The Movie Network (Astral Media) hired us to develop an online-focused campaign to launch their new High Definition programming. We created the “More HD” theme that was used across all media. A series of rich IAB ads featured an HD movie carousel that updated dynamically from the Astral server. We also created video ad units (with purpose-built movie trailers) and an HD Movie microsite that featured the entire library of HD Movie Network titles. The microsite makes use of Flash 10 to create a smooth and engaging 3D environment. This site is also deployed as embedded content across affiliate and marketing partner sites.

By working closely with Media Experts we were able to identify media partnerships that were eager to create campaign destinations within their sites, notably, Heavy.com and GorrillaNation. Heavy components included a first-of-its-kind homepage zoom takeover, embedded deployment of the HD Movie microsite inside the HD movie trailers section, TMN sponsorship of various sections within the site, video channel content and Heavy blog editorial content. A branded TMN YouTube channel also features TMN HD movie trailers and exclusive online video content.

Visit the site jointhemovienetwork.ca

How is it that in a time where everything is so connected and information is passed at such lightning speeds, people continue to steal, rip and defraud other members of the design community? As if somehow they’ll be able to get away with it. Yes, the internet is a big place, but its communities are still very small and well connected. Read the rest of this entry »

The anticipation of a site launch can be somewhat nerve-racking. We take our clients from strategy through to front-end code.The process takes months to work through. Stakeholders on both sides of table make decisions. Then, when everyone is agreed and code is delivered you wait. You wait for real people to marry deep technology to your design.

Today, “The Toronto Star”:http://www.thestar.com/ launched their new site. It was about 7am when I saw the Toronto Star redesign tweet on my phone. I couldn’t wait to get to the office and give it a thorough walkthrough. On the drive in I wondered how or if they had implemented the various news views and topic pages. I thought about the fit and finish – would it be polished?

<blockquote>”Determining the point at which you need to stop developing and get something live isn’t exactly a science”</blockquote>

Before I grabbed my coffee or took off my coat I opened a browser. It looked great. Of course, there are still quite a few differences from what we delivered, but that’s common in a release of this magnitude. It’s one thing to deliver a few dozen static templates but an entirely different one to bring it to life in a single release. Determining the point at which you need to stop developing and get something live isn’t exactly a science. There is risk on both sides of the equation and I think their decision to go live was a sound one.

Big congrats to the fine people at Torstar for pushing it live knowing it’s not finished (they say so themselves) “The new star.com is not a finished product – it will change as we go”. Now the focus shifts from getting it live to continually improving it. They can now analyze usage, collect feedback and most importantly, use it themselves to inform new releases. Working through issues in strategy decks, wireframes, static designs, working prototypes and development environments will never come close to using the real thing. I think it’s one hell of a good start and I look forward to seeing the new platform evolve.

h3. A few highlights of the redesign

The optional news views remove much of the noise that gets presented on a traditional view.

h3. Visual News

“Visual News”:http://www.thestar.com/visualview looks stunning. It allows users to scan the news via images and small headlines. Try it out, I think it provides a refreshing perspective on the day’s events.

h3. Grid View

The “Grid View”:http://www.thestar.com/gridview let’s you see not only the homepage news in a uniformed way but also the main level categories of news like “Business”:http://www.thestar.com/gridview/business or “Entertainment”:http://www.thestar.com/gridview/entertainment.

h3. Timeline View

The last news view of this initial release is the “Timeline View”:http://www.thestar.com/timelineview. It shows you every story published, in order, since you were last on the site.

h3. Topics

This is far and away the best new feature of the site. I don’t always have time to follow every story as it unfolds. Topics offer deep coverage of stories and subjects. They aggregate stories, photos, videos and interactive pieces about people, sports teams, places and issues. Want to see what’s new with the Letterman story? Check out the “David Letterman topic page”:http://www.thestar.com/topic/DavidLetterman for all the related material and milestones. The “main topics page”:http://www.thestar.com/topics is also a nice place to start your experience.

h3. Before & After Homepage

When Geoff and I started this company we were convinced it wouldn’t last. I would always think of that line from Heat where DeNiro says “allow nothing to be in your life that you cannot walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner”. That was us. That is how we operated for the first year. We paid cash for everything, we didn’t take on any long term commitments. If we felt the heat we could fold the tent, split the money and be gone in 30 seconds.

That was seven years ago. We are seven years old today. That’s 49 in dog years. Fuck. Me.

We never meant to do this. It was an accident. We don’t plan anything other than some really high level goals at the beginning of the year. We do what feels right when it feels right. For the most part it works out really well.

So how does this thing work because it’s not due to any great plan on our part?

It works because Shannon, Gilli and Paul have worked here almost as long as we’ve been in business.
It works because Dave and Jeremy help us run this place.
It works because Angie takes care of the office and makes sure people’s birthdays are dealt with.
It works because Chris, Pete, Zack, Bobak and Brendan make things work so well, it makes grown men weep.
It works because Nals, Stevo, Tanner, Dunc and GDub take the vague ideas we have, improve them, design them and then make us look good.
It works because Kate writes in her lonely writer’s garrett (we promise we will get you some company soon).
It works because Alyssa and Joan make sure we know what we’re doing and when we’re doing it for.
It works despite the fact J-Dogg and Jonas use PCs.
And it will work better with Tamera and Adam joining.

But mainly it works because none of this feels like work.

Thanks to all our staff and clients who have kept us here for 7 years.

We’re really excited to announce that we’ll be working with Virgin Mobile on their digital properties and initiatives. There was just such a great fit between us. From the moment we got the call to the final pitch – The brand, the people, the ask, everything just felt right. We both have a lot of work ahead of us and we really can’t wait to get started. We look forward to sharing some of what we do together over the coming months. A sincere thanks goes out to the people who worked on the pitch and those who picked up the slack while we did it.

It’s still a work in progress, but I wanted to share the “previously promised”:http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/?p=1544 gameplay footage. Being such a simple game, there isn’t a great deal to showcase… but it certainly gives you a sense of how the game will work.

As you can see in the footage, you control your hippo by simply rubbing its back. The actual mechanic needs to be tweaked as it doesn’t feel quite natural yet, but it certainly works. However, there is issue with the texture of the surface itself. It’s slightly rough, which is great for general use… but it’s somewhat uncomfortable when you quickly rub your finger back and forth. I have a feeling we may need to reconsider a tapping interface, or we might actually introduce a physical object as the primary interface element.

We’ve modeled the environment and if you look closely, you’ll notice that we even animated the water. We still need to add some trees and shadow animations, plus I’d love to make the water respond to the actual gameplay… although I think that’s a little too ambitious for our initial release.

We’ve been knee deep in Surface development for a number of weeks now and I think we’re about ready to share what we’ve been up to. Being that this was our first venture into Surface development, we wanted to start with something simple and straightforward. We batted around a number of ideas and ultimately settled on something that I’m sure you’re all familiar with… Good old Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Being a 4 person game with a relatively simple interaction mechanic, the Hippos seemed like a natural fit for surface computing. From a user interaction standpoint however, it’s actually not quite as straightforward as we had anticipated.

The actual board game requires users (read: children ages 3-6) to rapidly press a lever in hopes of consuming the most marbles. The harder you press, the faster the hippo eats. Simple, right? Unfortunately, that doesn’t exactly translate as the Surface isn’t pressure sensitive – it only sees on and off. To compensate for this, we experimented with a number of alternatives and ultimately decided on a “rubbing” interaction. The faster you rub the hippo’s back, the faster he eats.

Mmm… virtual marbles.

We’ll be sharing a video of the actual gameplay soon, but in the meantime we’re gonna’ go a little retro. Enjoy.

Huge congratulations go out to Teehan+Lax’s own “Peter Nitsch”:http://www.peternitsch.net/ and “Greg Washington”:http://www.marc-gregory.com/ for taking home Best Canadian Developer and Best Canadian Designer at the recent FITC awards. We’re honoured and privileged to work with such a huge collection of talent – these guys included. Here’s the complete list of the “‘09 FITC Award winners”:http://blog.fitc.ca/post.cfm/fitc-awards-2009-winners-announced.

Teehan+Lax took home the hardware yesterday at the 2009 MediaPost Digital Out-Of-Home Awards for our work for TELUS on the HTC Diamond.
Congratulations to the entire team, it’s a big win.
See the full list of winners here.

MediaPost Digital Out-Of-Home Awards

Our digital signage work for the TELUS launch of the HTC Diamond is a finalist in the Best Point-of-Sale Campaign category at the 2009 MediaPost Digital Out-Of-Home Awards. We’re up against R/GA for their Verizon Retail work and Moxie Interactive for their Blackberry Storm signage, and that’s great company to be in.

We’ll know who won on April 22nd. Wish us luck.