When the supremely talented Laura Wills of Messenger — who has designed virtually the entire Southbrook brand from the ground up — asked me write their new website, I felt a distinct thirst for experience with this brand growing in me.

Among the world’s great wine makers Southbrook Vineyards of Niagara is a relatively new arrival. Organic, biodynamic and an exemplar of entrepreneurial shrewdness, the business is owned and operated by the husband and wife team of Bill and Marilyn Redelmeier. The wines produced at their small holdings draw international admiration. The vineyards and winery are a masterstroke of design and nature at its most elegant, while revealing the Redelmeiers’ mindblowing vision.

In the end, it was all pleasure. The work was often more of an edit, as the briefing notes I’d been given were so well written and frequently poetic — to the point where I sometimes struggled to improve on things.

Well, the Redelmeiers were happy and so was I, especially when I received a case loaded with Southbrook’s finest, including several vintage bottles.

Call it a thirst well quenched.

Enwave is the company that built and runs the network of pipes, pumps and heat exchangers that draw great volumes of icy water from the depths of Lake Ontario to chill the majority of large buildings in Toronto’s core. Aside from their Deep Lake Water Cooling, Enwave also owns significant district heating operations, warming many of those same buildings in winter from central plants downtown.

I was approached by Meta to exact an enlivening on the copy Enwave had provided for the website redesign. This consisted of tidying up, and condensing text, adding heads and subs and pulling together info chunks from disparate sources and unifying it into a whole. Note: I neither wrote nor edited the landing page copy — the rest, yes.

Designer Richard Marazzi approached me to collaborate on this, a bus-exterior campaign. I came up with the Autumnal Italy notion, for which Richard designed a banner to anchor it. I researched several fall fairs and these are some of the ads that came of it. They were to target those inclined less toward visiting leaning towers than to sampling Italy as locals do, via its seasonal food festivals. Too bad Alitalia Canada couldn’t use it.

A print campaign I wrote with graphic designer Richard Marazzi for Toronto furniture shop UrbanAmish. Richard also shot, edited the images.

Monthly small-space magazine campaign.

Back in ’09 my client, designer George Argyropoulos — then of Jib, now of Meta Design — approached me with a few small jobs for Far Coast’s Canada-wide brand relaunch. What began as a trickle grew to a Niagaral flow, culminating in a vast 2010 Vancouver Olympics marketing blitz (Far Coast having won Official Brewed Beverage Supplier status for the Games).

Below, some of the ads and posters used at and around Far Coast cafes and kiosks in Whistler and Vancouver.

The Far Coast website served as a key vehicle for the brand launch. In time, the Olympics sort of took it over. A few screen shots show how the various coffee and tea blends were communicated — using audio and rolling text. (If you visit the site, take note that I am responsible for the two blend descriptions shown below. The others existed before my time and aren’t quite to my, uh, taste.)

Far Coast also commissioned students from Emily Carr University of Art + Design to design and build seating for its cafes from ‘blue pine’. The timber gets its name and blueness as a result of the nasty mountain pine beetle having invaded the trees it comes from. I thought the initiative was brilliant, and so re-purposed the old ‘when life gives you lemons’ line to explain Far Coast’s adoption of this perfectly good wood, which due to its colouration is not viewed by the timber industry as commercially viable.

I definitely would have preferred payment in-kind on this job writing the website for the Elounda Beach Resort in Greece. You’re forgiven if you have difficulties  getting past the photography, the absurd beauty of the place, to read my copy. Browse it and try not to book something.

Since May 2, the day of The Autists, I’ve not had a moment’s rest. Pitching new clients, launching a new business and keeping up with demand from existing clients. So a quick postmort.

In sum, a massive success. We sold off virtually everything on auction, both the live and silent versions, at generally strong prices. We had three exceptional musicians — Chaka Khan, Matt Savage and Samantha Mutis — perform for us at what several conductors and musicians have already ranked among the finest concert venues in North America, Koerner Hall. And we raised a considerable sum for Geneva Centre for Autism, the exact amount I do not yet know.

I have big plans for The Autists in future, which I’ll share as they inch toward fruition.

Vast thanks to all those who worked with me, donated product, time and sweat to help our event rock the world. In no particular order they are:

Charles Pachter, for curating like the true master he is, and bringing in all those talents whose work gave our event much added oomph

Albert Schultz, for selling the goods, making us laugh and making it look far too easy

Peter Doig, for donating a fine and valuable work that helped our cause immeasurably

Stan Morantz, for saying yes to all our printing needs faster than it took him to read the list of them

Wallace Edwards, for donating a fabulous work (two actually — long story) without hesitation

Curt Detweiler, for hooking us up from San Fran with a top ad creative team in Toronto to do the outdoor and print campaigns

Jon Freir & Chunky, for producing those ads quickly and tastefully

David Shephard, Dali and Cornelius, for the blog design, ad tweaks and other last-minute favours

Fidel Pena & Claire Dawson, for designing The Autists logo and invitations that set a high and early mark and made a mere idea shine a few million candlepower brighter than it would’ve in lesser hands

Chaka, Matt & Sam, for singing, playing and giving all and remaining at the top of your respective games throughout

John Alcorn, for organizing the music, bringing such consummate pros to back up Chaka, to the extent that she took the time to write and thank us for making the experience unusually rich for her

Hindy Abelson, for believing, acting on it, tapping her people, and watching my back

Holly Bannerman, for watching Hindy’s back, and being a calming presence throughout many typhoons of uncertainty

Katie Wilson, for feeding me much useful info and enabling me to experience more personal organization than I’ve ever known, or may ever know again

Boss Marg Whelan, for saying yea not nay to a loony fundraising event, then being such a class act while attending it

The Koerner Hall-ers, for your professionalism, understanding and endless assistance

The staff at Geneva Centre, for doing what you do and making an absolute difference to the lives of people who really need a difference made

Screen-grab from theautists.com

I have an autistic stepdaughter. She’s pretty high up on the function end of things, but has trouble comprehending certain forces of nature, and of humanity. Stuff like money, avarice, fairness, conversational nuance and so on. Like some people with autism, she’s been given a gift — the ability to draw with exceptional depth and imagination — that to most eyes is well beyond her 11 years, even for a non-autistic girl.

So one evening, watching her draw, having just discussed with her the passion she has to some day be a professional artist, I thought, “Great, but how will she make a deal?” I set to wondering about that one, and after a time an idea came.

Our logo proud and strong

The Autists is that idea in the process of being realized. Its simplest description is this: A concert/party/auction event that seeks to monetize the gifts, the marketable skills (art, number-crunching, engineering, supermemory, etc.) of those with autism who’d otherwise not have an easy time marketing those skills. It’s also a fundraiser for the Geneva Centre for Autism in Toronto.

I called the Geneva Centre once I’d written out a draft of how it might unfold and spoke with Neil Walker who, on hearing barely a minute of my spiel, said, “Count us in.”

The rest is about to be history. Go to theautists.com for the story so far, and return with frequency to see how we’re making out. If you’re inclined, get involved, sponsor something, send us ideas, give us names of people who might be able to help out with cash, expertise, free champagne, etc. And if you’re here in town Sunday May 2, 2010, come to the party — it’s going to be unforgettable (perhaps unrememberable for those who really love a good bash).

Inside the reborn Royal Conservatory of Music, where rocked you shall be

I am mostly handling the creative — writing, design, advertising, promotion — while the admin and fundraising will be looked after mainly by the Geneva Centre’s charming and highly capable Ms Hindy Abelson. That’s not to say I won’t be banging on a few doors myself to extract a few (hundred) grand from the willing where I can.

Our schmoozing zone, outside the concert hall

So here’s to a successful event, and to a whole bunch of people with autism becoming enterprising people with autism.

www.harmonyphi.com

One of many jobs I’ve worked up for master jeweller Michael daCosta of Fortunes Fine Jewellers (via Jib Advertising & Design).

Michael has long been fixated with the idea of phi, aka the Golden Ratio. In early ’08 he designed a silver and gold pendant around the concept. He named it the HarmonyPhi and asked Jib, who brought me in, to launch it and tell the story. It’s available for Christmas ’08 and is priced under $200.

Expect to hear more about this deviously clever product.