I’m happy to report that I’ve launched the new Edmonton Music Collectors Show website, with a new branding concept and expanded content. I worked with local artist Andreas Loutas to create original illustrations for use in our new branding concept. My goal with it was to capture the high energy and creative spirit we experienced during the first show, which still maintaining a fun and simple approach, and a bit of a “retro” feel. We changed up the colour scheme to be more print-friendly, so that our posters and handbills would stand out more and be more easily readable. I moved the site from standard HTML to a WordPress installation, and there is now integration of a blog and our social media profiles right in the site. We’re very excited for the spring show, which is happening on April 22, 2012.

http://www.connectionsnetwork.ca

About the project.

Connections Network is a consulting organization that helps professional women in all stages of their careers network through meeting sessions and discover their own individual next step using Personality Dimensions™ profiling. I came to the Connections Network website through my work as an outsourcing contractor for Dana DiTomaso. Connections Network wanted to convert an existing HTML site to one powered by WordPress, as well as add a little more polish to the site’s look-and-feel.

Project scope.

This project required fairly straightforward development of a simple custom WordPress theme with dropdown menu navigation and plugin integration. Using elements from the client’s existing branding, which suggested a very simple, clean and minimalistic design approach, I put together a WordPress site that combined a blog and an events calendar plugin alongside standard information pages about the business. I worked closely with Dana to satisfy the client’s specifications and expectations in terms of the design and layout of the site.

Since expanding the scope of her business, Dana has been outsourcing more of the website development and maintenance work that she’s been getting from clients to other developers. I met with Dana in the fall of last year, shortly after the launch of KikkiPlanet.com, to discuss the possibility of taking some WordPress and general website maintenance work off her hands. Since then, I have worked with Dana on several projects, including:

• Connections Network » Migration to WordPress with original custom theme development.
• Hewick Research » Migration to WordPress with duplication of existing site’s design as a WordPress theme.
• General website maintenance for other clients, including Vision Dance Academy, Social Photo Booths, and Magnolia House Spa.

Working with Dana as an outsource service provider has been a great experience so far, and I look forward to our future collaborative efforts.

The official launch of the book will take place at Words with Friends 3 (aka #yegwords3) on October 26 at Bohemia (10217 97 St). I will be reading from the book, and will have copies for sale there as well. $20 cash will get you a copy. The event will also feature a whole roster of other amazingly talented writers and performers, so it is well worth attending. Doors are at 7:30 pm, readings begin at 8:00 pm.

I am so incredibly proud of and excited for this project to launch. It has been virtually a lifelong dream to publish a book of my poetry, and the fact that I did all of the print layout and book design work myself makes me even more excited. Please come out and join me in celebrating!

http://www.lisanicolegrace.com

About the project.

Lisa Nicole Grace is an independent singer/songwriter from Edmonton. Her music could be classified as folk, with elements of pop and country. Lisa initially approached me about her website in August of 2011, as she was gearing up to release her first full-length album, Prairie Belle. She already had a website, but was looking to revamp the design in line with her vision for the look and feel of her new album. She also wanted a fuller-featured embedded music player where visitors could listen to a few songs from the album before deciding to buy, as well as links directly to her iTunes and cdBaby stores. Additionally, Lisa had an externally linked blog hosted at BlogSpot, but she wanted to integrate her blog directly into her website in the new iteration. She had a tight deadline and a limited budget, and needed me to produce something quickly that was beautiful, yet simple.

Project scope.

When I first spoke with Lisa about her project and took a look at her existing website, considering the alterations and upgrades she wanted to make, I immediately recommended switching to a WordPress installation. This would allow Lisa to retain her existing website content, integrate her blog into her website, and easily maintain things like her show schedule and her blog herself. I knew I could use the vast library of open source WordPress plugins to put aspects of her existing content into a format where she could autonomously keep her own website updated regularly. Lisa was amenable to this course of action, and so I set to work on creating a brand new design concept for the site.

To start with, Lisa provided me with a series of photographs taken by Lillian Katz of Visible Echo for use in her album’s packaging and to rebrand her website. The photos had a very natural feel, with many shots of Lisa in outdoor settings, featuring colours and textures that were earthy and organic. This suited the Prairie Belle concept very well, as the content of Lisa’s songs are intimately tied to growing up in the prairies and her life here in Alberta. Warm browns, creams and natural pinks were staples of Lillian’s photo series, and both Lisa and I wanted to use these colours to define the look and feel of the album and the website.

Lisa gave me notes on ideas she had for how we could use specific photographs in the website’s design, as well as sending me links to a couple of other musicians’ websites that she liked for inspiration. I had a good idea of what she had in mind, and used her ideas as a base when I set to work designing. I selected a beautiful photo of Lisa against the backdrop of leafless autumn trees for the site’s fixed background image. It framed the content of the website nicely, and provided beautiful texture to the design. I also selected a scriptive font for the title accents, which was in line with the organic, feminine feel that Lisa wanted.

Content development was easy, as for the most part, all I had to do was copy Lisa’s existing website content over to the new WordPress installation. I imported all of her blog posts from BlogSpot and her existing information pages into the new design. Where it got a little more tricky was installing a plugin to manage her calendar of shows and gigs. I wanted Lisa to be able to update this on the fly without coding, and to use the information in varying places in the website’s theme. So I installed an event calendar management plugin that would allow Lisa to enter new events through the admin interface and automatically update Lisa’s schedule on the website, making it easy for her to manage. Other website features included a photo gallery plugin for Lisa to manage her own photos, as well as social media plugins to integrate Lisa’s social media presence directly on her own site.

Lisa’s site was also my first foray into WordPress themes designed expressly for mobile devices. If you visit her site on a mobile device, you’ll see a simplified version of the site using the same colours and content as the desktop site.

After Lisa saw her new website, she was very happy with the results, and asked me to also design the packaging for her CD. She wanted the CD packaging to reflect the same aesthetic as the website. Using templates provided by her print house, as well as Lisa’s notes, I created 4 panels including front and back covers, and inside panels for the CD case using Adobe Illustrator.

Client testimonial.

“After two years of pouring my heart and soul into recording my first full length record, I needed to find someone who I could trust to create a design for my website and cd packaging. I needed to find someone who would take this precious project of mine and interpret how I wanted to present myself. Kasia Gawlak took my scattered notes, the ideas and hopes I tried to express to her and to put it quite simply, read my mind. I could not be more blissfully happy with her work. She is extremely enthusiastic, passionate and attentive to every detail. I recommend Code Word Media Design to anyone and everyone I know looking for a dedicated, incredibly creative and professional designer. Thank you Kasia!” — Lisa Nicole Grace

Project extras.

CD packaging – front cover

CD packaging – back cover

About the project.

KikkiPlanet.com is an online magazine centred on Edmonton, which launched on September 30, 2011. It focuses on the young, urban, up-and-coming, professional, and social media savvy population of Edmonton. KikkiPlanet.com is truly a team effort. While Kikki does the lion’s share of the writing, I handle the website, branding and associated print/promotional materials. We have photography by Photos With Ashley, and makeup design with Makeup by Lita. We feature profiles of young men and women who are making a difference in the city through their involvement with Edmonton’s social media community, with their professional accomplishments, with giving back through charity, non-profit and volunteer work, and who personify what makes Edmonton great. We also feature content on great things to do around the city, reviews of books and wine, and much, much more. The project is still in its start-up phase, but we plan to grow and expand steadily with new features, new content and the very best that Edmonton has to offer its vibrant population.

KikkiPlanet.com has come a long way from where it started. Initially, Kikki conceived of it as an extension of her Twitter persona, @KikkiPlanet. That persona was sarcastic, witty and outrageous, with a lot of tweeting about Masi wine, Smirnoff vodka, Lelo, and cabana boys. The site would be a personal blog featuring content in line with her tweets about her life as the stay-at-home mom of a 4 year old daughter and two teenage sons, and the wife of a successful lawyer. Kikki hired someone to design the blog and a photographer to take a few pictures they could use to build the template. But somewhere along the way, Plan A failed — and all for the better.

For one, Kikki’s vision for her creation had changed. She wanted her website to be about more than just getting tipsy and spouting off pearls of wisdom from the comfort of her designer sofa. She wanted it to be about the vibrant and exciting culture she had become a part of through Edmonton’s social media scene, and about the amazing friends, contacts and goings-on she had discovered there. As well, things with the development of her site weren’t going well. Kikki happens to be a close friend of mine as well as a client, and so because of my background in website development, we had been chatting about her project a fair amount off the books, even before she officially hired me. Eventually she approached me, hoping that I might be better able to capture her vision for her persona and her website. I was only too happy to join her team.

We scrapped whatever there was so far and went back to the drawing board with a new vision, a new website developer, a new photographer and a new passion. In the space of 4 weeks, we built the website, ran two sensational photo shoots, wrote 6 solid articles, planned/promoted and hosted a beautiful cocktail party to celebrate the launch of the site, designed and ordered business cards, designed and ordered custom shot glasses as gifts for our party guests, produced and posted a 3 minute video for the launch party, and a whole host of other tasks too numerous to list.

I can’t say enough about how much this project means to me. On a personal level, I share Kikki’s feelings on Edmonton’s social media scene and the amazing people I’ve come to know through it over the last 18 months. On a professional level, I couldn’t have asked for a better client. Kikki has a prominent voice in this town, and as a result of our collaborative partnership, literally thousands of people in Edmonton have seen my work on her site, many of whom are top level talent in Edmonton’s news media, marketing and communications firms, and independent business community.

Project scope.

I knew from the moment Kikki told me about her project that WordPress would be ideal for her needs. It allows for multiple contributors, a great deal of layout flexibility, a solid content organization method, a library of many open-source plugins to extend the site’s functionality, and would make it easy for Kikki to post her own articles once the site was fully operational. But KikkiPlanet.com was not just a standard WordPress installation, with a list of blog posts running down the page. We wanted to create a “magazine” feel to our website, with all the latest content available straight from the front page, where visitors could access what interested them in a single click. This required development of a brand new, from-scratch custom WordPress theme. Working with WordPress code and functions was very demanding in this project, and it certainly challenged me! Thank goodness for the WordPress Codex.

When we started, all we had was a concept in our heads and ideas for the content we wanted. But we had no branding yet. That’s where Ashley Green came in. We did a photo shoot with Ashley at several downtown locations designed to capture KikkiPlanet.com’s modern, urban flavour. The results were outstanding, and we built the site’s branding around graphic elements designed using Ashley’s photos of Kikki as a base. Kikki wanted the aesthetic concept of her site to be feminine and elegant, but still bold and attention-grabbing. I conceived of the site in my head as something like a fancy cocktail party in website form. When it comes to bold, feminine elegance, you can never go wrong with black, white and hot pink. I worked with one of Ashley’s photos in Photoshop, then built the website’s main logo header around this image, using both a scriptive font and an understated serif font for the logo’s text. When I showed this treatment to Kikki, she loved it immediately, and so I knew I was on the right track. From there, it was fairly routine to use the elements from the logo to accent the rest of the site.

Kikki and I really took a two-pronged approach to getting the website ready for launch. In one house in the West End of Edmonton during the month of September, I was clacking away at my keyboard and clicking away at my mouse to create the site’s layout and structure using filler text while I waited for Kikki, in another West End house about 30 blocks away, to complete the writing of her features. As she began to send me content, I slotted it in where it needed to go on the site. I wanted a really interactive experience for visitors, and coded the site’s theme so that each type of content would have unique sets of theme elements, sidebar features and intuitive clicking access for visitors.

In the meantime, there was a lot more work to do than just developing the website and its content. We ran two back-to-back photo shoots with Ashley in Edmonton’s downtown core mid-month to get stunning images of Brittney and Seth for our Woman to Watch and Man About Town feature articles. During the photo shoot, I had my video camera in hand almost the entire time, capturing footage I planned to use in a video montage for the site and its big launch party at the end of the month. Speaking of the launch party, was that ever fun to plan! We definitely wanted a fun, bold and elegant affair to capture the theme and style of our website, so we planned a stand-up cocktail party with trays of gourmet appetizers and a private bar. I accompanied Kikki every step of the way as we secured a venue (Daffodil Gallery), a caterer (d’Lish Urban Kitchen & Wine Bar), decor and made up a VIP guest list. I also designed and produced a special postcard-style invitation that Kikki could personally deliver to her VIP guests. While she handled online ticket sales to the party and procurement of items for the swag bags, and we both promoted it as much as possible on Twitter and Facebook, I also designed for her a simple but elegant business card, and had those produced by a professional printer. By the eve of the party, we were expecting around 50 guests, and Kikki had lined up a digital photo booth on site for her guests to create memories of the event. I also created a 3 minute video set to music designed to capture the story of how KikkiPlanet.com came to be, and the experience of working on the site for all the people involved.

By the time September 30 — the day of our big launch — rolled around, we were incredibly excited to see how our creation would be received and to celebrate a lot of hard work in a very short amount of time.

Project results.

Since launching KikkiPlanet.com, we’ve been overwhelmed by the positive response it has received. In the first 28 hours of operation, more than 800 people took a look at the website, and they spent a combined total of 78 hours browsing its content. Comments from our peers in Edmonton’s social media community were overwhelmingly supportive of both the site’s look/structure and its content. We’ve had lots of interest from the organizers of various events around the city about being featured in “#yegenda”, our guide to Edmonton’s hottest things to do. We’ve also had recommendations for people we can profile on the site, and requests to contribute content as well.

The launch party, too, was a roaring success. Our guests enjoyed delicious food and a signature “Kikkitini” chocolate cinnamon cocktail, and hammed it up in the photo booth until we had to shut down the event. But that doesn’t mean we shut down the party. Afterwards, those who wanted to keep celebrating moved over to 100 Bar & Kitchen and we were at it late into the night. Everyone who attended seemed to have a great time, and the launch party video was also very well received.

Client testimonial.

“In July of 2011, KikkiPlanet.com was at a low point.  After months of no progress on the site and a lack of congruency between myself and the previous web designer with regard to the vision, I had become frustrated and disheartened with the project.  Determined to bring the site back to the initial vision I had developed in the first place, I hired Kasia Gawlak to work both on the design and construction of the site.  Kasia’s immediate enthusiasm for the project and comprehension of my ultimate goal and the audience I wished to attract breathed new life into our project.  As a result of her hard work and dedication to a common goal, KikkiPlanet.com launched to acclaim, accolades and received immediate recognition in the online social media community, as well as in news media.  Kasia is not only a gifted developer but also a thoughtful listener, and the blend of these two attributes helped KikkiPlanet.com become what it is today – a breathtaking website that appeals to the exact audience I had hoped to attract.” — Kikki Planet

Project future.

Though Kikki and I are just starting out, we have high hopes for where KikkiPlanet.com may ultimately take us. We definitely plan to expand the features, content and scope of the site over the coming months. We want to make it Edmonton’s go-to destination for who to know and where to go in this fantastic city we call home. So visit often for all the latest!

Project coverage.

• New Planet Discovered! The Unknown Studio s03e02, with Adam Rozenhart & Scott Bourgeois
• Social Media Roundup 19 by Karen Unland

Project extras.

Business card, 4-colour, 3.5 x 2″

VIP party invitation, 4-colour

Launch party video

If you know anything about Kikki, you know that she can really throw a party. I attended two house parties at her place, one in the Fall of 2010 and then another in the winter of 2011. The #ColdHeartsHotPants party — the anti-Valentine’s Day celebration — saw 68 women between the ages of 19 and 75, most of whom had met in one way or another through online social media, rockin’ it out in the beautifully remodelled kitchen of her west end bungalow.  I’ve been to a lot of Twitter-based events and hung out with a lot of new friends over the last year, and that party was truly an epic moment. If you know anything about me, you know I love a good party. I am so glad I was there. Girls are still talking about it. And when we’ll have another one.

Both Kikki and I have worked extremely hard on this project, pouring the heart and soul of our collective talents, our professional aspirations and our shared vision of a platform for the side of Edmonton that outsiders rarely seem to see — a vibrant city full of culture, political activism, community involvement and a brilliant, talented generation of urban young people making a positive impact on their city every single day through their contributions to Edmonton’s social media community and beyond. Edmonton is more than just an oil town, and it’s more than just the gritty, blue-collar murder capital of the nation. There is much beauty to see here. Beauty in some of the fantastic architecture, our legendary River Valley, the incredible people and some unlikely places that most of the people I know rarely choose to spend time in unless they have to.

Last week, I accompanied Ashley Green of Photos with Ashley to shoot Brittney LeBlanc and Seth Glick, our inaugural Woman to Watch and Man About Town respectively. Ashley had scouted locations and told us to meet her on the corner of Jasper Avenue and 96 Street at the top of the afternoon. As you no doubt are aware, that’s not exactly the nicest, cleanest part of E-town. Up until recently, it was home to the notorious 25¢ Peep Show. I’ve driven past that corner hundreds of times, on my way to my dad’s house. 96 Street has a lot of dilapidated buildings. Ashley shot Seth in front of one that still had an ad for cigarettes painted on the side of it. It looked pretty vintage. Then Seth conveniently stumbled upon a fist-hole in the window of another building, which we incorporated into our photo series. The amount of history in this part of town always amazes me, as does the opportunity for fascinating people-watching.

When Ashley shoots, she’s fearless. Sure, her hair may be done up in what could only be described as angel ringlets, but that girl will walk out into the middle of a downtown street near Chinatown during the lunch rush to get the shot she wants and trusts me to let her know if any cars are coming so she doesn’t have to take her eye off the viewfinder.

As usual, Seth was hungry, so we wandered into a very generic looking Chinese restaurant to discover the most fabulous green onion cakes I’ve yet to experience. We also got some photos of Seth eating the green onion cakes, because it would be ridiculous to do a photo shoot of Seth without any food in the mix.

Later, after Seth was wrapped up and we met up with Brittney, we crossed Jasper Avenue from the grittier part of downtown into Louise McKinney Park for a literal change of scenery. Suddenly we were surrounded by lush green (the final throes of a lovely September), a beautiful Asian-inspired footbridge, enormous stone lion statues (which I suggested that Brittney climb on for some photos, but she declined), and an Asian-inspired gazebo with Chinese characters in stonework. Believe it or not, although I have lived in the Edmonton area for over 30 years, I had never been to this particular part of the river valley before.

To me, this day personifies Edmonton. Edmonton is a place that can constantly surprise even people who have lived here all their lives. Edmonton is both ugly and beautiful. Edmonton is a place with a vibrant, active and politically conscious social media community who are constantly introducing each other to new things, new places and new people. It is a place where we are surrounded by good friends who support each other in work and in life.

For quite some time, I had been seriously considering leaving Edmonton. I was going to sell my condo and move elsewhere, perhaps to Vancouver, perhaps to London. I was born in England, hold dual citizenship and can apply for my British passport anytime I want to. All of my mother’s family is there and it would be an exciting change of pace. But recently I have been having second thoughts. What Kikki and I have both become a part of here in #yeg over the last year is very important to us, and we have both made a significant investment in it through this project. This really is a labour of love, and although we have hopes and aspirations for what it can ultimately be, it is our passion for the people we’ve met over the last year and a half, and the new side of life in Edmonton to which they’ve introduced us that has gotten us this far.

Please, please join us in celebrating the launch of KikkiPlanet.com on September 30, 2011 at Daffodil Gallery (10412 124 St.). Cocktails at 6:30pm, launch at 8:00pm. Tickets are $40 through EventBrite. This includes gourmet appetizers catered by d’Lish, 2 signature cocktails, and a swag bag full of goodies. We will be showing a video, Kikki will be giving a speech, and there will be plenty of fabulous people to mingle with. The entire KikkiPlanet.com team will be there, including myself, Ashley Green, Ashley Kravetsky and Meghan Darker, who will be writing a feature on Wino Book Club every month. Brittney LeBlanc and Seth Glick will also be there!

This is an upscale event in a beautiful space designed for cocktail attire. So whip out your little black dress or your favourite suit and come out to celebrate a project that means the world to us: KikkiPlanet.com.

KikkiPlanet.com is now updated with a splash page that provides a sneak peek of the concept for Kikki’s new website, which will launch on September 30. Progress on the site is coming along nicely and we’re very excited about the upcoming launch at the end of the month!