Last year we were giving for xmas. This year we are giving and saving by doing xmas on a shoestring.
We have put together a twitter aggregator which pulls in tweets anytime someone mentions ShoestringXmas (#shoestringxmas).
To promote this fun tool we took old xmas cards - luckily weird people like Darcie collect them - and had rubber stamps made with our message, logo and charity we are donating to, Marie Curie, with the money we saved.
Many people are having a tough time this year and we felt it would be a good way to bring cheer, cheek and some possibly useful ideas to save!
The nominations for the Roses Design Awards 2009 have just been announced, and we’re delighted to have been nominated for our work on the recent Positive about Science campaign.
CIVIC has been shortlisted in the “Digital - Best visual design in a digital medium” category for work on the online branch of the Scottish Government campaign; the campaign challenged misconceptions about science amongst secondary school children and encourage more young people to consider science courses at college and university.
Will Price, CIVIC’s Head of Design, said; "It’s always good to receive affirmation from your peers, especially with the stiff competition at the Roses. This is also great news for the campaign.”
The Roses Design Awards promote excellence in design, both graphic and architectural design. The judges are looking for an innovative piece of work, a new approach to design and a concept that’s inspirational.
We are proud to announce the redesign of the new Registers of Scotland website, launched this week.
RoS compiles and maintains registers relating to property. The old site was out-of-date and did not acknowledge their two main user groups: members of the public and professionals. The website was updated to represent a modern organisation in touch with their audience with tailored information for their users.
The homepage has a clean, crisp yet approachable treatment. RoS built the pages and worked on the back end functionality of the site. Its bold message uses a slider feature to minimise the need to navigate away, built with jQuery and Flash technology by CIVIC. Everyone can use the free search function to find information on house prices across Scotland.
CIVIC had originally helped RoS develop an intranet for RoS first to define the distinct branding and approach for the live site. Based on extensive user research we identified audience needs and re-assigned information between the two distinct user groups. We were then able to create a public facing web presence with a clear, concise message for both audiences: brand and general information for the public, eServices and business news for property professionals.
This is just the beginning of a roll-out plan to develop further rich content, which includes RoS TV. RoS have teamed up with the BBC to create a TV series on the history of Scotland's land and property which will be available online.
Thursday night saw CIVIC host the first official Edinburgh Beer Evening, a spin-off from the popular Edinburgh Coffee Mornings (ECM) led by DigitalAgency’s Mike Coulter.
Conversations included starting an online business during a recession, the importance of analysing user trends online, the future of the internet and the merits of 80s music.
The beer evening attracted many ECM regulars to our offices in South Charlotte Street as well as CIVIC staff. It was a great turn out and we even had to call time on the last stragglers at 10pm. Luckily most of them still managed to turn up to the coffee morning the next day. It was so successful, we plan to run another in a few weeks time, so watch this space for details.
About ECM
Every Friday Edinburgh's creative early risers - producers, marketeers, writers, filmmakers, geeks and the occasional PR person - meet at Centotre from 8am on George Street for breakfast and a chance to share ideas and Web 2.0 finds.
To find out more about ECM, check out the Facebook page, follow the #EdCM hashtag on Twitter or head to Centotre.
Civic are proud to launch the Financial Learning Online (FLO) micro-site.
Financial Learning Online is funded by the Scottish Government and forms part of Adult Literacies Online family. It is a Learning Connections website geared towards helping workers and volunteers who are involved in developing and delivering financial learning projects for adults across Scotland.
The site includes video case studies (produced by MirageTV) along with downloadable resources.
Case studies are searchable using a map of Scotland or by searching target groups (such as 'migrant workers'), or by learning topic (for example, 'bills and budgeting'). And users can submit their own case studies to the site.
There are lots of links to organisations involved in adult education and financial capability as well as a whole host of online tools and resources for adult financial learning programmes.
CIVIC is pleased to announce that we are now officially a member of the Sun Partner Advantage Program.
Working with Sun Microsystems will enable us to provide our clients with a total package, from design to advanced hosting, adding Sun hardware to our already-bulging portfolio of technical solutions.
CIVIC has relaunched the Scotland Office site for the Scottish Government, complete with Twitter-fed blog posts. It complements the recently-launched sister site, Office of the Advocate General: www.oag.gov.uk. The Scotland Office represents Scotland interests in Whitehall, supporting the work of the Secretary of State for Scotland, Jim Murphy.
The new website aims to clarify the Scotland Office’s role and explain how it is involved in the day-to-day devolution issues in Westminster and Holyrood. The new site has a simple and clear-cut navigation, with an image gallery of hi and low resolution images. The Secretary of State for Scotland also wanted the website to support web 2.0 technology.
CIVIC worked with the government to add social networking tools, including a blog (blog.scotlandoffice.gov.uk) and Twitter account for the Secretary of State. The Twitter account feeds recent posts to the blog, and the blog has an RSS feed to help people keep in touch.
CIVIC has unveiled its 'Positive about Science' website for the Scottish Government.
The site supports the government’s 'Positive About Science' advertising campaign which launched today. Accompanied by the strapline, ‘Do something creative. Do science’, the campaign aims to challenge misconceptions about science amongst secondary school children including its ‘nerdy’ image and encourage more young people to consider science courses at school and university. It is also aiming to address the widening employment deficit in the science profession in Scotland.
Working closely with the government and other creative agencies, Civic developed the online branch of the campaign. The funky, slick site features an interactive, Flash ‘Career Path’ gizmo, to encourage kids to discover the numerous, often surprising, careers from football to fashion, open to them if they study science. Inspiring stories from people who’ve found their way into cool science careers, useful FAQs and links have all been designed to talk to the youth target audience.
We’re pretty excited here having completed our sponsorship work on www.challengescotland.com, which went live recently to the delight (we presume) of the thousands of participants who take part in the Edinburgh Christmas Walk and Walk for Scotland every year.
When Terry Crossley, stalwart organiser of these events, came to us with a portfolio of websites and a list of domains as long as your arm, we immediately saw the opportunity to pull it together into a single, sustainable platform under a common brand.
We’ve developed the brand and website so that there is now a fundraising engine to which charities can subscribe and easily raise funds, and any number of different events may appear there in future. Our goal is for Challenge Scotland to raise £10 million over the next five years.
CIVIC will be joining the fun at the Edinburgh Christmas Walk this year. Come and join us, choosing which charity you want to support from more than 25 that have subscribed so far.
The Edinburgh Christmas Walk takes place on Sunday 6 December, 2009, starting in Inverleith Park at 11am. If you prefer something a bit racier, the Edinburgh Christmas Fun Run starts at 9:30am.
Sign up now for some great days out, and to support your favourite charity: www.challengescotland.com
CIVIC is delighted to announce the appointment of Sam Miller to its board of directors as Client Services Director.
The appointment will see Sam help drive forward CIVIC's new business strategy, with the agency expected to announce new account wins and projects later this month.
Commenting on the appointment, Greig Tosh, MD, said: "Sam's appointment to the board is testament to her invaluable commitment and hard work over the past few years. She has demonstrated a keen business sense and this will be a real asset to the board. We were pleased to have been reappointed onto the Scottish Government marketing framework and Sam will maintain full responsibility for this account."
Sam added: "I'm delighted to be joining the board. It is a particularly exciting time for CIVIC, and digital media in general, and I am very much looking forward to the opportunities that this position will bring."
CIVIC has redesigned the official online presence of the Office of the Advocate General (OAG) in Scotland.
The Advocate General is the Minister responsible to the UK Parliament for the Office of the Advocate General. The Advocate General is also the UK Government's principal legal adviser on Scots law and is the UK Government's senior representative to the Scottish legal community.
The OAG website was implemented to complement the Scotland Office project, which CIVIC will launch in March. The site is simple, easily navigable with a clear-cut layout, developed within the newest version of CIVIC's bespoke content management system, CCC 6.4.
Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) has launched a myAlerts service allowing users to sign up for weekly, monthly or quarterly email alerts to specific subject areas within the SQA website.
myAlerts users can focus on one or more subjects and monitor updates within those areas. Users are also able to log-in and amend their accounts, change or update the subjects they are interested in.
CIVIC designed the system to be fully managed by SQA through a simple administration area. Register for the service at: www.sqa.org.uk/myalerts
RRD Creative provides award-winning design and consultancy services to both private and public sector clients. They are the un-sung heroes of the much larger RR Donnelley Global Document Solutions.
They felt that it was high time they blew a few of their own trumpets and decided to give CIVIC a call.
We brought both teams together to produce a new microsite that would do their portfolio justice. Working closely, from initial concepts right through to final build, we collaborated to produce a site we're both proud of.
Entirely CMS driven, with tooltips, Google maps, Flash animations and a unique horizontal scrolling feature, we hope it'll stand them in good stead.
The site was released on Valentine's Day as part of a wider advertising campaign: www.rrdcreative.com.
CIVIC's annual charity donation has been a resounding success. In our "Favourite Toy Giveaway", each day of advent, a member of staff donated the cash equivalent of their most prized childhood toy to the Sick Kids Friends Foundation. As parents, several CIVIC employees have experienced first-hand the grand job that the staff of Edinburgh's Sick Kids hospital does and we hope the donation of £642.37 will go a small way to helping more kids in need.
After a lengthy and tough tendering process and months of nail-biting, CIVIC can announce it has been successfully re-appointed to the Scottish Government's framework for Digital Services.
The other eight Scottish agencies joining us are Whitespace, The Union, Dog Digital Ltd, Story UK Ltd, Storm ID, Golley Slater, Innovation Digital, and The Gate.
Digital is a new category, replacing Web which previously was held by three retained agencies, CIVIC, Union Digital and Whitespace.
Managing Director Greig Tosh said, "We are absolutely delighted to retain our position on the roster. We have enjoyed working with the Scottish Government and its partner agencies over the last four years, delivering award winning digital work. We look forward immensely to being given the opportunity to continue sharing our ideas to help the Government and its partners successful digital communications strategies."
Thistle Street’s Café Marlayne was the venue for this year’s Civic Christmas outing on Friday 19 December. This year’s theme was celebrity lookalikes with uncanny resemblances to such A-listers as Madonna and, (ahem) Kerry Katona amazing restaurant staff as they served a feast of festive delights such as seared king scallops and prune and Armagnac tart.
Managing Director Greig 'Freddie Mercury' Tosh presided over the annual awards ceremony where top notch prizes for categories such as the Russell Brand ‘just stepped out of a salon’ award for best hair-do and the Amy Winehouse 'they tried to make me go to rehab' award for the person most likely to self-destruct were given to a glittering array of 'stars'. A splendid time was had by all.
Here at CIVIC we’re digging out our trainers and limbering up in preparation for our latest project, namely the website redesign and rebranding of three of Scotland’s highest-profile organised charity walks: Walk for Scotland, the Great Scottish 100 and the Edinburgh Christmas Walk.
We’ve been tasked with consolidating the sites into one distinctly branded portal and streamlining the online management of events, participants and affiliated charities. We also plan to rebrand the group of walks under the banner Challenge Scotland, with challengescotland.com becoming a national platform for fundraising events.
These events are an important part of the Scottish walking scene, with Walk for Scotland (previously the Great Scottish Walk) attracting over 6,000 entrants at its peak. While they aren’t promoted as competitions, with young and old participants encouraged to walk for charity or just for fun, there is a competitive element to each of them.
Commenting on the new project, CIVIC’s Client Services Director, Sam Miller, said: “I have taken part in The Great Scottish Walk several times now for MS Scotland, a charity close to my heart, and have found it hugely rewarding, especially after winning first female back in 2008.
“I’m delighted that CIVIC are going to be helping to raise awareness of the newly rebranded walks online while also becoming their main sponsor. You will see the CIVIC brand everywhere, which is fantastic for us.”
We’re taking on development of the project from our colleagues at Scotland Web Design, whose unflagging support for the events has helped make them a great success in the past.
Working with Sun Microsystems will enable us to provide our clients with a total package, from design to advanced hosting, adding Sun hardware to our already-bulging portfolio of technical solutions.
