I had the weirdest comical back-and-forth with someone trying to sell their bike to me, I thought it would be funny to share it. Here’s the quick backstory: I saw a posting for a bike for sale at the university that I teach. I tried a number of times to phone the number posted but [...] Read more – ‘How Not To Sell A Bike’.
In 2000, Haig Armen was offered a producer position to help create and develop CBC Radio 3 – a highly innovative initiative in the new media space, which aimed to attract a younger demographic to CBC. In 2002, CBC Radio 3 launched its online magazine. Haig and a small team worked weekly to design and [...] Read more – ‘CBC Radio 3 Magazine’.
In 2005 Haig founded lift studios, an interaction design agency in Vancouver, BC. The studios’ goal is to create elegant usable interactive products for the web, mobile and touchscreens. Over the first 4 years the company has been recognized by the industry a number of times and continues to create exceptional work. The website’s goal [...] Read more – ‘Lift Studios Website’.
In 2010 Haig Armen’s design firm, Lift Studios was hired by the Vancouver Aquarium to design and develop a touchscreen kiosk to accompany the Beluga Whale exhibit. The goal of the kiosk was to encourage children to explore the sounds that Belugas create and compare them with the sometimes-disturbing man-made sounds in their environment. The [...] Read more – ‘Vancouver Aquarium’s Beluga Touchscreen Kiosk’.
In contrast to the many brochure-style university websites, Haig Armen proposed that the School of Architecture present the work that is produced day-to-day by its community. The site features content contributed by faculty and students dynamically and fosters interaction, exchange and exploration within the sala community. The site has been received with great enthusiasm by [...] Read more – ‘UBC’s School of Architecture Website’.
In 2009 Haig Armen’s firm, Lift Studios was chosen to design and build a media-rich community website for the Vancouver Olympic Committee and aboriginal sports community. The website celebrates the accomplishments of Canadian aboriginal athletes, and provides a social network for aspiring young athletes to communicate with professionals in sports. The Aboriginal Sports Hall of [...] Read more – ‘Aboriginal Sports Hall of Fame website’.
For the past five years Haig Armen has been creating music and motion graphics, and performing for a multimedia project called MIRROR that uses live and recorded media to create a kind of pyschosexual postmodern cabaret. By embracing the artificial and sentimental, MIRROR reflects the transitory, spectacular world of endless commodities, sex, advertising, and tabloid [...] Read more – ‘MIRROR project’.
Haig Armen was a key member of a small team asked to develop a broadband pilot project for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). The primary aim of the Home Delivery project was to deliver CBC’s rich media content to people in their homes without them having to go to much effort. In 2003 Home Delivery [...] Read more – ‘CBC Home Delivery’.
In 2005, Haig Armen was commissioned to develop an identity, advertising strategy and sales centre for large real estate developments in Victoria. Haig developed a brand for the project and applied this visual identity to all the marketing collateral and advertising campaigns. Haig developed a simple, contemporary wordmark for the overall brand with a series [...] Read more – ‘Dockside Green Identity Design’.
In 2004, Haig and his partner Tamar decided they would like their wedding invitations to show their creative nature and a traditionally designed card just wouldn’t do. When designing the card, Haig remembered that a family friend who was a retired doctor had examined him and his soon-to-be wife with an old cardiogram machine. They [...] Read more – ‘Haig & Tamar’s Wedding Invitations’.
Flying up to Yellowknife to redesign Up Here magazine was a thrill Haig Armen won’t soon forget. In 2003 Haig was asked to redesign the prominent outdoor magazine with an eye for bringing a more contemporary style to the publication and attracting a younger audience. The redesign was later implemented and the magazine continues to [...] Read more – ‘Up Here Magazine Redesign’.
Haig and his Lift Studios team were asked to create a visual identity and website for Booknet Canada in 2011. The project’s goal was to become the place where Canadians around the world could visit to find any Canadian book ever published. The site would eventually house over 80,000 titles, reviews, bookclubs and author profiles. [...] Read more – ‘Canadian Bookshelf Website’.
In 2006, international recording artist Neko Case approached Haig to design her website. A warm welcoming design was created on an extendible content management system. The site allows Neko to easily share her touring stories and photography with her fans, showcase her music and sell merchandise. After six years the site still receives great feedback [...] Read more – ‘Neko Case Website’.
Lift Studios was hired to create the website and corporate identity for a new forward-thinking real estate development on Bowen Island in British Columbia. The development’s objective is to encourage sustainable living while still allow residents of the Evergreen a luxurious home in a prime location. The website was designed to feature the strategies and [...] Read more – ‘Evergreen Website’.
In 2006 prominent Persian architect, Housein Amanat’s firm hired me to design a new corporate identity for his architectural firm. The project took many months and included a great deal of exploration and changes in direction. Iteration 1: Iteration 2: Iteration 3: Final Iteration Read more – ‘Amanat Architects’.
Over the past couple of months I’ve been meeting with Vjeko Sager and Duane Elverum to talk about what the Post-Digital means to us. The conversations over breakfast have been lively and interesting. We hope it shapes into a tangible outcome at some point but for now we are allowing ourselves to explore and discover [...] Read more – ‘Digital: Lost & Found’.
Over the past couple of months I’ve been meeting with Vjeko Sager and Duane Elverum to talk about what the Post-Digital means to us. The conversations over breakfast have been lively and interesting. We hope it shapes into a tangible outcome at some point but for now we are allowing ourselves to explore and discover [...] Read more – ‘Defining Digital’.
I had an amazing time in Calgary (of all places) giving a talk about the Future of Magazines for Alberta’s Magazine Conference 2011. The conference was top notch, I met some truly awesome people and look forward to keeping in touch with them all. Here’s my slidedeck from the conference. Mobile Magazine Publishing Some of [...] Read more – ‘Digital Magazines on Mobile Devices’.
One of the most interesting musical minds of the past century, Brian Eno, visited Vancouver on January 10th to share An Illustrated Talk. A good friend picked up a ticket for me and I was glad to go. I left the Vogue theatre that night completely inspired. I was particularly impressed with how effective Eno [...] Read more – ‘Brian Eno Speaks and Draws in Vancouver’.
This year I read the bestseller book “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. Along with a fair share of buzzwords and hype are some great bits of advice for entrepreneurs. Here’s a summary of the book broken down by chapter. Chapter 1: Good is the Enemy of Great The profound point that Collins makes is [...] Read more – ‘Going from Good to Great’.
When you set out to create a business the first step should be inspiring, thoughtful and fun. Although most proper businesses have all started with the creation of a business plan they tends to be a slow and tedious process. But it can be done differently, a business plan can be exciting, emotional and filled [...] Read more – ‘Planning a business creatively’.
Over the past year I’ve been researching how to design for Multitouch devices after our experience of designing the Beluga Whale exhibit for the Vancouver Aquarium. I’ve pulled what I think are last year’s ten best posts for your enjoyment. 1. 5 Questions for Planning a Multitouch Interface 2. Creating Intuitive Gestures Using Object Orientation [...] Read more – ‘Multitouch Screen Design Research Articles’.
On September 8th, 2010 Alex Steffen gave a lecture to the public at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. If the name is unfamiliar to you, Alex Steffen is someone you should read about. He edited the book WorldChanging, a 600 page: A Users Guide for the 21st Century is a groundbreaking compendium of [...] Read more – ‘Alex Steffen Lecture’.
This little PhotoWall project is an effort to understand more about the Flickr API and also see what is possible with Javascript and CSS3. Read more – ‘Photos From Flickr’.
"One of the principles of durable typography is always legibility; another is something more than legibility: some earned or unearned interest that gives its living energy to the page." - Robert Bringhurst Read more – ‘Typography for the Web’.
If you design & develop websites and use a mac you’ll most definitely need to test code locally. A large percentage of today’s open source content management systems are built on Apache, PHP, MySQL and there are two common ways to make those three things work in Os X. The first method is by using [...] Read more – ‘Install Apache/PHP/MySQL on Snow Leopard’.
The good people of MIT have done it again with an impressive new report called “The future of learning”. With minds on the front edge of theory, application, and innovation, they’ve shown leadership in harnessing and shaping the emerging trends between technology, media, and learning. Thanks to funding from the MacArthur Foundation, The MIT Press [...] Read more – ‘The future of learning is here’.
Today I started teaching the two Interactivity Courses at Emily Carr University. The courses are back to back 12:30 – 3:20pm and 3:50 – 6:40pm. The Course Outline This introductory studio course addresses the design, composition, and construction of computer interactivity in authoring environments, focusing on the Web. Emphasis is on increasing visual and sensory-based [...] Read more – ‘First Day of Interactivity Courses at ECU’.
This is one sadly neglected blog. I’d like to apologize for not keeping up with this publication. Let’s just say I’ve been busy. I do have big plans for this site and I hope to roll them out soon. In the meantime sign up for the mailing list and I’ll let you know what I’ve [...] Read more – ‘sorry for the absence’.
Last year the International Documentary Association put out a list of the best 25 documentary films ever made. My interest in documentaries has been growing steadily compared to my disinterest in Hollywood flics. If you’re at all interested in docs then this list is a great place to start. 1. Hoop Dreams (1994), directed by [...] Read more – ‘Documentary Movie List’.
I’ll be presenting a talk on a new topic for me at this year’s Content Convergence and Integration Conference on March 14th. The subject I’ve chosen is Service Design – a new term for designing and integrating all the various touchpoints of a brand into a new networked service. It’s a fairly new approach to [...] Read more – ‘CCI CONFERENCE TALK’.
Until now, Web Designers have had to test all of their designs in IE 6 before launching a website, because so many Windows users still use it. Fortunately, those days are coming to an end. Microsoft is planning to force all Windows users to upgrade their Internet Explorer version to IE 7. This is extremely [...] Read more – ‘See Ya, Wouldn’t Want to be ya’.
I’m curious about genealogy. Maybe it has something to do with being Armenian and having your family tree cut off after only a few generations, but I’ve recently been looking into software to enable genealogy tracking. What I’ve found is the following software: Family Tree Maker (PC) Legacy Family Tree (PC) RootsMagic (PC) REUNION (Mac) [...] Read more – ‘Tree in a Forest’.
Lots of big changes happening in 2008, I have agreed to teach Interface Design at Langara’s Electronic Media Design program. But this time will be a bit different, I’ll be assisted by Kathleen Moynahan of Habanero who will eventually teach the course in my place. All our notes will be compiled on our Interface Design [...] Read more – ‘Interface Design Course at Langara’s EMD’.
This is just a reminder for me to start doing some major cleaning up. It’s been a really busy year and in many aspects there has been a lot of loose ends left behind. The clean up starts now. The list starts here: My Dreamhost account: lots of stray orphans here. It’s time to round [...] Read more – ‘Clean Up Time’.
I’ve been working with RubyOnRails for about a year now. Now that I’ve got a new MacBookPro I’ve got to reinstall Rails on Leopard. Although there’s a fair bit online about the subject it’s still a pretty counter intuitive process for designer types like myself. Read more – ‘Installing Rails on Leopard’.
I don’t know about you, but I will definitely be at ECIAD on November 8th. Last year I completely devoured Bill Moggridge’s book Designing Interactions. A comprehensive historic look at the innovators and milestones of interface design. Bill Moggridge is co-founder of the Silicon Valley-based design firm IDEO, independently ranked by business leaders as one [...] Read more – ‘Bill Moggridge Speaks at Emily Carr’.
London was buzzing for the last two weeks of September. Everywhere you looked, on every street corner there seemed to be something about design. The city was filled with museum exhibits, public art and storefronts with interactive installations. I took in what I could in a week before heading to the south of France for [...] Read more – ‘A Day at the London Design Festival’.
Content Management Systems are great. They’ve become more flexible and easier to implement, allowing companies big and small to have the ability to manage the content on their websites without breaking the bank. There’s a problem though, and it’s not a technology one. It’s a people problem. If you’re having trouble managing the content on [...] Read more – ‘Don’t Blame the CMS’.
While cruising the streets of London I was approached by a smart looking guy offering me the chance to grow my own jalapeno peppers at home. He handed me a small pink package, that looked a bit like a book of matches. Inside were five chilli-pepper seeds, with instructions on how to plant them. As [...] Read more – ‘Marketing Wahaca’.
It’s no surprise that I’m a big fan of open source software, after all, I use software like WordPress and Drupal a lot. I have also been a strong believer in ActiveCollab, an open source project management software, and so it came as a big surprise when they decided to close their open source model [...] Read more – ‘ActiveCollab Goes Commercial’.
While in London for their design festival I visited an interesting interactive installation at the Beyond the Valley showroom. The installation was put on by SHOWstudios, who’s Head of Interactive Ross Phillips I met at the iDesign conference. The piece is a collaboration with Evian (the people that bring us expensive water) and uses 1 [...] Read more – ‘The Replenishing Body’.
As part of the London Design Festival I attended a new opera called “The Corley Conspiracy”. The event was cowritten by a friend and collaborator Sean Starke, who is also part of the MIRROR project that I’m involved with. Based on a true story that unfolded on Usenet bulletin boards in the early 90’s, the [...] Read more – ‘The Corley Conspiracy’.
For the past 3 years I’ve been working on a project called MIRROR with my good friend Thomas Anselmi. Our collaboration began with a breakfast meeting about a website and quickly evolved into us writing music and visually refining the MIRROR brand together. MIRROR just launched a new site and put on two free shows [...] Read more – ‘Look in the MIRROR’.
Lately there’s been a lot of talk about Edward Tufte. Who is he? He may be the only designer with a roadie. If you have yet to read any of his books you will find depth and clarity in his explanations of information design that simplifies complex data systems. Or perhaps you could read his [...] Read more – ‘Tufte’s Sparklines’.
More and more, it seems that one of the stronger motivational factors of the web is to tag, mark you space, define your borders, or claim your territory. Call it what you will, it seems like a new continent has been discovered and everyone wants a piece. No visual representation shows this more that DrawBall. [...] Read more – ‘Mark Your Space’.
There’s no telling what you’ll find if you just rummage under the hood of Apple’s OS X. If you’ve got a mac, chances are you probably haven’t yet found the Quartz Composer. Its a cool possibly geeky way of generating motion graphics on the fly. QC has a unique method of composing motion graphics recipes [...] Read more – ‘Composer under your hood’.
