COC Launches 2012/13 Season and Delvinia-Designed Digital Brochure

The Canadian Opera Company announced the line-up for its 2012/13 season at a press conference at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts last week. The new season—the company’s 63^rd—is described as a celebration of opera’s greatest masterpieces. The season features seven productions including Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore, Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus and Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

The season launch, held January 18, also marked the launch of the COC’s third annual digital brochure, developed by Delvinia to support online subscription renewals.

While the overall user experience and strategy behind the piece remains the same as last season—to showcase the upcoming season and entice users to subscribe online—our team completed a creative refresh of the design. Rather than building the brochure in Flash, as was the case last year, we designed the brochure in Java to ensure compatibility with smartphones and tablets.

The digital brochure includes a synopsis of each opera, including a link to a sound clip and more information about the performance dates and casting. This year’s brochure also features a stronger call to action to generate subscriptions and a season trailer featuring video clips from General Director Alexander Neef and artists like Ben Heppner, who is returning to the COC for the first time in 17 years.

We hope you’ll visit coc.ca to take a look for yourself and we wish the COC all the best with its exciting new season!

Delvinia Wins IMA Outstanding Achievement Award for Ivey HBA Site

The Richard Ivey School of Business Honors Business Administration website, designed by Delvinia, has been recognized with an Outstanding Achievement award in the 2011 Interactive Media Awards competition.

The site was honoured in the education category.

Since 2009, Delvinia has worked closely with the Richard Ivey School of Business in developing the institution’s overall online strategy and digital design, successfully launching the school’s home page and Executive Development website.

In the summer of 2010, Ivey called on Delvinia to redesign the website for the Honors Business Administration (HBA) program. The institution had two key objectives in mind: to draw attention to the unique features that set the HBA program apart and to attract applicants to the school.

The website also needed to explain the complex pathway through the program while supporting students in choosing a post-secondary institution.

To achieve Ivey’s objectives, Delvinia designed a site that is more experiential, while including program information that is easy to consume.

Through the use of testimonial videos, quotes and graphics, Delvinia was able to help Ivey better articulate its unique offerings in an engaging and persuasive manner that is also on brand from a look and feel stand point.

The site, launched in the fall of 2010, achieved the overall objective to better articulate the brand proposition and messages effectively.

Introducing my Mother to E-books—an Exercise in Behavioural Change

I recently enjoyed the Family Day weekend in Ottawa giving my parents some quality time with their grandchildren—which is code for giving my wife and I a little break.

My mother is an avid reader and over the past few years has also become a digitally-savvy senior thanks to her computer.  So, putting on my digital evangelist hat, I thought it would be a great opportunity to introduce her to the newest digital game changer—being e-books.

I decided to turn the weekend at my parents into a real life experiment by introducing my mom to an Amazon Kindle.  Thanks to some initial research—when my parents were visiting in Toronto two weeks earlier, I introduced the idea—I thought it was time to take my mother through an exercise in behavioural change.

While I was sensitive to my mother’s perspective that she really didn’t need an e-book and still enjoys curling up on the couch with a paperback, I knew I had to take this challenge head on.  Opening up the box, I could see the calm disappointment on my mother’s face when she realized I was giving her the e-book we had discussed a few weeks ago.

My goal for the weekend was to simply get her to tell me what books she might like to read, download them, and leave her with a loaded e-book, ready to be tested.  I assumed getting her to use the functionality of the e-book would be too much to ask at this point.

So the experiment begins.  We’re back from our visit and our next trip to Ottawa will be April.  If my experiments succeeds, I will be helping my mother download her next set of books to read.  If it fails, well, I guess I have myself a new Kindle!