Graphic Design Fused with World Inspiration

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Leanne | View Comments

As a designer, inspiration can arrive in many shapes and forms outside of the virtual environment we immerse ourselves in every day.

Designing a website isn’t only inspired by other great website designs.  Everything seen, felt, heard, and experienced can play a role in elevating our next client design into something new and unearthed in the multimedia world.  All of these encounters are a contributing factor in inspiring something great, with an edge!  Designers gravitate to all sorts of mediums where they draw inspiration from to enhance their creativity.

My inspiration swells from travel.

Viewing the world from a different place, a different perspective, from another person’s point of view is incredibly inspiring.  We’re all born with similar functional abilities and start off in the world with the same promise and potential, but our experiences along the way help shape our worlds into vastly different interpretations.  Stepping inside someone else’s culture, looking through their eyes and catching a glimpse of their view point of daily life helps me to think outside the box.  I’m able to draw from the unique perspective and subtle touches that make it so exceptional from the world I know.  There’s something magical about sitting quietly in a pew in the Basilica di San Marco in the colourful island city of Venice.  Absorbing the grand mosaic masterpiece engulfing the sky-high ceiling above, created piece by piece hundreds of years ago while the world continues on around you.  The places at home, at work, even outside feel left behind.  Or standing on the edge of a hilltop in lush Costa Rica, gazing down at a steaming silent volcano as the sulfur smell tumbles up the mountainside in the sweltering soft breeze.  Knowing at any minute it’s calming nature could change in a fleeting instant.  Or standing in front of the Bell Tower in the Tower of London.  A structure strongly-reflecting its wear and tear through the ages since its 1190 inception.  And just imagining the events and people and carnage it has witnessed.  Many generations have passed by in that very spot where you stand, that feels so calm and peaceful and faraway now.  Travel is a passion.  It’s a privilege.  It’s inspiring.

I’ve been fortunate with the places I’ve traveled to so far, and I cannot wait to explore what’s waiting around the next turn.  These are some of my favourite photos from the places I’ve been.  Looking at these immediately transports me back to the place, the moment captured, and the feeling of being there, and how it made me feel.  And inspired me.

Amsterdam Silhouette - Netherlands

Amsterdam Silhouette - Netherlands

Chacchoben Mayan Ruins - Costa Maya, Mexico

Chacchoben Mayan Ruins - Costa Maya, Mexico

Innsbruck, Austria

Innsbruck, Austria

Lion Monument - Lucerne, Switzerland

Lion Monument - Lucerne, Switzerland

Local London Pub - London, England

Local London Pub - London, England

Theatiner church - Munich, Germany

Theatiner church - Munich, Germany

Poás Volcano - Costa Rica

Poás Volcano - Costa Rica

UNESCO World Heritage Site 'Rhine Gorge' - St. Goar, Germany

UNESCO World Heritage Site 'Rhine Gorge' - St. Goar, Germany

St. Goar, Germany

St. Goar, Germany

2009 Stanley Cup Championship parade - Pittsburgh, PA

2009 Stanley Cup Championship parade - Pittsburgh, PA

Gondola ride through Venice canals - Italy

Gondola ride through Venice canals - Italy

Verona, Italy

Verona, Italy

Detail from the Château de Versailles - France

Detail from the Château de Versailles - France

What feeds your passion?  What inspires you?

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The Booths of Rendezvous Canada 2011

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Dave Rossborough | View Comments

The fact that this post is going live almost a full two months since RVC11 gives you a sense of how successful Canada’s largest Tourism conference can be for a company servicing the destination marketing sector.

Since we returned from our first Rendezvous Canada experience at the end of May we have been extremely busy servicing the businesses and new friends we met in Quebec City, so all our plans for wrap up blog posts, large scale communications follow up etc were postponed until we got our our feet back on the ground.

We had a lot of positive experiences in Quebec City at RVC11. The Conference was extremely well planned and executed upon by the Canadian Tourism Commission, from the layout, to the efficiency of the appointments, to the catering and entertainment. They did a top notch job and partnered with excellent people to ensure a seamless experience for everyone involved.

But we’ll write more about all that in a later post, as this one is just a retrospective on the quality of exhibitor booths at the Conference. We’ve been to plenty of other trade shows in our time, but this one was a little different because of the appointment component, whereby buyers had scheduled meetings at seller booths for the duration of the show rather than the usual free-form walkabout we are used to. It was intriguing to see how booth designers went about catering to this unique format.

We took a few pictures of some of the booths that stood out for us:

Canadian Tourism Commission Booth

Main CTC Marketplace Booth

Via Rail - Full Train Experience

Via Rail - Full Train Experience

The Canadian Tourism Commission booth dominated the skyline of the conference hall but retained a spacious and functional air that catered to group meetings, private consultations behind closed doors and lots of visual interest in the architecture and flat screens placed strategically on the various walls.

Via Rail took a different approach by building a full scale replica of the interior of one of their trains and backing it up with a massive bank of LCD screens which could push marketing messages along with showing scenery from along the routes they service, mimicking the windows on the trains.

Air Canada Hospitality

Air Canada Hospitality

Best Western Mini Hotel

Best Western Mini Hotel

Air Canada followed a similar theme to Via Rail by constructing a cross-section of one of their larger jets, borrowing from the inflight entertainment motif and re-purposing overhead storage bins as table tops. The overall effect was subtle but clever and comfortable for small meetings and chats.

At the Best Western booth they made a valiant effort to distill everything about their hotel experience into a small space by tying together elements of a front lobby, room decor, and hotel bar feel. It largely worked but wasn’t quite as impressive as some others.

Outside of the uber-rich, some of the smaller attendees still did a great job of drawing attention to their offering. While most of the DMOs largely went with the default booth configuration and scads of literature, a few others did some interesting things.

Quebec Aboriginal Nations

Quebec Aboriginal Nations - Canoe Building!

Borealis Centre for the history of the Paper Industry

Borealis Centre for the history of the Paper Industry

There was actually a gentleman at the Quebec Aboriginal Tourism booth who was carving, soaking and fastening together replicas of full size canoes, right in the conference hall. It was somewhat intimidating to see such craftsmanship in action, and certainly stands out as an enduring memory.

The booth representing the Borealis Centre for the history of the Paper Industry always caught my eye as I traversed around the Ontario and Quebec sections on the tradeshow floor because of their creative use of paper (cardboard) to create a neat 3d effect as the centerpiece of their exhibit.

One of the reasons for making this post is because we are always interested in creativity in marketing, especially in tourism. The other reason is that this year’s RVC will forever be associated with booth shenanigans for our attendees. When we first arrived to set up, our courier had not delivered the booth and were not working on the weekend. After much calling and cajoling we had half our booth delivered on the morning the show began, with the rest arriving the next morning, much to the chagrin of all involved.

iSTORM Booth on Day 2

iSTORM Booth on Day 2

iSTORM Booth on Day 3

iSTORM Booth on Day 3

Not only that, but the unique format of the show meant that we did have to compromise somewhat on how we used our booth elements in order to not upset the very people who had helped us out so much when we arrived boothless and appointment-free.

These two shots represent how we managed to shoehorn our booth in on day two, and then the altered layout on day three to ensure we were adhering to the show rules. While we admit it wasn’t perfect, it still gave us good visibility and a great place to offer the free furry friends out to anyone who wanted a little gift to take home from Quebec City but never got the chance to leave their booth.

We very much enjoyed our whole experience at RVC11 and met a lot of new friends and business partners. If you were there and have anything to share about the booths or overall impression of the experience then we would love to hear from you in the comments, on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

Thanks Quebec City!

Thanks Quebec City!

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In the Art of the City June 2011

Posted on June 10, 2011 by Barry Doyon | View Comments

In the Art of the City June 2011If you find yourself in downtown Kingston over the next week, be sure check out the student art show “In the Art of the City” at 122 Princess Street (next to Rogers Wireless) The gallery showcases the works of the Creative Arts Program based at QECVI and includes fatastic paintings, sculptures, life drawings, graphic design and more…

I attended the Creative Arts Program during my last year at high school, and it was there I had the opportunity to explore many artistic mediums. Painting with acylics, oils and watercolours. Additive and subtractive sculpture with clay, stone and wood. Life drawing and anotomy etc… It is a fantastic program that provided me with a solid foundation for my post-secondary education in Graphic Design.

FREE ADMISSION
Open Daily to June 19th, 10am – 6pm
122 Princess St.
613-540-4124

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Rendezvous Canada pre-event hiccups

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Dave Rossborough | View Comments

The iSTORM team have arrived in Quebec City for Rendezvous Canada 2011and we have our first challenge.

Today is booth setup day but our shipping company has failed to deliver our booth. The conference staff here are phenomenal and we hope it gets here before the conference opens tomorrow morning.

We will post photos when it arrives. If you are at the conference, get in touch!

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Building an ActionScript 3 MP3 Player

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Ryan Warner | View Comments

I hadn’t much experience working with Flash, so when the opportunity to do something interesting with Flash ActionScript presented itself I leapt upon it. The Great Unwashed, a funk band from Kingston, needed a site built and asked iSTORM for help. A large portion of the project involved building a Flash MP3 player so visitors could preview the band’s music.

I struggled with concepts I was not familiar with when I first got started. I had no idea that you need to load a sound object into a channel object, and then use a transform object to control the volume. Initially I loaded all of the sound files at the same time, which caused the visitor to download 20+ MB of data even if they never played a song.

The largest problem I ran into was the lack of a coherent example to follow. I was able to find many ActionScript 2 MP3 players, but with no experience in Flash I wanted to start in with the latest version of the language (Flash 3.0 ActionScript at the time). To address the issue of being unable to find a good example I’m including the source for anyone to reference.

Download the iSTORM New Media ActionScript 3 MP3 Player

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Engaging Delegates at Trade Shows

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Dave Rossborough | View Comments

With a few Trade Shows coming up this Spring/Summer that we will be attending, our thoughts have turned to what new and fresh ways we could engage and present information to potential clients and partners.

The concept on the left (click the image for full sized version) is the trade show idea we are currently playing with as our “leave behind” on the Trade Show floors when people visit our booth.

We wanted to find a way to reduce wasted paper (and things for delegates to have to carry), get people to our website, and easily continue the conversations we started at the Shows.

By moving our brochure online and using smaller card stock to allow delegates to either put the card in their pocket to review later, or scan the QR code to access the brochure right on their smartphone we think we have come up with a useful solution.

As for how we are going to interact with the delegates after they click through, you’ll have to wait for an update on that one, it’s not quite done yet.

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The First of the Last!

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Barry Doyon | View Comments

Flight of CF-100s by Graham Wragg The first of the last! A formation of 414 Squadron CF-100 aircraft commemorate 31 years of RCAF/CAF service at CFB North Bay September 13, 1981 – reads the caption to my latest eBay aquisition: a vintage print by aviation artist Graham Wragg.

The Artist:
Graham Wragg was born in 1943 in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England. Graham came to Canada at age 13 in 1957. His initial on-job training was in architectural rendering and technical illustration fields in Montreal. The combination of artwork and technical illustration at Canadair Ltd. proved a powerful influence and in 1969, Wragg established himself as the first full-time aviation artist in Canada. In 1974, Wragg was commissioned by the Canadian Armed Forces Civil Artists Program, where eight of his pieces were selected for the National Gallery of Canada, War art Collection.

The Plane:
The Avro CF-100 Canuck was truly a great Canadian achievement that oddly, many Canadians know nothing about. Designed in the late 1940′s the CF-100 was an all-weather jet fighter/interceptor that served during the Cold War both in NATO bases in Europe and as part of NORAD defending the vast Canadian arctic. For its day, the CF-100 featured a short takeoff run and high climb rate, making it well suited to its role as an interceptor. It’s all-weather capabilities allowed the CF-100 to operate day or night and in poor weather conditions.

The CF 100, or The “Clunk” as it was affectionately called by it’s crews, was powered by two Canadian designed Orenda jet engines which gave the jet a top speed of 888 km/h but was capable of breaking the sound barrier in a dive.

CF-100s in FlightIt was heavily armed with eight 50 caliber machine guns, and 58 air-to-air rockets housed in two wingtip pods. These rockets were automatically fired by an onboard radar-guided fire control computer – another fairly advanced system for its day.

The CF-100 was in front line service from 1952 to 1962 but continued to serve with 414 Squadron of the Canadian Forces until 1981, in reconnaissance, training and electronic warfare roles when the last of these great Canadian planes were finally retired.

You can still find CF-100s today in various museums and on pedestals around the country and you can check out hundreds of photos that I’ve been gathering in my CF-100 Flickr Photo Group.

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The iSTORM Internship – Part One

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Taylor Braida | View Comments

As a graduating high school student from Holy Cross interested business and technology, I was seeking internship opportunities that would provide me with an opportunity to gain experience in the field of graphic design and business marketing. When the intern opportunity at iSTORM was offered to me, I was immediately interested and was quick to respond. I have only been here at iSTORM for a few weeks, but I have found the work environment very welcoming, accommodating and motivating.

Winston Churchill once said, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us”. We should feel good about entering our workplace everyday given the amount of time that will be spent there. So far, I have been impressed with iSTORM ‘s ergonomically designed workplace and the casual and creative atmosphere. My experience so far leads me to believe this is a great workplace that has many opportunities for me to learn .

One of the most important business concepts that has been impressed upon me as an intern is to ask questions. At iSTORM, the employees are highly specialized in the areas of creative design and technical support . Knowing that the staff are so knowledgeable and that they are available to me, I know that I can benefit from their experience and expertise. I’ve learned that in the business world it is important to stay ahead of the game and when we ask questions, we realize how blindly we might accept certain things and how often we are mistaken and how quickly things become outdated. Who knew Twitter is one of the most effective social media websites to promote and gain interest in your business? I learned that by following the right people on Twitter, you are able to develop new business approaches and ideas that can be advantageous and profitable. Twitter even allows for direct messaging (DM) and tweeting whereby businesses are able to create long-lasting customer relationships.

I also am learning many new valuable pieces of advice on logo design . In addition, it has been recommended to me to read the book “Getting Things Done ” by author David Allen as it should provide valuable insight and teach me the tips and tricks of how to get and stay on top of it all !

I look forward to the internship opportunities and challenges that lie ahead!

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Tablet Computer Renaissance

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Ryan Warner | View Comments

Beat Up MartinIn 2003 I bought a Compaq TC1000, one of the first slate style tablet computers. At the time Microsoft was pushing a version of Windows XP that featured an onscreen keyboard. The primary input method of these early tablet computers was a stylus which was fantastic for software like Autodesk Sketchbook; a stylus is not ideal for text input so Microsoft bundled hand writing recognition with its virtual keyboard. Unfortunately handwriting recognition is notoriously unreliable and I didn’t find it particularly useful.

Apple launched the iPhone a short while after I started at iSTORM. I was quite skeptical at the time, having never been an Apple or iPod fan. When the first apps for jailbroken phones came out my interest was piqued. Despite my misgivings Apple created an excellent touch screen interface that capitalized on the strengths of the device. I eventually bought a second hand iPod touch from a friend and, though had a lot of fun with it, it added to what I was carrying with me on a given day.

In August 2010 I decided that I was carrying too much and that it was time to upgrade my phone. I settled on an Android phone, the HTC Desire, because it didn’t require me to use iTunes and had many similarities to the iPhone. After a few months of use my interest in slate style computing was renewed; I had taken to reading comic books and the web primarily on my phone, with its relatively tiny screen. Specifically I would be on the couch and have a need for information, but want access to it faster than my laptop could provide.

I ordered a Nook Color several weeks ago and it recently arrived at the office. So far I’m very pleased with my purchase; the screen is vibrant and clear and it’s very responsive. I rooted the device within 30 minutes of opening the box and installed a few applications, they all run quite nicely. The webkit based browser renders pages perfectly, though I am impatiently waiting for flash to become available.

With the iPhone, and subsequently the iPad, Apple revitalized the tablet computer market. CES 2011 showed that every computer hardware manufacturer is ready to re-enter the market with ARM powered, Android driven tablets. A tablet renaissance has begun and consumers showing a strong interest this time around.

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I like to Score: Creating a Soundtrack

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Barry Doyon | View Comments

HeadphonesA while back I was tasked to create a promotional video for a client. Video isn’t a medium I get to work on too often so this project was a chance to do something a bit different.

The first creative challenge for this project was that there was no video content to work with. Shooting video wasn’t an option and stock videos would have been too pricy. So, I created PDF storyboards based on still images and stock photos. After a few rounds of minor changes requested by the client, the “video” was ready to be built. It would end up more like a slideshow than an actual video, but I did my best to animate the images, text and graphic elements using pans, spins and zooms tocreate visual interest. I used Adobe Premier to build out the project, I was still learning the program at the time and I remember having to figure out things like making an image rotate, zoom and pan simultaneously. I was very pleased with the end result but there was still one thing missing… Music!

My initial inspiration came from a commercial by Apple Inc. It was an announcement ad that the company was switching to Intel processors in its line of computers. The music in their commercial, a mix of rhythmic pianos and orchestral strings, conveyed the same “awe” that I felt would work well with my project.

I turned to my laptop and fired up Propellerhead’s Reason software. Reason is a virtual studio rack with all the tools and instruments you need to turn your ideas into music. I’ve dabbled in music synthesis for years, so I was quite familiar with the process. I used sixsamplers, a mix of various sampled grand pianos and orchestral strings, a drum machine for a symbol crash, and one synthesizer for a subtle choir pad.

I started with a simple piano riff and slowly added more elements. A few solitary strings were soon joined by more and more strings, rising and crashing like ocean waves. I remember being very pleased by how this simple melody came together so easily yet conveyed the same feeling of “awe” that I hoping for. After hearing a sample, the client agreed. All I had to do then was to combine the video and audio together. The sample music I made was about 30-40 seconds too short for the video so I went back to Reason and made an extended cut of my score.

The music had a dramatic affect. The final video with the soundtrack included turned out better than I had hoped and, more importantly, the client loved it. The project was a lot of fun to work on. I learned quite a bit about video editing software and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to write some original music.

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