Edmonton’s most beloved farmer’s market is now operating downtown, year-round. Vision is helping get the word out through a witty, eye-catching campaign that helps folks find the market in summer and winter months… be it on 104 St or inside at City Hall.

The bountiful crop of creative for this campaign includes transit advertising, newspaper advertising… even canvas shopping bags.

View the City Market project in our portfolio.

There can, however, be only one winner. Meredith Swytink from Edmonton will be enjoying the Festival free of charge along with a lucky companion.

The earliest poster Vision Creative designed for the Folk Music Festival is shown below. The year was 1991 and the festival featured the likes of Jr. Gone Wild, Oscar Lopez, The Rankin Family, and Los Lobos.

Since then, Vision has created the art behind the artistry – annually designing the poster and other materials for the Edmonton Folk Music Festival.

Congratulations to Meredith and all successful entrants. See you on the hill!

Myself (Adnan) and Brad Blasko attended on behalf of Vision Creative. After eating, listening and note-taking this is what we came away with.

Laurie Rosenwald – New York artist extraordinaire and conference MC
Aside from showing us her collage illustrations, Laurie entertained us with jokes and her unique sense of humour.  I won’t try and write her biography, so you will have to visit rosenworld.com to learn more about her. Here is what Laurie had to say:

1. A blank computer screen is the devil – Laurie used a blank illustrator artboard as an example and said that it’s the scariest thing a designer could look at. She wants us to stop thinking so hard while staring at a blank computer screen and begin our ideas with something tangible (a sketch, object, inkblot…etc).
2. Do it for love or money – There is no in-between.
3. Make mistakes on purpose – Laurie’s workshop Making Mistakes on Purpose teaches people how not trying works better than trying.
4. Steal from yourself – Make something. It doesn’t have to make sense at the time, but you might be able to come back and re-use it. She gave the example of a triangle shape she drew quickly one day and then later, under tight deadlines, turned it into a canary by adding a beak, eyes and feet.

Randy Hunt – Etsy – Pattern Recognition
A New York designer working at Etsy, Randy Hunt’s Pattern Recognition talk was about how observing patterns can simplify the way we execute complex tasks and solve design problems.

1. Observe then inspire – For example, by observing the pattern of people’s movement in Union Square, New York architects were able to recreate the same behaviour in one of their building designs.
2. Patterns produce a “shared language”, patterns reduce “redundant effort” – Etsy creates back-end code called Patterns for their website, that is then used by staff to simplify repetitive tasks when editing the website content.
3. “The world is moving quickly, we need to make change quickly”

Armin Vit – Under Consideration – The Good, The Blog and The Ugly
Armin was not able to make it physically to Pica (see his tweet below), however, the Pica team got a Q&A with him over Skype which made the presentation a lot more spontaneous.

Apologies to #PICA2011 attendees: I didn’t make it to Banff, as Mexican citizens (i.e., me) need a visa to go into Canada. #foundouttoday.

Quick Facts:
Armin works from home in Austin, TX with his wife Bryony and one intern, sticks to a rigid routine and is author and creator of the popular blog Brand New.

Answers:

1. Advice to graduates: show your portfolio to everyone even if they aren’t hiring because getting feedback is very important.
2. Send your blog address to lots of (well known) people because if they like it they will pass it on.
3. His blogs make money from advertising.
4. Writing on blogs is equally as important as the design. Even though it’s all about the content always make sure that the design is considered.

Thanks to Farin Manji for the above notes.

Blair Enns – Win Without Pitching
Blair Enns wants to change the way creative services are bought and sold the world over, one creative firm at a time. His Win Without Pitching Manifesto is available on his website as a free download, but I would advise everyone to purchase it and place it in your desk drawer next to your coveted client list.

Here are a few excerpts from his manifesto:

1. “The world is drowning in undifferentiated creative businesses. What the world needs, what the better clients are willing to pay for, and what our people want to develop and deliver, is deep expertise”
2. “We claim to have been raised in a family or a culture where it is impolite to talk about money, but we know this is only a half-truth, don’t we?”
3. “We will take seriously our professional obligation to begin at the beginning, and we will never put our clients or ourselves in the position where we are prescribing solutions without first fully diagnosing the client’s challenge.”

Ray Fennwick – Illustrator – Why do it by Hand? Seriously, Why?
Ray Fennwick is an author and illustrator of Hall of Best Knowledge and Mascots living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. You have to love Canadian illustrators! In his talk, Ray shared some valuable lessons he learned through his experience.

1. When doing a T-Shirt design for Threadless.com, Ray created an ornate “Hi” as one of his submissions. The design didn’t win many votes and had a few negative comments to go along with it. Nonetheless, the people at Threadless decided to print it and now it lives on T-shirts, mugs, baby onesies and was recently been published as a cover for his own postcards.
2. Ray received a photo from a friend of someone that had used his hand lettered typeface for their own commercial work. He made this comment: “People taking your typeface (or scroll) is like taking your skin, putting it on, and going out in public pretending they are you and peeing on things”. He quickly took action against this un-original culprit.
   

Jason McCann – Taxi
Jason McCann (not to be mistaken for the Jason McCann a.k.a Justin Bieber that recently trended on Twitter) finished off the Pica conference in a unique fashion. He wrote his presentation on paper from his notebook and then photographed it individually all over New York using Instagram and then placed on his iPad and presented using the Flipboard app. This is why he is the VP, Co-ECD at Taxi Toronto (quite the fancy title) and works for clients like Mini, Telus and Gatorade. Jason raised some good questions we should all ask our selves when looking for that BIG idea.

1. Does the pressure to replicate outweigh your instinct to innovate?
2. Are you solving the problem or solving the brief?
3. Are you iterating instead of innovating?

You can see more of Jason’s work at Taxi.

How about you? Did you like or dislike any talks? Did you learn anything that will help you become a better designer/person? Did you see any wildlife? Let us know what you thought of Pica 2011.

Proud to show our Valour, the Vision team attended the ground breaking ceremony for Valour Place on April 19.

The first facility of its kind in Canada, Valour place will provide “hope away from home” for injured soldiers, veterans and their families while they are in Edmonton for rehabilitation and medical treatment.

Thank you to our clients Dennis Erker, Jennifer Fisk and Julie Hamilton for inviting us to participate in this milestone event. We look forward to working to build support for this much needed facility.

We encourage everyone in the Capital Region to support Valour Place by visiting valourplace.ca and getting involved or donating online.

You can view our work here.

The ink is barely dry, but already Christy Choma and Harry Vance-Law are proving to be strong additions at Vision Creative.

Christy is a talented art director (and self-confessed “paper freak”) with eight years of industry experience, a passion for creativity and a sharp sense of humour. Harry is our chief web developer and master of all things “new media”. Over the past 10 years, he has made it his mission to stay on top of the latest tools, trends and technologies.

In just a short time, we have witnessed their impressive skills as designer and web developer… although their foosball abilities are still under evaluation.

Two Vision-designed logos have been selected for inclusion in the upcoming volume of LogoLounge: “Typography and Enclosures.” The first was created for Fairfax Lane, an upscale condominium development in Devon. The second for Edmonton SEO firm Bluetrain. Vision is honoured to have two of our logos selected. We would like to thank both clients for giving us the opportunity to do great work.

This year’s brew, an amber ale, will bring a smile to several local charities, including the Kidney Foundation of Canada, where the proceeds will be donated to.

A big thank you to Neil Herbst from Alley Kat, who entrusted us to design the beer label and shared a case of the delicious brew with the Vision team.

You can pick up the 650ml bottle through specialty liquor stores and through some of the participating brew pubs.

The participating breweries are Yellowhead (Edmonton), Wild Rose (Calgary), Roughneck (Calmar), Jasper (Jasper), Grizzly Paw (Canmore), Drummond (Red Deer), Brewsters (Calgary and Edmonton), Brew Brothers (Calgary), Big Rock (Calgary), Amber’s (Edmonton), and Alley Kat (Edmonton).

Enjoy.

The drive there was smooth for some of us (160 km/hour is not cruising speed Gord…) Great wine and light hearted conversation awaited us our first night in the Rockies.

On Friday we reviewed Vision’s goals and aspirations for the upcoming year; putting everyone on the same page is paramount. In short, 2010 has been most rewarding; we have connected with some fresh faces and their enthusiasm is palpable & contagious. Thanks to Gord for facilitating and to Brad for the great lattes!

We finished the day with a nice long walk into town followed by beer, pizza desserts on the house compliments of the Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company: goat cheese anyone?
Later that night some of us ventured to the Drake for drinks and dance, in honour of Mark’s birthday (we soon learned that Mojitos cannot be served as shooters…), others saved their energy for the golf day ahead.

Saturday began cold and windy but the skies opened up for us all just as we teed off at Brewster’s Kananaskis Golf Resort. Couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful setting and a better way to finish the week – although golf balls will be a line expense item on our 2011 budget.

Thanks to all who gave up a weekend in pursuit of a Vision!

We wish Amy and Rick all the best and look forward to sampling the fruits of their labour.

See the story in the Metro News.

The 2010 edition of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival has just wrapped up. From my perspective it was truly one of the best; certainly in the top five of my 20+ years Folking. Best in terms of quality and variety of music, best in terms of sessions, best in terms of weather and best in terms of the overall experience – each and every night. As one of my astute tarp-mates put it: the only problem with Folkfest this year is that there were too many great acts to see. You end up missing one great session to see another. And as far as sessions go the Sunday, 3pm concert with Ian Tyson was the hit of the weekend for me. Four Strong Winds had 4000 people in the palm of Ian’s hands; and who knows how many more times we’ll be able to see him perform this FF classic. Other highlights included Ben Harper, Sarah Harmer, Calexico and of course Brandy Carlisle – the voice on this woman…!

Regarding Van Morrison, sure he’s a cranky old man and it’s a shame he behaved like he did, but I didn’t pay for his banter; and after having seen him live twice before, I’d say this was the best music I’ve heard him play. And, although I didn’t actually see the hill from the stage, I’m told by those who did that it was a sight to behold – 12000+ candles swaying to and fro.

Thank you EFMF for another memorable year.