uc/C
Article: Learning to Fly
uc/c principal Lucas Warren has a new piece in Alberta Venture magazine about the future of the Red Deer Regional Airport.
Publication: Explore
uc/c has recently completed the design, layout and printing of Explore: A New Era in Sports Tourism — the City of Leduc‘s inaugural publication to promote sports tourism in the Leduc region.
Website: Tee Pee Construction
uc/c has completedthe design and launch of www.teepeeconstruction.com. Based out of Wetaskiwin, Alberta, Tee Pee Construction has earned a reputation for building quality, affordable homes, apartments and hotels. A customer builder, their goal is quality and customer satisfaction every time. For the site, we wanted to keep the design clean and simple — like a business [...]
Website: Little Bees Photography
uc/c is proud to announce the completion of Little Bees Photography website re-launch. The goal was to let the photos do the talking and so we went with a simple WordPress installation and slightly tweaked and personalized theme. Unlike a lot of photography websites, we decided not to use any Flash.
Advertisement: Fines Are Over (If you want it)
During March the Wetaskiwin Public Library is running a fine-relief campaign to encourage people to bring back their overdue books. In the spirit of John and Yoko, uc/c designed a stark text- based poster to get peoples’ attention and realize that we do indeed live in a forgiving community.
Advertisement: Norsk Sprak Timer
The City of Wetaskiwin Archives asked us to create a poster and a simple invitation to help promote their first Norsk Sprak Timer (Norwegian Language Hour). Playing on the fun (yet, apparently inaccurate) imagery of the Vikings, we were able to create a simple, yet effective combination of materials. The invitations were printed 4 x 5 cards, with the graphic on the front and the event information on the back.
Website: Prairie Fuel Advisors
uc/c recently completed overseeing the website re-launch of www.prairiefueladvisors.ca.
(de)generative website project
At the risk of getting a little too artsy-fartsy, I thought that this piece by zach gage was interesting as both an art installation and a commentary on online life and information.
Campaign: Fact\Fiction
The City of Wetaskiwin Archives wanted a series of ads to promote their services to people in the city who might not even know they exist. We came up with ‘Fact\Fiction’ — a series that is meant to poke a little fun at Wetaskiwin’s little known history as well as promote not only the fact that there is an archives but that it offers some pretty cool services (like photo reprints).
Besides, everybody loves dogs … and flexible men.
Article: Serving the unserved
This is a box out of uc/c’s article “Are we there yet?“, an article about the current state of Alberta’s SuperNet project. Lucas Warren talks to Graham Fletcher, President of the Internet Centre, a Canadian ISP fighting to bring high-speed connectivity to rural Alberta in an innovative (and currently unapproved) method. The entire article was [...]
Article: Are we there yet?
In this article, Lucas Warren of uc/communications examines the current state of Alberta’s SuperNet project. He finds that while major progress connecting municipalities has been made, there are still areas of the province unserved by high-speed connectivity — creating a rural digital divide.
Advertisement: Peace of Mind
Here are two versions of an ad we created for the Prairie Fuel Advisors to use in their Manitoba campaign. The first we had a bit of fun with, the second being more serious. Which one do you think was ran in the end?
Advertisement: City of Wetaskiwin
Two advertisements that we did for the City of Wetaskiwin. “Rethink” was designed for Alberta Venture and needed to skew to an economic development audience. “Living Costs Less”, on the other hand, was placed in an annual map publication and was meant to show a different, softer side of Wetaskiwin.
Print vs digital … keep beating that horse
Thought that this was an interesting comment from Peter Feld on the ongoing digital vs. paper debate (well, it’s more of an autopsy that a debate).
Quick, Cheap … and Good
A tip of the hat to the marketing genuises at the Town of Banff who continue to do amazing work promoting their municipality. Not only did they surprsise everyone with their Banff Refreshing campaign but they’ve been quick to capitalize on the “Crasher Squirrel” meme sweeping the Internets.
Advertisement: Our Green Year
Two posters that uc/c designed for the City of Wetaskiwin’s, Wetaskiwin Tomorrow initiative.
Newsflash: Google needs more of your information
“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.”
Twitpocaclypse — Hard to say, harder to predict
The countdown to the Twitpocalypse is on. Actually, it’s been on for awhile. And like the apocalypse, it’s been predicted more than once. Given, however, the recent (and ongoing?) DDoS attack on Twitter more attention is being paid to the services limitations and, more importanltly, it’s open-source alternatives.
Wired has a good explaination of the situation in its article “Open Source ‘Twitter’ Could Fend Off the Next Twitpocalypse”.
The truth will … probably get you in trouble?
There is a fasincating two part-series about lying by Errol Morris and Ricky Jay in The New York Times. It’s very relevant to public relations, not only because he talks about the master P.T. Barnum, but because when things go bad in an organization or municipality the first tendency is to lie (well, technically, spin [...]
IE6 doesn’t know when to say goodbye
“As web workers, sometimes we have to walk a fine line between keeping clients happy, and providing the best possible services. For web developers like me, the issue of whether to continue supporting Internet Explorer 6 is becoming a major headache.”
2016 Logos: Who do you like?
“Two months from now the International Olympic Committee will name the host city of the 2016 Summer Olympics. If the decision were based solely on design, which candidate would win?”
10 words not to have in your press release
Some good advice from Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks on the importance of knowing your audience and talking to them, you know, like real people.
Poster: Welcome to Summer BBQ
Part of our work for the Wetaskiwin Tomorrow project.
They needed something a little different to attract people BBQ dealing with sustainability. Because of the subject matter – a little dry – we tried to spice things up a little bit with humour and some minimalist design.
Poster: Take A Picture
Part of our work for the Wetaskiwin Tomorrow project.
We hadn’t plan on doing another poster but the quality of the entries was just so good it was decided it was worth promoting the contest and the photographs.
Poster: What does your Wetaskiwin look like?
Working with the City of Wetaskiwin and the Wetaskiwin Tomorrow initiative, we’ve been doing some design work to help promote their various contests, events and other publicity materials. Here is a copy of the first poster in a series promoting the summer photo contest “What does your Wetaskiwin Look Like”.
Article: The importance of rural Canada
This is an article that uc/c wrote for the AAMDC’s Rural Routes magazine. It’s promoting the release of the report that we help write, edit and layout — One Vision, Many Voices: How to Build a Sustainable Rural Canada.
Winter Advisor
This issue has an article from Freckle Creative on developing your companies brand (we should probably give them a call) as well as one from Western Sky Management Associates on effective project management.
Report: One Vision, Many Voices
Our largest project to-date, One Vision, Many Voices: How to Build a Sustainable Rural Canada has been released by the AAMDC.
New Year New PiT
After a year of distributing a PDF version of the newsletter, in January we helped manage the AAMDC’s official switch to an HTML-based electronic newsletter for Partners in Trade.
Better Design/More Profits
Excellent article by Jared Spool on the importance of a properly designed user interface. Kindof funny considering our web design choice.
Article: “People Powered” Profile of MD of Crowsnest Pass
This is an article that uc/c wrote for the AAMDC’s Rural Routes magazine. It’s a profile of its newest member, the MD of Crowsnest Pass.
6 Ways to a Better Subscriber List
It’s hard to believe that there was a time, not so long ago, when people actually liked checking their email.
Fall Advisor
This quarter’s edition features excellent articles from Modern Press, Acton Consulting, as well as one from your very own uc\C about how to improve your email newsletter.
Under the Tee Pee
ucC is proud to annouce that we’ve signed a new client: Tee Pee Construction!
PIT: November
This month we profile Barnes Distribution and and Lyreco.
3 Big Projects = Good Times
Over the last month we worked with the AAMDC to manage three projects related to their Fall 2008 Centennial Convention.
PiT: October
High fall harvest demand, a strong trucking sector, plus both scheduled and unscheduled issues with refineries in Alberta all add up to not enough Diesel for farmers, truck drivers, municipalities and anyone else depending on Diesel.
AAMDC Advisor
The premier issue of the AAMDC Advisor was sent out today. It’s the first and only email newsletter for the AAMDC that’s HTML-based and not an attached PDF. As it was our first time too, the whole process was a good learning experience. Designing for an HTML newsletter is a challenge because the look is not static. [...]
PiT: July
This month we profiled Brandt Tractor and Alberta Mobility.
Advertisement: Put Down the Pump, Pick up the Phone
uc\c was asked to create something that drew attention to the free fuel analysis feature of the Prairie Fuel Advisors program.
Advertisement: Feeling Empty?
The PFA wanted something with a clean design that highlighted the programs strengths. We started with a stark image of an empty fuel tank contrasted it with lots of white space and minimal text.
PiT: June
The issue features profiles of Trinus Technologies and Wolseley, as well as a write-up about the changes to the Fuel Supply Program.
Brochure: Rural Matters!
In order to promote their upcoming conference Rural Matters! the AAMDC commissioned ucC to design a small brochure that could be handed out at conferences and other events
Business Cards: JR Consulting
After designing the logo for JR Consulting, we were asked to create some business cards.
Business cards are a real challenge because they can’t just look nice, they also need to be functional and convey standard information that is, well, fairly boring. In the end, we came up with a straight-foward, classic design with a touch of flai
Logo: JR Consulting
The logo the we developed for JR Consulting came out of ariel images of Alberta’s landscape.
Four fields of green are bordered by deep brown dirt roads. What’s unique about the logo is that it’s purposely messy – the colours don’t stay in the lines or even in what would traditionally be called the “logo”. It captures a professional, yet distinctly rural feel.
