Since 2003, team members from Big Wheel have been collaborating with our friends at Mark Andy on a variety of media for web, interactive, branding, advertising, print, and trade show creative.

Throughout the year, there are several packaging and label trade shows, with Label Expo being one of the largest. The show typically alternates between Chicago, Illinois and Brussels, Belgium. This year it was held in Brussels. The turnout was excellent and Mark Andy caught a lot of attention with the launch of its newly anticipated press, the Performance Series.

The Performance Series was well received and is a true game changer in work flow and productivity. We would like to express our sincerest appreciation to the good team at Mark Andy for letting us be a part of the experience.

Above are a few snaps of the trade show booth and show traffic.

To learn more about Mark Andy, please visit www.markandy.com.

With the future of Healthcare being the hot topic in the news, there are many opinions floating around on how to move forward.

For Big Wheel, answering the question of how the interactive design community can make an impact on Healthcare and simplify the lives of organizations and patients gives us hope. With more and more people turning to mobile devices instead of desktops or laptops for web connectivity, we see an opportunity here that many interactive and application developers see. Mobile and iPhone applications that can manage medicine, social activity, record stress levels, and connect patients with support groups to name a few. Many of these applications are already in the works and certainly can reach far greater than these examples.

For more information, check out Fast Company’s recent review of the University of Southern California’s “Body Computing Conference,” held earlier this month.

Since most people these days have developed a reluctance to ever put down their cell phones, board games creator Hasbro has now found a way to include them in the quintessential family activity: game night. Their new edition of Clue: Secrets & Spies not only updates the look and story of the game with a Tom Clancy feel, but introduces text messaging into the game play. Players send texts to a Hasbro number during the game and receive replies with new clues.

For me, the new design is another example of a strategy that latches on to a technology for the sake of trendiness, of being ‘with it’, versus truly enhancing the result. I’m all for companies staying up to date with the technology of the day, and finding creative new ways to use that technology, but there is something disappointing about the picture of friends and family sitting down together to play a board game only to all pull out their cell phones once more. Perhaps I’m just old fashioned, being a member of the last generation to grow up with phones that were attached to the wall, a time when answering the phone (with no caller ID) felt like playing a lottery.

For others of the old-fashioned mindset who enjoy disconnecting from the grid once in a while and re-connecting with friends and family through clever and engaging gameplay, I recommend the game Settlers of Catan.

I’d like to give kudos to Walt for putting together a nice blog about the St. Louis ad scene. In addition to reading several posts, I took time to visit several of the blogs listed in his blogroll. Finally, the St Louis ad community is publishing some online content.

This past summer was a busy one for Big Wheel. We work with a variety of clients and always enjoy learning about their business’ and what makes them tick, so we can help position them to take full advantage of this ever evolving internet world that we live in.

Landscape Saint Louis is no exception to the rule. With their wonderful team at hand, we were quickly convinced after seeing their work and speaking with all the gears that make their wheel turn that Landscape Saint Louis is top shelf when it comes to landscaping solutions – big or small.

That being said, we are happy to have collaborated with them over the summer to launch their new website this fall.

The new site is highly visual and showcases dozens of their design solutions delivered to inspire ideas and and demonstrate creativity. The interface features a seasonal graphic element (leaves top left) that is pre-programmed to change with the seasons to something new that reflects the time of year. The Latest Work callout (bottom right) links to a Featured Projects section and shows how specific projects progressed from start to finish utilizing a “Flash Flip Book” visual solution.

To see it for yourself and learn more, please visit www.landscapestlouis.com.