Merry Christmas from All of Us!

It's truly been such a wonderful holiday season. Our WagJag canvas promotion was a huge success! Our production team has worked very hard to complete all of the Christmas canvas orders in time for the BIG day! Thank you for a great holiday season. We wish you and your family a wonderful Christmas!

Looking forward to working with you all in 2012!

Do you LOVE your job?

I love my job. Honestly... I do! It's so exciting to be able to work with so many diverse clients, some are well established, some are newer businesses looking to do BIG things. As a graphic designer I get to meet many people and not only learn about their businesses but get to know them on a personal level. It's exciting and rewarding when a customer sees the end result and is thrilled with it! Sure there's times when my designs are critiqued, (I can take it!) BUT, it's even more rewarding to go back and present a revised design that the client loves.

One of our newest clients is Grosche, another business that's located in the Hespeler Furniture Building. Helmi designs, manufactures and distributes "kuchenware": teapots, french presses, and all things to do with hot beverages. To get to work with another creative mind, who understands the importance of professional photography (courtesy of BlueCow Photography) really makes my job so easy! Then to translate the look from a catalogue, to door graphics, and even to the interior design of his office is so cool... It's like a snowball effect. Or, in graphic design terms "BRANDING"!

If you've got a few minutes, check out Groshce.ca for some beautiful glassware. It certainly is art at work!

Cheers!

Izabella

The Pursuit of Excellence

I recently finished reading the exclusive Biography of Steve Jobs by Bestselling Author Walter Isaacson. Being an avid apple fan, I was quite interested in the life story behind the man who certainly changed the landscape of the digital world in his time. Although I was fascinated with all that Steve Jobs achieved before his life was cut short, one nagging question remained after reading his biography. How far is reasonable to go in a strive for excellence?

Steve was a man who strived and pursued excellence in all his business endeavours. When it came to the people who worked with Steve, an enormous amount of pressure was put on them to achieve greatness in all that they strived to accomplish. Steve was known for surrounding himself with "A players" on his teams, but would berate them on many occasions. In the end, many of the people who worked for Apple, or for Steve Jobs achieved things that even they had not thought possible. I am sure, however, that there was a personal cost, not only to those people, but ultimately to Steve Jobs as well. 

Steve may have reached heights of greatness in vision, through the invention of amazing products, but I am left to wonder if the personal cost of his pursuit for excellence was worth it. I believe that many of us do not realize what our true capabilities are and that Steve had a remarkable way of bringing out the best in people to achieve his goals. 

In our business, at Big Footprints, we strive for excellence in all that we do. Whether we are designing a marketing piece for our clients, or producing a commercial print, we look for ways to give our clients the best. If it's not excellent, we're not afraid to do it again, rather than give our customer a job that is second rate. At times the balance to strive for excellence can be frustrating for our team. But at the end of the day, I hope, our team is able to create work that exceeds our client's expectations, that they feel good about the work they've accomplished AND feel valued for their contribution. Maybe this makes us "B players" from Steve Job's perspective, but I am good with that. I'd be curious to know what you think.

Order Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson from Amazon.ca. It's a great read!

Creative Canvas Christmas Gifts

The holiday season is fast approaching! Time to start thinking about great gift ideas! Canvas prints make a wonderful gift for family & friends. Last year my siblings and I decided to have a photo shoot done as a gift to my parents and grandparents. We decided to have some prints and canvas wraps made to give as gifts. The final result was beautiful and my family absolutely loved them! (A HUGE thank you goes out to Rachelle Rousseau Photography for doing our unique family photo session. Check out her portfolio of work, she’s amazing). I smile every time I see one of our gifts hanging on the wall in their homes. That Christmas felt like such a special Christmas. Every other year we spend oodles of cash on gifts of clothing, electronics etc... Things that are so materialistic. It was a nice change to spend such a meaningful Christmas looking over beautiful images with my grandmother. She loved her gifts so much that she placed an order with me for some more!

This Christmas, give a meaningful and creative gift instead of the usual. A family photograph, a photo of a favourite pet, an image of a beautiful sunset up at the cottage, an old photo of Grandma and Grandpa, restored and enlarged. The possibilities are endless. In our studio in the historic Hespeler Furniture Building, we can enlarge, restore, touch-up and print any image for you. Big Footprints strives to always provide you with the best quality prints available in the market.

Come to Cambridge and see us about canvas prints! Be sure to “like” Big Footprints on Facebook to access our special Fall Canvas Deal, only for Facebook fans and mailing list contacts. As a little hint:  check out WagJag next week in the Cambridge, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Guelph areas for a great canvas deal from Big Footprints!

Introducing the New Cricket Banner Stand!

Introducing our new Cricket Banner Stand! This banner can be used as a stand-alone banner or as a hanging banner! Come visit us in the studio today to see this new addition to our line of banner stands!

Welcome to BIGideas!

Welcome to BIGideas, Big Footprints blog for inspirational articles, industry news, sales, promotions, new products and much more! Check back here for daily postings! Be sure to check out our Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/bigfootprints and our Twitter feed @BigFootprintsON