Ottawa & Calgary Web Design + WordPress + Drupal + Social Media + iPhone Apps | Armadillo Studios Inc.

Armadillo Studios is happy to announce that we are expanding our reach from one end of Canada to the other.

Armadillo Studios is now operating out of two location in this fine country. Our home-base of operations will continue to be our beloved Calgary, but we are now also expanding with a satellite office in the Ottawa market.

With the advances in collaboration tools and video conferencing, the challenges associated with working across time zones and distance have been dramatically minimized. It’s because of these advancments and tools that Team Armadillo will still be able to provide our great web design services in two different locations at the same time. We’ve been able to hone this skill over the past few years through our work and collaboration with companies all across North America – working with companies and teams in Toronto, Chicago, Washington, Austin and even Edmonton.

Team Armadillo is incredibly excited to continue our work as an involved member of the Calgary web design community and we’re also excited to bring our hard working prairie attitude to the Ottawa Tech community.

If you have any questions or would like to get in contact with us for your next project, feel free to contact us at info@armadillostudios.ca or 1.800.974.3814.

Armadillo Studios Inc., is very proud to announce that we are not only a major sponsor, but acting as the online technical support for the 1st Annual Calgary Seniors Walk. The Calgary Seniors Walk is being put on by our good friends at the Canadian Legacy Project, a great Calgary based non-profit that we have been working with for a few years. As you can see from the event’s web site, it’s sure to be an exciting event:

The 1st Annual Calgary Seniors Walk will take place on Thursday, August 30th on Stephen Avenue Mall in support of the Golden Age Club (www.thegoldenageclub.com). This unique walk event will take place during the lunch hour and will cover the four blocks on Stephen Avenue Mall in downtown Calgary with the goal to raise awareness and much needed funds for The Golden Age Club. The Golden Age Club offers a variety of social, recreational, health and outreach programs for Calgary’s seniors population.

Today, January 18th, Team Armadillo is joining hundreds of web sites across North America in blacking out in support of the anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA movement.

And while it’s great news that SOPA (The Stop Online Privacy Act) has been shelved by Congress for the time being, it still doesn’t address some of the underlying threats towards the web industry in North America. It’s a step forward, but governments north and south of the 49th parallel must show a greater understanding of the importance of this emerging industry.

Earlier this month we teamed up with members of the Howard family and The Event Group to launch the new online home of the Canadian Legacy Project.

The Canadian Legacy Project is a new non-profit foundation dedicated to improving the lives of disadvantaged youth, seniors and veterans and mobilize collective action in celebrating the legacy.

The Canadian Legacy Project is in it’s first year of existence and is already working to help local Calgarians with the Seniors Day Out this past September and also the 4th annual Veterans Food Drive which will take place in November.

To help establish the foundation and build a strong following, we went about designing a unique identity for the web site. One that would invoke a sense of pride and honored tradition. As the main portal for information regarding the foundation, we wanted to create an engaging layout while also making it easy to navigate. We also utilized large colourful buttons to draw the users attention to some of the more important aspects of the site – such as the volunteer, donate and event pages.

We also established a soft and professional colour palette, with a combination of light greys and steel blue. We also created a unique maple leaf medallion logo for the Project as a way to reinforce the project’s commitment to Canadian Veterans, Seniors and our cherished past of servitude.

We are extremely excited to be working with the Canadian Legacy and to help them achieve their online goals. We look forward to seeing the foundation grow over the next months and to see the uplifting change that they plan to bring to our community.

Sidenote: In November The Canadian Legacy Project will be working with Crown Surplus on the fourth annual Veterans Food Drive. Please check into the site over the next couple of weeks as the foundation begins providing more detailed information regarding the drive.

We are excited! … Correction.

We are incredibly stoked to be a bronze level sponsor of Drupal Camp Alberta this September 11th and 12th at the University of Calgary.

This is the first time in it’s three year history that Drupal Camp Alberta will be held in our hometown. So to recognize such a great step forward for the Drupal community, we thought we’d provide a bit of sponsorship and a hand for this merry band of Lethbridge designers.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Drupal Camp concept, it’s essentially a two-day tour de farce for everything Drupal.

The sessions are designed to bring the growing Drupal Camp community together to share ideas, techniques, tools and strategies that make this CMS one of the most powerful tools in the Web industry. Through Drupal Camp Alberta, we are hoping to see a stronger more tight-nit Drupal development community emerge in this fine city. The team at RedWall and Lethbridge Web Design have already done an exceptional job of fostering the community down south and we look forward to seeing them in our hometown.

If you’re planning to attend Drupal Camp Alberta, keep an eye out for Team Armadillo’s own Drupal Ninja – Ryan Boley. He’ll be in attendance this weekend and would love to spend some time talking everything Drupal.

It is with big grins that we are proud and extremely pleased to announce the first copies of the yycPhotobook have been published.

As mentioned in a previous article, Armadillo has been honored to team up with Duncan Kinney (of yycBlogs) to design and construct the yycPhotobook. And now that the book is completed, we are even more excited for the upcoming launch party on Sept 18th.

In regards to the actual design process for the book, the yycPhotobook team started by selecting a diverse collection of unique and engaging photos from a group of Calgary photographers. Next, we brainstormed a layout and order that would maximize the impact of each photo. We then assembled the basic skeleton of the book in InDesign using the easy to use templates supplied by“Blurb.com”:http://www.blurb.com. Keeping with the theme of the original web site; The yycPhotobook design utilizes the same crisp aesthetics associated with the minimalist web site. Each photograph in the book is given it’s own page with the author’s accompanying avatar and a short 140 character description of the work. In combination, this ultimately created a unique 40-page book that encompasses Calgary’s distinctive identity.

As mentioned, the yycPhotobook launch party is on Sept. 18 at Venturion (214 11th Ave. SE). There will be beer and wine for sale at reasonable prices and some light refreshments. You’ll be able to meet the contributing photographers and get a sneak peek of the book. The book will also be made available to the public through yycPhotobook.com and Blurb.com, on the day of the party.

A couple of months ago, Alex Lemanski of Bitfyre fame approached some of our mutal friends from previous SXSW Adventures about trying our hand at a panel for SXSW 2010.

As a collective we’ve already built the popular how-to guide SXSWisEASY , so it would only make sense to throw our collective hats into the SXSW panellist ring. So with that I’m happy to present to you our potential panel Leave Your Job. Start An Agency.

The concept behind our panel is simple. We want to provide an outsiders perspective on the difficulties of starting your own studio. We’ll address things like how to do transition from your solo Apartment/PJ set-up into a full on office? How to deal with arguing co-owners? How to find clients across different area codes? Pretty much every topic that someone would need to know if they were contemplating starting up their own business.

To paraphrase Joe, the idea of the panel is to get the real dirt on non-existent inter-office scandals and what to do when your partner doesn’t agree with you – there’s sure to be some heat in this panel. What else could you expect from three Americans, one Canuck and a Texan.

So this is where we need your help, if you’ve got a second and do plan on attending SXSW’10 in Austin, please log on to the panel picker and give our panel a big thumbs-up. Voting closes on Sept 4th, so be quick.