The BlackBerry Blade is our dream Superphone. It was created out of our passion for RIM’s products – retaining everything that makes them great, while propelling their design aesthetic and technology into the next era. Our vision was to create a design that’s inspiring, beautiful and will re-ignite the BlackBerry brand.

A fusion of acrylic and aluminum, the Blade feels solid and sturdy, but is a comfortable light weight. In addition to defining its modern style, the Blade’s curved design serves several functional purposes; it’s meant to feel more comfortable while typing, reduce direct glare on the screen, resist a face-first impact, feel invisible when put in a pocket, and of course, bring the microphone closer to your face. It also allows the phone to stand up on its own in the landscape position.

The external LED, a popular feature on BlackBerry’s, has been enhanced with an ultra-modern wrap-around design that glows in different colours, animates, provides visual notifications, displays battery life, game effects, etc.

There are 3 smartphones based on the Blade’s overall visual styling – a full touchscreen, a physical keyboard, and a slider. In each version we felt it important to maintain the trackpad and physical buttons – the BlackBerry is a uniquely productive device and these features are critical for precise movements and more efficient phone functions – after all, a smartphone still has to be a great phone, which is something others seem to have lost.

The BlackBerry Blade continues RIM’s proud tradition of being a world-class enterprise device sought after by business professionals. Its multiple outputs will serve any business need, from its MicroHDMI to MiniVGA – it’s a powerhouse for presentations, e-mail, social media, security, and web browsing with full Adobe® Flash®. It has no compromises with the new QNX based BlackBerry 10 OS – and desktop calibre real-time operating system.

Features like NFC, Wi-Fi hotspot and 4G LTE bring it into the next generation of connectivity. It’s tough, highly resistant to damage and supports breathtaking quality photos and video for both work and play.

The BlackBerry Blade is distinctly BlackBerry, while modernizing the brand and allowing RIM to not only catch-up to the current consumer competition, but leap-frog them entirely.

All lawyers are the same, right? Not so. Wolf Kimelman has a unique understanding of the Canadian legal system, and of the challenges and crisis’s that their clients experience. As such, Wolf Kimelman required a website that allowed them to stand out amongst the clutter of law firms in the city, and turned to Pixelcarve to help them meet this challenge. We designed and built a beautiful and experiential website that portrays the power of Wolf Kimelman’s brand, as well as their level of unwavering skill and dedication to their clients.

Here is what senior partner Jason Kimelman had to say about working with Pixelcarve.

“We have just launched our web site which was designed and created by the great people at Pixelcarve. Having never purchased a web site and knowing very little about the intricacies of web sites and marketing, we were quite lost initially. Quickly, however, our nerves were calmed by Curtis, Ryan and Jeremy.

Throughout the process (which was relatively quick), our questions were answered, our requests were satisfied and our deadlines were met. We are thrilled with the finished product. It was a pleasure working with Pixelcarve and selfishly, I hope no one ever retains their web site design services in the future.”

Wolf Kimelman was a fantastic firm to work with, and we’re excited by the great results they are already experiencing from their new website.

You can check it out here: http://www.wolfkimelman.com

Tredd is a unique kind of insurance company. Passionately aggressive in serving the risk management needs of heavy industry, they elected not to have a website at all until they could find an agency able to intimately understand the nature of their brand. It only took 1 meeting with Pixelcarve to seal the deal, and the website and branding that emerged is not just a powerful business tool, but a flawless interpretation of who Tredd is as a company – clearly differentiating them in their industry, and defining what makes them exceptional.

For this project Pixelcarve strategized, designed and built a state-of-the-art website, portrait photography, and a full brand identity for both Tredd and TreddWest with business cards and stationary.

Isabel Silveira, Tredd’s Vice President of Operations, has this to say about Pixelcarve:

“Pixelcarve’s product, people amazing!

Here at Tredd Insurance Brokers Ltd., we could not be more impressed with the team at Pixelcarve.

They were a pleasure to work with, from the initial brainstorming meeting, to the photo-shoot to the after launch upkeep. They are timely, professional and patient. Not only are the people great but the product is outstanding. We’ve only been online for a couple of weeks and we are constantly getting compliments about our new website design.

Having an online presence is so important for all businesses but it isn’t always executed to a client’s expectation. Pixelcarve was able to grasp the essence of our corporate personality and translate that into a streamlined, sophisticated website that will help attract more clients and get our message out there. We would highly recommend them to anyone.”

Working with Tredd was incredibly satisfying for us here at Pixelcarve. They exemplify our values and it resulted in a project that we are very proud of. You can check it out here: http://www.tredd.ca

When Gearshift needed to execute a rich-media ad campaign for No Yolks, they turned to Pixelcarve to execute the vision. We created custom 2D animation from scratch, and built them into Flash ads of varying sizes for 4 total executions.

Check them out below:

• Arrow – Big Box
• Arrow – Leaderboard
• Vacuum – Big Box
• Vacuum – Leaderboard
• Facebook Video

When Snow Marketing needed a combination of world-class quality and exceptional delivery time for a large LinkedIn online media campaign, they turned to Pixelcarve.

Building off of Snow’s exacting specifications, we executed 2 campaigns with a number of different units. Feel free to check them out below:

Micro-Targeting

• amsterdam-big_box/
• amsterdam-leaderboard/
• amsterdam-skyscraper/
• amsterdam-wide_box/
• newyork-big_box/
• newyork-leaderboard/
• newyork-skyscraper/
• newyork-wide_box/

Precision Advertising

• financial-big_box/
• financial-leaderboard/
• financial-skyscraper/
• financial-wide_box/
• software-big_box/
• software-leaderboard/
• software-skyscraper/
• software-wide_box/

When Brightworks needed a sophisticated execution for an RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) page takeover ad, they turned to Pixelcarve. Although simple in concept, the ad, which rips through the webpage to reveal RBC’s Arby showing off their newest mobile banking app, required a lot of subtle complexity. From the creation of custom page ripping artwork and animation, to a full blown dynamic physics engine within Flash to create the realistic movement, our team delivered an experience at the highest possible quality. More importantly, it was delivered ahead of the very tight timeline, and on budget.

Check it out!

ESPN – Homepage Takeover

YouTube – Voken

Yahoo – Homepage Takeover

Maritz Canada, part of the Maritz global network the largest single source of sales and marketing performance services in the world, has partnered with Pixelcarve to bring a new dimension of engagement and interactivity to the Blackberry / AT&T “A Bold Step Ahead” campaign. Pixelcarve, known for their innovative use of new technologies, worked closely with the Maritz creative team to conceptualize, create and produce multiple media banner ads that encouraged user interaction and promoted brand engagement. The ads featured Flash AS3 interactivity as well as direct social media integration through Twitter. Check out some of the ads below:

Client: Maritz Canada
Media Buy: Starcom
Artwork: Pixel Pushers

Here is a sample of the ad on Wired Magazine. Also applied to 600 x 480 page take-over.

Legendary Toronto real-estate magnate Brad J. Lamb has moved to a brand new building, featuring 3 interactive displays designed by Pixelcarve. Working with Johnson Chou, who designed the new space and conceptualized the project, the screens present new and resale properties in an innovative and revolutionary way. Users walking by his office on the street can use 1 of the 3 touchpad controllers to navigate through a comprehensive listing of properties, seeing high resolution images, location, description, price, agent, etc. It allows Brad Lamb’s office to showcase their properties in a far more interesting and comprehensive format than the usual clipboard.

Feel free to stop by his new office at 786 King St. W. Toronto to try it out.

Gotstyle

But knowing how to put yourself together is not just for celebrities, so Gotstyle needed an effective and entertaining way to communicate a variety of fashion messages to every guy – an audience known for their dislike of shopping and short attention spans (unless of course it’s the 3rd OT period of a playoff game!).

Working with owner Melissa Austria, Pixelcarve envisioned and executed a short video blog, filmed in HD, in the style of a TV show. Each segment identifies a different essential for every man’s wardrobe, and how best to represent it. Packed with incredibly useful tips and tricks, it’s also short enough that guys will actually watch it.

The videos are promoted on Gotstyle’s blog, as well as through targeted and attention-grabbing eblast campaigns.

Melissa Austria, owner of Gotstyle: The Menswear Store, says “Pixelcarve were one of the first that I told about Gotstyle before I created it. From the very beginning they were able to put together a visual image of what I wanted my brand to look and feel like through the website, eblasts, business cards, postcards, etc. Pretty much anything that had to do with the brand they “got it”. Now as they go to the next level, they’ve brought me there as well with digital multimedia, big concept advertising ideas and full interactive campaigns that are rapidly growing my business.”

Check out Gotstyle’s first video blog, and let us know what you think.