Over the duration of my college career I discovered I have a strong preference for hand-crafted design. Throughout my first year at TBG I have tried to work it into as many projects as I can. This style of design fits well with our pro-bono work for a local ballet school and Habitat for Humanity. However, the majority of our regular clients are hi-tech, B2B companies, and the issue that always arises is: “Is there a place for hand crafted design in the hi-tech B2B world?”  Read more...

Halloween is the one time of the year where we all seek a bit of fear. Whether it’s watching scary movies or dressing up in a ghoulish costume, we love the excitement and adrenalin created by fear. The rest of the year, however, we do everything we can to avoid fear because it sucks the joy out of our lives and compromises our decision-making. This is true not only in our personal lives, but in the way we conduct ourselves at work.

For marketers, fear impacts our decision making at work on three levels; our personal fears, our clients fears, and our audiences’ fears.  Read more...

The other day, I came across these videos on a site called “The Fun Theory”. According to its creators, the site ” is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better”.  Read more...

We used to have a red upholstered chair and ottoman in our office. It was incredibly ugly. However, it moved with us wherever we went and had multiple homes around the office. It was the JuJu chair, and it had indescribable creative power…at least for me.  Read more...

Since starting at The Basis Group I have realized the vast difference between school and the real world, and, wow!, what a gap. Though still a student, I’ve realized in order to prepare for this transition you must take the initiative or you will find yourself in a constant struggle fighting to keep up. I obviously struggle with my inexperience and lack of know-how in daily situations, and I’m confident that every other graduate will come across these same struggles. The selling point here is that you can never be fully prepared for what is to come, but I know without doubt there are ways to help lessen the blow. Looking at some areas of concern I will walk you through what has been successful in my attempt for preparedness in the design field.  Read more...

As I have moved into my new position as designer, I have begun to work on projects that involve strict corporate guidelines. I, like many designers, find that such rigid restrictions can kill all creativity. So I decided to explore what I feel are the problems with many corporate guidelines and how they could be resolved.  Read more...

Good Design is Good Business-to-Business
It’s always been believed that good design was mandatory in the B2C world but only a luxury in the B2B world. This may be due to the overt emotional aspect in B2C selling where as B2B tends to be a more rationale, analytical space. In some ways this is true but I’d like to examine how in many ways good design is more important in B2B marketing communications than its consumer counterpart. Because good design addresses both organization and structure of the communications as well as the presentation.  Read more...

I have an embarrassing confession to make that involves a bit of painful reminiscence. When I was in high school I was invited into the National Honor Society. While my inclusion in this organization resulted in nothing more than an unremarkable note on my first resume, the memory of the actual induction ceremony is something that still causes my chin to fall and my shoulders to slump.  Read more...