Louie Van Amstel’s Ballroom With A Twist Launches
August 9, 2010
Armadillo Studios is incredibly excited to announce the launch of our latest project – The Canadian tour site for “Dancing with the Stars’ Louie Van Amstel’s production of Ballroom with a Twist”:http://www.ballroomwithatwist.com.
In conjunction with Calgary’s “Event Group”:http://www.eventgroup.ca and “Innovative Events”:http://www.innovativeevents.ca/, we set out to create a unique and exciting one-stop informational site for the upcoming 2010 Canadian tour. Building off the current excitement surrounding ballroom and professional dancing, we wanted to create a design aesthetic which encompasses the passion that Louie Van Amstel brings to all of his projects. Using a combination of bold pastel colors and a variant of glowing light streams, we created a vibrant mosaic to create a sense of excitement.
As a single page site, our next goal was to utilize as much of the screen real-estate as possible to provide users with the maximum amount of information. A dual column layout provides potential concert goers with a simple introduction to Louis Van Amstel’s production with an accompanying list of the 10 Canadian dates.
Then we created three secondary sections to promote the show’s star performers – Evan Lysacek and David Hernandez – while also allowing users to sign-up for email notifications on advanced ticket sales or to share the tour with their facebook friends.
Louise Van Amstel’s Ballroom with a Twist Canadian tour is set to launch this October and we are more than excited to be a part of this unique experience.
So, if you’re a fan of Dancing with the Stars or Louise Van Amstel, now’s your chance “to see both in a city near you”:http://www.ballroomwithatwist.com.
Categories: Armadillo Studios News,Client Releases,Corporate News,WordPress
The Lazy H Ranch Project
July 22, 2010
The second of our big releases this month is a property site for “The Lazy H Ranch”:http://www.ranchforsalevail.com.
Earlier this month we were approached by Howlyn Properties to help them create a new site to showcase a “vacation ranch property for sale near beautiful Vail, Colorado”:http://www.ranchforsalevail.com. They wanted to keep with the structure of a previous property site, but build upon the structure to make it more appealing to their selling demographic and to provide key information to potential investors.
We set out to create a rustic western colour palette with dark browns and tarnished yellows for the new site. Then we imposed some _lumography photoshop elements_ on selected photos to give them a vibrant nostalgic feel – with a goal of showcasing the down-home western comfort and livability which exudes out of The Lazy H Ranch property.
The next step was to build upon the chosen site structure, by incorporating a simple jquery image slider and a fancybox gallery for the photos of the property. Each of these enhancements was developed to showcasing the lush qualities of this stunning property.
The final major enhancement to the site was to build customized Google maps which would give users a true understanding of the location of the property in relationship to amazing wealth of winter and summer activities in the Vail Valley. We built custom maps to showcase “the world class ski hills”:http://www.ranchforsalevail.com/enjoy-vails-world-class-ski-hills/ and “top notch golf courses”:http://www.ranchforsalevail.com/vail-valley-golfing/ in the area.
Over the next few weeks we will be working with Howlyn Properties and their Realtor “Team Black Bear”:http://www.teamblackbear.com, to tailor the SEO components of the new site and to help promote the property to potential investors.
It was a pleasure to work with both companies and we wish them all the best with the project.
Taylor Made Events Catering Launches For The 2010 Stampede
July 20, 2010
A few days before the 2010 Calgary Exhibition and Stampede, Karjsa Taylor of “Taylor Made Events Catering”:http://www.taylormade-events.com came to Armadillo Studios with a small conundrum. She was showcasing her new catering talents at “The ATCO Kitchen Theatre”:http://cs.calgarystampede.com/planner/event/149-taylor-made-events-catering-ftkajsa-taylor.html and needed a quick online presence to connect with potential online customers.
So cue Team Armadillo to help a new friend in need.
Within such a quick turn around time, Armadillo Studios went about creating a unique and professional branding concept for Karjsa, while developing a simple and informational splash page to promote her unique catering services. Using a soft red, rosa and brown colour palette we developed a branding for TMEC which would appeal directly to her target market. We also leveraged a couple of interesting photos of her exquisite Lamb Burgers and Karjsa herself, to connect potential customers to the catering services.
After a successful Stampede Showcase, we wish Karjsa and Taylor Made Events Catering all the best during the busy summer BBQ season.
Stampede Wallpapers 2010: Real Pancakes Edition
July 10, 2010
Being that Team Armadillo is unapologetically proud to be Calgarian, we thought it was time to do something a little special for Stampede. So what better way to celebrate the greatest outdoor show on earth, then to create a new set of Desktop Wallpapers.
So for everyone’s enjoyment here is the 2010 Edition of our Calgary Stampede wallpaper collection. (By the way these new wallpapers predominantly feature “Veer’s custom Calgary Font”:http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=UMT0000326 and “GoMedia’s Western Vector Pack”:http://gomedia.us/arsenal/#set9.)
Real Pancakes contain Bacon
Download: Zip File with 1920×1200 & 1600×1200 formats
Download: 1600 x 1200
Download: 1920 x 1200
Mini Donuts… Sugary Carny Crack
Download: Zip File with 1920×1200 & 1600×1200 formats
Download: 1600 x 1200
Download: 1920 x 1200
If you have any other _slogan_ suggestions, feel free to leave a message in the comments. If they’re funny enough, we’ll make another batch of wallpapers.
*Happy Stampede Everyone*
Categories: Armadillo Downloads,Calgary Web Design,Fresh Ideas,Site News
DCWEEK2010: 140 Conference
June 24, 2010
To conclude our time at DCWeek, Team Armadillo had the privilege of taking in the D.C. edition of the “140 Conference”:http://dc.140conf.com/.
Started last year, by Jeff Pulver, the 140 Conference is a platform for the worldwide twitter community to come together and discuss the impact of Twitter, and to an extent the larger Social Connectivity of our culture. It’s a quick single day event, where speakers and panelists are give less than 20 minutes to cover their desired topic. The added bonus of last week’s event in Washington, was that it corresponded with “Digital Capital Week”:http://www.digitalcapitalweek.org.
The D.C. 140 Conference was filled with an “impressive line-up of thinkers and speakers”:http://dc.140conf.com/schedule. To detail each talk would probably fill three or four blog posts. So for the sake of brevity, I am going to detail three of the most interesting talks from the day.
The Salty Campaign
One of the more interesting talks revolved around Eric Weaver, an Agency executive with Vancouver based DDB. In his talk, Eric described the success of the “Salty Campaign for Knorr Sidekicks”:http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2010/01/knorrs-salty-salt-shaker-cant-catch-a-break.html.
And while many people are familiar with the T.V. spots which infiltrated Canadian Networks last year, how many of you are familiar with the accompanying Social Media campaigns?
Probably not many of you, but the campaigns were a huge success. In conjunction with the T.V. commercial, DBB also launched campaigns on Facebook and Twitter. On one hand user were able “to purchase Salty and Pepper shakers”:http://www.sidekicks.ca/arden.aspx and once people received their shakers. they were encouraged to promote pictures of their Salty in everyday life on Twitter. The second part of this aspect of the campaign allowed users who befriended Salty on Twitter and Facebook access to two hilarious video clips to expand the Salty story.
Here is one of the extra videos below.
Eric spent his time talking about the success of the campaign, but one of the key points he made was – _to have a successful campaign in this market, you have to have a corresponding relationship between Traditional Media and Social Media. Each tool has to compliment the other and it has to be geared to drive users towards the target campaign_.
*Sidenote*: Eric, although not a full-fledged Canadian, was one of the three Canadians at the conference. Of course the other two Canadians were “TEAM ARMADILLO”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/drbeachvacation/4710974738/!
Blake Hall & TroopSwap
Blake Hall is a one of the three founding members of “TroopSwap”:https://www.troopswap.com/pages/about, an online tool designed to help soldiers who are constantly moving and transferring. His talk revolved around the concept of Enterprise 2.0 and how it can help communication issues within the Military.
Hall talked about implementing Enterprise 2.0 concepts and the ideals behind shared social networks to help communications between forces in combat zones. Hall’s visions revolved around the use of a massive discussion board or a secure Twitter like client (similar to “Yammer”:https://www.yammer.com/), where troops and commanding officers can safely pass on information in real-time to Platoon leaders. The goal of Hall’s vision is to ensure that information is available to all levels of a combat force in real-time.
Hall’s philosophy was that with so much collaboration and information being spread through these Social Networks, the concept of the Twitter and Enterprise 2.0 is something that could be leveraged to save lives in combat zones.
In a world where so much rhetoric is focused on brand development, ROI, and trends; Hall’s talk was an astonishing breath of fresh air.
The Browncoats: Redemption Project
One of the most interesting talks came from Mike Dougherty and Steven Fisher, who detailed their experience with leveraging the Twitter community to fund “The Browncoats: Redemption”:http://browncoatsmovie.com/.
The Browncoats: Redemption is a new film based in the Joss Whedon developed universe of Serenity and Firefly. But unlike the short-lived show Firefly and the movie Serenity, Browncoats is a completely fan-funded continuation of the mythos. It is the brain child of Mike and Steven and during the 140 conference, the two discussed the project and how they have used Twitter and Facebook to spread the word to the ravenous Firefly community to help fund their vision.
The 140 Conference
The 140 conference was an exceptional day of thoughts and discussion. As mentioned, I could go on about each of the 50 speakers, but it would probably be a bit of an overload of information.
If you do get a chance to attend a 140 Conference, please to take advantage of the opportunity. You won’t regret it.