Today the new From My Bottom Step launched with a brand new design and added functionality provided by Leschinski Design.

The site has already recived some attention at Dan Brown’s Cool Blog Name to Come and Pat Dryburgh’s blog where he described the new design in a word, fantastic.

From My Bottom Step (FMBS) is described as “a community activist’s online, independent, local source of news about London, Ontario” and focused on issues like pedestrian rights, accessibility, environmental concerns, public transit, and municipal politics. It was recently the subject in my review on London’s Independent Media.

Check it out at www.frommybottomstep.com

Here is a quick peak at the brand new site I’m working on for From My Bottom Step. I recently reviewed the site in my post on London’s Independent Media, and have since been working with Greg Fowler to take his site to the next level. We’re hoping to launch the site to the public mid October at his new domain www.frommybottomstep.com

Let me know what you think in the comments.

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.’

By now you’ve probably noticed the new branding and website, but today I’m going to fill you in a bit on the last seven months of development and launch a new feature that I think is great. So lets start from the beginning, January 2007 saw the launch of the second version of this website and at the time it was a pretty good representation of my design style and the tone of my work. But as the year came to a close I realized that a new look was essential to represent the evolution of that style and tone.

So at the beginning of 2008 I began from the bottom, the brand. Previously the brand and identity system were put together as I went along and required new pieces. The logo was the name in a simple font, Interstate, the words separated by colour. I had always wanted a mark to compliment the logotype so I focused on creating something simple and flexible, and I think I found it. Sketch after sketch I came back to the acronym regularly used by friends LD. This set with a hint of the old typographic mark in helvetica this time resonated with me.

Shortly after the brand was put to bed, the website quickly became the focus, the old site wasn’t bad but it didn’t represent me the way I wanted anymore. It was also constrained to a time of 800x600 resolutions and with the surge of larger monitors dominating the market I decided to spread out a little. The new site is much better, and focuses on some core ideas such as grid based design, typography and minimalism.

I am sill in the process of going though my eight years of work and adding the case studies back to the work section; some of the older work for deviantART, Fort Frances Daily Info, and the campaign for Mayor Dan is currently up with more on the way, but I’m also adding new projects as they are completed like Bryan Johnson Creations, NortheastEnder, and Clinical Depression Show. I’d love to head your opinions of the new look, so feel free to add them in the comments below.

But the real reason for writing this is that this week I will be sending out the first edition of my newsletter in Brief, a quarterly publication highlighting some of the exciting new and work done at Leschinski Design. I’ve built quite the list of email addresses over the years so I’ve added friends, family, and past clients to the inaugural list. You can sign up for it right now though below or in the left column in the sidebar of this blog. If it’s not your thing then unsubscribing is easy and instant, just click the link at the bottom of the newsletter anytime you want to stop receiving it. I won’t cry if you do, I promise (at least in public).

If you’ve read all this, congratulations, and thanks for your support and comments.

Continue reading ‘in Brief’

The business card designs done for the online publication NortheastEnder were featured in the design inspiration gallery faveup, which previously featured the Talk of the Town identity in February.

Leschinski Design’s new look has also been receiving attention in the industry, being featured in Webdesign is Art out of France, We Love Wordpress for our unique blog design, and participating in the May Standards Reboot.

Lastly, I wrote two articles for David Peralty’s eXtra for Every Publisher this month on the fall of folksonomy and how to make it usefull again.

Exciting times here. You’ll likely see some more changes as we complete the redesign of our website, so thank you for bearing with us as we make the transition.