Not sure what the world will be doing in 2010, but Vancouver (our home-town) is ready for 2010. And zooming in even closer, DesignStamp is set to forge ahead into the new year as well. Here are the top 5 things that have us excited right now in broad sketchy details, just so that we can remain open to the possibilities that present themselves to us after the Holidays.

We, at DesignStamp are particularly excited about 2010 because:

1. Coming Soon. Yup, without displaying the ever-popular construction man animated icon, we will soon launch a new site for ourselves that will better reflect what we do and who we are. (You say: Soon is not a date. I say: I know, but as we tell our clients, don’t make promises of dates and things, unless you can be sure to stick to them. So we’re taking our time, between client projects to get this done. We want to do this right).
2. Team. What bites about the current site is that it gives you no sense of who we are. That will be more transparent in 2010.
3. Partnerships. As we grow as a team, we have also been working closely with some great companies. We will release collaborative work in 2010 that will help us build on shared strengths and leverage each others specialties.
4. Clients. We have been very proud to work with premier non-profit organizations that are affecting real change across the globe. We are also equally proud to help large brands communicate effectively. We will launch 3 new projects in the first quarter of 2010.
5. Blogging. For reals. This has been inactive, sorry excuse for an Opinion for way too long. We are going to use our site, and our social networks more regularly and be better contributors to conversations in 2010. For now, follow us on Twitter. While we work with clients to help them get social, we have not done the same for ourselves consciously. “If you don’t have the bandwidth, and not sure of how you are going to participate: Don’t!”. That said, our presentation on getting social on SlideShare has been the most tweeted presentation, twice in 2009!

We wish you and yours a peaceful holiday season. Look forward to working, tweeting, sharing with you in the days ahead!

It was a typical interaction design project, testing initial assumptions, validating business logic with a user-centric philosophy and asking simple questions like “why” and “how”.

However, looking back at the project and the path it has taken over the last few months, it has been anything but typical.

It is my pleasure to introduce you to Rouxbe.

Rouxbe helps people to cook simple recipes using video. Gone are the days of printing off complicated recipes and guessing what those fancy French words mean, and not being sure just how to get to that all important end-result. You can now have a chef walk you through the process without the camera attempting to make the chef the celebrity. Right now, you have subscriptions to magazines that show beautiful food. Now see how that food is made, and you control your viewing experience. No ads to skip through. Just lots of videos recipes. Amazingly shot and served. You don’t need to follow along. Just watch, learn and then go make.

Rouxbe was different for DesignStamp for a lot of reasons. Our commitment to Rouxbe is ongoing and our involvement is much more collaborative and immersive than the consultative role that we usually play. We have been involved in the building of Rouxbe, it’s online presence and technical development from ground up. From building the proprietary Flash player, to creating a complete website including e-commerce components, we are working with Rouxbe to take the user through a smooth, hassle-free experience. Nothing should come between the new user and the food recipes that they can sample.

One of the other key things that makes Rouxbe different is it’s commitment to a cause much higher than profit. To feed starving kids around the world. Having worked in the field for years, one can get a bit jaded and just about everyone you talk to has the next big Web 2.0 idea that they want to bring to market and get bought by Google. One of my first meetings with Joe Girard, the CEO of Rouxbe was not about the financial promise that Rouxbe held, but about Rouxbe for Life. A good cause that is whole heartedly supported and believed in by all of us that are working to build the Rouxbe brand. In fact, we all contribute money towards the cause each time we eat a meal together (working at Rouxbe means that there are a LOT of delicious meals before, after and during every meeting!)

In the next few months, I hope to be able to share details about our design process and the development of Rouxbe as a trusted brand. Till then, I invite you to try Rouxbe and give us your feedback. After all, the proof is in the pudding. Or more precisely, in the Crème Brulée!

I wanted to be skilled in the media of creative production,
wanted to become adept with tools that could deliver my art. I wanted
to act as a bridge for those who were disenfranchised from the luxuries
of media production, and provide their stories a means to be seen and
heard instead of being drowned out by the din of corporate advertising
and homogenized entertainment. So I enrolled in the VFS Digital Design program,
despite the fact that I had had only used my computer for writing
poetry, and the extent of my familiarity with the web involved checking
email and occasional haphazard browsing.

With an excess of faith in myself and not too much forethought, I
jumped on the digital bus, and found myself suddenly committed to a
great and grueling passage, a blur of insomniac nights editing videos
and crash courses in software languages that felt as foreign to me as
Chinese. It was digital boot camp. Learning HTML made me want to tear
off my nose. Photoshop made me weak in the knees. The magic of
cinematography, lighting, sound, editing, motion graphics made me
tremble. It was the way I had felt holding a paintbrush for the first
time; as if the gates were opening out of a small grey world, into an
infinitely vivid and endless landscape. I now had the potential of
creating fluid alchemical multimedia compositions that communicated what
words or static images alone could not.

But it is one thing to be five years old and delving into new media;
it is another to feel like a clumsy novice when you are pushing thirty.
My ego took a nosedive. This was furthered by the fact that most of my
compatriots were far more experienced than I, whereas I was a beginner
at all of them. I felt like I had been thrust into a graduate course in
trigonometry without ever having learned how to add or subtract.

Then, suddenly, we graduated. We dispersed, some returning to native
lands to seek employment, to Korea, San Francisco, New York, Venezuela,
Mexico. My girlfriend and I got evicted because the landlord sold our
house. I spent a few transient weeks wandering beaches, staring at
seaweed and mumbling to myself about blending modes. Then I started
taking photos of the seaweed and playing with them in Photoshop and
waking early with my video camera ready, to shoot the crows flying over
the house at dawn. Slowly, with the recovery of relatively normal
eating and sleeping patterns, the deeper realization of the potential
applications of all I had learned sank in. Once overwhelming tools of
media were finally beginning to feel familiar, I was writing again,
drawing again, breathing again.

I got freelance work, here and there, mostly volunteered to
non-profits with high values and low budgets. I dug deep into my
pockets, bought a new shirt, and went to interviews looking sharp. To
no avail. The businesses that had the capacity to pay me were, in most
cases, whose total lack of social or environmental ethics sickened me.
I had made it through an agonizing year of training in the incredible
media of creation and communication only to get slammed by the fact
that, in this world, skilled people are generally hired by companies
who are proud to include Nike and Coca-Cola on their client list. Since
I was fifteen after researching sweatshops, I had wanted to blow Nike
up. My morning reading of the alternative press told me about kids in
India that were suffering diseases from dehydration, now that Coke had
opened a factory near their village, sucked up their water supply and
polluted their aquifer. I did not want to sell out.

Moreover, when prospects came to me, I was afflicted by hesitation.
I knew I could excel in this field, I knew I possessed a unique
perspective and talent, but I felt like I was trying to get a job
building rocket ships after a few courses in mechanics. I cursed the
Digital Design program for being only one year long and cursed myself
for not building my skills up beforehand. I needed more time to become
adept with these complex and powerful media before meeting professional
demands, let alone being picky about job offers, but I also needed an
income.
So I wrestled with the demons of my doubts as I struggled with the
dilemma of what to compromise in order to achieve security. Tightened
my belt, sucked up my pride, and asked my mother to lend me money for
another month.
At long last, I found two glimmers of hope:

1. I made contact with a producer who expressed deep interest in my
   proposal for a documentary on leaders of the global peace movement.
   With a successful track record behind her company, she seemed confident
   that funding could be obtained.
2. Simultaneously, I discovered that the deadline for the national production program with the CFTPA

   was December 16th. In another three months (after my birthday) I would
   be ineligible. I had one shot. This mentorship would enable me to offer
   my skills to a production company that may prioritize social and
   political progress over its profit margin. The CFTPA would cover the bulk of my salary.

My path, which had been buried under thick fog for three months, was coming clear.

And this is where I find myself, reckoning with self-realization, in the dark Vancouver winter.
Still sitting in internet coffee shops, spending countless hours
preparing and revising my letters of intent, tailoring emails to
potential references, and doing my very best to tackle this vision of a
life in which my work, my gifts, my art, my politics and my soul can
manifest in a world that so often seems bizarre and berserk to me.
Still burning the wick at both ends, editing footage of birds and
vagabonds, doing After Effects tutorials, making art. Proceeding.
Sometimes falling flat on my face. Sometimes with full throttle
faith.