October 2010
1 post
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September 2010
1 post
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August 2010
4 posts
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MEA award!
Peak has won an MEA award for the Public Service / Advocacy category!
“TheRightsFive.com has not only raised awareness among LGBT Coloradans about state laws that protect and enrich their lives, but has also raised awareness among non-LGBT Coloradans around these state laws and the plight for equality for the LGBT community. And all in a clever, friendly, endearing and engaging...
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HTML5 Buzzword
Some interesting discussion here regarding HTML5 - http://jeffcroft.com/blog/2010/aug/02/term-html5/.
At the current moment we tend to agree with the AJAX comparisons and the sentiment that “Sometimes we just need a word to rally behind.”
Here’s to new exciting possibilities!
July 2010
2 posts
3 tags
Some sprucing up!
Recently, Peak made some updates to the Kinkennon Communications web site to enhance the social media presence. Twitter and blog content are now better integrated within the site, while keeping things smoothly within brand.
Want to increase your social media identity integration? Drop us a line!
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June 2010
2 posts
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Add a dash of Peak, and stir for success!
At Peak, we take pride in our ability to work seamlessly with client in-house design and development teams. Need a new direction on a design? Some extra hands for production? Drop us a line.
Recently, we worked with Dave Ingraham on the GHX Anniversary brochure.
“I just wanted to let you know that we received the Anniversary brochure last night and it looks AWESOME! I am SO pleased with...
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Are links too distracting? →
May 2010
1 post
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99 Pieces of Art on the Wall
Join members of PEAK at 99 Pieces of Art on the Wall on Friday, May 21. Two members of the PEAK team have contributed a piece of artwork - Ward Woods and Jennifer Collins. $9.99 entry fee goes to a good cause - VSA/Access Gallery works to “open doors, open minds” for artists with disabilities.
Visit the Access Gallery web site for more info.
March 2010
2 posts
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Bringing New Understanding to the Director’s Cut →
A really interesting read in today’s NY Times about “1 over frequency” — a film director’s “pink noise” signal profile approach to shot segments. Evocative of the “Golden Ratio” — only hollywood style.
February 2010
5 posts
7 things social media can't do -... →
From the article posted on iMediaConection.com:
“The reality is that social media can’t fix existing business issues, nor is it a sure-fire solution for achieving business or marketing objectives. Social media can be an enabler and an accelerator of existing core capabilities, values, attributes, and plans. It can even be a catalyst for change. But it can’t magically create what...
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Campbell Soup Alters Labels After 'Neuromarketing'... →
From the article in today’s Wall Street Journal: ”For two years, Campbell researchers studied microscopic changes in skin moisture, heart rate and other biometrics to see how consumers react to everything from pictures of bowls of soup to logo design.”
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Designing for Improvisation
Interesting read by Liz Danzico (@bobulate) on designing web frameworks that allow the audience to improvise.
“Instead of the control coming from the composer (read: the designer), modal jazz promotes a sense of discovery.”
http://bobulate.com/post/390952640/designing-for-improvisation
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Logorama - →
Wow.
A stunning animated short that re-imagines LA as a city made up of nothing but corporate logos and mascots. Warning: This should certainly have a NC-17 rating (anything that includes a profane Ronald McDonald on a bloody shoot-em-up rampage deserves at least an “R”).
If you love logos like we do, this one’s for you —
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POLL: Social Media Critical to Political Campaigns... →
Ten years ago it was enough for a gubernatorial campaign to claim they had a Web site (that was usually nothing more than static brochure-ware). Five years ago, the same level campaigns needed to show they had started to dip a toe into a blogging capability on those same sites and at least give a nod to the concept of listening/responding to voters via the new technology.
In 2010, for campaigns...
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Rights Five campaign wins national public affairs... →
Congratulations to everyone on the Peak design, web and strategy team who helped develop the Rights Five public education campaign for the Gill Foundation. The campaign was awarded a Reed Award for Best Web site for Issue Advocacy which is an annual competition sponsored by Campaign & Elections/Politics Magazine. Publisher Jordan Lieberman was quoted in the news release announcing the winners...
January 2010
9 posts
1 tag
The names, faces behind Haiti's pain →
An article in the Charlotte Observer by an old high school friend who is a doctor who continues to find ways to serve. This time in Haiti, Wonderful quote in the article that he learned from his Haitian driver: Fe bien tout cote, tout gens, tout facon, pou tout mounn, just le ou pa ka pab anko. Do well, in all things, to all people, in all ways, for all the time, until you are no longer able.
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Ezra Klein - How presidents polarize ... →
An interesting piece by Ezra Klein showing the correlation between a presidential agenda and the amount of time Congress spends arguing about it. The study he quotes shows that merely being the the party out of power (and the formula for getting back into power) has more to do with the staking of an opposing view on a subject for the mere sake of being opposed than having a firm ideological bent....
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Mossberg: Evernote Hits the Right Cord →
Walt Mossberg reviews Evernote, a pretty slick personal cloud-based organizer. I’m checking it out today and seems very intuitive and potentially really handy for personal and business project management.
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Seven steps to smart email marketing →
Karl Ossentjuk runs sales & support business marketing for Comcast and uses a guest column in Colorado Biz Magazine to lay out a few rules of effective email marketing. His tips may be best for consumer focused marketers — but the advice is applicable for anyone needing to utilize email in their constituent communications plans.
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Can the Economist Buy Half a Million Facebook... →
FROM THE BIG MONEY, SLATE SITE: “The Financial Times is reporting today that its sister publication the Economist is trying to boost its social media presence. This means, according to the paper, having an audience on Facebook of at least 500,000 fans six months from now. Which may not be quite as hard as it sounds, given that it already has a fanbase of 180,000 or so. (It also wants 750,000...
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Clarity Trumps Persuasion →
From a recent posting on Marketing Experiments:
“While many marketers are intimidated by choosing the best copy for their site, our research has found that the simple, yet powerful way to drive customers deeper into your web page is by being clear.
So don’t worry about selecting the perfect persuasion words and putting them in the perfect order when writing your website copy....
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What type are you? →
Saw this link today from the daily Very Short List email highlighting Pentagram design studio’s holiday e-card. Just enter your name and password (“character”) and then answer four questions to reveal your “type” (font) and a little history lesson on who designed the font, where it was developed and how it’s used. Pretty slick. Turns out I’m “Cooper...
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Companies turn to virtual trade shows to save... →
Interesting article from USAToday on the rapid growth in virtual trade shows and how technology leaps are vastly improving the participant experience, saving all kinds of travel expenses and becoming more accepted among companies in general as a sales tool for consideration.
But there are cons as the article points out: ”There’re no face-to-face meetings or serendipitous run-ins with...
December 2009
8 posts
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Streaking Into New Year →
From the “Monopolize your Marketplace” blog/site a nice year end advice column on figuring out what you’re “mostest behindest” on and how to get your act together in the New Year!
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Happy Holidays from George K. Baum & Company →
Check out George K. Baum’s 2009 holiday e-card that Peak wrote, designed and produced — and all of it done in under a week from first call to finished online card!
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Tom Friedman: The Do-It-Yourself Economy →
Friedman’s Sunday column in the NY Times talks about the two concurrent tsunamis crashing in on businesses today. The Great Recession we all know about .. the other, The Great Inflection is all about leveraging technology to cut costs (and people). The example he uses to illustrate The Great Inflection could have been told by just about anyone in the creative world these days (ain’t...
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PEEK@PEAK - HAPPY HOLIDAYS Newsletter →
Happy Holidays from Your Friends at Peak Creative Media!
We’ve put together a variety of our favorite greetings, traditions and memories of the holiday season. Though 2009 was challenging, we are immensely grateful and thankful for our many friends and for the great creative projects and campaigns you let us design and build with you this year.
Here’s to a healthy, happy and...
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Giving back: a strategic business investment →
You really can do well by doing good. It’s a business philosophy we’ve made a central tenet of what Peak is all about. A good article published this morning in Colorado Biz Magazine by Kathleen Quinn Votaw that explains why more businesses would do well by implementing “doing good” into their business plans.
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Old Peak Holiday e-Cards →
So we ran out of time to have as much fun as we’ve had in year’s past with our online holiday cards. The 2006 Peak holiday card we built to highlight the Blossoms of Light at the Denver Botanic Gardens was one of my favorites.
Rest assured, we’ll be getting our 2009 holiday e-card out the door next week. But it was fun to dig this one out of the portfolio file and play again.
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AAVE Summer 2010 Brochure online →
Peak is happy to partner again with our friends at AAVE (All About Visiting Earth) for the third consecutive year to design and print their annual brochure/catalog. AAVE puts on some amazing adventure travel programs for kids and young adults — we want to go on these trips! The brochure is now online at aave.com.
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MIT wins Defense Department balloon hunt, a test... →
A fascinating DARPA research project probes how people can leverage online social networking to solve national-scope problems.
November 2009
8 posts
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Social media overload has some marketers taking a... →
Good cautionary advice for anyone thinking about jumping into social media:
“… ‘social media is free … like a puppy.’ Staying involved in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites cost nothing but time. Lots of time.”
"It starts with 'Hello, how are you?' and... →
This week’s NYT’s “Corner Office” interview with Judith Jamison, artistic director of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater. Jamison shares some insightful leadership and management thoughts she’s learned from running one of America’s greatest and best known creative organizations.
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Think Like A Genius web site launches →
Peak launched the Think Like A Genius web site this week.
TLG Innovation Workshops are designed to accelerate innovation and problem solving in today’s fast paced business environment. Through a process called “Metaphorming,” teams of participants confront current business challenges through the creation and exploration of 5D symbolic models.
This innovative approach to problem...
The power of time off →
Famed album designer Stefan Sagmeister gives a presentation to TED about the creative power of taking time off. Great concept — take five of the years you were planning to devote to retirement and apply it to taking a full-year off every seven years during the “productive” work phase of your life. Hard to deny that the guy clearly gets some ridiculously inventive creative...
Uncovering Steve Jobs' Presentation Secrets →
A great read to send to the next client who asks you to build them a presentation deck that includes 200+ bullet-point words in 8pt type. Steve Jobs: 10 slides - 7 words. I like that ratio. And while I can pretty well promise you that your client will never be as good a presenter/salesman as Steve Jobs it sure wouldn’t hurt to make their presentations less like root canals for their...
Quark has a new product →
Remember when MacWrite came out and people started using 40 different fonts in every memo they wrote — just because they suddenly could? So now Quark is coming out with an online software service to let the millions of small businesses in America design their own marketing materials. Will be interesting to check out the product Quark delivers on 19th. Is it possible that giving people...
Soar Charter School - Denver - Providing... →
We proudly launched SOAR Denver’s web site late last week. Opening next fall in far northeast Denver, SOAR will offer an innovative, academically rigorous curriculum that will make a difference for a lot of families and for Denver.
October 2009
7 posts
Small Business Social Networking Tips: How to... →
Spot on quote from the article: “…if you’re not prepared to devote a sizable portion of your day, or, at least, ask an employee to step up, aimlessly participating in social networks can quickly become deflating.”
Getting to No →
With the luxury of hindsight, the clients and projects you shouldn’t have taken often become crystal clear. A good article pointing out some common client warning signs (it’s written from a web developer perspective — but it’s applicable to really any creative project).
WatchThis is a presentation of “The Rights Five” public education campaign prepared by Fred Sainz of the Gill Foundation and Jim Jonas of Peak Creative Media and delivered at the Communications Network’s Fall Conference at the Ford Foundation on October 16, 2009. The original Keynote presentation file was converted to a Quicktime movie before being posted to Vimeo.
Facebook is not a fad →
With more than 300 million users, Facebook has shown that it’s not going away anytime soon. And now that 40, 50, and 60-somethings are signing on faster than their kids it’s clear that Facebook has completely broken through to become a mainstream social communications tool. This isn’t to say that Facebook will be as important a player in a couple years (when was the last time...
Just 1 In 3 Brands Has An Effective Mobile Site →
EdNewsColorado →
EdNewsColorado is the state’s most comprehensive (and entertaining) online clearinghouse for news and commentary about education happenings and policy. We helped Alan and team port EdNews into a wordpress CMS over the last couple weeks to help them expand the site offerings and give them better administrative capabilities. If you have any interest in what”s happening in education in...
For better or worse, businesses can’t ignore... →