About Us

A Modular Communications Model

Developing modern media-based projects, including print, websites, mobile apps, video, social media campaigns and more involves a wide variety of expertise and specialization. We use a modular communications model, meaning we start by understanding your project at a high level, presenting you with the possible size of the scope, and, if agreed upon, developing that scope in very fine detail to reduce costly production changes later in the process. We say reduce because we are realistic. Changes often happen during production. Our key expertise is helping you understand what producing a project entails and helping you understand production parameters and the "language" of developers. We can and often do act as a liaison between you and the developers when the development team is not collaborative media.

Once a thorough understanding of a project is complete, we build teams that consist of appropriate experts. If your project is creating a booking system for courses about supply chain management, you will likely not need a videographer or editor (unless your courses involve video, of course). Your project team consists of yourself, your team, and the team we assemble to collaborate with you on a per-project basis. This is a flexible model that adapts to the size and scope of projects. It can grow if necessary (for example, if later in the project you want animations that display how supply chains work that would be another aspect of the existing project or could be viewed as a subproject) or it can be reduced if necessary (example, you initially decided on a multilingual model but have since decided to shelve that feature, possibly until a later date).

We network with experts, developers, speakers, animators, illustrators, video editors, etc., on a per-project basis. This is our modular communications model.

Boxed Projects

Some projects are "boxed", meaning, for example, you want to start a blog website with onsite comments and social media. There are several solutions to such a common type of site. You can think of such a site as purchasing a product, such as a car or television. There are some variables (SUV, Sedan, Hatchback) but essentially the parameters of the project are known, which makes the cost, though variable depending on optional features, fundamentally known as well. For example, if you want a custom design, the cost increases. If you select a template from a Software as a Service (SaaS) provider such as Squarespace, then you won't need a host for your site but will need an email host, changing cost. If you wanted to customize a template, then additional costs would be incurred.

In the case of a blog website, you need:

• A domain for your site address and email(s)
• A website through an independent hosting provider or a Software as a Service (SaaS) provider
• Standard blog features such as
  • the blog articles themselves, sorting by date, subject, tag(s), author(s), etc.
  • the content of the articles (copy, images, animations, videos, audio)
  • the ability to share the articles, including how they appear when shared (for example, what image an article has when shared on a social media platform)
  • a comments section that may or may not be moderated
  • appropriate social media accounts to make readers aware of new posts and engage with your community
  • standard pages about privacy, terms, contact information, possibly a contact form, etc.

In this case, we'd speak to you about the standard and optional custom features, and ensure it all fits with your current needs and budget then we would scope the project in detail, answering all your questions, and finally agree on a platform (from custom to WordPress to SaaS). Then development would proceed with developers we could recommend or your developers.

Custom Projects

Other projects are either largely custom or need custom features that the boxed project doesn't offer natively. For example, you may look at Shopify's Basic plan and feel that it suits your needs for operating an online store that sells photographic prints. However, you soon discover that Shopify only supports 3 options per product, but you want to offer from 5 to 10 print sizes for each of your products. To accommodate your need for additional options per product, you'll need to install a Shopify App, from which there are many options. If you have very specialized needs, you may have to develop a Shopify App to accommodate that need.

Additionally, you may not like any of the free or paid templates Shopify offers. In this case, either an existing template would have to be modified or an entirely custom template developed.

In our extensive experience, this is the "wall" of surprise, stress, and confusion that often arises when developing communications projects. If you haven't developed a project of this nature before, or you are unfamiliar with modern production practices, you learn you need to consider and plan for the wide variety of factors that make up a project. Again, this is our key expertise.

Our Key Expertise

Our key expertise is guiding you through the modern communications project development minefield so that you can build and complete a project understanding the following:

• What the project does (Blog Site, e-commerce site, Mobile App for Navigating Forest Trails, etc.)
• The features of the project
• The features the project DOES NOT have (for example, your photographic prints site does not allow custom uploads)
• The time it takes to produce and complete the project's development
• The cost of producing the project
• The cost of running the project after core development is complete (hosting, writing articles, producing images/video/audio, social media posts, etc.)

Contact us today if you'd like to discuss a project you'd like to start or change and how we can help you.