My buddies over at Burnkit, the hottest web design and creative services firm in Vancouver, launched their new website today… and it’s smokin’. They are a part of a bunch of boutique design agencies that are participating in a web redesign contest called May 1st ReBoot.

The site features video embedded in Flash and lots of awesome photos of the Burnkit team and their stunning new offices in Railtown. I was honored to find upon clicking through the super creative ‘Team’ section of the site that a couple of my photos had been used on Jeremy Crowle’s profile. Swedish! I should probably also mention, that like any uber-hip new media outfit… they have their own Facebook group.

Solid work guys. Can’t wait to see what you come up with next.

Raincity Studios launched their new company website and blog today. Mark Yuasa and the rest of the crew worked on the design of another site I’ve been developing and now have a beauty of their own too. If you are looking for custom web design or themes for blogs and content management systems you should think about hiring them. Thanks for the help getting 2010.dailyvancouver.com off the ground boys!

New Website Completed: 2010 Daily Vancouver is Now Online -

RCS completed this week the design of 2010.dailyvancouver.com, a dynamic website providing information on the upcoming Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010.

From Raincity Studios New Media Design blogs (feed)
See also links to this feed and more from this feed

[Vancouver Winter Olympics on Feedster]

The Standard: Site Launch: Just A Gwai Lo

The new Raincity design for Just a Gwai Lo is up.

The Firm List interviews designer friend Paul Jarvis and talks about web applications, having your clients do the selling for you, and half-crazed Canadian mounties.

“FL: When I crossed over the border from the US, I was hit by signs that said “think metric.” In that same vein, what do you think are the differences between web design in Canada versus the US (or anywhere else)? Is it as simple as a conversion formula or something deeper?

Paul: i think there are differences between designers from each country, but it’s a subtle sociological/cultural thing that only other people in the industry could pick up on, and sometimes even they can’t. since design is really rooted in culture, if two cultures are kind of similar, then the same will show through in designs. another item to think about is that since the web is “global” most of the cultural influences are from the same source (the web), regardless of country, since anyone in any country can see the same sites.

the majority of my clients are american though, and i think if my designs were recognizably canadian, i wouldn’t get as much US work. in proposals and filler text though i always try and excert my canadianness as much as possible with adding “u”s to words like colour and favourite and writing cheque with the que instead of the eck.

FL: In addition to web applications & websites, you feature various other projects, including twotiny, a set of icons. Tiny icons. First off, why tiny? And then, how does this fit into the overall picture you have for twothirty?

Paul: “tiny” because the icons are smaller than most other icon sets and only come in that size. they fit into the overall picture in so much as they are a new area for me to explore that i haven’t before. i’ve run many startup companies, but they’ve all been service-based. so having, marketing and selling a product was something new to me. it’s been pretty good so far, and i’ve already broken my initial sales goal (which really weren’t too high to begin with). another side project of “twothirty” was pseudodictionary.com, which is still online, although doesn’t get the visitors it used to (at it’s peak it was breaching 500,000 visitors a month).”

Read the rest of the interview - http://spotlights.firmlist.com/twothirty/

Here is an important message to corporate marketers via Blogging Planet… Enter the Conversation! This article is a great setup to some ideas I’ll be posting here soon.

“Your customers are talking about you. They talk to their friends, their colleagues, your competitors, the press. Generally, except perhaps in the last case, what they say doesn’t make it into the public sphere.

But what happens when they start writing about you on their blogs? Do you know what they are saying? Are they your best advocate? Or, are they frustrated and, unable to find an effective communications channel into your organization, blogging their frustrations? Are they forming fan clubs? Or are they running yourcompanysucks.com?

Your customers can be your best friend and your worst enemy. They can spread word of your product, increasing sales. They can provide valuable input into future products.

They can also destroy your brand.

Seth Godin is a master marketer and pretty much wrote the book on how ideas spread online. Here’s some tips from his blog today on how to make your blog popular.

Here’s how blogs get popular:

step 1: run some sort of poll that lots of other bloggers link to
step 2: if the poll is about you, link to it: Link: The 2005 Business Blogging Awards - Best Marketing Blog.
step 3: be controversial. Try to get a CNN VP to resign under pressure. Yell when you can speak, scream when you can whisper.
step 4: write stuff worth reading. The thing is, it’s up to you/us, the readers, to decide what “worth reading” means. If we read, talk about and link to the stuff that’s thin or short-lasting or flamboyant, then that’s what we’re going to get, right?

I love these end of the year best and worsts. Here’s a good one from Laura Ries‘ The Origin of Brands blog with the world of brandings big winner and loser from 2004.

BIGGEST BRAND WINNER of 2004: Apple iPod

Ipod - The brilliantly branded, designed, and advertised iPod is my clear choice for Brand Winner of the year. The product is brand divergence at its best. A single focused device that was conceived to be the very best music player period. It also helped pioneer the hard-disk-drive-music player category. Today’s music player of choice, thanks to Apple, is the iPod.

Through the third quarter of 2004, Apple has sold 6 million iPods, since they were introduced in 2001. The last quarter alone, they moved two million units. Estimates indicate that Apple could sell up to 3 million iPod in the fourth quarter of 2004. And the number would be higher if Apple could just make the hot-selling Apple Mini fast enough. Currently, 65% of all MP3 players are iPods, while 92% of all hard-disk-drive players are iPods.

Why did Apple succeed music players where so many others failed in?

In a word focus.

You know I don’t favor advertising for brand building. And when advertising is used, it should reinforce the brand message. And that is exactly what Apple did. They first used PR and a slow roll out of the iPod brand. Then Apple used advertising to accelerate the wild success of the iPod. The campaign was brilliant in its simplicity. Just silhouettes of people and an iPod. Over and over again in print and television advertising. There is nothing more to say. Except here is the iPod. People already knew what it was and how cool it was from word of mouth and PR. The advertising just reminded people. Perfect!

What should Apple do in 2005. Well they might consider getting out of the PC business and focus the whole company on iPod.

BIGGEST BRAND LOSER of 2004: Coca-Cola’s C2

Cokec2 - What were they thinking? Second only to the lunacy of launching New Coke back in 1986 was this year’s introduction of C2. C2 is a mid-calorie soda which has half the sugar and calories as regular Coke, C2 was Coca-Cola’s major new product of the year. The thinking goes that there are some people who enjoy a regular Coke sometimes, but also are trying to lose weight on low-carb diets, and don’t really like the taste of Diet Coke. So Coke makes a half-and-half product called C2. Mix one part real Coke with one part Diet Coke and there you have it.

What must have seemed like a bright idea in the boardroom has fizzled on the market. Consumers didn’t get it, didn’t want it, didn’t need it and rejected the whole idea. Note too, that Pepsi is not immune from stupidity and this year introduced Pepsi Edge, their mid-calorie soda to the same dismal results. According to recent statistics from Beverage Digest, C2’s share of supermarket soft drink sales was 0.4 percent though early October. Pepsi Edge was 0.3 percent.

But it’s Coke that deserves the title of Biggest Brand Loser of 2004. The most valuable brand in the world (according to Interbrand.com) should know better. Coke is a company in trouble. They have line extended Coke to death and have not had a successful new brand launch in 40 years since the introduction on Sprite. They have been line extending and introducing me-too products that have been unable to compete with the first and leading brand in the category:

Dr Pepper, the first spicy soda, is a success, Mr. Pibb from Coke is not.

Mountain Dew, the first high-caffeine citrus soda, is a success, Surge from Coke is not.

Gatorade, the first sports drink, is a success, PowerAde from Coke is not.

Snapple, the first all-natural beverage, is a success, Fruitopia from Coke is not.

Red Bull, the first energy drink, is a success, KMX is not.