When I launched envy creative back in 2007, I was really excited by the name and knew that it would take me far in the creative space. It would infuse my clients with the excitement that they would be the envy of their industries if they came to me for the design of their branding, marketing and other business materials.

However, I’ve come up against a wall with the name. Sadly, because it’s so fantastic, there are lots of other companies popping up with “envy” in their names. I have at least 3 competitors, all doing creative work. I had lofty dreams for “envy” from the beginning. There was a domain, envy.ca, that existed but had nothing on it. I hassled the owner for a couple of years, asking for it – but eventually, she opened a beauty blog there, and that little piece of my dream evaporated.

Throughout this time, I dreamed of throwing these amazing parties called “envy nights”. I’m not going to go into the details of what made these parties so incredible, as I’ve been told there’s a mafia in Toronto that controls club nights here, and I don’t want to give them any ideas that they’ll just go act on, instead of paying me to throw them – and I don’t want my knees broken, either, for even suggesting I would compete in that space. I eventually thought “envy productions” would be an excellent branch of interactive event-design that I could spin off from envy creative – alas, someone just recently launched a party production company in Toronto called envy productions, thus destroying that aspect of my dream for envy. The worst part of all this? I did enter a competition that Smirnoff ran with a few of the biggest party promoters in Toronto a couple of years ago, explaining my awesome party ideas – including the name. A couple of months ago, “envy productions” was launched, and the domain name .ca registered… it felt like they completely ripped off my idea. Maybe they didn’t and it’s all just coincidence. Either way, it sucks.

This sort of brand dilution is one of the worst things that can happen to a business. It makes it difficult to find you on Google, confusing for current and potential clients who are looking for “envy creative” and finding my three competitors instead of me, and it limits my exposure to Toronto-based searches, which is terrible – I want international exposure. I love my business, and I want to see it grow – how can it do that when “envy” is everywhere, fragmented, all different businesses?

There’s another change happening as well – I no longer want to focus merely on “creative” work. I’m more than just a graphic designer – and I want to grow my business into the interactive digital agency space. Yes, watch out Toronto – I’m poised to launch a new digital interactive agency, and I will be competing with you, with a team of smart, talented, engaged people who are constantly throwing around new, interesting ideas, and always willing to learn something new.

Due to the constantly inflating brand dilution, and my need to re-focus the business on this emerging form of audience engagement, I’m becoming less and less enamoured with envy creative, every single day – and it’s time for a change.

In the coming months, watch out for our regenesis. We will be transitioning from a creative design boutique, to a creative digital interactive marketing agency. That’s a lot of qualifiers – but an accurate description of what’s to come. Think not just web design (we’ll still do that, of course – as well as print marketing campaigns to support any digital stuff we do), but also: mobile development, interactive installations, interactive and immersive audience engagement, and multimedia experiments that will explode your brain. Just you wait, Toronto (and international). The interactive industry is about to morph again.

An FYI regarding my previous post: I am still taking freelance projects! In fact, that’s my main source of income right now, so if you’re a past client and have got anything in the pipes that you’ve been holding onto and want to get done, I do have time for you!

I will also continue to take on select new clients, so go ahead and get requesting a quote either for your interactive projects, or your print projects.

Now, on to the meat of this post…

For the duration of the Sheridan Interactive Multimedia course, I’ve decided to task myself with the overarching goal of: dream big!

What does this mean to me?

Well, all throughout my time in the York/Sheridan joint program in design, I was so overloaded with droves of homework, not to mention having to work to earn money while I was there, that a lot of my work had to be compromised, and I missed many opportunities to produce the most interesting, engaging results I could come up with. In fact, many times my work fell short – though it was the best I could do in the time constraints, with the extremely limited resources I had at the time.

Now, however, I am lucky enough to have many more resources: I have a lot of real-world experience with all of the software we are using for our classes, as well as the techniques and concepts they are teaching us; my boyfriend was working on computer vision in C this past summer, so he’s got both ideas and a wide range of experience to assist me in my own projects; the Sheridan IMM program is equipped with all sorts of new media equipment I could never afford on my own; and this time – focusing only on client work that I can do at home in my spare time, I have more time to spend on my assignments. I’m also better at focusing on the tasks at hand, rather than getting distracted and procrastinating. My motivations have changed from what they were 10 years ago.

So, I’m going to use this blog to post both inspirations for the work I produce over this course, and to explore ideas and potential directions for my assignments. On that note, I really should get back to it!

I had planned to post about the @media Web Directions 2011 conference I attended in London this summer, but we were so busy traveling all over Europe, I had barely a moment to digest the information I was exposed to there before going on our next trip. In any case, it was all stuff I’ve seen online in the past year or so, particularly that’s been covered in .net magazine, on my Twitter feeds, and in general in the web industry online, so it wasn’t particularly innovative, but I did learn a bunch of new concepts and I look forward to attempting to apply them in my future endeavours (concepts like game design).

So, the big news: I’ve started school. I’m taking the Sheridan Interactive Multimedia one year post-grad course to sharpen my programming and design skills, and further develop my project management and other media skills – because I want to get into interactive installation design or, in other words, immersive multimedia experiences that audiences can interact with. I have no idea, right now, where this will lead, but I’ve been dreaming about it ever since I took the YSDN program at York & Sheridan, and in the past 6 years have advanced in that direction 0%. Thus, my taking of this program.

I have yet to obtain a car to make my travel to and from Oakville easier, and I had to be at Sheridan’s Trafalgar campus at 9 am yesterday. So, I woke up at 5 am (overly excited), headed out the door at 6:45 am, and was at Union at 7:30 am for my Go train out to the boonies. I couldn’t believe the droves of people flooding Union at that time – I felt sorry for them all, stuck in their 9-5, hellish-commute lives, all of them looking exhausted, haggard and used up. Every time I’m reminded of the 9-5 hustle, I just can’t allow myself to get into it for something less than my dream job. I absolutely need to be working on something I’m passionate about – thusly again, my taking of this program.

I was disappointed to find the Go train doesn’t have free wifi available – for some reason, I was grossly misled into believing it did. No matter, I had time to knit a little bit.

In any case, the first day really whet my appetite for the work, and I’m looking forward to getting into the meat of our projects. For anyone who may be reading this from the program, I created a Facebook group for our class, specifically. Feel free to join, and invite others!

Brochure design for Brinks Canada Inc.’s Cash Handling Supplies

In early 2010, Brinks Canada Inc. approached me to design a tri-fold, double-sided, full-colour brochure for their Cash Handling Supplies. They provided their logo, a sample of their US materials to copy for look-and-feel, and all the photography. This brochure is in line with Brinks Canada’s branding guidelines.

I used Adobe Photoshop to modify the photographic elements, and Adobe Illustrator for page layout.

I’ve decided to do a photo a day starting March 11, 2011. I’m keeping the feed over at Posterous – so check it out there: http://envycreative.posterous.com. As a teaser, here’s today’s photo.

Click over to get the full-sized image and find out where it is.

Book cover and eBook cover design for “Overcoming Gradversity”

I was approached to design a book cover for Overcoming Gradversity, a publication available as both an eBook and a self-published, printed book. The cover was to be designed for use in both mediums.

I used Adobe Illustrator for page layout, typography and vector elements, and Adobe Photoshop for photographic elements.

You can see the full cover and learn more about the book on the Overcoming Gradversity page.

Website Redesign for Patient Care Solutions

PCS asked for a redesign of their current website. The HTML and files have been submitted to their IT team, just waiting on them to imeplement the new design. However, here’s a screenshot, and you can view the old site still at http://www.patientcaresolutions.com

Website Redesign and Social Media Integration

Mixed Company Theatre returned to envy creative for a second redesign, 3 years after the initial redesign. We re-launched the site on the free content management system, WordPress, and integrated social media in terms of Facebook and Twitter, as well as Google Maps and Analytics. Content was ported over from the old site and reformatted to the new design, and Mixed Company Theatre now maintains control of all content updates.

Check it out at mixedcompanytheatre.com.

Promotional card design

One of the owners of Spice Safar asked me to design this promotional card for their chain of coffee shops based in Toronto. They provided the photography and graphic elements, and I assembled them into this card.

I used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

Not-for-profit Website Redesign

Not-for-profit Taking Action for Youth, approached me with a request for a redesign for their website. They wanted a more approachable template, something that would appeal to their target audience – teens to 20-somethings in Native Reservations. We worked together to come up with a design that integrated their current branding and expressed the creative approach the organisation takes to the issue. Installed on the WordPress content management system.

Check it out at takingaction4youth.org.