This week we were back in Niagara-on-the-Lake and "the Bench", working with our friends at Creekside Estate Winery on a new branding project. We previously created the brand image, packaging, merch and website presence for the Wayne Gretzky Estates Winery in collaboration with the same team, whom are behind some of the most award-winning projects in...

Releasing an application into the wild is always a great feeling. The weeks, days and hours leading up to the launch can be pressure packed as the last design tweaks are made and final QA fixes are applied. Managed properly though, a launch should also bring you closer to your teammates and clients, at least it always has for me. 

There's been a noticeable shift in the last couple of years about what constitutes a "successful" launch....

Last weekend during the Portes Ouvertes Design Montréal, Dynamo presented a private collection of matchbook artwork from the 1930s through 1950s, titled "Avez-vous du feu?", or, "Got a light?". Our faithful intern-turned-junior-project-manager-from-Paris : Guillaume Bourousse participated in curating the exhibition, and was an invaluable help in organizing, scanning and installing the exhibition. On display were large-format blowups of around 200 of the microdesigns, selected from the more than 1500 originals, each on display in their original format as well. If you'd like to brush up on your French, please read Guillaume's post about the expo here.

Inforpresse/Grafika have lined up a great list of presenters for tomorrow's conference on web design.  

Alex will be discussing our creative process as well as the technical challenges we faced bringing this brand to life online. 

There are still tickets available online here. 

Thinking of going or already have your ticket? Leave a comment here and we'll be sure to look out for you in the crowd.

Here's a quick first look. Stayed tuned, tomorrow is launch day!

Last month Dynamo directed an HD video shoot for the upcoming Berthelet website that we're hard at work producing as I write this. Integrating large, full motion video into web experiences is becoming standard practice these days, and I really love the immersive communications opportunity it offers. Youtube has paved some serious ground for rekindling this medium as a default for engaging users online, and we're firm believers in it's potential...

It's rare these days that a day goes by where we don't find ourselves working video into one of our online projects. Flash video (FLV) is our format of choice for embedded (it is really the ubiquitous choice thanks to the good folks at YouTube) and we built our own online conversion engine (affectionately named "FLVme.com") about 2 years ago. We recently upgraded FLVme to use the H264 codec to encode videos and the results have been amazing....

I'm happy to announce that Yellowbird's brand new online store launched last night. The site can be seen at http://www.yellowbirdproject.com. Designed and built from the ground up in just 4 short months, the new brand and site are just what this great initiative needed as it continues to gain momentum, both online and off.

Welcome to my first in a series of posts about a project that we're all super excited about at Dynamo - the ground up design and development of an online store for the Yellow Bird Project. 

I'll be focusing my attention on the development side of the project and, notably, our decision to use the Spree E-commerce platform.