Some people collect stamps, others rare Bennie Babies, and while I’ve collected both in the past my latest collection obsession is business cards. Odd I know, but there are odder things to collect, and it seems I’m not alone. In researching for this article I found a ton of resources for collectors, from YouTube videos to a International Business Card Collectors club.

I started my collection circa 2002 while in Toronto to see the Pope with the Thunder Bay Diocese. Probably the worst trip I’ve been on, but I came home with a bunch of business cards and pinned them up on my office bulletin board. Since then I moved and they ended up scattered in several boxes for the last year that I had yet to unpack. However a few weeks ago while cleaning one the book shelves next to my desk, where new business cards collected at networking functions lately end up, and decided it was time to get the collection together again.

I got a binder and some plastic baseball trading card pages, which is the worst way to store them I found out today, and organized them alphabetically. I have have a collection of 100 through 20 pages so far but I want more. This is where you come in faithful reader!

Send me your business cards. You can hand them to me in person at any of the networking events I frequent, or slip them in an envelope addressed too 404-641 Kipps Lane, London Ontario, Canada N5Y 4R6. I have no desire to be the next Steve Patterson who’s looking to collect 1 million cards, but I’d like to fill out this binder at least which would be about 300 cards. And I’m not too picky about what I’ll accept, I’ll even take the cards you have amassed from networking and traveling about. There is a video here that talks about how to mail them, try to send a couple so I have spares in case something happens to one and to minimize damage to the cards if you can.

Thanks in advance!

In March some friends and I attended the London Indie Media Fair, to promote our monthly new media meet up, and I had the chance to sit in on some workshops they were holding. The first I attended was “The Importance of Independent Media” by Anthony Verberckmoes, and while it didn’t explain how it was important, it did discuss how the “mainstream media” is sophisticated propaganda perpetuated by rich white men. It wasn’t a surprise to hear Anthony espouse these sort of views, independent media is often very critical of the way the mainstream media operates and even markets itself, despite some of the similarities between the two, but if independent media wants to gain acceptance as the news source of choice it could definitely benefit from these evil tools of the mainstream media; branding.

Branding the idea of independent and user generated media, capturing its diversity, and building a community around it is key to reach out to those who want to be able to identify sources of passionate and free voices. But better brands are needed, and they need to be better than anything mainstream has to offer before they can grow.

In this article I’m going to take a look at six of London’s most prominent alternative media sources online, and go over what they do well, where they could use some work, and where they fail.
Continue reading ‘State of London’s Independent Media.’

Londoners are probably familiar by now with the “We’re on board” posters that appeared on London Transit buses in October, and more recently bus shelters. It’s a campaign designed to get riders to “Ride Respectfully” with a series of four posters.

The posters feature very low quality 3D models of passengers varying in race and sex and a little note at the bottom telling riders how to behave. Some take one or two of the characters and highlight them to make a point about that specific user demographic. Overall the posters are poorly done, with unnecessary drop shadows, poor type selection, poor 3D graphics, and the use of almost identical imagery for four separate ads. I’m not the first to point this out.

Based on the fact that the logo is of a much higher quality the the posters I’d say the logo was done by an outside company and the posters done in house. The in house designers are also likely the ones to stick a ring around the logo with the URL in a very low contrast colour.

  

So I threw together some mock-ups of my own, in somewhat of a parody, but still following the visual style of the campaign. I didn’t spend too much time on these, as I’m sure is obvious, but I think they are an improvement. I also kept in mind the time and cost restraints the staff probably had using stock photos and keeping the time on each under 30 minuets (including material sourcing). Ideally, with the tone and style the logo gives us, I would have preferred to use illustrations rather then photography; however I am not an illustrator.

Rather then copy the posters verbatim, two voice some long standing gripes from riders. The desire for 24 hour service or at the very least service past bar hours, and large strollers impeding pathways through the bus. The third takes aim at the current poster implying that youth are trouble, especially the ones with skateboard, iPods playing Red Hot Chili Peppers, and little fashion sense. People over twenty-five would never be rude, right?

   

The LTC (London Transit Commission)’s branding strategy, if there is such a thing, is a mess. They put decals of old versions of their logo in the windows of new buses, and a portion of buses have yet to be fitted with the new brand at all. It’s not surprising people have little respect for the LTC, when the LTC doesn’t take the time to improve appearance and service, but chooses to chastise it’s customers instead.

The LTC isn’t alone though; London itself seems to be having an identity crisis lately.

As a new resident in London I tend to watch the local community cable channel Rogers 13 quite a bit. It’s an invaluable resource for discovering events in the area and learning more about the politics, people, and culture of the city.

The other day I happened to land in the middle of a program I hadn’t seen before, and since they were talking about London Transit I decided to watch it, as transit is something I’ve become interested in as of late.

Larry Ducharme was talking about a BRT or Bus Rapid Transit and the branding that would be needed to inform and encourage people to use the service. It’s interesting he was discussing branding as the show he was on suffered from confusing info graphics and a brand that appeared to be straight out of the 80’s.

The first issue I encountered was a confusing “bug” displaying the name of the show, which was troublesome becuase I happened to land on the show when Mr. Ducharme was in focus causing me to think his name was actually McLeod. The bug is far too active to not be confused as some point or another sitting higher then the Rogers bug and being in full colour drop shadows and all. Only latter did I realize that is was the shows name and not the guests after they displayed a graphic showing his acctual name and title in place of the show bug.

Secondly the logo behind the host seemingly changes between camera shifts from a rogers promotion to the shows name. Which is kind of unnecessary as the Rogers bug is omnipresent in the lower right.

Having been an associate producer on a television show in the past, I don’t have any misconceptions that this isn’t low budget mostly volunteer work, but still, these issues seem glaring to myself and worth pointing out as no one else seems to have. I’ve submitted an application to volunteer and maybe help them out, but haven’t received a call as of yet.

McLeod airs Tuesdays at 9:00 PM on Rogers 13 in London Ontario.

Have you ever tried to find information on a government website? It’s a daunting task to say the least most times, recently I tried to find out some information about MTO (Ministry of Transportation Ontario) offices in London and was directed to three different pages only one of which was helpful. Why when I can Google just about anything, does finding information on my government seem so troublesome?

That’s what Ari Schwartz and Jimmy Wales have been asking as well. Both are in a Washington Post article calling on governments to be more “googlable” and pass legislation forcing federal government websites and databases to be more search friendly. With four out of five people using search engines to find information online, it’s not a moment too soon in my opinion, but government is organized in such a way that achieving more open and operable sites might be a task that requires more forceful legislation then governments are willing to enact. The majority of government sites are built, designed, and function poorly. Much like some would say, the government itself. And the uptake on these new ideas will be just as slow as the Government.