Design Lab

Alexander Younger of Designlab

http://www.designlab.net/

http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander305454

ay@designlab.net

• Alexander started Design Lab in the last 20 years
• great brands- financial, retail diversity
• green company - believe in giving back to the planet
• solar panels to power the lab

Mobile Market –— its HOT
infographic courtesy of www.luke.com

• 371K babies are born per day
• 378K iphones sold per day
• 562K iOS devices
• 700K Android devices activated per day

Web vs Mobile Time usage

• mobile apps vs web consumptiom minutes per day
• Mobile GMV - $billions of dollars

Best Practices in mobile design

• Key idea
• establish business goals - know your audience
• keep it simple
• get inspired
• go social
• remember the rankings
• measure!
• know it will deliver a sound business resul

ie Angry Birds

• great game, easy to play, free game - u get hooked and buy additional levels
• advertising in the game
• build a phenoman around the game - sell branded items - ie tshirts, birds etc
• engaging fans, woo and keep fans on different types of screens
• product is experience
• ROI $, good will, causes awareness etc
• not just about the APP but everything around the APP

Keep it simple — Dont make me think


DONT’s

• good CTAs 
• advanced functionality should be easy to find - shortcuts make it intuitive
• labels - keep em clear and consistent – ie about us - being too clever - use the tried and true,
• icons should be obvious not cyptic — need to have 1 second understanding or words underneath
• Scrolling vs multiple pages - scrolling is better
• Usability Test — insist on this - essential to have customer feedback - require people input

Get inspired

• know what the competition is up to
• be on top of new innovations
• save time and money

Best Practices
Remember the Rankings

• rankings are extremely important
• featured in app store  free advertising

Go Social

• invite users to write their feedback and ideas
• make it personal

The Beer Store
http://www.thebeerstore.ca/

Alexander shared a case study Design Labs worked on.

• website
• redesigned it - kept it nice and simple
• built in drupal
• designed to look like an app

The Beer Store App options

• no app
•  App that skins the mobile website - why? why download it then and bad rankings
• Full app - trying to be cool and build a strong social relatnsihp
• app should encourage sampling -ie competition tasting checklist

Designed the Beer Passport to encourage sampling

• community building
• store and beer finder

Thoughts on QR codes

• slow adoption rate
• tricky to use

Responsive Design  — Some examples
full control of navigation and look and feel on different screens

www.barackobama.com

www.foodsense.is

www.palantir.net
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/responsive-design/




Measure!!

• things that dont work are just imporant as the things that do work
• require the details that will make an exceptional app
• resonate and deliver

Last bit of advice

• Put together a great portfolio
• have a great attitude -KEY attitude determines your altitude.
• research the company and your interviewer
• ask lots of questions
• life is short dont settle!  6 years average stay7
• ask what your role would be like
• what the environment is
• how am I going to grow here
• only hang out with people you are interested in and are interesting

Your attitude determines your altitude.

David Gray – CTV

David Gray

Digital Sales Producer

CTV

Website: www.ctv.com

Email: davidgraydesign@gmail.com

Portfolio: http://www.davidgraydesign.com/

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjjgray

David graduated in 2007 from the Sheridan web design course.


Publicis - http://www.publicis.ca/
3 years - started out as an interactive designer

• honest you will work hard - sometimes 16 hour days (I do this already myself)
• to move up the ladder, stay ahead by working on own time,  keeping up on trends and technology
• David spoke of long hours and deadline pressures

He then worked at Rogers where he moved mostly into web banners

• he loved it - new project often daily - pushes out a lot of work (the one who does the banners is known as the "banner bitch")
• flash is dying - but banners are still flash and HTML5
• while doing flash banners, he became a producer and became a educator to the creatives to ensure the web designs will work

...Then with the economic crash he was laid off

• he then became a freelancer -
• try to stay on the "good side"
• good to have contacts
• great money - sometimes set your own rate, or work within a budget and work at strange hours
• feast or Famine

TBWA 
http://www.tbwa-toronto.com/
as a producer be work at 9am and leaving at 7:30 and answering calls all night

• Visa was an interesting client
• quick turnovers
• maintenance some things is a few hours
• 2000 pages - largest site in Canada if not North America
• most of the site was superfluous and part of the job was to clean up the site.
• A big part of his job was making the client happy, organizing production flow and time.

Then CTV media
 David's wife helped him get a job through her contacts. Contact Contacts.

• Gillian spoke up regarding internal recruitment, companies are always looking for good people and often give incentives to employees and receive a bonus. This saves the company thousands of dollars in recruiting fees.
• Linked in is a  powerful tool - use it
• found many jobs on linked in
• did a 360 — worked for an agency, media and then to a publisher (ie CTV)
• His job is organizing, he is a delegator - hands out projects, project manager + MORE

Sample of project David was involved in:

http://retail.petro-canada.ca/en/cibc/default.aspx

• Use companies such as lunchbox to source talent -
• Amy Mirano - Lunchbox
• http://www.thelunchsite.com/what/
• many companies that work under her - very eclectic group of companies.
• She has visual artists, musicians and creatives

David's advice

• Don't take things personally
• Get great references
• Pitch yourself and pitch your friends
• Be organized
• Know your browsers
• Learn about Mobile

We are Lollipop

Michael Gramlow

Creative Director

http://www.wearelollipop.com/

http://www.michaelgramlow.com/

mgramlow@wearelollipop.com
416.399.6236

Lollipop is an interactive creative production company run by ex-agency types...

While we work in whatever way is right for the agency, generally it looks something like this: the agency owns the client relationship, strategy and idea. We help them figure out how to bring the idea to life in the interactive world. That could range from creating a treatment and shooting content to fleshing out and building a core idea into a fully functional interactive experience.

To get there, Lollipop provides interactive direction, full-service production management, design, animation, web and app development services.

We also think it’s pretty important to mention that we come from the agency side of the business; so we understand how agencies work and what their needs are from a production partner (read: level of service is really, really important). Our goal is to make the process as enjoyable and un-complicated as we possibly can.

• Most of their clients are in the US and Europe where budgets are bigger and top tier interactive production companies have emerged
• The Barbarian Group, Big Spaceship Firstborn, EVB, NOrth Kingdom

Interactive Pure Play

• Trend towards largescale site buildes
• large big budget clients
• companies Critical Mass, Organic, Blast Radius

Intergrated Ad Agency 

• have to find business
• brand oriented, creative
• often work with other channels - part of a bigger campaign
• often very siloed
• ie Txi, BBDO, DDB

Production Company

• have reps
• works as a partner
• well versed in production
• ability to work on a range of clients/projects
• and emerging specialty
• companies lollipop pixel Pusher, Indus Blue, Fuel, Jam 3

Samples of their work 

(I loved seeing all this - looks like a lot of fun but I know there would much time and crazy work hours that must goes into these!


Little Black Sunshine
Coffee brand — had a lot of creative liberty and played on the drug smuggling theme
Packaging.
Visit the link for an experience in the underbelly of the coffee trade!
www.pureblacksunshine.com

Sprint 

http://biz360.sprint.com/

• Shot on a camera Phantom - slow mation - 900 fps
• salvage and rescue fixtures and materials on demolished or tear downs
• their business is built on sprint products

Sapporo Beer

• online adventure game to discover ancient scrolls
• great effect - visit link below to check it out.

http://www.wearelollipop.com/portfolio/sapporo/

Dickies – durable clothing

• media rich
• the ad takes over the entire site

check out the geolocation integration here and the skilled carolling!

http://work.wearelollipop.com/share-a-carol/

side note: greenscreen.com find all sorts of animals... if you are looking for a reindeer — 
I would like a panda ...

Critical Mass - Alison Garnett

Alison Garnett
Creative Director
Critical Mass


Website: http://www.criticalmass.com/
LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/alisongarnett
Blog: http://www.mylalaland.com/
Blog: http://www.alisongarnett.com/

Alison does not take herself seriously
Her name is SUPERCAPACITY.


Her idea came from washing machines and the super capacity setting. This term is reflectiive of her ability to load super capacity into her life.


She is a creative director, blogs, on flikr, wife & mother of 2 and 3 dogs. She manages to do most of her checklist by midnight.


What I appreciate is that her family is more important than work
no matter what her family comes first

She never has taken a design class in her life - but her bakground is painting and drawing from OCAD. She then decided to take this multimedia course at Sheridan


Alison is a creative director - she says she is more of a jack of all trades:
designer art director, project manager, account manager, new business, stylist, photographer , blogger writer, illustrator, Bad cop, Good Cop


First job

• ICE – live events – but then discovered the web
• Freelance – Henderson Bas (Sean hired her)
• Supercapacity – her own business after adopting her first child,
• Taxi 6 years – had another baby,  then moved to Critical Mass

About Taxi

• amazing creative directors
• Jason McCann
• working on cool projects as MINI - great client
• Her advice was try and work on clients that are amazing brands

Town Shoes – I loved this as I love shoes!

• great posters - gold fish and gold sandals
• crystal boots and constellation stars
• think on your feet literally

LCBO

• microsites
• improvise on small budgets
• mediterrean wine

Cadillac Fairview

• Brand the building
• design collateral
• and website
• sustainable building
• each colour reprsented something - legend on a graph

Alison managed digital team for Telus
telusmobility.com

• landed a huge account with no translation
• microsite to compare phones - online quiz
• banners, and microsites
• the most fun was shooting the pygmy goats

After 6 years moved from Taxi, Alison moved to Critical Mass
Alison wanted to work on a large site and collaborate with an IT team
Taxi did not have the resources for this.


Theodore Alexander
http://theodorealexander.com/
luxury furniture - largest site - e-commerce tool,
flew out to NC to convince them to let them take photos - treating the furniture like a rolex or expensive car. Created a style guide on how to shoot, with a horizon and reflection to keep everything consistent and high-end

Some other brands Alison has worked on 
Brita – scroll deeper into the water
Nestle - are you roloworthy? – baby food to ice cream and chocolate, facebook apps
Sears – Sears.ca


Pitching LIVE

• At Critical Mass every pitch  includes a quick video and how the brand comes to life
• by Aftereffects designer
• pitch how it shows on mobile, or ipad
• ie childrens world - modern day on christmas catalogue for Sears

SUPERCAPACITY

• little book of ideas
• designs logos
• pro bono work - the redwood
• supercapacity - waterproof printed cards - on plastic, very tactile

Alison likes blogging - tumbler, wordpress

• valigirls - blog - friend in amsterdam - they love the same things and can stay in touch - reskinned a wordpress
• Hello - started a blog 9 years ago — about her travel to china to adopt her daughter
• my lalaland – one portal that links to everything she is working on

Alison does not waste a moment and makes the most of her time


It's just advertising, we dont save lives, so have fun and make cool sh**t!