I’ve recently had the unique experience of developing a brand from its origins with a start-up company that I’m working with called The New World Community (The NWC). Developing a brand from scratch can be an interesting challenge, especially when you’re the sole creative on the project working with people who have very focused business ideas. Getting people to see the marketing or brand impacts of their decisions and helping to shape a business accordingly is very interesting and time consuming.

The New World Community is a company that wants to change the way that the business world operates. They believe that doing business for good will, in turn, be good for business and that they can positively impact the world. As such, they operate in the middle grey area of the business world between your average profit-seeking business and your charitable organisations, similarly to the brand TOMS – they want to do good in the world while maintaining a profitable business.

CEO Jay (center) in the Dominican Republic on an NWC Experience trip.

They accomplish this by educating their clients about how their products are made and how they impact the lives of others, reinvesting in the communities from which their products originate with a percentage of the profits from those products, and providing people with opportunities to take action through NWC experiences.

Below, you’ll find a “coming soon” splash logo tease; all that I can share at this stage of the brand and business development. This is an ongoing project of mine, so I will be continuing to post more about the NWC as things continue to move forward with the business. I’m looking forward to sharing the brand book in the coming weeks.

- Steven

Note: This entry does not relate to art or design, in the traditional sense of my site. I am writing this to help others that have run into similar problems.

Background

If you’re like me, you might have heard about the game Crusader Kings II through Penny Arcade TV’s Extra Credits show in an episode called Games You Might Not Have Tried #4 and you might have thought, “hm, that looks like a really neat Civilization-type strategy game with a pretty rich story…” But then the narrator said, “Game of Thrones mod…” and you were hooked.

Now, as a primarily console-based gamer, I have to take deep breaths when I hear about a cool PC game because odds are that it won’t work on my Mac, but luckily, in this case, Crusader Kings II is available for PC and Mac, so I went ahead and bought my copy from the Mac Game Store. I downloaded my copy of the Game of Thones mod here, but you can do a quick Google search for the latest version if you’re reading this post months after I wrote it.

Because I purchased my copy of Crusader Kings II through the Mac Game Store, it was a direct download and all I had to do to install the game was drag the app from the .dmg file to my Applications folder. This is where the trouble starts, if you bought the game to play the Game of Thrones mod.

The issue

After figuring out where to put the mod, when launching the game and selecting the mod, the game crashes instantly. This is because the path specified in A Game of Thones.mod doesn’t point to the actual folder with all of the mod’s resources like it should.

The 5 minute solution

It turns out, this isn’t an incompatibility between the mod and the Mac version of the game, it’s an issue with a directory in the A Game of Thones.mod file itself, which was developed by a team who had assumed the mod would be used by a PC user and hadn’t been able to test it on a Mac. Here are my step-by-step instructions on how to get the mod working on your Mac in less than 5 minutes:

Steam users: If you bought your copy of Crusader Kings II through Steam, I’ve added steps to the instructions below to get the mod working for you as well. There may be a few extra and unnecessary steps, but I recommend you follow them all because as inelegant as they may seem, they work. Follow the steps as written originally unless you see a Steam heading below the original step.

Step	Action
1	Unzip the A Game of Thrones mod.
2	Go to your applications folder, find Crusader Kings II, right-click it and select Show Package Contents. Steam: Skip this step, go to step 3.
3	Navigate to Contents / game / mod and copy all of the files from the original ZIP here. Screenshot of Crusader Kings II package contents Steam: Navigate to Library / Application Support / Steam / Steamapps / common / crusader kings ii / mod / and copy all the files from the original ZIP there. (The copied files within the mod folder should still look the same as in the screenshot above.) If your Library path is hidden, in the Finder, click on the Go menu and then hold down Option or Alt on your keyboard and the Library will appear in the list. Click on it to navigate to Library.
4	Open the file A Game of Thones.mod with TextEdit.
5	In the Path field, replace the directory “mod/A Game of Thones” with “/Applications/CrusaderKings2.app/Contents/game/mod/A Game of Thones” and replace user_dir with #user_dir. Screenshot of A Game of Thones.mod in TextEdit with changes Save the file and exit TextEdit. It might be locked and ask you if you want to overwrite the original or create a duplicate, make sure you overwrite the original. Steam: In the Path field, replace the directory “mod/A Game of Thones” with “Users/YOUR USERNAME HERE/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/crusader kings ii/mod/A Game of Thrones” and replace user_dir with #user_dir. Save the file and exit TextEdit. It might be locked and ask you if you want to overwrite the original or create a duplicate, make sure you overwrite the original.
6	The next time you run the game, select the A Game of Thrones in the Select mods to play field before you select Start CKII.Note: The game may still crash the first time you do this, but if it does, launch it again and it will work. Steam: Unzip the A Game of Thrones mod again and this time, do not modify the A Game of Thones.mod. Navigate to your Documents folder and open the Paradox Interactive folder. Open the path to Crusader Kinds II and create a new folder inside named mod. Copy the contents of the unzipped A Game of Thrones folder to this new mod folder. Perform the “normal” step 6.
7	Enjoy playing out Robert’s Rebellion, and good luck avoiding marrying one of Walder Frey’s hundred children!

Note: The Steam portion of this guide was made in collaboration with my commenters. As I don’t own the Steam version, I can’t test these steps personally, but they have worked for others. If you find a way to optimize them at all, comment and let me know.

- Steven

For a while I’ve been promising opportunities to help me promote my new site. While the tacky web links and buttons are on their way, I thought I’d share the more guerrilla methods of spreading the word first.

If you are the proud owner of an establishment with a public-facing surface that already has graffiti on it and you feel like one more piece can’t hurt and feel like promoting my site, I have shared below the DIY stencil featured in the series with Marc Charbs.

Stencil Download (699 KB)

I’ve also started to give hundreds of stickers to completely random people for them to decorate as they see fit. Feel free to ask me for one the next time you see me.

Branding wouldn’t be complete without some more mainstream methods of spreading the word, so I designed and had produced a stamp and some business cards.

I will periodically share images of peculiar places where I find my branding around the city. Please continue to share my link via Facebook and Twitter to help promote the site. Oddly enough, the majority of my patrons are from America and the United Kingdom, Canadians only account for 15% of my site’s traffic. Let’s pick it up!

Gorilla: the largest of the anthropoid apes, terrestrial and vegetarian, of western equatorial Africa and the Kivu highlands.

Guerrilla:  a member of a band of irregular soldiers that uses guerrilla warfare, harassing the enemy by surprise raids, sabotaging communication and supply lines, etc.

Guerrilla Marketing: any of a number of unconventional methods of marketing with minimal resources for maximum results; any marketing campaign that uses non-mainstream tactics and locations.

- Steven

Reminder: Be legal, I don’t want anyone arrested attempting to promote my site.

Occupy Toronto officially started today.

If you’d like to better understand the global occupation movement, I found this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQzq_WbH4E0) of Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges on CBC to be quite informative and comprehensive.

I went out this morning to capture the start of the movement, my photos are below.

- Steven

The title of this post is in reference to linguists believing that cellar door is the most  euphonious phrase in the English language and the general public disagreeing and voting that serendipity is nicer-sounding.

Today I went out with Marc Charbs to shoot a photo set that I’ve chosen to call Pugilist. Below are a few of the shots from the shoot – I hope you enjoy.

I haven’t forgotten about my promise of providing guerrilla marketing opportunities, those will come with the next post.

Happy Thanksgiving Day, Canadian visitors.

- Steven

I am very pleased to present the first part of the Lost Cuban Photos series. As the series’ title suggests, the following is a collection of photos that I had completely misplaced and then recently found and edited.

Thank you for your continued patronage, and stay tuned for some new site features (while maintaining complete minimalism, of course) and some viral / guerrilla marketing opportunities!

- Steven

P.S. To illustrate the importance of the Oxford comma (the title of this post) I present the following two sentences to you:

• We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin. (With)
• We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin. (Without)

I want to thank you for your continued patronage and welcome the new visitors that Google and Facebook have been driving to the site. I really am dedicated to the success and continued development and evolution of this site and these site-views are inspiring.

I implemented a new feature that warns Internet Explorer users that their browser may not render everything correctly. If you’ve noticed this, it’s time to get a new browser.

Below are two time-lapse videos that I made this spring / summer. They’ve just been added to my YouTube channel and I thought they ought to be shared here as well. Fair warning: they were experiments. Enjoy.

- Steven

Watch this video on YouTube.

Watch this video on YouTube.

Firstly, a big thank you for all of the support for the launch of my new site. It’s appreciated and helpful. When you like my page by clicking the Facebook like button at the bottom of my posts, you suggest the page to Digg, you like my actual Facebook page, etc., you’re contributing to the success of my site in more ways than you might realise.

Now then, in the interest of making this site dynamic and worth revisiting, I’ve made a covenant with myself that I will update it with new content on a weekly basis. On that note, enjoy some new and old Steven photographs:

Thank you for visiting stevenMORAN.com.

I have decided to take my personal portfolio / creative outlet in a new direction – rather than the typical portfolio site (as StevenMoranPhotography.com was an example of) I’ve decided to make a quasi-interactive blog-esque portfolio to which I can post photos and design work as I create it or when I feel inspired to do so. This new Web site and domain name also allow me to broaden my creativity to more mediums than simply photography.

I hope you enjoy the site, I had a fun time coding like crazy to make it look this plain (if you can believe it.)

Please enjoy some portraits I’ve decided to share below, and check back soon for future updates and more of my work.

- Steven

*Note: Against my personal tastes, due to the size of the portrait-oriented photos and design pieces on this site, I have been forced to insert a watermark. Please don’t judge me too harshly for it.

Model: Chelsey

Model: Lindsey

Model: Krissy

Model: Krissy

Model: Marc

Model: Britt