Thanks to everyone in our community for your support this year. Together, through the effectiveness of our Considered Designs and the vision of our inspiring clients we made a real difference in the world in 2008.
We had many highlights including launching major web presences for newmatilda.com, the LHMU, the Victorian branch of the ETU, BigPond’s new messaging system MyConnect, and the Guide Dogs NSW social media strategy and pilot MySpace page to name just a few.
While we focus on effectiveness it’s always nice to be recognised for our work and we took away a swag of awards including a Finalist in the Classical Music Awards for Sydney Symphony’s Sinfonietta project, two AGDA finalists for our “Hey Joe, know an eskimo?” recruitment campaign and an FBI/Timeout SMAC award for the Raise The Bar campaign. Co-collaborator John Wardle and I were also recognised in Sydney Magazine’s Top 100 influential people awards for our work on the campaign.
Speaking of which the first small bars opened in Sydney just a few weeks ago and live entertainment will soon be filling pubs, restaurants and those new bars thanks to changes in the planning laws. Nothing short of a cultural revolution has begun in NSW and Digital Eskimo is proud to have played its part in this.
We also moved into our new open plan studio this year, giving us 300 square metres of bamboo floored sunlit space in which to create and collaborate. We continued to eco-innovate in the space, bringing our third worm farm online to process our food waste and we recently installed a rooftop vegie garden, closing the loop on our food usage. And finally, in a market downturn we ended the year strongly; picking up key clients Artbank, UTS, UNSW and Randwick Council.
Last week was the 20th anniversary for the Ozchi conference, the leading forum for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) in Australia and New Zealand.
I had the pleasure of presenting a paper co-authored with John MacFarlane, a producer at Digital Eskimo, Reflections on the role of Seeding in Social Design (pdf). In it we discuss the way in which social technologies, dependent on participation for success, bring into focus the dynamic and critical relationship between design and use. In social technologies the user literally determines the design, we (designers) only provide the platform. This is an interesting landscape for designers as our role starts to extend beyond constructing and making, to taking responsibility for facilitating and enabling participation. Designing and implementing social technologies successfully means also developing strategies for engagement.
We’re delighted to announce that last night the Raise The Bar campaign won the SMAC in Your Face award at the first Sydney Music, Art & Culture Awards presented by FBI Radio and Time Out magazine. The awards, presented at the Opera House, focus on Sydney’s creative community and are about celebrating the “interesting, the ingenious, the clever”.
From left: Dave Gravina, Andrew Cox, Adele Winteridge, Jonathon Larkin and John Wardle accpet the prize
Congratulations to all the winners on the night which represented some of Sydney’s most creative young talent (a special congrats to Fergus Linehan who pipped us at the post for SMAC of the Year!).
I should take this opportunity to thank all of those wonderful people who made the campaign such a huge success - and forgive me if I forget anyone .. our members who sent over 7,500 virtual drinks, gave money and made hundreds of calls to Liberal leader Barry O’Farrels office the night before the vote in Parliament, Clover Moore, Graham West MP, John Thorpe (ex AHA President, aka the villain!), FBI Radio, Spanton Media, Walter at Melt and Cedric at Cafe Lounge, Tom and the team at Mooball, Kate Bezar at Dumbofeather, Two Thousand, Kripy, Musicland, James Squire, Burrundulla Wines and of course all the RTB crew who put so many hours into the campaign.
Which incidentally isn’t over, stay tuned shortly for the next phase of the campaign …
… the convergence of social action and technology
Last week I had the pleasure of giving a keynote at the Making Links conference in Melbourne. A big thanks to the organisers and the great attendees who all represent organisations and activists doing excellent work for social change. My presentation, ‘Reaching out or Moving closer: connecting with your community’, focused on participation and engagement (See it here on slideshare). In particular ways that people can approach social technologies to initiate and foster relationships with their community. I focused on how we can use these tools to develop an ecology appropriate to our stakeholders motivations and interests, rather than focusing on the one stop shop idea of traditional websites.
Design is for the large part one of the main causes of sustainability problems in today’s world. Too often design is caught up in creating the next meaningless flavour of the month. Pushing people to consume more and think less.
As designers we are often asked to create something new for the sake of NEW, when new isn’t necessarily more usable, functional, aesthetically pleasing or in anyway better. Although designers are not completely to blame, by being more responsible and sustainable in our approach to design we refuse to take part in the joint denial that is consumer capitalism.
So, on world usability day we at Digital Eskimo would like to make a call to our readers (especially designers!): be a leader; don’t do things today that make tomorrow worse. Rather than asking yourself which one is newer, brighter and superficially better, perhaps we should ask what does better really mean?
BTW .. This year’s theme is Transportation - a matter close to our green hearts … learn more at the official site.
Ohh and this post was written by our new Art Director, Christopher Potter who has joined us from the UK after running his own agency, Grass Blades for many years. Chris and i met on the launch of the original Toyota Prius back in 2001 and have stayed in touch ever since - his design is naturally considered and he brings a swag of flash and coding skills to the house. Ohh and he cooks a mean Burmese dish with his partner Cho, check out their hsa*ba book for tastey Burmese treats.
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