Design Lab – Alexander Younger

Alexander Younger, the founder and the president of Design Lab, was our speaker today. He has been in the field for 20 years. Despite his excellent credentials and work background, he had a humble personality. He said he really likes Sheridan College students because they have good knowledge in the design and business field. If there's a chance, he is definitely someone who I would like to work for once I graduate. I was particularly excited about his talk on Mobile Design.


BACKGROUND

• Canadian Securities Commission – CSC, Investment Advisor
• King's College – Philosophy, Economics
• Concordia University – Fine Art
• Upper Canada College

ABOUT DESIGN LAB & AY

• Started 20 years ago.
• No web at all, but technology is changing rapidly over the internet.
• Clients include Diamond, Aircraft Vertica
• Believe in green design lab. All power in the office generated by solar panels.

MOBILE GROWTH – LUKEW.COM

• 371 k babies per day
• 378 k iphones sold per day
• 700 k Android devices activated per day
• 562 k iOS devices
• 200 k Nokia smartphones
• 143 k of blackberry devices

BEST PRACTICE IN MOBILE DESIGN

• Establish business goals, know your audience!
• Deliver a sound business results
• Segment your audience
• Keep it simple
• Don’t make me think
• Things users shouldn’t have to think about
• Scroll bars and what they can select
• Advanced functionality should be easy to find
• Labels – keep them clear and consistent (no shortcut)
• Icons should be obvious, not cryptic
• Scrolling vs multiple pages
• Usability test it
• Get inspired
• Know what the competition is up to
• Be on top of new innovations (no duplication of other people’s work)
• Save time and money
• Go social
• Get people involved with the apps
• Facebook/twitter/Google+
• Remember the ranking
• Rankings are extremely importantly
• Great apps get free promotions
• Measure!
• Try to download it
• How many people you have been sharing it? Hitting the target or not?
• Try to see the results

CASE STUDY - ANGRY BIRD

Get the freebies out, then let people test it. Then make people get attached to it and go buy it later on. Then sell all the merchandise (download full version, t-shirts, cups). Once you build the apps, then you build everything around it.

CASE STUDY – THE BEER STORE

• Ask 643 clients about mobile device ownership
• Redesign the website and make it simple

The Beer Store App
options:

• No App
• app that skins the mobile website
• full app

features:

• beer passport to encourage sampling
• community building
• store and beer finder

simple, single focus

RESPONSIVE  DESIGN

• Regardless how people resize screen, it will keep all the key elements, (it will shift accordingly)
• www.barackobama.com
• www.foodsense.is/
• www.coding– smashingmagazine.com (responsive web design: what it is and how to use it)

How TO IMPRESS COMPANIES LIKE DESIGN LAB?

• Look at the culture of the company
• Make sure to work with a company that has put together a great portfolio
• Have a great attitude (need enthusiastic people)
• Research the company and your interviewer (people will ask what kinds of projects you have to work for in that company?)
• Ask lots of questions (what will be my roles in the company? What's the company culture like? Need to show interest in that company)
• Don’t settle! (Average in a designer is 6 years. How are you going to grow here within a company? What kinds of work will the designer do? They will encourage people to improve their skills. Find the job that fits)

CONTACT

ay@designlab.net
Linken: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/alexander305454
155 George Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2M8

CTV – David Gray

Today's speaker was David Gray, the Digital Sales Producer at CTV News and Entertainment at Bell Media Interactive. Very sweet guy. It's not only because he came over to speak to us, but it's also because he brought in a big bag of trophies for everybody, T-shirts, water bottles, and a 2GB of USB for everybody. He is also an alumnus of the Web Design Program. He seemed have experienced many ups and downs since he graduated from school, doing freelance jobs, getting laid off from the previous jobs, but he never gave up that he eventually found that job that he has now that he is really happy with.

BACKGROUND

• Studied graphic design at Saint Lawrence College.
• He also took Web Design course at Sheridan in 2006–2007. Everybody in his class found a job within a month. He mentioned that it's a great class and that it was a wise decision to enroll in the program.
• He got hired by a company called Publicis Modem Toronto, the third person in the digital theme. 
• Main responsibilities: Designing websites, Heart and Stroke, Rogers. A lot of money for building banners
• He loves to do banners.
• Then he got let go, then he started to do freelance job and because he got lots of contacts, he starts to get busy again, mainly doing banners. He even created a bible for making banners for different medium in terms of specs.
• While he had been doing that for about a year, he started feeling a bit tired of that because he had to avail himself 24/7 for his clients, sending out invoices and lots more non stop. However, money was great.
• He was hired by TBWA, an international agency. They have lots of great clients such as Apple, and everybody gets great incentives for getting the right client for the company. There are lots of great benefits for working in company like this. He was the producer in the company and his responsibilities included contacting clients, ensuring project completion. He was laid off from TBWA. He noted that it's important to remain professional and avoid becoming personal with the company laying you off.
• He started to work at CTV Media. One of the reasons is because he got great reference from TBWA. He got the job through internal referrals from somebody who knows his wife.

ROLE OF THE CTV PRODUCER

• He is the Digital Sale Producer at CTV. His role also includes representing the brand. 
• Nature of the job:
• The jobs starts with the sales representative who will call his boss, then his boss will assign the job to him.
• He needs to know what the clients want and sometimes he needs to do some copy writing.
• Then he needs to send it to the designers who will be assigned with a task from their own design managers.
• He also needs to make sure everything done by the launch day, keeping the flow of work and production.
• He has to make sure that things are within the budget, and ensure that the tasks are handled by the right person.
• He needs to work late hours to get things done on time if unexpected events occur.
• He serves as the mediator for different jobs and he needs to do post reports, involving project management, TV producers in order to guarantee flow of work and production.
• He needs to educate people who don't know much about the web.

KEY TO SUCCESS

• Need a lot of contacts for freelance job.
• Make great use of Linkein for jobs and networking.
• The recruitment company: LunchBox
• Freelancing work: 
• In agencies you work 14-16 hours a day.
• You will learn to love it.
• Take time to do trend research.

SHOWCASE OF WORK

www.Retail.petro-canada.ca. done in html5 or Jquery.

CONTACT
Linken: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/davidjjgray
Portfolio: http://www.davidgraydesign.com/
Email: davidgraydesign@gmail.com

www.ctv.com

P.O. Box 9, Station

Scarborough, Ontario

Canada, M4A 2M9

Lollipop – Michael Gramlow

Today's speaker was Michael Gramlow, the Creative Director from Lollipop. He has been working in many famous agencies in the U.S. and Toronto.


ABOUT MICHAEL

• Co-founder and creative director at lollipop

DESCRIPTION OF THE COMPANY

• Lollipop is a production company run by ex-agency types
• Have a lot of freelancers on different areas

HOW THE COMPANY STARTED

• Over the past couple of years, the agency and interactive world have evolved (actually completely changed is more like it).
• We saw a need for interactive models that mirrors the broadcast production model that agencies are familiar with.
• Production company – strategy, big ideas, treatment, shoot/design, edit post and audio and development.

THE INDUSTRY
This model is more prevalent in the U.S. and Europe where budgets are bigger and top tier interactive production company have emerged: the Barbarian group, Big Spaceship, Firstborn, EVB, North Kingdom.
Generally, there are 3 types of agencies which can be summarized as follows:

Interactive Agency

• Trend towards the large-scale site build
• Large big budget clients
• Work is generally focused on user experience design and usability
• Examples include Critical Mass, Organic, Blast Radius

Integrated Agency

• Work tend to be creative brand oriented
• Often works in conjunction with other channels, TV,  print, outdoor, design,
• some times not really integrated at all, but a separate "solo: in the agency
• Examples include Taxi, DOB, BBOD

Production Company

• Work as partner to agencies to execute work
• Well-versed in production techniques (videos, audio, animation)
• Ability to work on broad ranging of clients
• An emerging specialty
• Companies: Lollipop, Pixel Pusher, Indus Blue, Fuel

WORK

CONTACT
http://www.wearelollipop.com
439 Wellington St. West, Suite 107
Toronto, ON M5V 1E7
Tel: 416.597.8777