Come out and meet like-minded people from Toronto's design and tech communities and help us inaugurate our new studio space, rock out on the finger drums, and check out the comings and goings of our strange neighbours across the street all while enjoying yummy pizza and fizzy or otherwise bubby beverages.

The event is totally free, but space is extremely limited and once the tickets are gone, they're gone. Full details including location, time, tickets and anything else you might need to know are available at Eventbrite.

For the scoop on what Lunch 2.0 is all about and who's behind it in Canada, check the official Lunch 2.0 website. Hope to see you on the 30th!

What’s that — madness, you say?

Not in the least. Just the start of something great and now that the cat’s out of the bag, I can say a little more about these new peeps.

So Who’s Are These People?

First — Anna McLuhan. Anna, an unbelievable score for Wishingline will be instrumental in helping manage projects along with playing a key role in developing the company beyond my original vision. Aside from being amazing at what she does, Anna brings a fresh perspective, a brilliant mind and great ideas, infectious enthusiasm, and a well-rounded set of skills that will help improve internal processes and enable us to take bigger strides (not just because she’s 6ft 3 either).

I’d continue to extole her virtues but I don’t want to give her too big an ego :)

Next up — Dale Harrison, with whom I’m still finalizing a few details, but who will be coming on board in April as a design intern. Currently finishing up his final year in Durham College’s multimedia design program, Dale has the right level of technical and design skills and a great thirst for knowledge that will let him flourish especially in a small team environment where everyone can really have an impact on the larger whole.

Internships can be hit or miss, particularly depending on the size of the company and the amount of attention given to interns. For students, it’s a great chance to experience the real world; the often challenging reality of creative work. Hopefully it allows them to use skills they’ve been learning and pick up new ones which let them to evolve as designers — not scare them away. An internship is a great way to experiment, learn what you’re good at, what you like to and don’t like to do; to find the things that will make you happy in your working life.

For Wishingline, internships are an opporunity to learn more about what’s being taught to design students in Canadian post-secondary schools such as Durham College, Humber College or OCAD and hopefully have a positive impact on the career of a young, bright designer.

To both Anna and Dale — welcome aboard!

One More Thing

I’ll be in Vancouver next week for Web Directions North between Jan 29 to Feb 1. While I’m not speaking at the conference exactly, I will be introducing my friend Jon Snook who’ll be giving a short talk on Ajax frameworks along with Andre Charland and Walter Smith who will be talking about Adobe AIR and Microsoft’s Silverlight respectively. Expect awful jokes and good-natured ribbing.

I’m looking forward to catching up with old friends and will hopefully arrive home having made some new ones. If you’re going to be there, please do say “hello”.

The first item being that, yesterday, I picked up the keys to a new studio space on Queen Street East at Vancouver Street. There’s a bit of minor renovation work, painting, packing and unpacking to do, but the plan is to be in the new space full-time beginning in March. Just in time to disappear briefly for SXSW in Austin, Texas.

And if that weren’t enough, earlier this week I hired a fantastic new account manager who’ll be coming on board sometime in mid-to-late March. A more official announcement with actual details will come later.

The search for designer(s) is still on and I haven’t forgotten about those who have sent in their resumés and portfolio links. The call-back list has been whittled down from the 100+ submissions I’ve received so far and I expect to begin to respond to those selected in the next few days. Thanks for your patience!

There wasn’t an option to indicate a locality for the job on Authentic Jobs which is why it says “Anywhere” and which is why, if you read the description all the way to the end it says:

Candidates are expected to work from our office in Toronto, Canada.

I appreciate everyone who’s sent in their CV from around the world, but the position is only open for local residents. I’ll be contacting those who’ve make the first cut by the end of next week and periodically from then on if anyone else happens to pass muster. A final decision, if there is one will be made in early February.

Good talent is hard to find as Greg so eloquently pointed out which is why our ideal candidate is perhaps a bit younger and looking to gain real, practical experience in both design and across a number of interesting technologies. In finding the right person, my hope is to do a little bit to help pick up the slack where our educational institutions may be going wrong in instructing students, particularly in how to design for the web. And for that design to be inclusive of all people.

You can read the condensed version of the job description and perks at Authentic Jobs.

This doesn’t mean we’re going anywhere though — oh no!, quite the opposite. In its place is the newly formed Wishingline Design Studio, Incorporated — now with all new super-seriousness, renewed vigor and more paperwork than you can shake a stick at.

For our clients, this doesn’t mean much aside from us having to make a few minor wording changes to our general business terms and conditions, and updating our stationery, estimates and invoices to reflect the name change. Everything else is business as usual. Same design insight and problem solving. Same creative drive. Same bad jokes. More paperwork.

Taking the leap to go from a sole proprietorship to incorporating the company (still operating as a private enterprise) was a big step and one which will be bringing other changes later this year including bringing on employee no. 2, a clearer, more focused direction and tuning the design services we offer to better differentiate Wishingline Design Studio, Inc. among the highly competitive design marketplace.

Incorporating is perhaps just the preface to chapter two of our story.

At the moment, there’s still a few tickets left, so if you’re looking to attend what will surely be a great two day conference, you had better hurry as they undoubtedly won’t last long.

And anyone who’s headed out for the @media conference in San Francisco, CA should take some time out on Friday night, May 25th to take part in the inaugural Avalonstar Grand Prix, a sure-fire fun event that we just happen to be sponsoring and have donated the grand prize for — namely a full license of Adobe Fireworks CS3 (for the Mac, though Adobe will let you easily switch platforms if necessary).

So, go out. Have fun. Race your asses off and make sure to take lots of pictures since we can’t be there for the event ourselves!

72 were made. We know at least 2 have been damaged during shipping over the last year or so, leaving 70 or less in existence, so if you want one, you’ll need to act fast. Visit the store now!

We’re planning a few new surprises to be added on a later date. Once we have some time to actually do something about those things, that is…

TheFiveRuns crew have a few special announcements for theRails community planned for the event and they’re going to be giving away another new MacBook Pro at the conference too. So if you wouldn’t mind walking away with an awesome new computer, be sure to stop by their booth at the conference or pre-register for the draw at their website.

We’re looking forward to seeing what’s coming next for Rails and catching up with a few friends we haven’t seen in a while. If you’ll be in attendance, be sure to say hello!

All systems will return to normal on March 19th. While we will make every effort to respond to any inquiries promptly please take note that it’s unclear the exact level of connectivity that will be available at the Austin Convention Center throughout the day and throughout the city during the evenings.

If you’ll be attending the conference, please stop and say hello. Ask nicely and we’ll happily hand over a shiny button (may not be exactly as shown). Ask really nice and you could get yourself a fancy mug.

If you’ll be attending the conference, please stop by the FiveRuns (primary sponsor of the conference and one of our clients) table and say hello.

Over the last few months we’ve worked again with Toronto Life, this time to help with the redesign of some secondary screens of the venerable lifestyle and entertainment site. The changes required reworking some of the template code developed earlier this year.

We’ve also been working with Sabre Airline Solutions developing a modern design framework to help unify their various applications and provide cohesive branding across the board. During this time we also completed identity projects for programmer/designer and writer Dan Benjamin, and user-experience designer Theresa Neil whom we’ve been working with since March on the FiveRuns project and whom we’re continuing to work with on other upcoming projects.

During September and October we collaboratively redesigned and produced HTML/CSS template code for Toronto-based e-retailer Glarkware and during November, we rebuilt Epireon Capital Investment’s website with clean, valid XHTML and CSS and with a touch of Microformats thrown in for good measure.

During all this we’ve also continued working with our friends in Austin, TX, FiveRuns, iterating through new screen designs, new functionality and other general improvements for their premier hosted application. I’d say we need a vacation, but we’re just getting warmed up.

Happy turkey day to all our clients and friends in Canada.

The major goals for the office were simple: increase the general workspace area, make better use of the space available, and incorporate some of the Wishingline visual identity via colours and furniture choices. Through this we ended up rewiring the entire office, put in new lighting, new windows, flooring and space-saving pocket doors. Nearly everything is new.

More photos coming soon.