…Cheers!

This week Peapod Studios was informed about the acceptance of our proposal to work on the redevelopment and redesign of the Château Des Charmes website.

Chateau Des Charmes Wines.

A Little History

Château des Charmes story began over five generations ago with a family that traces its roots to the Alsace region of France and the vineyards of French Algeria. Thousands of kilometers from its present day vineyards located at Niagara-on-the-Lake.

In these foreign lands, the ancestors of Paul Bosc began a heritage of fine winemaking that would serve the Bosc family for generations to come. This tradition of excellence continues today in the vineyards of Niagara-on-the-Lake where Paul Bosc and his family carry on this rich heritage of meticulous vinification by harmonizing science and art.

A graduate of one of Europe’s finest winemaking schools, the University of Burgundy at Dijon, Paul Bosc came to Canada from France in the 1960′s. He brought the Old World tradition of winemaking to his new home and he grafted that knowledge and tradition to the soils of Niagara.

Renowned British wine writer Hugh Johnson in his book Wine Companion has written:

“Canada was discovered, in fine wine terms, in the 1970′s when old fears and prejudices about which vines could survive were tossed aside. The formidable know-how that had been accumulating in new wine districts around the world provided answers to problems that had seemed insuperable. Paul Bosc became the first to plant a wholly vinifera vineyard. Award winning VQA estate wines include Icewine, late harvest riesling, an impressive range of both white and red varietals as well as méthode traditionnelle sparkling wines.”

We had to try it

Peapod Studios is picky about our clients, we want to work with the best of the best. We seek out companies and projects we can feel good about.

So we headed off to our local LCBO to grab some of the Châteaus offerings. We ended up with the 2005 Old Vine Cabernet- Merlot and the 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon, St. David’s Bench Vineyard.

Nom nom nom

The Cabernet Merlot was simply exquisite, the more it breathed the more fantastic it became, and the Cabernet Sauvignon reminded us of that summer in Rome.

We were hooked, The wine is fantastic, and the scenery and chance to visit and work with a company that is in arguably in the most gorgeous place in Canada. A family run business that returns its wealth to the community and environment. All the things we love and appreciate and aim for being ourselves.

“In the belief that quality and value go hand-in-hand, we at Château des Charmes have been dedicated to producing world-class wines in Canada by growing only the finest grape varieties.”

-The Bosc Family

Photo credit: whatsonmyplate

Freshbooks Makes Us Look Professional Every Day, So We Decided to Return the Favour.

Freshbooks makes us look professional every day. We’ve been customers since early 2007, and have no reason or inkling to ever move away from their awesome time-tracking and billing services. They save us several hours a week, and days a month. If you want to know how valuable your time is, try doing your invoicing for one month with FreshBooks, we promise you wont ever want to go back to your crusty old system.

So when Michael McDerment called and asked us to add a little spit and polish to his presentation at the Future of Web Apps Conference, we absolutely jumped at the chance.

Mike giving his talk
Photocredit: Alex Designs

Presentation Slide

Presentation Slide

Presentation Slide

Presentation Slide

FreshBooks Believes…

Running a business is hard enough. We believe financial record keeping should be easy, fast, (and perhaps even fun), but still detailed enough to satisfy your accountant.

Billing should be simple. You can send an invoice a few seconds after creating your account no matter what level of experience you have.

Your data deserves to be safe, secure, and accessible to you. We also believe you own your data, we do not. Your data will be easy to export any time you want it.

Every customer should look like a Fortune 500 company, based on the image sent by invoices, bills, or other accounting communications, no matter what size the company is.

Thank You.

So a giant “Thank You” to the FreshBooks Management Team for putting your external face to the world in our hands, if only for a brief moment.

We were happy to return the favour.

Negligence.

Well its been over 2 months since we’ve posted anything here, and there is really no excuse for our tardiness. We’ve been sidetracked by extensive hours and ongoing projects, and I have been negligent. My apologies.

So What’s New?

We had the opportunity to develop the website, branding and identity for ChangeCamp

change camp poster

You can read about The Impact of ChangeCamp over at Remarkk’s site.

ChangeCamp describes itself as, a free participatory web-enabled face-to-face event that brings together citizens, technologists, designers, academics, policy wonks, political players, change-makers and government employees to answer one question: How do we re-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation?

I Tell Stories

We were lucky enough to be asked to work on Sameer Vasta’s full redesign for his infamous blog, I Tell Stories

I Tell Stories

Sameer had only a few thoughts, Simple, simple, simple and easily readable. To a designer, a creative brief like this is a gift, we hope he’s happy with the final result, personally we love it.

East End Nerds

Let’s face it, we’re all nerds, and lot’s of us here in Toronto live in the east end, so through the power of twitter we managed to finagle a nice little drink up in November, which we deemed “East End Nerds” There is a small flickr gallery here.

Nerds

BrundleCamp

Alistair ( Peapod Designer ) turned 40 on January 10th, 2009. Again through the power of the internet, his friends hosted a little bash for him at the Spice Route. It was deemed ( as so much in our little geek community ) as a camp… Brundlecamp. Many thanks to everyone who came out to celebrate with this quadro-generian. some photos

brundlecamp

Favourite Fonts

We created a list of our favourite fonts… just because.

Fave fonts

There is so much more, but due to client NDA’s and assorted conflicts, we can only present the more personal things. we hope 2009 is as good for you as it already has been for us.

Remarkk Consulting Redesign.

Designing for a friend is harder than presenting a new mockup to a fortune 500.

Remarkk

I usually try to avoid designing for people I am close to or work with, I find I can end up spending hours on end focusing on the tiniest little things. Remarkk was no exception. I went through five revisions before coming up with what you see here.

The challenge was to create an attractive site, that didn’t distract you, or drive you away from the content. As always the solution was to go as simple as possible, as it usually always ends up being.

So, I hope you like it, Remarkk

Metronauts Blog.

mocked up

Working alongside Remarkk Consulting Peapod Studios designed a blog specifically created for sparking lines of communications in relation to the GTA Transit mishmash.

METRONAUTS