In an age of fast moving marketing, billion dollar social media property acquisitions and brand leadership on a massive scale, the Banff Springs Hotel stands out as a brand apart. It is a destination that has means different things to different travellers. Its brand stakeholders are incredibly varied. Throughout every engagement however the experiential brand of the Banff Springs Hotel consistently holds true. It stands as a reminder of what old world class and prestige truly means.
I had the pleasure of attending the first 2014 Small and Medium Business Exchange at the Toronto Regional Board of Trade. It was an inspiring and educational event that featured a keynote discussion panel led by George Babu Director, OMERS Ventures. His diverse background as once an entrepreneur and now as a Venture Capitalist made him an excellent moderator and very approachable to the other entrepreneurs in the room.
Modu Design is excited to be a Community Sponsor for Toronto Region Board Of Trade’s March 5 event: How To Raise Capital For Your Business. This is part of TRBOT’s ongoing SMB Exchange which has a stated aim of: “Inspiring Start-ups, Entrepreneurs, Innovators”.
While crawling around the vastness of the internet the other day looking for some design inspiration, I came across a pretty cool company in San Francisco. They had a beautiful website, they offered cutting edge technology, a drive to help new entrepreneurs, a sense of community and social engagement, friendly knowledgeable staff and a ton of links to industry related resources and topics.
Pretty great. But what impressed me most was that this wasn’t a digital startup or Google lab experiment. What struck me the most was that this company was a credit union. Yeah, a credit union. You know – those scrappy financial institutes that seem to only exist on the outskirts of major cities next to an old windmill.
We were just informed by HOW Magazine that after all the votes were tallied our work for Arte Brasil was voted the top winner in the 2013 Logo Design Awards.
Thank you to everyone who cast a vote for us. We couldn’t have done it without your help!
WOW, what a huge day for us…
We were informed by HOW Design earlier today that our work has been selected as on of the top 10 winners in HOW Design’s Logo Design Awards for 2013. Needless to say we are stoked!
From over 1,000 logo designs submitted globally we won our award for the work we did for Arte Brasil, a Brazilian organization actively engaged in the social fabric of Brazil, creating and implementing high quality cultural and artistic projects. Through partnerships AB is able to embrace its main goal: to mobilize society, organizations, artists and people in Brazil and worldwide.
Now the dark side of all this…
We design companies are a troublesome bunch. We are curious, inspired, fun, passionate and generally a little too scattered for our own good. We want to be everything for everyone not because we are greedy but because we believe that we can apply our problem solving process to any problem and with any client. To a certain extent that is true but it is not something to build a business on. Business is about finding a focussed need in a market and then supplying a product or service that fulfills it.
We’re living in overwhelming times. There’s information overload, advertising everywhere, social media fatigue, the list goes on. You don’t need anymore content, new shoes or super-sized meals. Scarcity is becoming more of a non-factor and economies of scale have pretty much finished scaling. Now more than ever we need stuff that’s just… better. We need healthier food, more efficient sources of energy, more relevant marketing, better recommendations, faster and more reliable internet, more user friendly technology, better designed products and services, more pleasant experiences, etc, etc, etc. We don’t have to make and consume things that aren’t good or good for us. Our global society needs to take a stand and say “I’m not going to take it anymore”. It’s time for us to stop living our lives in beta. Quantity defined the past. Quality will define the future.
A buddy asked me the other day which type of design projects I love to get from clients the most. (Well all of them of course. Keep them coming!) But if I had to choose the type of project that makes me giddy when it comes across my desk it has to be a logo design project.
Some photos from the 3D Printing Presentation run by Draft Print 3D + People & Code.
