If you’re interested please contact Laura Mindorff at laura@76design.com.
Got talent? We want it.
Thornley Fallis and 76design is a bold, innovative, marketing agency that helps clients reach, connect with, and build and sustain positive relationships with their communities through the integrated use of on-line and off-line tactics.
We design the creative, build the innovative, and manage the complicated.
Every member of our firm believes in the power of digital engagement. Everything we do is designed to foster that. We engender mutual respect and trust between our clients and their respective stakeholders and audiences. Our clients are a mix of high-profile corporate brands, bleeding-edge startups, government and associations. For these clients, we go beyond. We don’t leave it at working for and representing them; we believe in them, we brag about them.
Our shop is dynamic, open-minded, eclectic and centrally located. Our style is fresh, friendly, professional and invigorating.
The common thread in all of our efforts is a big idea of what the conversation economy can do for our clients to solve real business challenges and create new business opportunities. If you are part of this fabric, and looking for a great ride as an Art Director, we want to hear from you.
A pat on the back is in order to our very own Ben Watts who responsibly committed his source code to SVN and wound up with commit number 8000. Who would have thought that we could have come this far with our favorite software version control system. This event only happens once per repository, and we are very proud of you Ben.
If we celebrate this much for 8000, I can’t imagine what we will do when we reach 10,000. Let the countdown begin!
Posted by 76design on February 19th, 2009 3 Comments
Have you ever wondered what 76design would do if there were no rules? no boundaries? Nothing in the way? What would we come up with? Would it be capable of flying? Would the result rival silly putty on the coolness scale? or perhaps pogs?
Well we wondered. We decided to take the first step towards answering that question with the first ever 76design Aural Design Poster showdown.
here is a snippet of the original project brief
“Take a Song, Listen to it, Design!…” “…Pitcher of booze for non-delivery is standard penalty.”
But where to begin? What song would provide suitable poster fodder? Well, according to one Steve Lounsbury, Brain of J by Pearl Jam would do the trick. And by golly – I dare say he was right. Well done Steve old chum.
Sure, its a “design” project…but this project was not meant for designers alone. No, this project was for all. Designers, developers, account managers, and project managers alike. With only a few abstaining from participation (and 1 poor sap that failed to meet the 2 week deadline) it was a full team endeavour. Fun? Probably. The results? You be the judge.
And 2 of our developers took the opportunity to create their submissions in processing – 1 of whom also decided to give us a glimpse at “the making of”. Enjoy.
Posted by 76design on February 1st, 2009 Comments Off
Give me an “X’, give me another “L”, give me an “I”, give me another….
You get it the drift. Today is Super Sunday, average joes across the Americas and elsewhere, will don their “colours”, slaughter 100’s of buffaloes for their magical wings, drink a lake’s worth of beer, take a nap, skip bathroom breaks to watch commercials, and then experience some the most over-hyped mediocre (correction:electrifying) football ever. Yes friends, Superbowl XLIII will showcase the Steelers of Pittsburgh and the Cardinals of Arizona. Both teams have a deep heritage in the league, all the way back when the Superbowl was a naive single roman numeral.
If you have haven’t reached your Superbowl ingestion limit yet, the New York Times had a few prominent designers take a couple snaps at re-doing the logo. It is interesting to note that a common graphic element was common in a few of the logos. See if you can notice. It gives an insight into this wacky creative world; just because you came up with an idea, doesn’t mean that it is that original.
Anyhoo, check out the logos, stuff your faces, enjoy the game and ‘Go (inserts team name)!, Kill the loser (insert team name)!’.
Posted by 76design on January 26th, 2009 2 Comments
What does a retired General, a former Olympian and a man they call “Dog” have in common? If you said they’re all speakers available through the National Speakers Bureau, you’d win the big stuffed narwhal.
For over 35 years, the National Speakers Bureau has garnered a reputation as the source for event speakers. They are the sole agents for over 100 speakers, and they work with over a thousand others in North America and abroad.
They came to 76design with a request, upgrade their brand. This included a new logo and revamping their site. During our analysis of their brand, we felt that their existing website didn’t accurately reflect the class of speakers they had, nor did it “speak” (so punny!) to their great customer service.
76 updated their corporate logo, created a brand new site with a focus on bringing their speakers to the forefront, improving the speakers search functions, and we also created a new interactive module on the homepage. Overall, our goal was to facilitate the user experience, but also motivate potential clients to call one of their reps to assist them through the booking process. The new National Speakers Bureau site launched January, 2009.
Take a spin on NSB.com, and book yourself a speaker or two. On a personal note, I am awaiting the confirmation that Strombo is coming to my Super Bowl party. Fingers Crossed!
Posted by 76design on January 12th, 2009 1 Comment
For the past week, I’ve been using present.ly at work. Present.ly is a twitter-style “micro-blogging” tool aimed for internal use within organizations, much like TC50’s 2008 WinnerYammer. Unfortunately Yammer has at least one major flaw: it builds its network based on the user’s organization name/email URL, therefore not allowing to join two organizations that use different emails.
So after no longer being able to cope with Yammer’s pitfalls anymore, Thornley Fallis and 76design’s CEO Joe Thornley had the insight to give present.ly a try, and actively encouraged both organizations to become part of this community. Here are my thoughts and feedback after our first week of use.
Ease of use
A handful of us are already avid twitter users, so the learning curve was next to none. Many were newly introduced to Twitter lingo, but after a few tries, it was smooth sailing.
Luckily for all us there are also some great additional features in presently that we got to know :
Groups are a marvel;
“Highlighting” when people ask questions (?) or say something urgent (!!!) is quite useful;
Built-in media sharing.
The web interface is really straightforward, and logical. In addition to this, present.ly also has a desktop AIR app and an iPhone-friendly interface.
However, things tend to behave just a little differently than they do on twitter, which can lead to some frustrating moments. The behaviors aren’t bad, but I like my conventions!
No “delete” option: seriously, we all make typos;
Unlike Twitter’s web interface, the return key will send a message instead of doing a line break (This seems minor, but without a delete button, it’s a total pain.)
Another often mentioned issue is that of the confusion on how the “Groups” feature works. If two users are members of a group, but do not “follow” one another, they don’t receive all the updates destined for that group. This could lead to people missing out on part of the conversation. And also forces a user to follow pretty much everyone;
Multiple email activity notifications that are impossible to turn off.
None of these issues are significant enough to stop me from doing what I want to do with present.ly. But to the folks at present.ly, if you’re listening – hear me out!
Is it all worth it?
After the first day on present.ly, many of us, myself included, questioned if this tool was worthwhile. The entire day on present.ly had been spent sending silly messages and testing out the features. It felt like a productivity killer.
I’d say that for the remainder of the week, a good lot of us realized the potential of present.ly and made a conscious effort to make it useful. A few examples of things we’ve used it for:
Tracking any internal technical issues with hashtags;
Sharing news / ideas about development in our devSquad group;
Sharing business successes;
Status updates (what you’re working on, where you are, etc.);
Giving out bonuses (if you’re Joe)!
Overview
All in all, I think Present.ly is a great app, and it seems to have really “hit the nail on the head” in terms of what we needed as a inter-office communication tool. I also envision it being useful on any “Enterprise” level, as it is reasonable secure and stable. But as with any collaborative tool or app, we must always keep the ball rolling and choose to make it useful…
What do you think? I’d love to hear feedback on some solutions that have worked for you, and have allowed you to communicate better at work.
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