Forge Media + Design :: Interactive / UX Designer / Developer – Toronto

Title: Interactive / UX Designer / Developer
Location: Toronto, Canada
Posted: December 4, 2009

Forge Media + Design is a multi-disciplinary design firm that excels in the art and science of telling our clients’ stories in a compelling manner and with impact, across multiple media channels and applications. Based in Liberty Village and with a growing array of major clients, our work covers a broad range of disciplines, including digital content, interactive, corporate communications, branding, print, wayfinding, signage, exhibits and state-of-the-art media installations. Forge has built a solid reputation for our unique ability to fuse design and technology to build comprehensive solutions with harmony, elegance and function.

We have an immediate opportunity for a talented and creative interactive/user experience designer/developer with solid experience in CSS, D/HTML, Flash, PHP Javascript, MySQL, ActionScript and XML to join our firm. The candidate we are looking for will be expected to show initiative and be pro-active, have the ability to work effectively both independently and collaboratively in a team, and consistently deliver top level creative and functional solutions to user experience and interactive content design challenges.

If you feel you have what it takes and are ready to make significant contribution to our dynamic team, please forward your resume and portfolio to careers@forgeinc.ca

Steve Jobs on working with Paul Rand

The Vendor Client Relationship – in Real World Situations

Just goes to show that in any other industry, Spec-Work would never be tolerated.

Credit: Scofield Editorial
Url: http://www.scofieldcreativepartners.com/

Tweet Cloud | Gerard Dolan | 11-29-2009

Tweet cloud November 2009

I just generated my #TweetCloud out of a month of my tweets. Top three words: design, designthinkers, 2009 – http://w33.us/rai

words (ordered by most used)

• design
• designthinkers
• 2009
• timothys
• looking
• toronto
• wednesday
• news
• talk
• obama
• time
• tomorrow
• coffee
• canadian
• updated
• michael
• care
• manager
• brand
• free
• adobe
• watching
• principles
• love
• check
• whos
• pictures
• hilary
• waiting
• start

Michael Bierut on Design & its relevance in today’s economy

Announcing Lift@home Toronto and DemoCamp2019 [Location Updated]

Republished from Tom Purves.

ATTENTION NEW VENUE: Canadian Corps Association Hall 201 Niagara Street Toronto

Introducing Lift@Home Toronto and DemoCamp 2019 [ticket link]

LIFT Conference is an international tech conference based out of Geneva, with events in Switzerland, France and Korea. For the first time this year, Toronto has been invited to participate as part of the Lift@Home. Lift is not your usual tech conference in that it tends to mash up web tech with arts with humanism and futurism. Cool stuff

To give this event a special Toronto flavor we’ve teamed up with the Toronto DemoCamp community. But, there’s a catch! We want to see demos only of things you can’t build today. We want to see demos from the near-medium future of 2019. Predict the future one decade out. This is DemoCamp 2019.

Our presenters have a fairly open ended but challenging design brief. We’ve tasked them with imagining a future state of the world, to make a bet on what might happen to the earth, technology, society in the next decade, and then present to you what will be the killer demo in the year 2019. So unlike normal demos, we don’t want to see working code. We want to see stuff that would be impossible or hopelessly impractical today, but could be the killer app in just a decade more.

Each presenter will have a hard limit 12 minutes to present their visionary design, and you the audience will have several minutes to question, to critique and discuss. (But what’s your revenue model?! and so forth…)

There will be a couple special guest presenters as well as 3-4 open slots. There will also be good prizes for the best demo in the open category.

If you, and/or your handpicked team of future-visionary design all-stars would like to sign up to be a presenter contact me for watch for further instructions (application form coming soon).

DATE: November 17th, 2009
TIME: 6:30pm, doors at 6:00pm
VENUE: Drake Hotel Canadian Corps Association
LINK: GET YOUR TICKET HERE to LIFT@Home Toronto

^{Lift@Home Toronto is being organized by: Francesca Birks, Mark Kuznicki, Michele Perras, Milena Vujanovic and Thomas Purves}

“Mankind Is No Island” by Jason van Genderen

I was introduced to a short film recently that is original and unforgettable: “Mankind is No Island”, Directed by Jason van Genderen. My girlfriend had been shown it by a foreign student, who is learning English, and they both were brought to tears by its clear and universal message of empathy towards the homeless in our communities.

van Genderen uses images of words found on street signage throughout New York and Sydney, captured on a cell phone camera, to narrate his story. The films soundtrack consists of a haunting piano composition.

“Mankind is No Island” is a 3 ½ minute film that won the top prize at Tropfest NY 2008 this past September. Tropfest is the world’s largest short film festival and is held every spring in Sydney and fall in New York.

Tropfests’ mission is to “continue to develop the most exciting forum in the world for audiences to come together and celebrate premium short films; and to continue to offer young filmmakers a bigger and better platform from which to launch their professional careers.”

According to the official announcement of the winner for Tropfest NY 2008, the entire budget for “Mankind is No Island” was $57. Very impressive.

Listen to an interview of Jason van Genderen regarding his film.

The Trent Reznor Case Study by Michael Masnick

Here is a presentation given by Mike Masnick, President & CEO of Floor 64 and Editor of TechDirt, this past January at the 2009 midem Conference held in Palais des Festivals Cannes.

Masnick dissects and analyses the current business model being used by Trent Reznor of Nine In Nails and makes a case of how Reznor is creating the business model for the future of the music industry. Despite allowing free high quality downloads of his music and concert footage, encouraging fans to alter his work without fear of legal action, Reznor manages to make money. In essence, Reznor has created a business model that works.

Masnick sums up Reznors business model in a simple formula:

CwF + RtB = $$$

and he offers two explanations of this formula:

Connect with Fans = Compete with Free
Reason to Buy = Return to Business

“…rather than focusing on complaining about pirates and worrying about new technologies, (ed. Reznor is actually) focusing on how to put together a business model that works.”

The high level take away from this is that Reznor continues to connect with his fans no matter what the cost of his product and achieves this by always insuring value in his communication with them.

Learning a New Language

Recently I decided to try and learn a new language, Russian. After several failed attempts at Language CD’s & “for Dummies” books, the Cyrillic (кириллица) alphabet doesn’t translate well into print, I stumbled across an iphone application; Russian Alphabet by Andre Khromov.

One could say that this is just no more than a digital version of flash cards but I think this is pretty ground breaking for language education. Its functionality allows you listen to a voice pronounce the letter, lets you rate your answers and with the help of a progress tracking system, repeats the letters you are having trouble learning.

I can honestly say that I have learned more from this $1.99 application than the $70+ I invested in CD’s and books. Also, I can now say I’ve been introduced to the mystery which is the Russian letter “Й”, pronounced “ee kratkaya.”

Like I said, the Cyrillic alphabet doesn’t translate well into print.

To learn more about the iphone application Russian Alphabet by Andre Khromov, visit the itunes store.

Kids Help Phone :: Coordinator, National Marketing – Toronto

Title: Coordinator, National Marketing
Type: Full Time, one year contract
Location: National Office
Reports to: Director, Marketing
Application Deadline: March 16, 2009

Accountabilities:

Advertising and Creative (30%)

• Coordinates, with the Director, Marketing, the development of all national and regional advertising and creative to achieve organizational priorities
• Liaises with vendors, suppliers, developers and designers to ensure consistency with the Brand and Graphic Standards Guidelines
• Secures pro bono advertising space in appropriate mediums across Canada that is consistent with the overall marketing plan
• With Graphic Designer, responds to all last-minute donations of advertising space and supports regional requests for local advertising opportunities
• Coordinates the inventory, printing and delivery of Kids Help Phone collateral and marketing materials (tv, radio, print, outdoor, online, videos)
• Develops the donor thank and recognition program materials for the organization
• Ensures that all staff and volunteers are aware of the marketing tools available to them
• Keeps the Organization Website, Internal Staff Showroom and Document Library up to date with the latest advertising and creative for internal and external downloads or requests
• Develops and maintains the Annual DVD of all PSAs and Videos, including dubs and distribution
• Ensures all marketing is effectively adapted in French

Partner Program Management (30%)

• Support the Director, Marketing in the development of the annual partner action plans for various media, marketing, public education and celebrity partners
• Evaluates new potential supporters, proposals and opportunities and considers fund development potential
• Tracks all partner contacts and activity in Raiser’s Edge software, including Gift-in-Kind donations of advertising, services or product
• Maintains healthy relationships with assigned partnerships (media, marketing, celebrities, public education and/or government) while supporting all other partner relationships
• Ensures our partners receive appropriate recognition consistent with Kids Help Phone’s recognition program (orders donor thank and recognition program materials specific to partner objectives)
• Preparation of all partner meetings (agendas, proposals, booking meetings etc)
• Prepares content for the website, staff bulletins and/or newsletters on various partner activities
• Support Director, Marketing in providing marketing expertise to Annual Giving Programs to achieve acquisition and fund development goals

School Mailing Program (30%)

• Coordinates the mailing of our marketing materials to all schools across Canada
• Ensure the materials are delivered and distributed in a timely, cost effective manner
• Tracks the annual school mailing budget and expenses
• Conducts surveys and analysis of overall program
• Coordinates the ongoing detailed reporting and measurement of the activity (by region, by city, by language etc)
• Ensures the public ordering system (www.kidshelpphone.ca/materials )is current and relevant for teachers and educators
• Coordinates the printing of all school mailing components

Research and Measurement (5%)

• Support Director, Marketing to undertake formal and informal research to better understand our key target audiences
• Provide reports on all key marketing activities

Budget and Administration (5%)

• Provide administration support to other Marketing and Communications staff as needed
• Maintain spreadsheet of annual marketing expenses

Qualifications Required:

• Minimum 3 years of experience in advertising and media
• Experience in writing for the web
• Strong relationship management skills
• Experience with production processes
• Excellent MS Office skills (Powerpoint, Excel, Word) e-marketing and/or e-fundraising experience
• e-marketing and/or e-fundraising experience
• Degree in Marketing preferred
• Experience using Raiser’s Edge software preferred
• A demonstrated commitment to the volunteer sector or volunteerism preferred
• Experience in both the corporate and community sectors preferred
• Bilingual English and French preferred

Contact Information:  jobs@kidshelpphone.ca