Posted on 07.08.11

Lunch-n-Learn 3: Third Time’s a Charm!

by Tim Frick

Stephanie’s warm lentil salad paired perfectly with Joy’s presentation on maintaining brand identity across multiple platforms to make our third Lunch-n-Learn Thursday a hit.

Last week it was jQuery and BBQ chicken. In the third installment of our Lunch-n-Learn Thursdays—where one person prepares lunch for the entire Mightybytes crew with goods from the local farmer’s market while another readies a spiffy lecture on an educational topic of their choice—we covered design challenges that affect everyone (not just the art director) while feasting on some tasty legumes laced with all kinds of farmer’s market treats. We lunched! We learned! Here’s what went down.

Lunch: Stephanie’s Warm Lentil Salad with Cherries, Feta, and Mint

“This is based on a recipe from Vegetarian Times. I modified it a bit to fit what I could get at the farmer’s market and my neighborhood grocer.”

Ingredients

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 spring onions with greens, sliced (enough to yield 1 3/4 cups)
• 2 tbsp sherry vinegar
• 2 tsp whole grain mustard
• 2 cups cooked lentils
• 1 ½ cups cherries, pitted and halved
• ¼ cup chopped, toasted pecans
• 3 tbsp finely chopped mint
• 3 tbsp finely chopped parsely
• ¼ cup crumbled feta

1. Heat the oil in a deep skillet over medium heat. Add onions and cook until soft and translucent, about five minutes (longer if necessary). Remove from heat and stir in sherry vinegar and mustard.
2. Meanwhile, toast pecans in a dry skillet until aromatic and lightly browned.
3. Combine lentils, onion mixture, cherries, pecans, mint, and parsley in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper, if desired.
4. Serve with a smile and some crumbled feta on top.

Learn: Joy’s Maintaining Brand Integrity Across Multiple Platforms

While Stephanie flexed her culinary muscle in the Mightybytes’ kitchen, Joy whipped up a great presentation on how we all can assist in the cause of maintaining brand integrity across our many endeavors. She began with a review of where our important documents exist on the server:

• Logos for print, web, etc.
• Proposal and contract templates
• Creative brief templates
• Progress report templates
• Company color palette with RGB, Hex, and CMYK values
• Website images
• Other important company docs

To assist in everyone’s quest for brand nirvana, Joy also shared a document appropriately titled ‘whereisit.rtf’ that includes directory paths to all relevant files.

Joy reviewed each document type, instructed everyone on the appropriate fonts to have installed on their machines in order to use them, and went down a list of simple design
guidelines that will help Mightybytes maintain a professional appearance when communicating with clients (and potential clients) on all fronts, from initial proposals all the way down to the finer details of keeping table cells aligned and appropriately color-coded in spreadsheets.

Joy finished up by translating these design principles to our website, blog, social profiles, and other online communities as well, offering up guidelines and suggestions for best practices in maintaining brand integrity across online touch-points, including:

• Expression Engine, our site content management system
• Customer-facing online tools like Proposable
• Social networks and online profiles

Lunch-n-Learn in Photos

Here are some photos of Lunch-n-Learn Thursday Number Three in action:

Until July 21st!

Because Mightybytes is sponsoring so many events during Andersonville Green Week (including the farmer’s market), we are taking next week off but will return on July 21st when I will do a dry run of an upcoming workshop for the Arts and Business Council of Chicago on website analytics and social media metrics. Chef for that day is TBD. Until then, happy learning, happy lunching…

Lunch-N-Learn 4