Their current member firms produce most of the student learning resources currently used in Canadian schools and although they produce learning resources in a variety of media formats they were concerned that the association may be perceived in education circles as an organization whose members are principally focused on print text book production at a time when there is an increased interest in digital learning resources.

What CERC Wanted

CERC wanted to updated their image with a new logo and branding as well as revamp their existing website so it could be used as an effective communication vehicle to easily publish content to project a more accurate and up-to-date image of what the CERC member firms do.

Digital Deceptions teamed up with Lesley Kelz of Squidpress who was the lead on the project and also from Durham Region, Lesley is a graphic designer with a fair amount of design experience in the publishing industry. She was responsible for the logo and branding and my job was the web design and development.

Lesley did a great job on the logo and her choice of colours were dead on. Also I have to say when the logo was finalized she sent me the most detailed and easy to follow brand guide I have ever seen and I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I now incorporate a similar type of guide myself.

Work Better in a Team Environment

I had never worked with Lesley prior to this job and I hope we get the chance to team again on future projects, it was really great working with her.

I don’t often get to work on projects with other graphic designers and I definitely like it much better when you have a set of parameters you have to work within rather than having to think, plan and design at every pixel yourself.

It is easy to get creative block, repetitive or even burnt out when wearing so many hats on a project so it nice not to have to think about as much and use the extra brain power to focus solely on your part.

For CERC’s website I used none other than WordPress, they needed an accessible content management system that was flexible, secure and easy to use so WordPress was a no brainer.

The website is accessible and W3C standard compliant. I made a simple clean design because this is going to be a very content driven website and you can’t have the user getting lost within the design. I used the great colour scheme Lesley chose as well as some dark and light greys and some carefully chosen stock photography.

All in all it was a great project and I enjoyed working with Lesly Kelz as well as the team at the Canadian Educational Resource Counsel.

Visit the website

Well once again WordCamp Toronto has come and gone. I got to see a lot of familiar faces and just like last year’s event I met interesting people and enjoyed making new contacts while practicing the art of networking.

Some of those new people include:

• Sue Varty of Wordtree Consulting a copyrighter
• Martha Chan the owner of the Divorce Marketing Group
• Brian Caicco the lead creative and project manager of dtmedia
• Christy Heenan the founder of Virtuall a virtual assistant providing administrative and marketing support
• Mai Peck a mortgage agent from The Mortgage Centre
• Clarence Johnson a photographer and eyewear photoblogger who has a cool concept website called
• Picpu about dudes like me who were glasses (my pic on his blog)
• Laurie (didn’t catch her last name) of Elle Media
• Ruth Maude a freelance web designer (like me) who’s company is called Dandelion Web Design Inc.
• Brian Anderson a content strategist and copywriter from Strategic Content who I first met on twitter and had the pleasure to meet in person
• The mysterious guy Joe from Double Take who I did not get any contact info from, had some good fun and great conversations with you …lol
• The event organizers Mathieu Yuill of Yuill.ca and Melissa Feeney of Mel, do tell thanks for all of your hard work.

Location

This year’s event was held at the Centennial College Student Centre, first time I had been there and I thought it was a pretty good spot to have it. There was a good crowd turnout, it was spacious and wasn’t packed to the point that you felt like a herd of cattle having trouble moving around and it best of all it wasn’t hot and uncomfortable like some of these events can easily become.

The WiFi didn’t have any issues unlike other events I have been to in the past and there was a lot of crowd surfing (online, no mosh pits) and tweets going on throughout both days.

It is getting pretty late, I have (what I usually call) computer butt from sitting in crappy chairs all weekend which is my only complaint, back is killing me and my Aeron isn’t even helping so it is time to go to bed. I will write a little more about the event during the week and get into some of the presentations.

?

Wow it is WordCamp time already and I am lucky enough again this year to be speaking at it. From the exposure I got from my presentation last year and a couple of key contacts that were made, Digital Deceptions has by far had it’s most successful year since this crazy ride began.

At this years event I will be speaking with one of my partners in crime Glenn McKnight from Global Catalysts Consulting Service and our topic is “Using WordPress and Social Media to Win an Election”.

WordCamp Toronto 2010 is taking place on March 27 and 28 and will be held at the Centennial College Student Centre. You can find out all about it at the WordCamp Toronto website.

Well WordCamp Toronto is all done for another year. I had an absolute blast learning lots of new things, will probably take a few days for it all to sink in. On Saturday I did a presentation on how Digital Deceptions transitioned from a Flash based website to a WordPress Content Management System and all the benefits and doors it has opened for me over the last year.

You can find my slides here.

And the biggest surprise this weekend was Digital Deceptions taking away the Best Theme Design Award, I’m still in shock.

I would like to thank all the wonderful people I met at the conference Jason from GueRilla Marketers, Glenn from Global Catalyst, Robert from SMO Joe and Alfred from Butterscotch just to name a few. I had some great conversations talking shop.

I would also like to thank Brendan from BackSpaceStudios and Phug and all the volunteers who put on a great show,  here is the link if you want to learn all about the WordCamp Toronto 2009 conference.

Well it is official, on Saturday, May 9 at 10:45AM I will be speaking at WordCamp Toronto 2009. This is the second time Toronto is hosting the event and I have to admit that I missed the first one last year because I only started really using WordPress late last spring.

At the moment I am a little concerned about speaking in front of such a large audience but it is still a couple of months away so I have plenty of time to prepare.

Where Do You Think Will You Be In 6 Months?

This opportunity has come up at an interesting time in my career. Six months ago I restructured my entire business model, switched from a Flash website to WordPress and incorporated (SEO) search engine optimization and online marketing strategies into my game plan and have to say that last September I could never have imagined doing so well or that I would even be doing a presentation at WordCamp Toronto.

Anyways On With the Show

I have been to a few similar type events namely Flash in the Can and absolutely love seeing industry people talking shop, it is one thing following somebody’s work online and in magazines but when you get to see them talk and then get a chance to meet them it is a whole other experience, kind of like stalking…lol.

So Who Am I Going To Stalk At WordCamp?

Brendan Sera-Shriar

Last summer I took a WordPress course at the Rich Media Institute which was taught by Brendan Sera-Shriar who runs BackSpace Studios, Phug – Open Source Culture and who also happens to be the big man behind the show, I learnt so much from him in such a little time so I am looking forward to hear what he has got to say. Also I am really interested in his release of FlashPress which is as you guessed it Flash using WordPress as an CMS engine.

Peter Flaschner

Peter Flaschner from The Blog Studio is another gentleman I am looking forward to hearing speak, he has been doing what I have been recently doing but for much, much longer so I will be like a sponge trying to soak up all he has to say.

Nick La

Nick La of Designer Wall, Best Web Gallery and N.Design Studio who I have followed for a couple of years will also be speaking. Nick is always sharing his knowledge and presenting it in a way that is easy to read and visually pleasing.

Matt Brett

Although Matt isn’t on the list of speakers a little birdie (tweet) told me he will be at the event. He happens to be a big time WordPresser who is also from the Durham Region like myself and I have followed his work for quite a while now, you can find his awesome site at MattBrett.com I have never really spoke to him before but I have been following up on his blog and tweets so I guess I am a true stalker…lol, anyway I look forward to hopefully meeting him at the venue.

That is just a few of the people I want to see, I could go on and on but I will save it for another post. here is the official WordCamp Toronto website.

The last five Digital Deceptions sites have either been full Flash sites or hybrids (using both Flash and HTML) which as with most technologies have their pros and cons.
Back in early 2000 when I was in college Flash was quite new and everyone wanted to use it. I’m sure you all remember those huge Flash intros; you could literally wait a couple of minutes just to see a company’s logo spin and they probably paid a fortune for it as well.

After finishing school and coming from a multimedia program I naturally used Flash to create most of my websites. I would be lying if I said that Flash wasn’t always my first choice because I definitely felt more comfortable with it as opposed to other web platforms, but if a clients website didn’t need to be animated, flashy (for lack of a better word), contain music, video or their target audience was much older I used Flash very sparingly if at all.

Most of the work I did was a reflection of my own website Digital Deceptions, clients would say “I loved what you did on this or that project” and usually to achieve what they wanted the only option was Flash, that’s why they came to me. So I guess what has made me stand out from the crowd has also kind of painted me into a corner in some respects.

To Flash or Not to Flash

I have never liked being pinned down or labeled a one trick pony and to me being the go to Flash guy was just that. Way back in college one of my teachers noticed I started all of my designs on a black background and he told me to get out of that kind of habit right away and use colours that I am not comfortable with or he would choose the colour palette for me.

So once again I have come out of my comfort zone by making the latest Digital Deceptions website The Free Lance which is PHP and fully database driven by WordPress. Just because it much more search engine friendly the traffic to my site has almost tripled and the average time visitors stay on the site has multiplied tenfold which is one of the major goals I wanted to accomplish with the latest build.

Don’t get me wrong I still love to use Flash and I’m very aware of its uses both good and bad believing it has a time and a place in certain projects, for instance I have used it for the search box in my website because I could customize the look of it much more closely to resemble the look and feel of the site’s design.

Is the Medium the Message?

In the end as with any project it is about the message and the information you are trying to get across to your audience, whatever technologies you use are just tools to support those ideas and shouldn’t in any way dictate anything different.

Being your own boss we as freelance designers sometimes get caught up in all these technologies and get lost forgetting the fundamentals, so as with any business model it is a good idea to evaluate your game plan. It is also a good idea to reevaluate your skills, equipment, what technologies you use and make any necessary adjustments before they become major changes.