1. The Nylons Portal Site

2. BTV Flash Sales Presentation

Yes, We got to build The Nylons' official website. Jealous?

The Nylons wanted a quirky, arts-and-crafty website that had the feel of Jason Mraz's old site. They also wanted control over their content. The rest was up to us. We decided that the site would be centered around what they do best: accapella. So we attended a rehearsal session and recorded their vocals with an Audio Technica AT20 mic, an M-AUDIO box, and a Mac. The result is a fun Flash piece featuring a wholly original performance by The Nylons!

The site uses Tumblr, Facebook, and YouTube to manage touring, presskit, news info. The idea here was to use their budget to produce as much animation (fun stuff) as possible, and to hand-off the content administration to big social networking sites. The Nylons now use Facebook to update their touring schedule. This model clearly has advantages. However, what if those sites change their policies, their interface, or their link structure? We look forward to getting feedback from them on how this experimental model will serve.

if you want any web designer to give a hundred and ten percent on your site, describe your needs to them at the beginning, give them a general direction, look and feel. Then hand over creative control to them and don't ever take it away, as The Nylons did with us.

But before you do any of this, checkout their portfolio ;)

When business is slow, keep busy, especially as a Freelancer.

This 100% Flash presentation was a great bit of guerilla marketing. I had met one of the Directors of Chum/NovaVision and he had told me about their start-up. They we're in full sales mode, hunting big clients with nothing more than a Powerpoint presentation as their principal sales tool. I went to their site and downloaded it. It looked like a million other Powerpoints made by the company administrative assistant. I had the Sales Director's card and no paid projects on the go so with nothing to lose, I sat down, copy-pasted the good stuff out of the Powerpoint and created something that would make any salesperson proud to turn on the RGB and any half-asleep potential client wake-up and go "Whoa! Is that the satellite we'll be using?"

I also made some handsome, unexpected coin.

3. The Marge Simpson Project LesPaterson.com

4. VictorAllen.ca Booking App

We can build enterprise class applications AND draw you as a Simpson's character.

Painter Les Paterson was the hottest thing on the art scene in Toronto in the summer of 2006. Les had reproduced in lifesize all of the fictional paintings of the Simpson's mother, Marge, that had been seen over many episodes. That's right. Not many people know that Marge was an aspiring painter in college before she met and married Homer. Les' show received full page spreads in all the major newspapers. Part of that success was due to the online popularity of this fun Flash site we created for the show. It showed up on StumbleUpon's list of best-of-the-web.

If you manage to find a picture of Les Paterson we think you will agree that this charicature of him sitting on the sofa is bang on.

Yorkville’s high-end hairstylist, Victor Allen, wanted a website that would above all serve his longstanding, loyal client-base.  Victor needed a way to tighten up his booking process.  As a lone cowboy in the world of hair, Victor manages his own schedule but what happens when a client call and he’s in the middle of doing someone’s hair?  They leave a message.  Victor picks it up later and returns the call “Sure thing, Sally, we can do Tuesday..” or “Sorry, Sally, Tuesday’s not good..” in which case Victor leaves some alternate times on Sally’s voicemail.  Sally calls back “Sure I’ll take..” or “Uh oh, I can’t do any of those..” and the phone tag game continues.  

The challenge was that this custom booking system had to be “loose” – computer people and computers hate that word.  Victor doesn’t like computers.  He was willing to update his availabilities once or twice a week at most.  We we’re looking at a system that would cut down the phone tag to a maximum with a minimum of effort on his part.

We designed the free-form system/site with a whole backend user/pass administation interface that Victor uses which you can’t see, which is a pity, because it’s exceptionally user-friendly.  Victor doesn’t like computers.

5. Dentistry@2000 & Britannia Partner Flash Sites

The primary business goal of our client in the development of 2 sites - one for each of his dental practices - was to help his junior dentists gain exposure and build their clientele. Other goals that became apparent during our meeting was low-maintenance and calmness. When a person is shopping for a dentist for themselves or a loved one, ease of use and a soothing tone make sense.

This site has a backend area whereby the client can upload new pictures and bios of staff. There is no need to hire someone to update the site everytime the staff changes. As for look, our own timeless style suited this project to begin with. The client did not want to be stuck with a website with a dated design in 3 years.

We managed to convince the client to use the same interface for both but use different colour sets. He felt that it was a strange idea but in the end we convinced him that it was a good thing to make the partnership between locations obvious and also it would cut costs by thousands. He agreed.