Fall Interactive Tour

An inside view at design agencies in Toronto

The morning was a hustle to make it to the GO train station in Oakville (memories of my many years of commuting to Toronto) to meet my fellow students—and on we went.

We were greeted with FTI tour guides— with color coded swag bags— already a great start and onto a tight schedule of visiting some of the top agencies in the city, all on foot. As advised, I wore walking shoes and left the heels at home— however all day I did suffer from a short complex...

First up, was Taxi. One of the top agencies in the world—a great opportunity to get a glimpse of the working behind the scenes as we were escorted into their contemporary kitchen meeting room. A well polished presentation was given about their work and Taxi "culture". Among the humorous and successful campaigns showcased was Viagara, Telus, Cheese, Bombardier, MSN and the list goes on. 

I was very impressed with the professionalism, award winning projects and contemporary work environment.



We then walked onto John Street. A very different environment– many levels, many stairs - no need for a stairmaster working here! A great place with open concept and people organized according to discipline more or less. 

I really liked their presentation showing the creative and strategic process for one of their clients— Infusion Teas by Tetley.  

The ideas behind the campaign and the process including the revisions to the original ideas were presented and then the end results of a commercial and an experiential event with personal shopping butlers. It was great to see the project unfold from start to finish the working parts and thoughts behind it. And we scored some Infusion samples as we left—I scored two. Blueberry is my favourite...so far— trying to switch out my diet coke habit...

We then went to Grip Limited.

We were greeted by one of the partners who gave us a tour. 

The agency space is huge with many areas of expertise including video editing and shooting. They really DO have a big orange slide–I was really hoping to go down it!! A little disappointed here...I hope to in the future....

A lot of capabilities in this shop. Great space. Great creative teams. Impressive clients paired with impressive work.

On from Grip we went to Derooted a smaller agency with big work. Their owner, Amir spoke to us about the company and their work.

Their work consists of branding, web design with facebook and twitter integration, event guerrilla campaigns, and photo and art gallery work

and very interesting interactive, and experiential lighting design that can be applied to surfaces including large buildings. A little out of the box and puts a whole new "light" on interactive design...




We visited ODDLY creative and were presented many multimedia, gaming projects that they have worked on. Fun projects like burger flipping, tire filling, mini golfing and skiing games. It seems they "play" for a living.

This entire event was the idea of Tim from Oddly who has very generously contributed his time and created this event to further students and their future of opportunities. Thank you Oddly!