Posted by Dom Coballe on August 7th, 2008 
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It is widely known that across the universe, the unofficial 5th season is Construction Season. Which beat out Wabbit Season about 12 years ago.
Currently, when downtown you couldn’t spit without hitting a labourer or an asphalt roller. Summer construction may mean many things to different people. To some it may say that there’s growth and expansion happening. Others may connect it with an outdated infrastructure that badly needs revitalization. Regardless, we thought why not bring the experience in full “Imax-esque” glory right up into our collective grills.
Our office construction season kick-offed this past Tuesday, and it is scheduled to run to the end of the month. That means wall to wall action of drywall and reciprocating saws in HD! The image attached gives you a small glimpse of the added space coming our way. What you don’t see, is that there’s a mass of 20 people working diligently behind the camera trying their darnedest to ignore the cacophony of power tools behind those flimsy plastic drop sheets.
Personally, my annoyance has been slightly subsided since it gave me an opportunity to use the most awesome animated gif up top. Look at those little dudes diggin’ away.
To our clients, I say this to you: Service will not be interrupted throughout the entire reno process. That’s our 76satisfaction guarantee.
Interesting fun fact: alcohol consumption rose 30% in the past 2 days.
Posted by John Sobol on August 1st, 2008 4 Comments
You may be familiar with the Italian clothing brand Diesel. Trendy, cool, hip stuff. And generally very creative campaigns highlighting their edgy brand. (For example, their logo is a guy with a Mohawk and their slogan is “Only the Brave”).
I recently visited the Diesel website and sent them this email via their customer service page:
“Hi. About 10 years ago I purchased a pair of silver Diesel glasses. I have worn them ever since. They are not only the best glasses I have ever owned but probably the best value of anything I have ever bought. They have endured despite the arrival of my two kids, who grabbed and flung them around more times than I can remember. I also love the look. You can see a picture of me wearing them if you search my name - JOHN SOBOL on Facebook. (I’m the guy with the flower on his head!
But I am not just writing to praise your glasses but to ask whether or not you still have any pairs like mine kicking around anywhere in storage. Mine are on their last legs and I haven’t found anything like them in any of the many stores I’ve been to. I would be very happy to buy a pair, or a few pairs from you, if you can locate any. Thanks.”
The next day I got this response:
John,
Thank you for contacting the Diesel Online Store.
We would like to inform you that we are the Customer Care exclusively for the Diesel Online Store, and that on the Online Store you will find a selection of products from Diesel’s latest collections. If you cannot find the product you are looking for, unfortunately this means it is currently unavailable.
We suggest you visit or contact the nearest Diesel store in your location. In order to find the store nearest to you, click on Diesel Store Locator, from the Online Store, or from the Diesel Home Page. Once in the Diesel Store Locator page, you will find the full contact details.
Please do not hesitate to contact us again should you have any questions or concerns.
Thank you,
Carlotta
Diesel Customer Care
It is not possible to reply directly to this message.
Now I know Carlotta was just doing her job as she’s been told to do it (assuming Carlotta is not simply an automated reply function, which I suspect she may be) but considering the unusual (for me, anyway) degree of loyalty I expressed to Diesel in my email, this response amounts to a complete kiss-off. How disappointing. I mean, if you are going to bother having a “Customer Care Centre” you should at least show that in some small way you do actually care about your customers. Unfortunately for me, Diesel apparently doesn’t.
Posted by Dom Coballe on May 12th, 2008 7 Comments
We work in an open concept work space, the lack of privacy is a negative agreed, but it really facilitates the expression of opinions — whether they are requested or not. The thing about spouting your opinions within your peer group, you best be ready to hear how much your thoughts sink or soar.
In the middle of our ‘pit’, we installed a ginormous whiteboard, it’s intended for brainstorming sessions, working out silky smooth code, drawing obscene doodles and other collaborative exercises. Now every week, starting last week, it will also house the 76 Top Five. What is the 76 Top Five? I am glad you asked. A theme is picked, and people (participation is optional) list their all-time top five (usually under a barrage of comments such as, ‘Are you serious?’ and ‘Nice choice pointdexter‘).
Think of this whiteboard as a window into the plethora of personalities who fill out the 76design corps.
So without further ado…
Week 1 Theme: Cinema
Brett:
- Donnie Darko
- Gimme Shelter
- Almost Famous
- 28 Days Later
- High Fidelity
Jeff:
- Goodfellas
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- And Now For Something Completely Different
- Rollerball
- Cable Guy
Jordan:
- Shawshank Redemption
- Dumb and Dumber
- True Lies
- Pulp Fiction
- Ocean’s Eleven
Julie:
- Blue Velvet
- Kill Bill Vol.2
- Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain
- Lost in Translation
- Adaptation
John:
- Seven Samurai
- The Night of the Hunter
- Rhapsody in August
- The Last Picture Show
- Kill Bill 1 & 2
Rob:
- Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
- Fubar
- American History X
- Forrest Gump
- Pulp Fiction
Dom:
- Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
- Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo
- Nuovo Cinema Paradiso
- Rushmore
- Jing wu men
Tune in next week for…76 Top Five: Music Videos!
Posted by Brett Tackaberry on April 21st, 2008 Comments Off
Speaker: Julian Dolce of Fuel Industries
The session spoke to the development process in creating www.fairiesanddragons.com.
Explore the inevitable challenges working with a highly inter-disciplinary team presents. Learn about the various tools and approaches adopted to ensure a smooth project work flow from conceptual to delivery, on time and within budget.
Challenges and moving from short-cycle projects to long term and high resource projects:
- Working with a big team
- Version control
- Bug logging
- Testing & Q/A
- Multiple locales
- Cross platform development
Step 1: choosing technologies for a desktop app installed from cd. A feature comparison and requirement checklist between Zinc, mProjector, SWF Studio, and AIR. Side bar note: current reservations with AIR are with the requirement of the AIR runtime which really puts up an obstacle for the general public and general accessibility to that platform. Chosen technologies: mProjector, Zinc, InstallBuilder (enable easy and streamlined installation), FDT (flash coding ide) and WPF (windows presentation foundation) for integration into windows platform.
Step 2: Tactics in streamlining production. A couple examples:
- Automatic nightly builds
- Image cropper and importer - automatically prepare images
- JSFL to automate flash processes =
Step 3: Debugging and QA.
- Use Mantis or Bugzilla
- Test on low spec machine
- Check OS configurations. For example, UAC on Vista
Cross platform development:
- Key elements: folder delimiter, performance of transparent desktop, and build on each separate platform.
Weird "features":
- Cool OSX trash can feature
- OSX Icon refresh rate
- Windows titles could not exceed 8 characters when running off a CD on Windows NT
- On lower end machines mouse clicks get ignored by the desktop wrapper
Posted by Brett Tackaberry on April 21st, 2008 Comments Off
Speakers: Patrick Keenan and Alan Smith from The Movement
This talk is about design, people, and meaning. Let’s call it “Creative Sustainability”, or maybe “Sustainable Creativity” ?
I care about the big picture and care about making great work. The folks at the Movement have started to put structure to ideas and concepts around what they call sustainable creativity.
The presentation started off with the question: "What have you done that is meaningful?"
The underlying theme of the talk is about a philosophy and concept that, as stated, is sustainable creativity. Its about solutions and an approach to problem solving. Its about how to change relationships. It means doing things that make a difference. To me it means doing work and working in a way that matches my values of creating meaningful work, engaging in mutually beneficial relationships and have a positive influence on the environment around me.
This is the creation of meaningful wealth.
The second question to the crowd came as this: How much do you make? …How much what? Money isn’t our only currency. Is there an accounting for non financial things.
Time as currency: Banking time. See Timeraiser to pledge time against a good cause.
Task as currency: trading tasks.
Non profit margin: distribute profits from centres that can afford to others that can’t but require attention. See good magazine - 100% of subscription fee is directed to the non-profit of your choice.
Next question: What is the victory condition for how you spend your time at work?
See Wiser Earth to connect with other groups.
Spread the word - action and reward. A cause based design camp. (Can’t find any further information though, anybody?)
A 12 step program to make change:
- take note of impact
- consider what to preserve and what to change
- draw the line, what won’t you do? have a to don’t list
- set priorities, what matters most? Urgent and important
- share the worst deed you did for an evil client
- tell somebody you’re about to make a change in your professional work
- implement a system to help you out
- make an ideal client list. don’t let this list just sit there, contact them.
- join something
- meet-ups and serendipity
- do. then talk. then do more.
- try these, then try something else.
