It has been a whole week since my last day of work placement at Honest. I am so sad for that adventure to be over. Before I go on to gush about my wonderful experience, I will say a quick introduction. My name is Anja and I am a 2nd year Graphic Design student at Red River College. You may also know me from my brief fame from an appearance in the CBC online video about the Assent Works grand opening or the Honest tweets about the apple pie cookies I baked (recipe can be found on smittenkitchen.com).

I had the great privilege of being placed at Honest for my work experience this year. Thanks to their website, I already had a big crush on the agency even before I set foot in the office. I became even more besotted with it after I stepped off the elevator into their beautiful studio space. I was immediately greeted by Dexter, the mannequin and then of course, the rest of the staff. They had cleared a desk for me to work at and even though it was "off in the corner," said corner had 3 windows looking down on Portage and Main from eight stories up. Between the cardboard deer heads, the clean white design of the work place and the incredible talent oozing from everyone within it, I was head over heels... and completely intimidated.

The first day was a blur, and now thinking back, the whole 2 weeks seem like they went by very quickly. I was tremendously excited to work along side them on a couple of projects, mostly attempting to soak up as much of their magic as possible in the short amount of time I had. I was teased about being quiet on many occasions (good-hearted teasing only) but I believe this was due to my acute focus on learning as much as I could from them. And learn I did. I learned that I only want to work at a place that allows pets, making clipping paths on fur hats is annoyingly tedious, field trips are fun, lunchtime is best spent watching Two Broke Girls, Fridays are the best day of the week because you go to King's Head for lunch (and you only order the cajun chicken pasta), you drink beer, and you play 30 second DJ. I also learned never to succumb to peer pressure when everyone wants you to participate in a little game called "Spin and Slap."

In all honesty, I was more than pleased with my time at Honest. Callum, Kerri, Charity, Erin, Andrew and Sherril, thank you so much for taking me under you wing and spoiling me with such an awesome work placement experience. You guys are the bomb diggity. Miss you lots! -Anja Hladky

I'm sure everyone, or most of you have heard about the ridiculously expensive bar tab the Boston Bruins racked up after they won the Stanley Cup this year. But, if you didn't, well, here's a little infographic for you to help you get a better idea of just how $156,000 could be spent on drinks in a single night. All I'm saying is, I wish I was the server that night because, good god that tip would have been amazing. I also can't resist pointing out the very disappointing amount of Bud Lights drank that night. Bud light guys, really? Come on.

For the past couple of days I've been doing a little Spring cleaning. Except instead of being Spring, its Summer, and instead of cleaning I'm actually making a bigger mess. See, a lot of work can pile up in 10 years and that's what I'm dealing with here. I'm getting all 1o years of these print samples back in order, because needless to say, they are a little out of control. I'll be honest with you guys, it kind of looks like an episode of Hoarders in here and I'm not even half done. There is, however, some good to come out of this process (well, other than things eventually being neat and organized and all) and that is when going through piles of old stuff, some gems are bound to pop up along the way. I've decided to share some of these gems with you here today. You're welcome. Exhibit A: bright colours, and bitmaps. This is all a little bit too much for my eyes to handle. Clearly this whole trend was before my time, and I feel pretty lucky for that. Exhibit B: Check these brochures out, I don't know what to say about them other than gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis are all really fun words to say. Also, I should probably get these things off my desk before people start getting the wrong idea. Unrelated to the photos above, does anyone recognize that dashing young fellow in the photo down there? Whaaa? Who? Wait a second, is that Mr. Callum Beattie?

Well they have, but not in a bad way. Thursdays around here have now turned into
bring-your-dog-to-work day. Which just happens to be one of the best ideas I think anyone has ever had. Well, at least in the top 10. We had kind of tossed around the idea a few months ago to the ol' boss, the head honcho, el capitano around here. But, being the new girl I was a little weary of making the first move. Since then Charity has started here with us, and obviously wasn't quite as weary as I (I think you know how the rest of this story goes). However we both were slightly worried that the first bring-your-dog-to-work day might be our last after the first day's little episode... Lets just say someone's pooch was feeling a little adventurous that day, and he may or may not have made his way onto the elevator, and when that same elevator came back up and the doors opened well, maybe he wasn't on it. All is well though, we found him moments later in the basement, presumably getting a sweet treat from the vending machine. So, without further adieu meet Winston and Coco. Winston, my pride and joy is that handsome little fellow on top, and Coco is that sassy little chihuahua on the bottom.

Folklorama? There's an app for that. So you're sitting at the Scotish pavilion at Folklorama eating your haggis and savouring your second three finger scotch and thinking to yourself, "Rrrright. I wish I could tell all ma frrrriends aboot the grrreet time ahm a havin'." when two things dawn on you. Number one, you can now rate your Folklorama experience with this nifty new iPhone app. And number two, you wonder why you're affecting a terrible Scottish accent (a la Mike Myers in So I Married and Axe Murderer) while you're neither Scottish or actually talking.

That's right. Now you too can think and speak in horribly put-on accents while rating your favourite pavilions on the brand new Folklorama app developed by the fine folks at Honest Agency. The app gives the user the ability to look up show times and descriptions, get directions to pavilions, view ratings from other people, as well as post experiences to Facebook. It's so good it makes me want to yell "OPA!" and smash a plate across my monitor.



 

Last week, as we were frantically moving toilets around the office, I got an e-mail from Claire Watson at IABC (International Association of Business Communicators). It seems our Folklorama Rebrand won a Silver Leaf award of merit in the 2010 competition, ranking it among the top 20 per cent of all work that was submitted.

This is particularly pleasing because: 1) IABC is a well-respected truly international organization that sets and holds high standards for communication 2) we won the award when they moved it from the original category of Marketing Communication to Brand Communication and 3) we would have scored much higher if we had before and after stats to prove effectiveness—something all communicators would love to do on every campaign, but rarely can because time and money gets in the way.

So, congratulations to our own Kerri Lynn Wilkinson, who created this brand and literally made it dance. The evaluators called it "stunning creative and excellent branding work."

And thanks to the Board, Leadership Team and volunteers at Folklorama, who recognized the need and worked with us to define where they're heading and why.

It's been a great project for a fabulous client—the award just adds to the fun.

Heeeeere's Johnny! Well, Jon Hendricks to be more exact. CTV News was in the haus earlier today talking QR Codes with yours truly. "QR what now?" you ask? QR codes are those little computery looking pictures you see on some ads and packaging that, when scanned by your smart phone, reveal all sorts of magical digitized surprises in the form of special offers, videos, and whatever other nuggets some marketing superstar comes up with. "Wait Callum, I still don't get it. Tell me more." Well, for example, in Sheps Hair Transplant Clinic's most recent promotion, clients can get instant gratification by scanning the QR code found on ads around town which will lead them to a mobile site. The mobile site offers a $500 coupon and a 2011 digital desktop calendar featuring more of the pin-up girls we've all grown to know and love. If you're a little prudish, you may want to stay away from the calendar as there are some slightly more racy ads included that we couldn't put in advertisements. However, if you're one of those guys who wishes they could have Sheps pin-up girls to look at all year round, then wish granted. Just scan the code at the bottom of this post with your smartphone/iphone/blackberry etc. You won't be disappointed.



As an aside, if you STILL don't know what the H-E-double hockey sticks I'm talking about, go to the app store on your iPhone and search for ScanLife. Then use it to scan the code above. Blackberry guys, well, there should be a scanner on your phone already. If not, you should be able to do the same thing as the iPhone. Good luck.

My wife and I were down in Minneapolis the other weekend on a good ol' fashion "working holiday". That is, under the guise of a holiday, we spent a good portion of four days at IKEA and other stores purchasing furniture for our new office. It was less a holiday as it was an exercise in patience, what with the multiple trips to the checkout, driving through the city's first snow storm of the year and missing pretty much every exit on the freeway. All that, however, I can handle. What I can't handle is not being able to get a single good cup of coffee when you need it the most. Case in point: I like McDonald's coffee. And for those who are sitting there saying to themselves "McDonald's coffee sucks", check again mr(s) negative, it's actually pretty much on par with Tim Hortons. And for those who are saying to themselves "Well Tim Hortons sucks too", while I neither agree or disagree with you, billions of coffees sold per minute says you're wrong. Anyhoo, my point was, every time we stopped for coffee, we were punched in the face with a giant handful of disappointment. Whether it was McDonald's (undrinkable), our Hotel room (upsetting), our Hotel's restaurant (disturbingly unsettling), or IKEA (curiously flavourful, just not the flavour of coffee) we could not for the life of us find a good cup of coffee. And yes, we could have tracked down a Starbucks but surprisingly, there wasn't one near our hotel. So, on to the point of this post. On our last day, just before we were about to leave the city, we decided to stop off at this breakfast joint called the Bad Waitress. For me it was the culinary highlight of the trip. I was half expecting bad service given the name (and would willingly accept if they would just give me a good cup of coffee). To my delight, the service and the coffee were both excellent. Not as excellent, however, as the restaurant itself. Every table was "numbered" with superhero or monster cards, there were campy movie posters on the wall, and the theme was both simple and consistently presented throughout the restaurant, right through to the washrooms. Kudos to you, Bad Waitress. You saved my taste buds.

Another intern post! My name is Meredith, and I was at Neuhaus through a work placement arranged by Martha Street Studio, as a member of their Advanced Graphic Design class. I'm also a student at the University of Manitoba's School of Art, where I'm doing my thesis in graphic design. Other than that, I dabble in printmaking (specifically, stone lithography and silkscreen), ceramics (you should see my tiny replica Stephen Colbert) and paper-cutting (always be prepared: carry a spare pack of x-acto knife blades in your bag just in case). I was only at Neuhaus for a week, but that was long enough to know I'll miss it when I go back to class. Before I graduate in the spring, I'm very grateful to have the experience of being in a studio and seeing how work is distributed, how varied projects can be, and just how many revisions can be called for by clients. All in all, a much more involved process than what I'm used to, with the added bonus of seeing your work printed and distributed at the end! That's still a novelty to me, but somehow I don't think that'll get less exciting once I'm out in the industry. At least, I sincerely hope it won't.



Stephen Colbert thanks YOU, Callum, Kerri, Sherril, Robyn, and Andrew! For the opportunity, the experience, and the memories.

Meredith Holigroski