Catherine Baird - Dashboard

 

 

WE ARE A DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT AGENCY.
At our core, we are strategists, big thinkers, meticulous creators and digital explorers. Together, we dream up experiences that are breakthrough and engaging. Simple yet surprising. Technologically savvy while strategically sound. Yes, we are passionate. Pushing every idea as far as it can go. Helping our clients build their business, connect with their customers and look damn good.

• Redesign of their Dashboard website based on German fonts and wayfinding.
• They help you navigate and find your way through the digital clutter
• Senior art director manages the project from beginning to end 
• We are still digital, but we are about engaging people. so if we need
  to engage people offline to come online, we will. they become brand
  ambassadors and social media strategists as well.

 

ABOUT Dashboard

Web site: http://www.dashboard.ca/

Contact: 416.504.4422
 

Address: 355 Adelaide St. W. Suite 100. Toronto, Ontario M5V 1S2

ABOUT Catherine Baird

• Associate Creative Director

• Sheridan grad, Ecentricarts, Designer
• Hendersan Bas, Senior Designer / ACD
• Hendersan Bas, ACD
• Semegauche, Paris France, Senior AD
• Draft FCB, Senior AD, then as a Freelancer
• Dashboard ACD

BE PREPARED

• Get your best work together in a simple easy to read format. This could be a website or better, a PDF with your resume and samples of work with links to the live sites. Don't make me work too hard. Don't fumble around in an interview. No one will look at your resume if they don't like your work.

DO SOMETHING UNSUAL

• She gets five emails a day from people who want me to look at theirwork. Boring. Do something different. Draw a sketch of the CD,send a hand-written card, brand yourself, make a video.Even doing something unusual in your emails is worth a try.

 

Follow up and don't write long emails

• Creative directors are busier and more stressed out than you could possibly imagine. If it's long, no one is going to have the time to read it. If you stalk someone you're not going to get a job.If you send gentle reminders, you'll better your chances.

Show diversity

• If you paint, show your painting. If you are a musician, add some links to your songs. If you do anything other than design it shows you are well-rounded, interesting, and creative. Show it. It's also a conversation starter in an interview.

 

Network

• The easiest way to get a job is to network and build up a groupof people who respect your work and work ethic. Be nice, workhard and don't burn bridges. It's a SMALL industry. Go to events,take people out for coffee, get out there!

• Some stuff that their agency is "talking or thinking about" or the future..
  Touch screens (i.e. ING direct cafes)  one touch screen in Toronto at the end of March
  Projections shone on old stores
• iphone (they've only done one so far - the santa claus parade one)
• Blackberry (apps)
• iAds (similar to expandable web ads but on the iphone)
• Facebook, youTube (skinning pages), Twitter
• Understanding and checking out other pages and advertising.
• Find some of your favourite brands and see what they are doing online(their campaigns). i.e. Vaseline on Facebook - what brands are doing on Facebook.
• Animation, videos for online
• Augmented reality. ways to surprise people with projections, billboards
• Which is still very gimmicky but this is advertising
• Cloud computing - ((user experience design, information architecture. try to figure out what the user will experience before u open photoshop))
• 3D conference - Unity, a 3D application. It's a plugin - instead of Flash (cinema quality 3D online)
• HTML 5 (the end of Flash??) only supported on some browsers at first, but may be the end of Flash
• Web Fonts (being able to use more interesting fonts online)