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

The Office Coordinator is the glue that holds Peapod together. An important role that includes managing and coordinating day-to-day tasks such as, organizing the studio, manning the phones, coordinating meetings, ordering office supplies, plus additional administrative tasks.

Skills and Abilities

• Ability to build rapport and work effectively with all studio members and clients
• Able to juggle many tasks within a short timeframe, with effective prioritization
• Positive, mature and professional, can-do attitude
• Detail oriented, self-sufficient and organized
• Must work independently with minimal supervision
• Solid written and verbal communication skills
• Proactive thinker who seeks to create efficiencies within the work environment
• Intermediate knowledge of MS Office Suite

Experience

• 1-2 years experience in an office environment
• Reception and customer service experience an asset
• Basic accounting and payroll

Nice to Have

• Project management experience
• Interest in design and interactive services

If you are interested in this position, please send your resume by email to jobs@peapod.ca

Thank you for your response, only those selected for interview will be contacted.

There is a great deal of discovery and strategy that goes into creating the final products we deliver. We start with several sessions of discovery, where we set the basic goals and criteria we’d like the clients site to meet.

Then we develop several individualized personas of who the key users and stakeholders of the site will be. Personalizing a users experience dealing with a website is a key part of ensuring success. We develop several pathways throughout the site, for them to easily obtain the information they desire or have come for while navigating the site.

Architecture and Strategy Documentation

We take all of this information and use it to develop our Architecture and Strategy document. This will serve as a resource for both our developers and the client to refer to as we move forward to the point where we can begin the preliminary site mapping and wire-framing of the eventual site build.

WireFrames

Once we have established the web sites core functionality and layout only then can we move into creating the initial rounds of designs, a process we call skinning. Initially we like to provide the client with three distinct rounds of creative, allowing the client to have several choices in the future direction of the design.

Design Begins

Taking the clients feedback from the intial three mockups we can begin to build out more honed designs based on their feedback. This is not a perfect science, sometimes a client will go through more than one round of creative, although sometimes we nail it from the get go.

Design Sign Off

WIth all the elements in place, we finally have the basis for build.

The documentation we have from the preliminary steps allows the developers to work knowing the ins and outs of the final structure, and gives them an extensive library to refer to. Art direction is minimized as most of the design lives within the styles created in the skinning stage.

Asigra.com

One of the first companies to go online was Apple, here is a snapshot of their journey, design and products through the last thirteen years.

Apple Website 1997

Apple Website 1998

Apple Website 1999

Apple Website 2000

Apple Website 2001

Apple Website 2002

Apple Website 2003

Apple Website 2004

Apple Website 2005

Apple Website 2006

Apple Website 2007

Apple Website 2008

Apple Website 2009

this post was made possible by Innocente–Hayart’s Apple Gallery

However some in the typography community are now moving towards the creation of high quality, open source free fonts. This is a sea change in the philosophy we’re used to dealing with from the old school foundries, representing a new age in how we can consume great typefaces.

Today we’ll focus on an open source foundry we just love…

The League of Movable Type

Philosophy: No more bullshit. Join the revolution.

“We’re done with the tired old fontstacks of yesteryear. Enough with the limitations of the web, we won’t have it. It’s time to raise our standards. Here, you’ll find only the most well-made, free & open-source, @font-face ready fonts.”

Quite a statement, and they deliver on that promise. Here’s some of our favourites typefaces from The League of Movable Type.

League Gothic

League Gothic is a revival of an old classic, and one of our favorite typefaces, Alternate Gothic No.1. It was originally designed by Morris Fuller Benton for the American Type Founders Company (ATF) in 1903. The company went bankrupt in 1993. And since the original typeface was created before 1923, the typeface is in the public domain.

You can grab League Gothic here

Junction

Inspired by my favorite humanist sans serif typefaces, such as Meta, Myriad, and Scala, Junction is where the best qualities of serif and sans serif typefaces come together. It has the hand drawn and human qualities of a serif, and still retains the clarity and efficiencies of a sans serif typeface. It combines the best of both worlds.

You can grab Junction here

Chunk

Chunk is an ultra-bold slab serif typeface that is reminiscent of old American Western woodcuts, broadsides, and newspaper headlines. Used mainly for display, the fat block lettering is unreserved yet refined for contemporary use.

You can grab Chunk here

One of our core philosophies at Peapod Studios is to always strive to work with open source software whenever and wherever we can. Seeing this open ideology move to the realm of typefaces is indeed very exciting.

With our highest recommendation, please check them out.

The League of Moveable Type

What’s Your Kidney Story of Hope?

March is Kidney Health Month across Canada. Kidney Health Month offers a special opportunity to educate all Canadians about potential risk factors for kidney disease and important steps for prevention. It’s also the time of year to encourage financial support to help improve quality of life for current and future patients.

Based on your positive feedback on last year’s Kidney Stories of Hope campaign, the Kidney Foundation and campaign partner Shire Canada are pleased to once again offer you an opportunity to help raise funds and have a chance to receive a cash prize in return!

Here’s what we came up with.

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.

Photocredit: Alex Designs

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.

We need cards!

So we decided to get them done using an old, yet different technique.

Letterpress printing is a term for the relief printing of text and image using a press with a “type-high bed” printing press and movable type, in which a reversed, raised surface is inked and then pressed into a sheet of paper to obtain a positive right-reading image. It was the normal form of printing text in the west from its invention by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century until the 19th century and remained in wide use for books and other uses until the second half of the 20th century.

To do the printing, we’ve engaged Eagle Print in Toronto. They do some of the most excellent letterpress work in all of Canada, and come with our highest recommendation.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the new design.

It’s true. We’ve always been a sucker for a great slab.

In this world where everyone always seems to be creating brands and identities using your typical san-serfis, the talented team at Hoefler-Frere Jones has brought back some love to the Slab Serif.

Sentinel: the slab serif that works.

For everyone who’s ever wished Clarendons had italics, everyone whose favorite slab serif is shy a few weights, and everyone who’s ever needed a slab serif to thrive in text: we designed Sentinel for you.

The first slab serifs were designed to be oddities. It was their intention to be eye-catching, to be novelties amidst the world’s conventional book types. Never mind that some of these faces treated different letters inconsistently, or had inherent qualities that limited the size of their families: these were eccentricities, and to a novelty typeface, eccentricity is strength. Two centuries later, their legacy includes three beloved species of typeface that are handsome, popular, and maddeningly difficult to use. Each is marred by a crippling deficiency, a situation inspiring us to create Sentinel.

Sentinel was designed to address the many shortcomings of the classical slab serif. Unbound by traditions that deny italics, by technologies that limit its design, or by ornamental details that restrict its range of weights, Sentinel is a fresh take on this useful and lovely style, offering for the first time a complete family that’s serviceable for both text and display. From the Antique style it borrows a program of contrasting thicks and thins, but trades that style’s frumpier mannerisms for more attractive contemporary details. It improves on both Clarendons and Geometrics by including a complete range of styles, six weights from Light to Black that are consistent in both style and quality. Planned from the outset to flourish in small sizes as well as large, Sentinel contains features like short-ranging figures that make it a dependable choice for text. And most mercifully, it includes thoughtfully designed italics across its entire range of weights.

Call to Action

So we ask you, please take another look at the fonts you use for your new projects, the world needs a little more excitement and colour in its designs. A return to the slabs would be an excellent start.

Peapod Studios is pleased to announce that we have been selected to create a vibrant new web presence for Asigra Inc., a leading cloud backup and recovery software provider.

The Asigra project includes a new strategy, architecture, design and development of asigra.com.

Stay tuned for a Spring relaunch of asigra.com.

About Asigra:

Asigra brings Cloud Computing to backup and recovery. Traditional approaches to backup have not kept up with the exponential growth and value of data – and the complexity of the IT environment. This means IT organizations are wasting brainpower and precious resources on what should be a routine task in today’s Cloud Computing era.

For more than 20 years Asigra has stayed ahead of the market with an efficient, cost-effective and transformational cloud backup and recovery solution that aligns the value of data with its storage costs.

More about Asigra online via www.Asigra.com