All eyes at Strut were proudly glued to the 2011 Calgary Stampede Parade to catch a glimpse of the main attraction - the Heritage Park Historical Village float.

Our first time designing a parade float, we adapted our successful Heritage Park marketing theme to create a mobile, 3D window into history. Using our typographic and illustrative style based on turn of the century travel and tourism posters, the float used layering of one dimensional, flat graphics to give a three dimensional feel, bringing the float to life.

There was much competition for the spotlight on parade day. While hundreds of thousands lined the parade route to see the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the royal couple gracefully bowed out of proceedings early, leaving the floats to take centre stage. At one point, the broadcast cut away to cover the final space shuttle launch. We wondered with hearts-a-flutter whether our showpiece would be passed over during the interruption.

At last, our creation rolled out of the starting gate for all eyes to see. The small-scale, cost-effective float, which was pushed along the parade route, rather than driven, by some stalwart pioneers, was designed with a purpose - it could be easily moved and adapted for display in other locations around town.

The success of our float design is worthy of a parade and fit for royalty. Keep your eyes peeled for the float as it spreads the word around Calgary. Also, watch for a brand new Heritage Park display, using the same theme and technique, atop one of Calgary International Airport’s luggage carousels.

Strut has been rather busy for the past several months working closely with Shell to develop and launch FuellingChange™. An evolution of the Shell Environmental Fund, FuellingChange empowers Canadians to decide how Shell grants $1 million to environmental projects in the areas of land, air and water.

From concept to completion, the program, which launched on May 10th, was a great opportunity for us to bring together the diverse strategic, technical and creative skills w e've developed over the years, and put them to work in a truly integrated fashion.

Strut worked with Shell to develop the program itself as well as creating support materials that included toolkits for the participating organizations, internal launch videos, a retailer handbook, POS materials and a FuellingChange display in the lobby of Shell Centre.

However, the true core of FuellingChange is the web site which Strut designed and built upon our own Insynergy web platform. At the heart of FuellingChange, it was essential to develop a site that was easy to use by the participating organizations and the Canadian public, and easily managed by Shell’s social investment team.

FuellingChange is simple. Customers make a purchase at any Shell retail station in Canada. Each purchase earns customers codes found on their receipts. They then visit the FuellingChange web site to redeem those codes and vote for the project(s) they want Shell to support. To get people started, Shell is giving all Canadians 10 free votes just for registering an account. Subsequent votes will require a Shell purchase.

The 54 environmental projects short-listed to participate in the program – focused in the areas of land, air and water conservation and protection – are eligible to receive funding at three grant levels: $25,000, $50,000 and $100,000 and multiple projects will be awarded funding at each of these three levels. In addition, those organizations not successful through the voting process are still eligible to receive $10,000 for their project.

If you haven’t already, please head to www.fuellingchange.com to register for your account and start supporting the environmental causes that resonate with you. We also ask that you share this initiative, as well as the projects you like, with your friends and family on Facebook & Twitter. By telling as many people as we can, we'll ensure FuellingChange gets a solid start.

With their new name officially announced, we can finally share that Brookfield Homes (formerly Heartland and Hawthorne Homes) has been recognized for their forward-thinking approach to the way consumers interact with home builders – the HomingDevice™ smartphone app.

Brookfield won Best Digital Media Production at the 2011 Awards of Excellence in Housing and is nominated as a finalist for Best Innovative Idea/Product at both the Edmonton and Calgary SAM awards.

Strut congratulates Brookfield on being recognized by their peers as an industry-leader. We are very proud to be a part of such an innovative project and can’t wait to see what else we can dream up when we put our heads together.

To the right, you can view a little spot we created to explain the HomingDevice app as part of a presentation at the awards. (Featuring the freshly-manicured hands of our own Chris McPhail.)

Related News:

HomingDevice App Version 1.2 is Released

Strut Launches Homing Device Smartphone App

In the works for some time  – you can see the hint of expansion in our Christmas card – we were finally able to cut through one of our walls appropriate some adjoining space. Adding a little over 900 square feet, we now have a little extra leg room to accommodate our recent staff additions. 

If you haven’t been by in a while be sure to stop in and check it out.

Maybe you are a big fan of the Griswolds and and recognize Jimmy Buffet’s version of the song, or perhaps you prefer to go old-school and sing along with the original from Bing Crosby. Either way, “Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaii's way to say Merry Christmas to you.”

If you are here to see if you found all of Aaron’s misplaced mugs, you must have received one of our Strut Christmas cards featuring some of our daily office mayhem. If not, take a quick look at the artwork and search right now.

The answer is 10.

There is 1 in the Christmas tree; 1 under the Christmas tree; 1 on top of the fridge; 1 in the microwave and 1 on top of it; 1 sitting in the fluorescent lights; 1 on the desk; 1 on the floor beside the desks; 1 inside the card and 1 on the back. (The one in Aaron’s thought bubble isn’t really lost... yet.)

Thank you very much to all those who helped make 2010 a fabulous year and here’s to an even better year ahead.

Addendum: After we finished the illustration and printed the cards we had a couple new people join the Strut family for the next while in our expanding web department. Meet Peter Abramowicz and David Miller... you can find them in the sidebar to the right.