We’ve been friends with the Chamber since we designed their logo in 2002. This year’s been particularly busy, though. We created the affinity program logo and designed the 2011 Leadership Winnipeg book. Through the election we worked on the creative for their Manitoba Bold Campaign—a Chamber initiative to increase prosperity Manitoba. You can expect to hear more about this groundswell campaign that’s just getting started.

Dr. Marshall Hoffer and Dr. Jack Lipkin operate a highly respected Prosthodontist practice in Winnipeg. With over 30 years of experience as leaders and teachers of advanced dentistry, they needed a brand look and feel that better reflects who they are and the basis of their work—building patient trust, based on the most current technologies, decades of experience and a practice that is entirely focussed on the patient’s well-being. “This new look is exactly what we were hoping to achieve.” says Dr. Hoffer. “It defines our practice as up-to-date, and upbeat, but at the same time a real sense of establishment is presented.”

The brand reflects the quality, personalized service and comfort that the doctors and staff talked about through the brand development process. We captured it through the use of traditional patterns, a monogram signature style and a colour palette that is strong, yet welcoming and familiar.

Their building, on the busy corner of Donald and River, was nondescript and the signage out of date. Now their real estate works double duty, acting as both their place of business and a billboard. “Our associates and acquaintances have been calling regularly to compliment us on how beautiful the building looks, adds Dr. Lipkin. “They love it, and several have inquired as to who we worked with on the project.”

The brand was launched with the exterior signage and the website and we are progressing through the interior, stationery and patient information applications.

“This new look affected our staff in ways we didn’t expect—there is excitement in the clinic and plans to carry the branding process through to other areas of the practice. Our new website is being promoted and is generating a lot of activity.”

Folklorama—as much a staple of the Winnipeg landscape as pickeral and perogies—added a new feature this summer for their 41st Festival, an iPhone app.

The Folklorama app featured everything the printed travel guide offered and a whole lot more: the GPS feature allowed patrons to plan and navigate their evenings; real-time ratings help people choose which pavilion they wanted to see; and direct links to facebook meant friends could stay in touch.

The app has been installed on 5,641 devices. Page views totaled 257,376, that’s an average of 46 page views per device. 74 different users shared content from the app 219 times on Facebook.

How do you introduce a program whose mandate is to make the world better and to do it faster? We did it over a cup of coffee.

The Impact Centre is a new initiative underway within the International Institute of Sustainable Development. With years of experience working internationally on local innovations that are proven to work, the Impact Centre can now use their experience and their networks to share solutions, where they are needed worldwide.

To get started though they need funding support. So they came to us to help them tell their story.

Do good, Better is the theme.

Given the topic, inspiration was easy. The trick for the project—much like the world—was to balance environmental, economic and social sustainability messages. And to do it in such a way that it welcomes conversation, because this isn’t the kind of conversation you can have on the fly.

Behind the Scenes:
Writing, layout and design of the brochure was only half of this project. Aside from the coffee (fair trade and organic) everything else was sourced locally. The printing, scoring, drilling and binding were done by Avenue 4 Communications. The boxes were made by Lyndon at Norquay Builders, located just outside of Winnipeg, who manufactured them to spec. The screen printing on the box and coffee bags was done by Rick at Underground Screen Printing. The IISD logos were embroidered by Nolan at Endo Clothing and the tags sewn to the bags by Kyrstin Stephenson. Even the newsprint fill was shredded in-house from our recycling.

What did we learn?
It’s great to have clients that give you creative room to stretch a bit and the Impact Centre team, led by Heather Creech, is great to work with.

If you’re in a meeting here, and it happens to be a Thursday, don’t be alarmed by the sound of fourty toes tapping the hardwoods. It’s dog day, the day when Coco and Winston come and hang out for a while. They’re pretty well-behaved for a couple of scroungers and it’s just hard to be crabby when they’re around.