pass the relish

We all know that it’s tough to find good Flash guys (let alone girls) out there. So at Relish we’ve decided to take an unorthodox approach and start grooming new employees at a younger age and lock them into exclusive, 50 year contracts. In order to attract the best talent out there we also have to give them senior positions with fancy titles.

I’m excited to announce that yesterday our first new hire of this type joined the company and was introduced via a video chat live over the interwebs. I’m pleased to introduce Jade, our new VP of Cuteness.

by Paul on April 21, 2010

Some of these jars are way past their bloggable expiry date but it’s been so long since we’ve posted some new work that I thought I’d take the opportunity to clean out the pantry.

Global Premium Brands

Last fall we helped Spain’s Global Premium Brands, a distributor and marketer of upscale liqueurs and bottled waters, completely redesign their site from scratch.  The end result is a dark and luxurious experience that aims to capture the depth and quality of GPB’s selection of products. Do you dare to enter…

Global Premium Brands' Spanish site

TravelPod Blog Redesign

Back in November TravelPod debuted a long overdue redesign of their blogger page. As you might have guessed, Relish worked with the fine folks at TravelPod to come up with a new look and feel from the ground up — from wireframes to finished designs. If you’re a Relish enthusiast, you might remember that we helped TravelPod with a logo redesign in 2008.

Before: This is how the blogs used to look... 2001-alicious!

After: A much-needed facelift

The Seven Sins of Greenwashing

In partnership with Standard Media Services, Relish was asked to help TerraChoice Marketing to develop an online presence for their “Seven Sins of Greenwashing” report.  If you’re not as West coast as this Vancouverite to know what Greenwashing is, you can learn about it here.  It’s a practice that’s becoming all too common in the age of marketing everything as “green” this and “enviro” that, so we were especially pleased to be involved in a project that shed some light on this important issue.

I think all of us at Relish would agree that important issues are important… but so are games. To help inject some fun into learning how to spot Greenwashing sins in the wild, we developed the Name That Sin! game to test your ability to spot phony and false green claims.  Test your Greenwashing IQ to see how enviro-savvy you are as a consumer.

Name That Sin! Game

by Steve Palmer on February 16, 2010

Some exciting developments have been brewing at the Relish HQ.  The New Ketchup™ is no longer just for breakfast… we now are officially open for Lunch dates.

We’re now being represented by Executive Producer Amy Miranda of lunch inc.  Amy has worked extensively in the digital space.  She’s worked as an editor, designer, technology manager, technical services director, project manager and interactive consultant.  She’s been at companies including iXL, CNN, U8TV/Alliance Atlantis, Activate, Henderson Bas and TAXI.

Not only are we working with Amy now, but we’re a part of the Lunch family.  The roster is made up of incredibly talented group designers, production and post production companies, developers and artists.  These folks have mad skill sets ranging from web to motion design to technical services to illustration and sound design.

The digital media's version of the Brady Bunch

You should definitely check out the work of our lunch mates:

Alchemy – http://www.helloalchemy.com
Alex McLeod – http://www.alxclub.com
Bijou – http://www.bijoueditorial.com
Broader Than Broadway – http://www.broader.com
Element – http://www.el-e-ment.ca
Fatbox – http://www.fatbox.ca
Mark Gervais – http://www.markgervais.com
Nick Goso – http://www.planetgoso.com
Imported Artists – http://www.importedartists.com
Indusblue – http://www.indusblue.com
Magic Pony – http://www.magic-pony.com
Narwhal – http://www.narwhalartprojects.com
PixelPusher – http://www.pixelpusher.ca
The Radke Film Group – http://www.radke.tv
Six Degrees – http://www.sixdegrees.ca
sociMedia – http://www.socimedia.com
STEM – http://stemlimited.com
Studio Dialog – http://www.studiodialog.com
Tool of North America – http://www.toolofna.com

That should keep you busy for a while… you should definitely eat Lunch at your desk today…

by Paul on November 27, 2009

Time to blow the proverbial dust off ye olde Relish blog and talk about a mother of a project that’s been occupying a lot of our time for the past 8 months…

Late last year we were approached by the fine folks at Xenophile to build an online presence for a new kids’ show called RollBots that was going to be airing on YTV in early 2009.  Naturally we were thrilled at the opportunity to work on a big site chocked full of games and geared totally at kids.  None of us had worked on anything quite like this, so we eagerly accepted the challenge.

Meet Spin, our hero

A bit of background: RollBots are robots that can roll (hence the name) by coiling into a ball.  They live in the clouds in Flip City and roll around on tracks to get from place to place.  There are 11 different tribes a bot can belong to and each tribe has a different role in helping to run the city.  The show centres around a special (and speedy) bot named Spin who mysteriously doesn’t belong to any of the tribes.

Our goal early on was to capture the high energy level of the show and create an online extension of what kids would experience in the episodes — a world where they could explore, learn and uncover new secrets with Spin’s help.

Duking it out with Manx in the "RollBot Rumble" game

How was it accomplished?  Working with Xenophile, we developed a plan to launch with an initial site when the first episode aired in February and then build on that by adding new content on a weekly basis for the entire first season of the show.  Basically we timed it so that the site gets updated late on Friday night so that when the episode airs on Saturday morning kids can immediately go check out what’s been added that week.  All in all, that included 12 standalone games built from scratch, a video mashup tool to make your own RollBots video, a tool to build your own RollBot, a Danuga (the RollBots written language) translator and countless other features to help you rise through the ranks as a cadet at FCPD (Flip City Police Department — where Spin works).

"My RollBot" tool to customize and build your very own bot

We’re nearing the end of season one and it’s been a total blast to be involved in such a visually rich and technically complex project. We’re all looking forward to seeing how the rest of the season plays out — specifically finding out how Spin came to be and what the heck that nasty Vertex is up to… he’s such a meanie!

by Steve Palmer on July 16, 2009

Now, while it really is an honour just to be nominated, it’s pretty kickass to win! Relish was lucky enough to have one of our projects, the Michener Electronic Health Record, nominated in the ‘Flash Usability’ category at FITC Toronto this year.  Despite stiff competition from a couple of incredible sites by Grow Interactive, it was Relish who was sipping champagne in the winner’s lounge this time.

A leader in Applied Health Sciences education—with an emphasis on hands-on learning—the Michener Institute quickly saw the benefits of what’s turning out to be a natural marriage between the medical applications in use by the industry today and some of the more tactile and er, “hands-on”  interfaces of tomorrow, like touchscreens.

Relish was asked to help build a prototype that showcased a hypothetical Electronic Patient Record that featured new ways of presenting and manipulating existing data as well as new interaction models for integrating some of their existing vendor applications. Using Adobe AIR, (and some fancy DLL modding from the Michener team) we were able to tie everything together into one visually-rich, fullscreen, multitouch experience.

Check out some footage of the demo here:

http://www.relishinteractive.com/snacks/michener/

::

In addition to the award, we were also amazed—and a little overwhelmed—by the positive response we got to the new FITC website we designed and built and also to Relish in general! So thanks to everyone who came to the Get-A-Job event and those who stopped us just to say “hi” over the last 4 days. It really made us remember why we relish what we do.

by Sacha on April 29, 2009