KLD is moving!

After 5 years in our current location, we're moving to our own space 1 block south down 124 street, to a new 2nd floor location. Our new address is #203, 10129 - 124 Street, Edmonton Alberta T5N 1P5, our phone number and email addresses will be the same. We'd like to thank Emergence By Design, with whom we've shared space with for the past 5 years, for being great office mates! See you all in the new space!

Thanks for Applying

To everyone who applied for this position - thank you!

We are overwhelmed with 30+ resumes from a wide range of talented designers — there is a huge amount of excellent work being done out there. We wish we could personally respond to all of you, but it would take us a week. 

Please know we are reviewing the resumes and portfolios, comparing them to our requirements and deciding what mix of skills will be the right fit for our current client mix. 

We intend to be interviewing/making a decision in the upcoming days and weeks ahead.

Thank you all again!

Graphic Design Position

We have a new position open for a designer, please take a look here:
http://www.kldesign.com/careers.shtml

Ready, Set, Animate!

For the past five years, the Recycling Council of Alberta has hired us to create a one minute flash animation to help promote their annual fall conference. We feel really lucky to do this because it stretches our creativity outside our usual day to day activities. This year we got the chance to do the whole thing: develop the concept, write the script, storyboard the visuals, illustrate, record the voices, and animate the peice. How fun is that? (And we designed programmed the the rest of the mini-site). Take a look.

HSAA Website Launched

After about a year in development, we're proud to announce the launch of the Health Sciences Association of Alberta website. Emergence hired us to develop the overall look and feel, while EBD built sophisticated features including tayloring news and information to members who log in. The Health Sciences Association of Alberta (HSAA) is a labour union representing close to 20,000 paramedical technical, professional, and general support employees in the public and private health care sectors of Alberta, Canada. Click to see it in action.

Innovative Packaging Design

Happy Monday everyone! I just wanted to share a couple of amazing inspirational and environmental packaging designs that I came across on FastCompany.com today. I really love seeing innovative packaging solutions – it's such an interesting and challenging field of design and I am really loving the move towards more environmentally-friendly solutions that are also clever, creative and often beautiful!

I encourage you to read the complete articles, I've posted links below.



First up is a really interesting take on how to box things up and ship them economically. I really appreciate the problem-solving that must have gone into this solution and if it saves trees AND protects your package then it fulfills its purpose brilliantly. The author brought up a valid point about how well these irregular-shaped packages may stack and fit on a truck. Time will tell whether shippers agree, but if it works in practice then it's brilliant!

» Almost Genius: The Cardboard Box That Fits Anything Perfectly
by Cliff Kuang – FastCompany.com, Apr 20, 2010



I also read an article from a couple of weeks ago by the same author about the new Puma shoebox design. The solution goes beyond the initial problem of reducing the packaging of the box itself by also reducing packaging at the point of sale as well! "Puma estimates that the bag will slash water, energy, and fuel consumption during manufacturing alone by 60%." (!!!) The solution makes sense on all levels, from economical, environmental and stylistic standpoints. Can't wait to see what they have in store for their rebrand! And now I want to go shoe shopping....

» Reboot: Puma and Yves Béhar Spend Three Years Designing Super-Green Shoebox
by Cliff Kuang – FastCompany.com, Apr 13, 2010

Photos via FastCompany.com

Lily & the Muse

Though I do love a 'cute kitty' or 'funny kid after the dentist' video via youtube, sometimes I long for something beautiful. Lily & the Muse is a video sharing site to watch pretty things in motion. That's where I found this video from Girls with Glasses. It was the perfect pick me up on this cloudy afternoon. Plus the props and clothes are fantastic!

Have a super weekend!

I Am A Girl - The Girls With Glasses Theme Song from The Girls With Glasses on Vimeo.

West Coast Style in Edmonton!

We recently launched the Yu Fashion Clothing & Accessories website and Yu: a fashion blog. Fay has become quite the blogger and regularly posts her fashion finds and new arrivals at the store.

Yu Fashion is an Edmonton clothing and accessories boutique in the Crestwood neighbourhood. Fay and Diane provide a unique and personalized shopping experience, creating ongoing relationships with their customers. They carry a lot of great brands including many local and Canadian designers as well as some labels such as Free People that are otherwise difficult or impossible to find here. And you should just see all of the jeans! We urge you to check them out, I hear the new spring collections are arriving ; )

Happy Friday everyone!

Hola Amigos

I've just returned from a two week adventure in Cuba. It was lovely with a mix of sun and clouds and although I can't say that I got a super realistic picture of Cuban life, I feel I got a peek.


We spent a day in Havana – a beautiful, yet decaying city. I wish we could have stayed longer but, unfortunately we were with a tour and had very little free time to wander. We were lucky to visit Bodeguita del medio to sample their famous Mojito (a favourite of Ernest Hemingway).


We spent a week on the Cuban island, Cayo Largo del Sur. The weather there was hot (it's south of the mainland). Lots of beach lounging happened there. My favourite day on the island was the morning we spent floating around on a yacht with our Cuban captain, his skip and a couple from Montreal. Simply lovely.


If you're wanting to learn a bit about the history of Cuba, (it's pretty fascinating) here's a great article on Cuban life and design.

Marketing independent consultants: how much to spend?

So you want to start your own consulting business. Maybe offer some seminars, get some ongoing paying clients, start a blog, and (cue the holy grail music) sell your advice packaged as eBooks, or (gasp) an actual book. Ok, great! 

So how much should you invest in marketing materials? The answer to that entirely depends on how much money you are expecting to make. Yes it sounds obvious, but when you are starting out and creating a vision of your new business - it all seems possible. As you get going you will quickly narrow your focus, and your marketing needs will start to crystalize. Lets look at how consultants make money, and what kind of marketing materials are appropriate for each.

1) Large contracts. If you are in the kind of business where you are bidding on large corporate or government contracts, then yes, investing in some marketing is a good idea, and will definitely pay off, even if you just get a great logo and business card. You'll likely brand yourself as a corporation (rather than your name). 

2) If your consulting is sold to individuals by the hour — like counselling, massage therapy, etc - then your marketing efforts will be more personal. A cleanly designed business card maybe all you need as far as materials go. Your customers will buy from you because they like you, or have been referred to you by someone who does.

3) Products. If  you have gotten to the point where you have books or videos to sell - then your website will be paramount, and the quality of your materials should be high. The more products you have (and the greater their value) the greater the marketing investment. Just don't expect to make any money from a book - its a loss leader to solidify you as an expert, and get you hired as a speaker or consultant. 

4) Seminars and workshops. How much marketing you invest here depends on how many workshops you intend to do. An occasional seminar at a community college will need nothing while ongoing weekly seminars, or conferences means you will need a lot of people to sign up, and plenty of ongoing marketing.

Going bigger with postcards and direct mail

I received a call from a client the other day who was thinking about doing a small postcard drop to his neighbourhood. He was thinking of dropping 1500 cards. OK, I said. Designing and printing that many full colour cards will cost you around $1000. With a 1% response rate, he might get 15 responses as a cost of $66 per response. Small quantities makes for expensive responses.

Instead of doing that, I told him he should consider printing 50,000 cards, costing him $3500 to design and print. The same response rate will give him 500 responses - or a cost of $7 per response. These aren't sales yet, but if I were him,  I'd feel much better about converting sales from 500 responses than 15.

And one more thing - if he had a good client list and printed the postcards digitally, we could design it so each card was printed with the address (no extra address labelling costs), and include the client's name on the front ("A Special Offer for Owen"), almost guaranteeing a better response rate.

Happy Friday!

We are having a delicious Friday here at KLD!

Nicole and I went across the street to Chocolaterie Bernard Callebaut to buy some Valentine's Day treats (we have a weak spot for the sweets!) and then stopped in next door to Buena Vista Coffee Co. for some tasty turkey sandwiches (their gelato is also amazing!)

Usually sandwiches from Buena Vista come wrapped in butcher paper, but today they used new takeaway boxes from Bio-based Tater Ware™. I was so interested in this new biodegradable packaging that I looked it up to learn more about the it and to see how it was made. Plastic made from plants, brilliant! I love being environmentally friendly where I can : )

This afternoon we finished this all off with an AMAZING 'Duke' chocolate cake from Duchess Bake Shop (have I mentioned how lucky we are to work in such a yummy neighbourhood like 124 Street?) It was Kyle's birthday last week and we all enjoyed his belated birthday cake immensely!

Design Budget Tips

Want to maximize your budget and minimize extra design costs?

I’ve compiled a short list of ideas which, in my experience, could help.

Do as much brainstorming and research as possible before getting started.
Find samples of work you do like and work you don’t like – put some thought into why this might be. This will also give you something to talk about with your designer.

Gather all resources that may be useful.
Such as logos (old/new) and old design work.

Find photos you think might work.
A lot of time can be spent searching stock photo sites for the perfect photo. It’s helpful and saves time to supply photos to your designer. Remember they will need to he high resolution if you’re going to use them to print.

Thoroughly proof your copy and send it all at once.
Extra revisions are a sure way to go over budget. One way to reduce revisions is to send thoroughly proofed copy that’s styled and ready to be placed. Revisions can sometimes account for 50%+ of a project's overall cost!

Be specific about changes.
Saying "This is wrong, please fix." is a confusing request. Rather be specific and say "Change the first sentence in the third paragraph to say October instead of November." It helps to over communicate.

Send edits through email as a list, or on a marked up pdf.
Receiving edits over the phone is a designer's least favourite way to receive changes. It's hard to double check and can make us nervous. It's best for everyone to have the changes in writing so that nothing is missed. If you like, you can always call so we can walk through the changes together.

Photo: My desk this morning.