The facts
Full name: Saskatoon (city), Saskatchewan (province). Pronounced Sask-acha-wan.
Located here on the map
Population: Around 220,000
Famous people: Gordie Howe, Joni Mitchell, Gene Simmons’ life partners’ parents
Average housing price: ~$250,000
Claim to fame: Berries, bridges, and a Guess Who song

The ‘Saskaboom’ boom pow
Economically speaking, our city and province are on the up and up. Read more about the good times here.

The flourishing downtown
For the first 10 years that I lived here, it seemed that nothing ever happened downtown. But within the last 3 years, the downtown has really come alive. From all the new lounges, condo/lofts, warehouse district revival, and small shops opening up, there’s no shortage of things to do downtown. The American Apparel on 21st put the icing on the hipster cake.

The shopping
If you’re going to be a designer in the city, you need the duds to help you represent. These stores can help: Momentum, Durands, Tonic, Clothes Cafe, Frank & Lucy, Vogue, Mint, Manhattan Casuals, Schmatta. Of course, we have your regular shopping centres that carry your run-of-the-mill brands as well.

The nightlife
Whether you like to relax around a few pints or burn up a dance floor to some bangin’ house and electro, we’ve got you covered. Check out these fine establishments: Scratch, Flint, BarkingFish, Freehouse, Baccus, O’Sheas, Winstons Pub.

The district
Every place has their ‘district’. Ours is called Broadway. A long stretch of ped-friendly blocks where you’ll find plenty of coffee shops, independent stores, and local street acts. It’s where you’ll see the local conforming non-comformists and Elvis Costello look-a-likes.

The art
Saskatoon has a well established art and theatre community, enough to satisfy the quirkiest of niches. Check out: Paved, Mendel Art Gallery, Persephone Theatre, Broadway Theatre, Saskatoon Soaps.

The music
For all you audiophiles, Saskatoon has to have one of the highest number of bands per capita. This makes it uber easy to catch a show on any given day of the week. Check these local spots of regular shows: Amigos, Lydias, Louis’, Buds, Odeon.

The food
If there is one thing my friends say about Saskatoon when they visit, it’s usually “You have an above average amount of beautiful women” followed by “What’s with all the restaurants?” Make sure to check out: Calories, Truffles, Cafe Sola, Scratch, Tusq, the 4 AYCE sushi joints, Samurai, Jakes, EE Burritos, Golden Pagoda, Conga Cafe, Taj Mahal, Red Pepper, and Dim Sum on the weekend. And if cooking is your thing, you’ll be happy to hear about the Farmers Market and Souleio.

The outdoors
Granted, there aren’t any nearby mountains, but what we lack in height we make up for in water. There are nearby beaches, a river that runs through the city, lots of bike and hiking trails, and many large lakes within driving distance. So practice your J-stroke.

The festivals
Like most other major centres, Saskatoon is in full festival mode come summer time. Events you’ll enjoy are: The Jazz Festival, Taste of Saskatchewan, Folkfest, Fringe Festival, and Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan. I really do like living here. Throughout my travels, I’ve fantasized about moving to much more exotic places, but there’s something about this damn city that makes it hard for me to justify leaving. Take a look around, and I hope to see you soon.

Over the last 8 years, I’ve had the chance to visit a large number of offices. Few are fun, some are tolerable, and some are unbearably dry. “It’s as though they are missing a certain element in their air,” Tony notes. “Or they have too much ‘Bore-inium’ pumped in.”

On a local level, zu has garnered some attention for its culture. If you have done some digging around, you might be able to catch a glimpse of it on the web. Or, even better, you may have heard about it from someone else. But preserving this culture as the company grows has been a challenge that has cost zu a fair bit. However, I like to think the benefits far outweigh the costs and I’ll tell you why.

When I say culture, I’m really talking about the energy that exists day to day in the office. It’s a culmination of the people, physical space, social initiatives and projects that help make getting out of bed every morning a little bit easier.

After observing our efforts and comparing them to other places over the years, I’ve compiled some evidence behind what drives the creation of culture.

1) Try
This may sound obvious, but you’d be surprised at how little companies try or how feeble some attempts are at achieving any sort of culture. Rule #1, if your attempt to form any corporate culture comes from an HR textbook, you’ve already failed. We try really hard to look like we’re not trying at all (almost shamefully so).

2) It comes from the top
Now the co-founders, Ryan and Tony, are my close friends as well as my bosses, so I don’t want to sound like a Dwight Shrute, but it really starts with them. Some places really suck the fun out of great people with the wrong management. Their attitudes and personalities really set the tone for the entire company. The fact that Ryan wanted to hire George Wendt from the show ‘Cheers’ to sit at our conference booth and drink with the delegates, proved to me that no idea I could come up with would be off limits. (Norm never happened, but you get the idea.) Though R&T aren’t as involved in the planning of parties as they once were, you can still see their influence at all our functions. If you are the head honcho, it’s as much your job to help create a fun environment as it is those in it, so don’t leave it up to someone else.

3) Hire the right personalities
You don’t need a room full of extroverts to have culture. You just need people to believe in and contribute to the culture. We have many quiet introverted people around here, but when it’s time to bob for apples, everyone’s hair gets wet.

4) Fire the wrong personalities (or don’t fight to keep them)
Get rid of culture killers.  If you are trying to establish or foster culture and someone is actively bringing it down, then find ways to get them to buy in, or get rid of them. It doesn’t matter if they are talented. (Agree, disagree?).

5) Small things add up
On my first day here, I can remember filling out my first timesheet. A stark, one colour grid with one small twist – above the box where you filled in your name, read ‘Groovy Person’. This set the tone from day one and communicated to me what kind of place I was working for. It also made me wonder, “why don’t we ever see more of this?” So at your office, think of ways to spice up everyday things. For starters, change the name of your social committee to something that doesn’t use the terms ’social’ or ‘committee’. You’ll be surprised at how even a little detail like that can have a trickle effect on your organization’s culture.

6) Aim for comfort
Most people have divisions between their work persona and who they really are. Try to foster an environment in which people can be natural. From the dress code, to flex hours, to the office space, to the language used around the office. It’s different for every company, but taking a good look at how to make your place more human is a step towards building culture. This is the service experience you give your employees.

7) Learn from other great environments
When you hear of other tales of success, don’t be afraid to copy them. We’ve been influenced by ideas employed at some local companies like Point2, VendAsta, EngComp and many of our clients. It’s exhausting thinking of new ideas for staff functions, so it’s good to listen to other fun ideas other companies are trying. Which reminds me, I just missed Point2’s Reggae Party.

So there you have it, piece of cake. I should state that this works better for companies our size, and I’m aware that some things are harder to pull off in bigger and more unionized environments. But to the people in charge, you should be asking yourself, “what’s stopping us from doing this?”

My intention here isn’t to showcase the zu environment, but to share some ideas on what we have found seems to work for us. ‘Real’ things still happen here after all. People get fired, people quit, and there is the odd Debby-downer once in a while. It’s the one side effect of not employing robots. But one thing is that we never stop trying to build up the culture, and I hope we can inspire your company to do the same.

I also hope this was the best thing you’ve read in the last 4 minutes.

AJ: How many different published sources are you currently in right now? What are some notable ones?
WN: To be honest, I have no idea who is publishing White Ninja. Perhaps this isn’t the best business move. But, neither Scott nor I have any clue how to run a successful business.

You see, we post a link to the latest comic that is free and open to whoever wants to publish White Ninja. I know that there are independent and college newspapers in Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Canada and the USA that are using the link. We also have two published books out that are available at your local bookstore for your reading and purchasing pleasure. And, White Ninja has been affiliated with National Lampoon, Cracked.com, Virgin Airways, and Crave Online.

AJ: Does that blow your mind?
WN: No way. White Ninja is the greatest comic ever written about a White Ninja, ever!

AJ: What’s the weirdest fan mail or suggestion you’ve received? Any good haters out there?
WN: By far the weirdest email we received was a marriage proposal. This girl – this incredibly attractive girl, I suspect – wanted to marry White Ninja and have his babies. It was difficult to break the news to her that White Ninja is not a real person. She must have understood because days later she proposed to both Scott and I.

The second weirdest was simply a photo of a girl wearing a White Ninja t-shirt. The shirt, accidentally, was on a little crooked, and a single naked bosom was showing from underneath. Whoops!

AJ: Walk us through the process of how you guys produce one strip, from idea to execution.
WN: It all starts with a good night’s sleep. Before bed I drink two cups of lavender tea with whole milk. Scott has a warm bath with a glass of red wine. We wake up feeling refreshed and ready to work.

So we each go to work. Me, to my private clinic to do some physical therapy, and Scott to a school to teach children how to learn. When work is over, we’re usually too tired to draw cartoons, and we definitely don’t feel funny, so we put off writing comics until the weekend.

Saturday arrives. At noon or so, when we’ve awoken, we’ll get together over a pot of coffee and stare at blank pieces of paper until an idea strikes us in the brain. Sometimes a half hour will go by with nothing being drawn, written, or even said. And then another half hour. After an hour and a half we’ll pack up our stuff and head to the pub for a “business lunch.”

Magically, by the end of the day, we have somewhere between two and eight comics completed.

AJ: How long have you been doing this? What are your future plans for WN?
WN: We’ve been drawing the comic for fourteen or fifteen years! Holy bananas! That makes White Ninja fifteen years old! Unlike The Simpsons, White Ninja actually gets older with each passing year. When we started, White Ninja was zero years old. We stopped counting his birthday after the first couple years though. All along we said we would stop on the Christmas Eve of White Ninja’s 48th year. In this final comic, White Ninja will die on the streets from exposure. It will not be funny. It will make people re-think the whole White Ninja saga. They’ll ponder, “Was it ever a joke?” “Was there underlying societal commentaries that I’ve been missing?” Bahahahaha! So I guess we won’t be able to retire for 33 years.

AJ: Explain to me how you guys have managed to make money on this?
WN: Well, putting a comic on the Internet, for free, and giving it away to newspapers all over the world, for free, makes us roughly $0.00 a week. Times that by four, and then again by twelve… basically, we make nothing.

BUT, we’ve discovered that people like to wear clothes. Especially clothes which have pictures of animals killing each other on them. Seriously. So what we’ve done is, we’ve used the popularity of whiteninjacomics.com to link to another website that we made where you can buy t-shirts with some seriously dynamic wildlife happening on them. We design all the shirts. Some features Pterodactyls fighting with lazer-beam-eyes…in outer space! And Owls, madly chomping away on a piece of delicious taffy. Heck yeah! And Tigers firing automatic weapons! It has nothing to do with the comic, but we couldn’t sell dumb shirts if we didn’t have the comic first. The website is casasupernova.com, in case you’re interested.

AJ: Is this self sustaining? (i.e. are you working at Starbucks?)
WN: Starbucks?! Just because we draw comics for a living doesn’t mean we don’t have any other skills. For all you know I could be a brain doctor! This interview is over!

But to answer your question, we make barely enough to live on. That is, if we wanted to live on Saskatoon’s dangerous west side. No thanks! Seriously though, I enjoy having a couch, and a box-spring under my mattress, and a variety of cups to drink out of, and all those other novelties enjoyed by the upper-middle class. And for that, we have other jobs.

AJ: What do you have to say to the people who say WN isn’t funny?
WN: “It is too, funny!” Yeah, usually we say that.

AJ: I’ve tried to draw WN before, and I’m horrbile. Any tips for me?
WN: Trace your ‘F’ finger, and then add arms and legs. For the eyes you will need two dots. Practice these on a separate piece of paper first.

Actor Genie has been specifically designed for actors, but it can be a powerful tool for anyone working, or interested in the film and television industry. It’s the best way to know what’s casting, who’s casting it and where to find representation.

The app is the brainchild of Hollywood casting director Heidi Levitt, perhaps best known for her work on such films as JFK, Natural Born Killers, Nixon, The Rock, Joy Luck Club, Lakeview Terrace and numerous independent films.

As for zu, though we all considered auditioning for the new Conan movie, we’re just as happy to be on the development side of things.

For a closer look or to download it, check out the Actor Genie Website.

]]> http://www.zu.com/live/2010/02/news-events/news/new-iphoneipod-app-for-actors/feed/ 0 http://www.zu.com/live/2010/02/ideas/business/quick-tips-to-avoid-cost-overruns/ http://www.zu.com/live/2010/02/ideas/business/quick-tips-to-avoid-cost-overruns/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:46:22 +0000 Albert Jame http://www.zu.com/live/?p=4479 Managing your web project and related budget can be a challenge. So we thought we’d share a few simple yet effective tips to help you keep your web project on track.

Avoid big committees
Outside of jury duty, I don’t know where else these are genuinely useful, but they can be devastating to a website project budget. Long meetings combined with a dominant voice with little to say make it difficult for important information to be extracted to form any sort of web strategy.  If committees can’t be avoided, try to select one point of contact that interfaces with the agency, while bringing in committees during the early discovery phase and for major presentations.

Be committed
Understand that this is a team project and you are a part of it. Don’t be surprised if managing the website project is a full time position (or more).

Trust the team you hired
If you find yourself researching solutions or micro-managing the process, it’s probably because you don’t trust the agency or team you’ve hired. Do your due diligence to find a team that you trust in order to avoid second guessing during the project. Understand that your agency should be experienced in this sort of project and they might be suggesting solutions that will help to avoid cost overruns in the future.

Client experience matters
Having someone on your end who understands web development—or has experience on a previous redesign—will keep the project closer to budget. The more you can hit the ground running, the less time is spent on explaining and training. Rarely will an agency budget an exorbitant amount for hand-holding during a project, so these costs (i.e. additional meetings) usually come at the client’s surprise.

Rushed deadlines and last minute updates
Rushing a deadline for any reason will usually result in cost overruns. Whether from premium rates or pulling new people onto the project, you will have to evaluate the marginal benefit of a quick turnaround as opposed to working out a more realistic deadline. Last minute updates should also be avoided as much as possible. Even a seemingly innocuous change can require additional documentation, programming changes, and quality assurance checks that could be avoided if known in advance.

Details, details, details
The more details at the beginning of the project—even in the discovery stage—the better. Though many project details are preconceived before picking a vendor, most agencies will agree that being part of the initial planning stages and assisting with overall strategic planning and visioning results in a stronger end result.

Be an organized client
This is a simple piece of advice, but seems to always happen. From easily overlooked protocols like inconsistent labelling of files and lazy folder structures when submitting content, to arriving late for meetings, disorganization can turn the project into a puzzle.

Focus on doing a few things right
Scope creep is inevitable, so keeping it to a minimum should be your goal. It’s common that once the ball gets rolling, the client suddenly ‘gets it’ and new features are suggested late in the game. Ask yourself, ‘is it a deal breaker if we launch without this feature?’ Understand that there is life after the launch, so don’t be afraid to plan for and release new features later on.

Save up your changes
Good things come in bunches. That holds true for changes. If you can, save up your changes or updates and send them to your agency all at once. Sending a series of changes (and changes to your changes) in a combination of phone calls, meetings and emails results in reduced efficiency, and increases the chance that something could be missed, or that one change will unexpectedly effect another.

Keep the flow
Long breaks between approvals hurt the momentum. When projects restart after dormancy, it takes a while to get everyone back to working as well-oiled as before, which generally leads to things taking longer.  Your agency team may need to reacquaint themselves with the documentation on your project, review old code or design work to get their groove back, or may even be tied up with something else if the delay was unexpectedly long.

Understand what you’re in for
This isn’t so much a tip as a mindset you need to be in when starting a web project. Developing a website is an IT-style project, following much the same workflow process.  And while the IT manager mantra of ‘it’s going to cost four times as much and take four times as long as anticipated’ might not hold true for most web projects, it’s important to understand how quickly the entire process can unravel when the client and agency don’t have a consistent vision, clear strategy, and an understanding of what causes cost overruns.

So that’s why I find the new Domino’s Pizza campaign so good. It was genuine enough to pass through my B.S. filter, yet the message was bold enough to make me curious about what they were selling. In short, they said “you hated our old pizza – our bad. We took it personally, now try this”. I agree wholeheartedly. Having gone through four years of being a starving student, like many others I detested yet still depended on Domino’s Pizza for their cheap and stale pies.

Their new Pizza Turnaround campaign is backed with a simple but effective web strategy, complete with the extended commercial and refreshingly unfiltered tweets. Another thing I like about this campaign is that it’s not funny, proving that you don’t always have to use humour to make your point in advertising.

What’s the risk of admitting your old pizza was comparable to chewing on a used Band-Aid? Not as much as there is to gain. People love when companies admit their mistakes and will only look forward to better pizza in the future. It’s quite a bit different than Ford pseudo-admitting they made bad cars – there are still millions of people who own those ‘mistakes’. I’m curious to see how this campaign is received, but more importantly I’m interested to see if we can get the new recipe in Canada. I’ll keep you posted.

Then I recently came across a short but great blog post from Chas Grundy that discusses how this can effect your culture. “If people want to do something great but don’t have the tools, support, processes, or resources, that’s an infrastructure problem. If people don’t want to do anything great, or change at all for that matter, that’s a culture problem.” This employee had what normal organizations wished upon all their staff: pride – which is a side effect of culture. He wanted to do great, but couldn’t.

How should something like this be handled? I don’t have a definite answer, but for starters I think everyone can agree that it’s wrong. I can understand enforcing policy to reduce corporate misbehaviour or abuse, but cases like this should be reviewed separately as it effects culture and client satisfaction. Don’t expect to get it right the first time. Social media and its uses are always changing, so expect your policy to adapt while you actively monitor the costs and benefits of social media in your organization.

After the session, one manager from an unnamed government department came up and admitted that he just “does it” and deals with the wrath of breaching policy (or the non-existence of policy) later. I like his style.

The evening was a less formal occasion than their previous galas. Architects, engineers, interior designers and graphic designers were treated to the theme “The Evolution of Play”. The room was filled with some great mood lighting and funky house beats. For food and beverages, the du provided a tasty bento box and cappuccino and gelato bar, combined with a full wine and spirits selection. Whether you were standing or sitting, you weren’t far from Lego blocks, play dough, the graffiti wall, or the cotton candy machine.

Big thanks to the Design Council for including us on this party. Hope we can ‘du;’ it again. Check out some photos of the night.

So how can we support the green team if we’re not going to the game? I say, do it online. Take something like Grey Cup Festival Connect that we built. It pulls everything to do with the Grey Cup and the two teams playing in from YouTube, Flickr and Twitter. So basically, any video you upload to YouTube, any photo you upload to Flickr, or any Rider tweet tagged ’sskroughriders’ or ‘greycup2009′, will make it onto the Grey Cup fan site. It’s a one stop shop for everything Grey Cup, generated by the fans. So it’s imperative for you Riders fans to take part. Here are some suggestions on how all you at home can participate.

YouTube

• Discuss your predictions or outcomes
• Wish the team well with a personal or group video message
• Send your ‘regards’ to the opposing team

Flickr

• Upload your ideal Rider Grey Cup outfit
• Give some inspiration for fan signs
• Upload custom ‘Photoshopped’ images of the opposing team

Twitter

• Lend Coach Miller some play suggestions (*ahem* Armstead option play)
• ‘Greet’ Allouette fans with a warm message
• Give recipes ideas for what to do with all that leftover watermelon

Don’t forget to join Grey Cup Festival Connect through Facebook. (See top right corner the Grey Cup Festival Connect site.) In addition to joining the fan page, log in and comment on Grey Cup Festival Connect using your Facebook account. Your comments will be shared to your Facebook profile.

And . . . don’t forget to follow live game stats by downloading the Rider mobile app to your iPhone or BlackBerry.

Follow zutweets and catch some of us at the game. Hope to see you there. If not, you know what to do.

twitpitch: Rider fans it’s time to shine. Tips to keep Rider Pride alive online. #greycup2009 #sskroughriders. http://twurl.nl/7yw1y7

Stantec and Begrand Fast were the architects and designers behind our new home. Thanks to them, since we’ve moved in, I’ve averaged one group tour a day. I figure what better time than this to post some photos of the project, from start to finish. This spanned over a year and a half and was made possible by the good people at Stantec, Begrand Fast, and VCM Construction.

twitpitch: New @zutweets HQ wins collab award at Premier’s Awards of Excellence in Design http://bit.ly/1UFLn4

Similar to the StampsConnect platform, fans can access Grey Cup and Festival content uploaded to YouTube, Flickr and Twitter all in one convenient site. It also pulls in Grey Cup and Festival news from the main website, and allows users to log in via Facebook Connect.

This has become an unofficial CFL social media hub as it currently pulls in content tagged under all CFL team names. Which is great if you just can’t get enough CFL content from your traditional sources. Overall, the festival committee was great to work with—they shared the same passion for this project as they do the game.

“To date, this site is truly the first social media aggregator dedicated to Grey Cup and Festival content we know of. The goal of the site was to have it live on to every Grey Cup Festival host city in future years, and we believe we succeeded in that with the 2010 Edmonton Festival taking on the Connect site next year. Reaching out to the fan base is important because you get so many people returning every year to the Grey Cup; and if we can provide them with a portal to interact with each other and the Festival events that are planned every year, this can only grow our great game of ours for future Grey Cups,” said Sheldon Lachambre, Director of Marketing and Media.

With the Grey Cup and Festival only a few weeks away, action on the site should heat up as we draw closer to the big game. So make sure to tag your Flickr photos and YouTube videos with GreyCup2009 and include #greycup2009 in your tweets to be a part of the fun.

twitpitch: Join the #greycup2009 party and share your videos, photos and tweets at Grey Cup Festival Connect http://bit.ly/2MjGPB

That’s what our friends at 3twenty Solutions are proposing. Their new site details all their plans to create modern and affordable living and work spaces—all with an environmental approach. I first heard of this idea about a year ago from Bryan McCrea, one of the founders of 3twenty and was instantly jealous. After winning the coveted I3 Challenge at the University and being featured in every media outlet possible, they recently unveiled their prototype at the Dragon’s Den pitch party.

The site features a very clean and simple design, meant to reflect the nature of their renewed containers. Interested readers can follow all their updates on their blog, which is updated regularly. We encourage everyone to check these guys out—they’ve put in some long days the last few months getting the prototype ready, but once you see it, you’ll get it. When I asked Bryan for a quote, he gave me quite the groaner, so bear with me.

twitpitch: 3twenty creates the future of affordable urban living. @albertjame shares insights on these unique homes http://bit.ly/2QTisM

We collaborated with SaskTel Labs [more on them later] and the Riders to launch the first official CFL team app. There wasn’t any shortage of ideas planning this app. There were close to 30 features on the table, so for now, only the must-haves made it for the launch. This was a great project to work on with SaskTel Labs—which is a small, almost top secret innovation department within SaskTel. It’s R&D, yet not quite R&D.

Kudos to SaskTel for being able to work on an app for a phone they don’t even sell. The Riders are excited about this and hopefully it’s a touchdown [pun intended] with the fans. Take a look at the vids to get an idea of how it works. The app is completely free from BlackBerry app stores [iTunes coming soon] so stay tuned to Riderville.com for all the updates.

Way back when I was a client, I was tasked with helping our ad agency come up with tag lines for our brochures. I was a music geek who had a boring agriculture job and was milking my chance at any opportunity for creative work. I was naïve but not clueless. By the end, I submitted about ten suggestions for a tagline to accompany a photo of an old farmer talking to a golf-shirt toting rep. Sadly, my best one: “Quality you can trust”. The big boss man ended up forcing the agency to use this rice-cake flavoured title. Looking back, I can only imagine the frustration the professional copywriters and designers must have had using this extremely mild copy for their design. I wish that the agency would have taken me aside and explained how hackneyed my ideas were.

Bring them over to the dark side
I think you have to give clients a tiny glimpse into the dirty world of design; what’s overused, some common faux pas, and how they can avoid being the inside joke. Don’t be afraid to explain blasphemous design terms like: “Make the logo bigger”, collages, comic sans, etc. Once you’ve opened the door, their new sense of empowerment will allow them to look down upon cliché designs.

Outside of the basic education you can give your clients about design, here’s an exercise I’ve found helps the design process with clients to eliminate cliche ideas:

Show a photo
Something very typical. Something like a set of green apples, with one red one. Ask everyone to write a tag line of what quickly comes to their mind, in the first 20 seconds. This example should produce gems like:

• Stand out
• Be unique
• Differentiate yourself

Ok. Make this your black list. Too many ads are built on these types of sentences and never get results, because it’s exactly what everyone else would come up with. It’s expected.

It reminds me of a ad I saw in Calgary for a value-based beer. Instead of the traditional-brewed copy, this poster simply said: “You don’t want to see the bikini models we can afford”. The unexpected got noticed (and remembered).

Show a tagline
Something like: “Meet & Greet” or “A step in the right direction”. Have everyone write down a description of picture they envision to match this tagline. Chances are it will be a person climbing stairs, a close-up of a foot on a ladder, the dreaded handshake photo, and the like. Once again, this is your blacklist of photos.

This is a great eye-opener for clients who don’t normally work with creative design, and can help you get them thinking like your designers. This isn’t just to get them thinking of copy or photos, but rather gives clients a better understanding how much effort and talent it requires to produce successful creative output. I should also mention that clients vary in their design experience and it’s important to acknowledge this early on. So, hopefully when you try this with clients, it will result in a better working relationship during your next creative endeavour.

twitpitch: How to get your clients thinking like designers. @zutweets @albertjame has tips to enhance your next creative project

The last time this site was updated, Bill Clinton was still in office. This was an interesting project to be a part of because our recommendations regarding usability triggered new questions about their current offline services to clients.

In the end, the new site received a complete makeover which enabled Blue Cross to shift their focus to health rather than insurance. One section that demonstrates this is the Push2Play section, a new initiative aimed at getting families to spend an hour a day doing a physical activity. It’s a nice little campaign which we had to integrate into the website, put together by the fine crew at the Marketing Den.

So if you plan on getting hurt, or just want to know more about insurance, make sure to check out the new site.

twitpitch: Saskatchewan Blue Cross gets physical with new Push2Play campaign. @zutweets shares props with The Marketing Den