We believe in promoting and producing Smart Art – work that is intelligent, adventurous, inspired and essential. Our personalized websites, publicity and marketing campaigns match your creative drive with our tenacity to produce real results.
YES WE DID! We are thrilled that President-Elect Barack Obama took Pennsylvania in the election, and even more thrilled for this new era of hope and possibility. Canary staffers played their small parts in the campaign - making calls, knocking on doors and, of course, voting on November 4th.
So with the election over and 2009 almost upon us, we have plenty of events and projects to keep us busy. We are pleased to welcome some new clients to the Canary roster. We're handling PR and marketing for the upcoming cutting-edge dance series Philadelphia Dance Project Presents '09, to be held Jan. 31 - Feb. 28. We'll be doing the same for The Design Center's fascinating exhibition, Lace in Translation, which will open in Sept. of '09. We'll also be developing a new website for Franklin's Paine Skatepark Fund which is working to fund the construction of free, public skateboarding facilities in Philadelphia.
Current clients with new uprojects on the horizon include Mauckingbird Theatre Company with their production of Hedda Gabler, and the Rosenbach Museum & Library's digital Abraham Lincoln project, 21st Century Abe (preview blog online now), not to mention a new Canary-designed museum website. More on those soon. Oh, and we're working on a new version of our own website somewhere in between all these projects.
Please read on for our latest news on design, publicity and marketing projects.
The seventh annual First Person Festival of memoir and documentary art – the only festival dedicated to presenting works of art based on real-life experiences – will be held in Philadelphia from Nov. 11 – 16. The multidisciplinary Festival features memoir readings and author discussions, documentary film screenings, performance art, experiential tours, visual arts exhibitions, music, competitions, artist receptions and more. Download the press kit, press release and photos here. Visit firstpersonarts.org for more information.
Miro Dance Theatre invites local music enthusiasts, supporters and members of the Philadelphia community to the Beer and Band Fall Jam – the company’s annual fall fundraising event on Sunday, November 16 from 4-7 p.m at Ortlieb’s Jazzhaus (847 N 3rd Street). Miro’s favorite local bands - Toy Soldiers, The Bee Team, Oak Oak Okay, Pete M. Wyer, and Venissa Santi Quintet - will perform in celebration of the company’s upcoming work Spooky Action at a Distance. Visit the Canary-designed mirodancetheatre.org for more info.
Bristol Riverside Theatre continues its 2008-2009 season with Absurd Person Singular (Nov. 11-30) by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, one of the most prolific and widely performed of English language playwrights. Gus Kaikkonendirects this charming, modern romantic comedy that looks at the game of love through the kitchens of three married couples and their fortunes on Christmas. For showtimes and tickets, visit BRTstage.org.
The Wilma Theater kicked off its 30th Anniversary Season with the smash hit Rock ‘n’ Roll by acclaimed playwright Tom Stoppard. From Dec. 3 - Jan. 9, they'll present the U.S. Premiere of Schmucks by London playwright Roy Smiles, who returns to the Wilma for a second consecutive season . Schmucks tells the story of a fictitious meeting between comedy legends Groucho Marx and Lenny Bruce in a 1965 New York diner. This imaginative comedy exposes the secret motives that drove these two famed comedians to make people laugh as the characters spar over the purpose of comedy in society. For showtimes and info visit The Wilma Theater.
Canary Promotion + Design ranked at #15 in the Philadelphia Business Journal’s top 25 web design companies this year. Despite being a smaller business, we launched more websites and have more local designers working on Canary projects than several other area design companies.
Canary recently launched ClassicTowns.org, the website for Classic Towns of Greater Philadelphia, an initiative of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) designed to foster the growth of the region's older communities by promoting what makes each community a wonderful place to live, work, and play. The designs for ClassicTowns.org were created by Paragraph Inc. Our task at Canary was to turn the designs into an easy to use and sophisticated Drupal site. The standout feature of the site is a map of all the towns in the program. By feeding dynamic information from Drupal into Flash, we were able to build a simple to use system for showing each town’s information in geographic space, but the real power is reserved for the site’s administers. Once they’re logged in they just have to drag and drop a town’s icon to precisely adjust it’s placement on the map. Read more about our work on Classic Towns here.
We also launched NeilBaldwinBooks.com for author Neil Baldwin, who needed a site that would grow with him as he added blogging, more public appearances, and an ever growing collection of published books to his site. Canary built a system that lets him write and edit the content on his site, and then automate as much of the rest as possible. For example, when he is ready to add a new book he just needs to upload an image of the book and write the accompanying text. The image will be resized appropriately so that it displays at the right size on the home page, feature page, and the listing pages automatically. The site utilizes the Drupal platform and a grid-based custom theme.
