Internet marketing will not save you or your business
September 18, 2009 | 12:27 am
It's funny.
I recently bought a new car. It's not that I needed a new car. My Mazda3 was perfectly capable, fun to drive and looked great in bright red. My problem? I get an itchy throttle pedal foot every couple of years.
You see, I like cars. Turbo cars, especially. I think it goes back to the fact that even though my first car, a 1989 Ford Probe GT, was possessed by Satan himself, I can't get over that turbo rush of acceleration.
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What's going on around here anyway?
September 14, 2009 | 12:29 pm
Man, it's been forever since I put up a blog post. Between a busy summer, getting the kids ready for school and everything else, I've barely had time to turnaround. So I thought I'd just drop a little post about what we've been working on, what's coming up and how things are going.
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If you have to say it, you aren't it.
August 06, 2009 | 12:20 pm
The other day I was looking for reviews of a car that I'm interested in. I somehow ended up on Fox News. Before the video review played, a Fox News interstitial played which spent 30 seconds telling me how fair, balanced, multi faceted and great their reporting was. As many media watchers can attest to and a simple Google search reveals, there is a great deal of opinion around Fox News' perceived or real bias towards conservative viewpoints.
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Print's not dead, it just deserves to die...
August 03, 2009 | 9:04 pm
... when it becomes another stale cartoon
A close-minded, self-centered social club
Ideas don't matter, it's who you know.
With apologies to the Dead Kennedys.
You'd be excused for thinking the same. With every internet development shop and SEO consultant crowing from the roof tops about the death of print, it's easy to get caught up in the rush to the internet for absolutely every marketing need.
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Things we could do better
July 29, 2009 | 1:18 pm
Our little company has grown an awful lot over the last five and a half years. We have beautiful office space close to downtown Halifax. We're now three people. I've been lucky to have speaking opportunities all over Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, although I'd like to have the chance to do more of this elsewhere in Canada and Internationally. We have tremendous partners and have had great opportunities with Colour, Shoreline Consulting, Nocturnal Design, ISL and many more.
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Video Blog: Web Design is like a Bicycle
July 28, 2009 | 6:21 pm
I think it's safe to say that if I wasn't a web designer and small business owner, I'd want to make a living doing something with bicycles. Of course, the ultimate career would be to make money riding a bike, but sadly, as much as I like it, I wasn't born with the genes of an athlete.
However, even though cycling has to stay a hobby for me, I couldn't help but notice some parallels between the humble bicycle and the profession of web design. The fact is, bikes have become increasingly sophisticated and advanced (not to mention expensive) and as much as I love my hydraulic disk brake equipped 6.3" suspension monster, there's something beautiful about a basic bike.
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Fancy Yellow Diamonds and Engendering Trust
July 21, 2009 | 12:39 pm
A few weeks ago, I got a poorly produced brochure in the mail at the office. The brochure from a Capital company in Ottawa advertised (badly) "Fancy Yellow Diamonds". The brochure was printed on a home inkjet printer, had a really bad layout that smacked of desktop publishing and decried the virtues of investing in these precious stones. Set almost entirely in Times New Roman bold and containing at least two triple exclamation points, I immediately disregarded it as the worst kind of junk mail and tossed it in the recycling bin.
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Video Blog: Do your best work, no matter what
July 20, 2009 | 2:11 pm
As designers, it's as if we're trained to apologize for what we do, even if we had full control over the project. If it wasn't for the time, client, printer, budget, rotation of the earth, bag of Doritos I ate for breakfast, or how much or little caffeine I had today, this would have been PERFECT.
It seems like the more obscure a project is, the better it will be. What do you think?
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If you can't make it work, make it free
July 06, 2009 | 2:40 pm
There's been a great deal of discussion lately about the whole concept of 'free'. First, Malcolm Gladwell slammed Chris Anderson's new book called Free. Then Seth Godin disagreed with Gladwell. It's all quite interesting and definitely has generated some discussion with regards to the future of newspapers and magazines. I certainly don't have a solution for the print industry's woes (whoever does come up with that will likely be a smarter man than I). But, the point of this post is to illustrate how free can salvage a potentially damaging event.
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Super Reggie and a Positive Outlook
June 15, 2009 | 3:20 pm
On Sunday, my wife and I returned from a stellar short vacation to Montreal. We were looking forward to seeing our kids again and were waiting for the Park and Fly Shuttle at Halifax International to take us back to our car that we had left four short days earlier.
We boarded the shuttle and were greeted by a (really) pleasant man named Reggie. He took our bags for us, loaded them up and chattered on to us and the other passengers. He was very friendly. No really. VERY friendly.