications. Whether it was cue cards for employee learning or their internal magazine, they wanted to help their company by focusing on their employees enjoyment and sound teaching practises.

  • ODA (Ontario Dental Association)

    As it is a non-profit, this company has to use it’s money sparingly and engage resources only when they believe it can help their directives. They service both Ontario dentists and the people of Ontario to help educate them and to provide consistency to the practise. Thirst tried to help them with their publication redesign.

  • Canadian Living Redesign

    After too many years of different people leading the art direction for this magazine and influencing it’s graphic language in one direction or another, it had become unfocused and therefore hard to read. Canadian Living hired Roger Black to simplify and bring back editorial content to every page of their publication. Fortunately, Thirst helped with…

  • The Toronto Star

    The Toronto Star is an institution in Toronto, many families get it delivered to their home and you can find it on almost every street corner in a blue vending box. It really caters to all the communities in the larger GTA area and focuses on the people and their situations in those neighbourhoods. (Rather…

  • The Globe and Mail

    The Globe and Mail is one of the most compelling newspapers anywhere. They call themselves Canada’s national newspaper and actually were the first ever newspaper to launch on the internet… yes they beat the New York Times. Always a good read, they have not only sustained but enhanced their brand after moving online.

  • Perform Consulting

    Perform Consulting was a startup consisting of four high level business financial consultants who had just formed a new company. They had plans and needed quick but accurate marketing material. Thirst gave them strong images, bold design and powerful typography to stand out from their competition.

  • MH Media Monitoring

    This client had never used any professional resources outside it’s own firm. They were skeptical about the benefits and thought that the cost to produce anything other than photocopies of Wordperfect files was too expensive. After one look at their fourth and fifth generation photocopies I knew I could help them. I explained the best…

  • Wright Technology Shocks

    Wright Technology, an Australian company, wanted to blast onto the computer imaging scene. They knew that they had superior imaging technology and made no bones about it. They were adamant that their introduction into the North American market place was to be bold and they wanted nothing subtle about it.

  • Canadian Hospitality Foundation

    Sometimes a worthy cause lands in your lap and even better your liason is so friendly that before you even think about the task ahead you already commit yourself to the project.

  • Family Channel

    Family Channel is a wholesome cable station which advertises both to the parents and their children. Thirst performed most of their print advertising work and as a bonus I made a good friend from one of my clients.

  • Sybase Launches in Canada

    Sybase decides to launch their brand into Canada and hired Thirst to create many of their intial prouduct launch materials. At this time they were vying for the number one spot in corporate database development and wanted to expand their user base.

  • India Trip

    Here are a few of the images from the India trip taken back in 2008.