Indusblue teamed up with Smirnoff Vodka to launch their exciting Smirnoff Experience event in Toronto. The event will be held at the prestigious Windsor Arms hotel in Yorkville on December 20^th.   Some background: Smirnoff Vodka has been hosting events around the world in Paris, Moscow, Shanghai and New York City with the intention of providing a truly unique experience for their guests.  Each event features city-centric music and talent performances.  For example N.A.S and N.E.R.D performed in New York to celebrate the city’s rich Hip-Hop historical culture.  This time, the experience came to Toronto…

Indusblue was given the opportunity to produce the strictly online ad campaign for the Smirnoff Experience Canada Event.   Part of the challenge involved creating a unique video player designed to promote the burlesque-themed excitement and sophistication for the Smirnoff Experience Canada Event.  The video incorporates two streams of red light (red like Smirnoff, no coincidence here) to weave through the city and eventually land at the Windsor Arms Hotel, thereby lighting up the venue from within.  The video incorporates real party footage, images to evoke a  burlesque theme, while simultaneously displaying all relevant event information. The colours, visuals and motions were only made possible by the talented Amy Lee and Michael Brown, while Cam Warnock is responsible for the inspired video.   However, everyone at Indusblue played a role in pulling this together, and you can be sure we will continue our services on the night of.  Feel free to join us…

In order to build up event anticipation, we looked to the obvious social media tools: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and FlickR.  The Smirnoff Experience Canada’s presence on Facebook consists of a Fan Page with an event attached.  Flash-friendly Facebook applications allowed Fans to view the promotional video for the Red Night Hotel Event as well as images, info and videos of past world-wide events.

Working with a brand like Smirnoff was very exciting for us.  Promoting an event where alcohol is consumed poses some challenges (I should say-opportunities for creativity); the video’s burlesque theme had to look appealing but not too racy, and anyone appearing in the content had to look well beyond the legal age.  Legal requirements aside, we think we delivered an online campaign that is creative, exciting and unique.  We will definitely be at the Windor Arms on Saturday, December 20^th celebrating the success.  We think you should come too.

No longer will buying new wheels consist of a test drive around a concrete lot.

Our newest baby, the Chevrolet Cobalt site we developed for our friends at MacLaren MRM, lets you choose the Cobalt model that best fits your lifestyle.  You can pick the car of your choice, design it to your liking, then test it out on a variety of daily activities.  There is something for everyone:  Yuppies can go to for a scenic drive through the park or a trip to the local market, City-lovers can try it out at the Club (sober obviously), the Introvert can hit up the gym, and the Social Butterfly can go to an amusement park with friends.

We are very proud of the subtle Flash animations that went into the site. Each of the activities is depicted with a colourful and well designed image. The sky changes according to the time of day while unique sounds accompany each location. My personal favourite feature is the tiny people who scurry in and out of the establishments with realistic purpose.  Thanks to the design and leadership supplied by Craig and Jeremy of MacLaren MRM, this is an extremely visually appealing site.  Additionally, we were able to pull off this technical accomplishment thanks to our talented programmer, Nicholas HIller.

Making the site user-friendly and realistic was our priority. One of the ways we accomplished this was by having smooth driving sequences between each frame.  Figuring out the most effective techinal approach to do so cost us a few forehead wrinkles but was well worth it.  Another temporary road block we came across (get it? heh.) was a way to create a colour swatch that would allow users to drive their car of preference through the activities.  After all, when you arrive at the Club the colour of your Cobalt SS says a lot about you.

It is worth noting the strategy behind this site.  Instead of targeting the stereotypical car consumer found in advertising, we leaned towards the consumer of ’09: one who is young in spirit, trend savvy and socially responsible. The personalization features allow for a unique user identity; one who might enjoy an exciting night on the town as much as a quiet walk in the park.

Measuring in at 300 X 250 pixels, the new CBC Olympics widget was developed to push the boundaries of information density.

This flashy little piece of real estate really packs on the pounds by delivering up to the minute reporting on all 306 Olympic events, athlete blog feeds, breaking Olympic News for all 34 sport categories, Medals Results, Video feeds and program schedule with links to live events… whew!

Of course, as you might expect in a widget, you can customize and add it to your desktop as a Mac Widget or Vista Gadget, and even embed it into your favorite weblog or social application. Check it out on my facebook page.

Some long nights went into developing this application with developer Matt Rix taking care of the chrome and front end programming, Dayton Pereira tackling design and interaction, and I handled building the data provider and results parsing. Brodie Hanbuch, our Associate Technical Director, assembled the team and put the plan into action.

The whole production was a really dynamic experience with each person playing one part toward a larger goal, and that goal was to create the best damn widget concept possible. With such a tiny space to work in, the design challenges are obvious. It had to be intuitive, easy to use, aesthetically pleasing and readable.

On the front end, you can imagine the challenge Matt had managing the interaction, animation and general presentation. And if you want to hear about the challenges getting it all to work with facebook, I suggest you send Matt an email.

And as for the back-end… well that deserves a post all by itself. Unfortunately it would be so intricate and detailed, only the most die hard code monkey would find it interesting. (If I get 5 comments asking for that description, I’ll write the post. Unfortunately for me I find it interesting…)

You can get yourself a copy of the widget by clicking the “get and share” button on the lower right-hand side, or visit http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/olympicwidget/ and do the same thing there.

For more information on embedding the widget for your specific needs, visit http://www.cbc.ca/widgets/.

Here’s a quick video taken at Yonge and Dundas Square this afternoon. We’re excited to feature our WSFF (Worldwide Short Film Festival) animations in a public space, right in the heart of Toronto. Amy Lee designed and animated these ads in conjunction with Doug Agency for the Canadian Film Council. We’ve also created a series of ad units that you’ll start to see online on sites like Blogto.com and Toronto.com.

It’s pretty cool to see the handiwork you created broadcaset in a public area as busy as Yonge and Dundas. Often times our work is confined to the virtual space, so it’s an awesome thing to have it manifest into something physical.

PS Amy says “what the funk”