Join Gordon Ross, Marika Escaravarge, and invited guests for a conversation about achieving resilience through design at Service Design Canada.

We’re excited to share that OXD Vice President Gordon Ross will be in conversation with Marika Escaravarge of Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation on Thursday May 28, as part of Service Design Canada’s (SDN) Dialogue series. They'll discuss balancing good with fast, responding to COVID-19, and achieving resilience through design. Dialogue is a three part series that will explore how design leaders in Canada are achieving resilience through design.

SDN is a national not-for-profit committed to building, connecting, and promoting service design in Canada. They host annual and semi-annual events for practitioners, publish articles and research about the profession, provide mentorship, and engage practitioners in community-based research. Tickets to the May 28 event are free but an RSVP is required.

Get your tickets on Eventbrite.

OXD’s Creative Director will be presenting on our rebranding process.

Our Creative Director Wil Arndt has been invited to deliver the keynote address at the Graphic Designers of Canada’s (GDC) annual general meeting for the BC chapter. On Thursday March 12 he’ll share the inside story of how we—after 23 years as OpenRoad Communications—renamed, rebranded, and relaunched our company as OXD. One year after the launch, Wil reflects on the process, the amazing team, and his personal experience of how it all went down.

Graphic Designers of Canada is Canada’s National Certification Body for Graphic and Communication Designers. They are a member-based organization of design professionals, educators, administrators, students and affiliates in communications, marketing, media and design-related fields. The event is open to non-members of the GDC.

Purchase your tickets on Eventbrite.

We’re thrilled to help UBC launch another successful web project.

OXD worked with the University of British Columbia (UBC) to redesign their Campus and Community Planning website. The Campus and Community Planning team brings experts in sustainability, planning, design, engagement, and community together to build a vibrant and sustainable community for everyone who studies, works, lives and creates on campus. Their website offers information on everything from land use regulations to campus and landscape design, sustainability engineering and operations, and access permits for buildings, filming, and business. 

UBC wanted to help people find the information they needed and bring the site in line with their brand and Common Look and Feel. Like most UBC projects, we used hosted collaborative design sessions with the client to refine the focus and vision for this project. We incorporated visual ways of presenting content that will be engaging and accessible to a diverse range of audiences, improved the navigation, and created a user centred information architecture.

Take a look at UBC’s new Campus and Community Planning website. 

The Alberta Government’s Digital Innovation Office (DIO) recently worked with OXD to launch the Online Child Care Subsidy Application. This application is used by Albertan families seeking financial assistance for child care. 

This Online Childcare Subsidy Application was the DIO’s exemplar project and the Province’s first beta. Together we worked to create a digital experience that would save parents time and make processing easier for staff. To improve upon the previous version, we gathered insight from real users and consulted them from the earliest phase of the project.  We also prototyped with modern, open source technologies. 

Having completed this first project, our teams are now working with Alberta’s Digital Innovation Office on the Child Care Staff Certification, which is used child care staff gain the certification required to work at licensed child care programs in the province. 

The Digital Innovation Office exists to drive digital transformation and design more efficient products and services for Albertans accessing and administering government services.

Take a look at the new Online Child Care Subsidy Application. 

In 2018 OXD worked with the University of British Columbia to design, build, and launch the UBC Strategic Plan website. The site’s original purpose was to host UBC’s Strategic Plan while giving users an easy to digest version of the short plan, including some extra snapshots to bring the plan to life.  

Since this launch, UBC’s needs have evolved and they’ve worked with us on updates to the Strategic Plan website. Our User Experience, Creative, and Development teams worked with UBC to illustrate the different elements of the strategic plan and how they complement each other. They also wanted to demonstrate the plan’s implementation in action, without changing the site’s general art direction.

The finished product features a new homepage, an updated navigation, and templates for news, updates, stories, and metrics related to various strategies. 

See the latest UBC Strategic Plan website here.

We’re excited to share our latest project with the Yukon Legislative Assembly.

The Legislative Assembly recently worked with OXD to replatform and refresh their website. The public beta is live and feedback from the public is encouraged. They wanted a website that was visually appealing, easy to use for content creators, and easy to navigate for visitors. We focused on improving the navigation and visual design, supporting continuous improvement, and increasing ease of use. 

Our Development team replatformed the Legislative Assembly’s website from RedDot OpenText to Drupal 8 while our Creative team applied their new branding to their existing information architecture and page design. The finished product facilitates continuous improvement and new functionalities. The website now supports French and English. With this replatform, the Yukon Legislative Assembly is positioned for future feature expansion.

Take a look at the new site. 

FortisBC, UBC, and Government of BC win Best Website and Standard of Excellence at the 2019 Web Awards.

We’re excited to share three OXD clients have been recognized in the 17th edition of the Web Marketing Association’s Web Awards. The Web Awards are the longest running annual website competition. Websites are scored on seven criteria: design, innovation, content, technology, interactivity, copywriting, and ease of use. 

The redesigned FortisBC website improves the overall look and feel of the site as well as the customer experience. The new design features refreshed colours and imagery that reinforces their brand attributes of credible, trustworthy, and innovative. This website was recognized with the Standard of Excellence category.  

The University of British Columbia’s Rapid Transit website was designed to build support for the campaign to expand Vancouver’s transit network to the UBC campus. The site uses illustration and infographics to tell the rider’s story, making it easier for audiences to digest the content. This UBC project won Best Website. 
The Online Divorce Assistant Application was developed to make the process of filing for uncontested divorces faster and easier for citizens in the middle of an emotional and stressful period of their lives. This finished product is conversational, understandable, and easy to use. This application was recognized with the Standard of Excellence award.