thirst » Editorial

Corktown Newsletter

James Caldwell — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:30:21 +0000

After having moved back to Toronto I wanted to get involved with my community. I live in a part of Toronto called Corktown, which is an historic Old Town neighbourhood in the midst of massive changes. Corktown has immense potential and it is because of this fact that I decided to contribute my time and accept to be part of the ‘Corktown Residents and Business Association’ – (CRBA).

A little background

This neighbourhood originated in the early 1800s and was a home to many Irish emigrants from the County Cork. Across the street from me is the first Catholic parish built in Toronto in 1887 named St. Paul’s Basilica, and around the corner is the oldest church in Toronto, Little Trinity Church which was built in 1843. Since these early years this community has undergone many changes unfortunately not all for the better and with successive ‘Ward 28’ governments the whole lower east side of Toronto has been a dumping ground for the highly medicated or impoverished of Toronto. But things are hopefully changing.

And Now

At the CRBA I am tasked with membership and communication. To this end I am using my passion to help improve and promote the area as a family community and get more neighbours involved with improving our streets and homes. One of my specific responsibilities is the Corktown newsletter which I recently branded ‘The Corktowner’. The newsletter is basically an eight page black and white document with a run of about 1200. Besides from my skill set, my reasoning to tackle this eight page quarterly publication was to bring some professionalism and consistency to the most read voice of Corktown. My thinking is simple; more people will get involved, advertise and promote Corktown if there is a sense of maturity and pride that emanates from its image.

My aspirations are that this newsletter can act as one of the major catalysts to not just a Corktown revival but resurgence. I do enjoy this area and hope that my efforts will contribute a sense of pride and commitment that all my neighbours will act upon.

E-zine Explodes Online

James Caldwell — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:58:05 +0000

This e-zine made its move to being an online publication and performed spectacularly well. The viewership numbers after the redesign were up substantially.

Client

Morbid Outlook

Period

08.2001 – 11.2001

Client Bio

The premier Gothic lifestyle online magazine portal.

Personal History

There are markets everywhere. This project was for a friend who decided that she wanted a more polished look for her e-zine that was easier to maintain. As a side note, this magazine is still hand coded and would do much better if moved to a CMS.

Objective

To increase the number of viewers online, to enhance and support greater advertising revenue potential and to expand the base viewing audience.

Noteworthy

Thirst completely overhauled Morbid Outlook’s online experience. The new site has easy access to much more content. The levels of editorial are supported within a clear navigational structure and all pages are enhanced by leveraging the site’s personalities and artists. Only a month after the redesign, the hits doubled, the average length of visit increased over 60% and the number of pages viewed per visit more than doubled. Morbid Outlook now has an easily scaleable template framework to facilitate its strong site growth.

Vendor

Thirst

Cahners Evolves its Vortal

James Caldwell — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:50:37 +0000

Cahners wanted to be the ‘E-business Portal’. They enjoyed a mix of advanced technology and they had a tremendous amount of wholly owned content to make it an ultimate business vortal destination.

Client

Cahners

Period

07.2000 – 10.2000

Client Bio

A leading provider of specialized business information through electronic media.

Personal History

This is a project that would have kept everyone busy for a great long time, but in the end, Cahners made the choice not go through with a massive redesign of all its online properties.

Objective

‘To become the number one Business Vortal’

Noteworthy

Branding of properties into a Meta, Vortal, Zine, and Article levels. Leveraging the authors of each inpidual magazine to define an authority. Cross-pollination of information from related brands and from the ‘elogic’ content aggregation engine.

Vendor

Hired by IAB (Roger Black)

The Guardian UK Online

James Caldwell — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 16:29:04 +0000

The Guardian Unlimited hired Neville Brody to make the Guardian Online infinitely flexible and readable. In turn he needed help and called the IAB studious where John Schmitz and I fleshed out ideas and finalized the design.

Client

The Guardian

Period

04.1998 – 08.1998

Client Bio

One of the most successful and most read newspapers in the world.

Personal History

I was ever so lucky to get an opportunity to work with Neville Brody on this project so early in my new career at IAB. I can remember when this project came into the office, John Schmitz thought that I may enjoy working on it because of my editorial background and I jumped at the opportunity. Still today I think that this modular design approach is one of the best examples of great content design. The Guardian was kept clean of superfluous design additions and clearly focused on an exciting and varied layout.

Objective

Fully explore the relationship of a traditional and online medium; to make sure that the final result was both easy to work within and exciting.

Noteworthy

Worked in partnership with Neville Brody’s London studio to push newspaper design to the edge. Completely modern and modular, easy to update and typographically rich. This traditional newspaper’s brand was pushed to its online limits.

Vendor

Hired by IAB (Roger Black)

Univision moves Online

James Caldwell — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 00:39:47 +0000

Univision decided to make their move online. As a result, Univision’s new hispanic portal contains separate channels for content and an online shopping experience specifically designed for their culture. These designs enabled Univision to take new market share and solidify the hispanic market in the United States.

Client

Univision

Period

05.1999 – 07.2000

Client Bio

The largest and most influential Hispanic television media company in the United States.

Personal History

This was a biggie. Univision was a very important client and spent a lot of money to put itself online. Univision hired IBM for its back end, teamed with IAB for its front end design and editorial leadership and the Gryphon Group for acting as the interim CTO and as an ambassador for technology decisions. Univision also partnered with a major hispanic sales organization to power its store front for their shopping channel. There were many players all trying to work together to deliver a great experience for Univision’s dedicated viewers. Although I can remember this being a struggle at times, the final product was very good and really delivered a distinctive, very hispanic brand online. I also formed a great friendship from this venture with my future business partner Michael Nicklas.It is unfortunate that Univision did not keep this design. Their present design is nondescript and lacks a visual identity that resonates with their brand.

Objective

An online venture to extend the Univision brand to the web and initiate the convergence of television and the Internet.

Noteworthy

A branding umbrella approach was taken for Univision. The original television logo was extended to include the “.com” and the channels within were represented as sub-brands. To extend their content online, the Univision stars were leveraged to create a unique and targeted online family, an integrated e-commerce experience was created, a scaleable template framework was developed to facilitate realistic site growth and easy manageability and lastly a comprehensive staffing and workflow plan was provided. Univision rose to #1 within six months after this launch.

Vendor

Hired by IAB (Roger Black)

Newsweek moves Online

James Caldwell — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:41:05 +0000

Newsweek should be instantly recognizable for most people and because of this fact, the staff wanted an online extension that kept as faithful as possible to their print publication while establishing it’s own personality.

Client

Newsweek

Period

02.1999 – 06.1999

Client Bio

Weekly American news magazine.

Personal History

I always enjoy redesigning newspapers or magazines, on or offline. Newsweek was no different. Walking into their offices felt familiar and I understood the staff well. This bunch were more like newspaper people than magazine people and very intent on making sure that their content was king. They wanted boldness and readability, they wanted the print brand recognizable in their online brand and they wanted their magazine to take another step forward online.

Objective

To redesign the logo and website for Newsweek online but maintain the instantly recognizable style of the print magazine’s visual identity.

Noteworthy

Extended the print brand online. Hired the original typographer, Jim Parkinson, to graft ‘.com’ onto the logo. The website gained a new navigational structure, flexible templates, and more content (copy and images) on the home page.

Vendor

Hired by IAB (Roger Black)

The New York Daily News Online

James Caldwell — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:30:49 +0000

This was a very involved online extension of a well respected and time honored print brand. The look and feel of the New York Daily News in its traditional printed medium is unmistakable to every New Yorker and so the task at hand was formidable. The starting point was the clean up of a trusted and familiar logo in order to extend it online and then the redesign of the digital ‘look and fell’ for the newspaper.

Client

New York Daily News

Period

07.2000 – 03.2001

Client Bio

Largest-selling New York metropolitan daily, covering stories that affect New Yorkers.

Personal History

To become properly acquainted with the newspaper I lived with it for approximately two weeks. I noticed that it was portable and easily readable on the subway but then when I did get to work I had to wash my hands of the black ink. It was fairly right-wing, had a huge library of photos at it’s disposal (larger than that of the New York Times) and if you were a sports fanatic this was the newspaper you read. My conclusion after those two weeks was that its brand was already a definite force, stable and well respected. I went into the pitch concentrating on the fact it was an everyman’s newspaper, familiar to every New Yorker and part of their daily routine for that subway ride into work and therefore its online extension should be just that. What followed was a bold, assertive design reminiscent of its rational brother.

It is interesting to note that newly redesigned online version has completely lost its faithfulness to the traditional newspaper and is now unfortunately nondescript.

Objective

To extend the print brand online.

Noteworthy

It was decided that the online brand should be more faithful to the newspaper. The previous attempt to port the brand online was too “tricky” and nondescript so much of the NYDN style became lost on the low resolution of a monitor. As a result, the logo was redesigned so that the online identity and section identities would be harmonious with the newspaper’s, the editorial voice and image content was augmented and the advertising placement was substantially improved. In behind the scenes, the client-side interface for the delivery and deployment of content was vastly improved a complete restructuring of the content production process to ease workflow concerns was implemented.

Vendor

Hired by Circle.com, a division of Havas.

Peace Magazine

James Caldwell — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:17:40 +0000

This was an independent magazine (as you would think independent movie), lots passion and no money. This redesign and templating structure was voluntary work for a worthy cause. It was mass produced by photocopiers, hand stapled and distributed to the various magazine and book stores in Toronto.

Client

Peace Magazine

Period

1994

Client Bio

Led by well-known Canadian peace activist, Meta Spencer, Ph.D., this is a not-for-profit magazine.

Objective

To enhance and simplify the visual impact on the magazine stands.

Noteworthy

Thirst donated the time to help Peace Magazine increase its sales. The magazine’s layout was greatly simplified and the “desktop published look” was finally abandoned.

Vendor

Thirst

Midas

James Caldwell — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:19:25 +0000

Midas hired Thirst for a lot of it’s internal promotional work and bilingual communications. Whether it was cue cards for employee learning or their internal magazine, they wanted to help their company by focusing on their employees enjoyment and sound teaching practises.

Client

Midas

Period

1995 – 1996

Client Bio

Midas is one of the world’s largest providers of automotive services.

Personal History

Simply another great experience, one in which I made a permanent friend of my direct contact. The work at Midas was varied so I had a lot of fun with it and a few pieces, like the magazine, were time driven seasonal tasks that were not only fun to do, but just as important to keep Thirst’s bottom line healthy.

Objective

To unify the national spirit of Midas employees.

Noteworthy

This was an internal magazine circulated to all Midas shops within Canada. Various feedback mechanisms were used to get the employees to contribute, such as contests, promotions and bragging rights to their own automotive past-times. This magazine was extremely successful, and promoted good faith within the franchises.

Vendor

Thirst

ODA (Ontario Dental Association)

James Caldwell — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:59:17 +0000

As it is a non-profit, this company has to use it’s money sparingly and engage resources only when they believe it can help their directives. They service both Ontario dentists and the people of Ontario to help educate them and to provide consistency to the practise. Thirst tried to help them with their publication redesign.

Client

Ontario Dental Association

Period

2000

Client Bio

The ODA is a voluntary, not-for-profit association committed to supporting its member dentists and the promotion of optimal oral health for the people of Ontario.

Personal History

Truth be told, I have a great friend who works at their office. He wanted to bring me in to enhance the look and feel of the association’s Journal.

Objective

To redesign Ontario Dentist Magazine so that it better represents the sophistication of its audience and increases the advertising value of space within its pages.

Noteworthy

Unfortunately this project was never realized and so today remains only a concept. The image below represents one of the the initial concepts for their magazine cover and the redesign of their logo.

Vendor

Thirst