Social Media, Online Marketing, Design, and Tech Blog

Graphic Design Fused with World Inspiration

Leanne — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:02:09 +0000

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... Continue reading →

The Booths of Rendezvous Canada 2011

Dave Rossborough — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:46:35 +0000

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…

In the Art of the City June 2011

Barry Doyon — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:09:31 +0000

If you find yourself in downtown Kingston over the next week, be sure check out the student art show "In the Art of the City" Continue reading →

Rendezvous Canada pre-event hiccups

Dave Rossborough — Sun, 15 May 2011 15:46:06 +0000

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!

Written by Dave Rossborough

Building an ActionScript 3 MP3 Player

Ryan Warner — Wed, 04 May 2011 18:58:29 +0000

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…

Engaging Delegates at Trade Shows

Dave Rossborough — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:12:45 +0000

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…

The First of the Last!

Barry Doyon — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:08:30 +0000

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. Continue reading →

The iSTORM Internship – Part One

Taylor Braida — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 19:57:16 +0000

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.…

Tablet Computer Renaissance

Ryan Warner — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 21:49:55 +0000

In 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…

I like to Score: Creating a Soundtrack

Barry Doyon — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 14:49:42 +0000

A 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. Continue reading →