Charles Lim

Charles Lim aka Ched

Designing Stories, Defining Brands

My name is Charles Lim and I’m a Brand Leader based in Toronto.

I’m passionate about products at the intersection of design, technology and content. Got a digital problem worth solving?

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Skillset

Brands I’ve Worked With

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Selected Work

  • CAA Head’s Up! Quiz

    Educating drivers/cyclists on road rules

    CAA Head’s Up! Quiz

    Educating drivers/cyclists on road rules

  • CAA Magazine

    Editorial platform for one of Canada’s biggest magazines

    CAA Magazine

    Editorial platform for one of Canada’s biggest magazines

    Challenge

    Design, build and deploy a responsive website to complement and enhance CAA Magazine, which has a circulation of 2.9 million readers.

    Approach

    Worked closely with CAA’s technical team to integrate content and templates with their larger Member platform. Trained staff to manage and optimize content elements.

    Result

    Increased opportunities for media and content opportunities as well as positive feedback from CAA Members, with steadly increasing traffic.

    View site
  • The Alpine Review

    E-commerce for the modern magazine

    The Alpine Review

    E-commerce for the modern magazine

    View site
  • APEX News Website and Email Newsletter

    Digital News and media serving the APEX Association

    APEX News Website and Email Newsletter

    Digital News and media serving the APEX Association

    Challenge

    Enrich both the scope and quantity of the APEX membership’s online activity, and build a better news environment to ramp up for increased frequency.

    Approach

    A complete redesign of both the front and back-end of the association website to both better present more shareable content and streamline all of the association’s membership activity. An email deployment platform was later integrated to efficiently create and deploy daily email newsletters to the members around the globe.

    Result

    Positive feedback from the association, with a revitalisation of the APEX brand and a truly digital complement to the printed magazine. The website serves as a membership hub with improved member search, profile management and a dedicated industry news section.

    View site
  • Air Canada 75th Anniversary Interactive Timeline

    A digital platform celebrating the rich history of Canada’s airline

    Air Canada 75th Anniversary Interactive Timeline

    Interactive Timeline

    Challenge

    As part of a multiplatform strategy to mark the 75th anniversary of Air Canada, create a special website that archived the history of the airline.

    Approach

    Using countless We created a special 75th anniversary microsite that used images and video to create a timeline, celebrating the events and milestones in the company’s long history.

    Result

    Only a month after its launch, the site received over 135,000 visits from over 105,000 unique visitors, resulting in a 300% increase in Facebook likes and a Webby nomination for Best Integrated Campaign.

    View site
  • enRoute Magazine

    Editorial, Inflight Entertainment listings, and more

    enRoute Magazine

    Editorial, Inflight Entertainment listings, and more

    Challenge

    To bring the Air Canada Media content universe online and further inspire travel and engagement with the brand. Serve as a home for enRoute’s other editorial initiatives like Canada’s Best New Restaurants and the enRoute Film Festival, and allow users to search for their entertainment before they get on the plane.

    Approach

    I’ve been involved in more than three iterations of the enRoute website, each with its own objectives and challenges. In its latest, and most successful iteration, the focus is on cities; the places to eat and stay, as well as the activities. A clean and mobile-friendly reading experience was also important, and multiple templates to present different kinds of content, from long-form travel stories to photo essays.

    Result

    The site has won many awards, including a huge showing at the 2013 Folio awards for Grand Prize, Best Custom Content Website; Gold, Best Website; and Gold, Best Overall Web Design.

    View site
  • Helveticurse

    Clean type, dirty words. The etymology of expletives.

    Helveticurse

    New feature: text-to-speech

    This is a side project that I had always wanted to create: a dirty glossary. I also find it interesting what vulgar words actually mean, and how they're used in daily conversation.

    Helveticurse is the exploration of a glossary website that contrasts the neutrality of Helvetica with the offensiveness of English curse words. Related content is pulled from Google, Wikipedia and Twitter.

    This site was inspired by designers like Max Miedinger and films like Helvetica.

    View site
  • Air Canada’s Altitude Community

    A Social Network for frequent flyers

    Air Canada’s Altitude Community

    A Social Network and world city guide for frequent flyers

    Challenge

    Build value for the loyalty program by engaging the members in a fun and meaningful way.

    Approach

    Create a branded social network and allow the airline’s frequent flyers to share insider travel knowledge with each other and browse recommendations written by others. Members follow each other and receive updates when someone in their network posts something new. With a gamification component, members earn badges, privileges and even tangible rewards as they interact with the site.

    Result

    A very successful debut with more than 70% of the beta testers signing up for the community within 48 hours of launch. Within 5 days, 8% of the whole membership was registered. The platform has gained earned media in the marketing space, and there has been a huge push by advertisers to access the properties in order to reach these business travelers.

    View site
  • Filmbank Media

    Film Licensing and Distribution

    Filmbank Media

    Film Licensing and Distribution

    Challenge

    Redesign Filmbank’s website to better reflect their rebranding and improve their customers’ experience.

    Approach

    We held a workshop in London with the company stakeholders to analyse the customers’ check-out flow and identify the pain points. We performed a K-J experience to identify their most valuable customers and their needs. From there we built userpaths for each of their customer types and the company’s visual sensibilities.

    Result

    Great feedback from the client and a modern, responsive website that better serves their customers and improves their interaction with the business.

    View site
  • Canada’s Best Bars

    Voting platform for Canadians’ favourite bars

    Canada’s Best Bars

    Voting platform for Canadians’ favourite bars

    Challenge

    Partnering with Molson Coors brand Rickard’s and Air Canada’s enRoute magazine, create the digital piece to a multi-platform campaign aimed at finding Canada’s favourite bar.

    Approach

    My team designed and developed the website to allow users to vote for their favourite bar on a Google map, and introduced features like the “bar-o-meter” to measure west coast vs. east coast bars. We leveraged the facebook and twitter APIs to authenticate users, and tracked votes across 100 unique places.

    Result

    A large influx of traffic and social media buzz in local markets. 15 of the bars were then featured in an issue of enRoute, which has a circulation of over a million people.

    View site
  • Turkish Delights

    Social Media Program

    Canada’s Best Bars

    Voting platform for Canadians’ favourite bars

    Challenge

    Feature Air Canada’s new route to Istanbul in a fun, engaging way.

    Approach

    To highlight Istanbul’s rich history and beautiful vistas, Spafax developed a destination microsite comprised of geo-targeted instagram photos, facts and trivia about Istanbul and Turkey. A quiz game was also built to complement the destination, where users could win a trip to Turkey based on how well they did (and if they share).

    Result

    The client was ecstatic with the results, and the response from users was positive. The campaign took home Gold for Best Overall Web Design at the 2013 Pearl Awards.

    View site
  • Eat and Vote

    Eat. Vote. Win.

    Eat & Vote

    Eat. Vote. Win.

    Challenge

    Invite Canadians from coast to coast to vote for their favourite new restaurant from a list of nominees, curated by an expert panel of respected regional critics, producers and food industry insiders.

    Approach

    We designed and built a microsite to funnel users into our voting flow, and made changes to our design based on the ongoing data. Building on our past efforts, we strove to make the voting mechanism even more efficient by making the call to actions stronger and the authentication with Facebook and Twitter APIs faster.

    Result

    More than 75,000 votes, increasing by 40% year-over-year for the past three years. Great social media buzz, with restaurant owners and fans engaging with each other online. 6.23 pages viewed per visit, over two minutes time on site.

    View site
  • Penny Black Media

    Independent Film Distributors

    Eat & Vote

    Eat. Vote. Win.

    Challenge

    Design and build a brand new website to kick-off an era of prosperity for Penny Black Media.

    Approach

    Create a modern, boutique website for Penny Black Media’s customers. A simple, but powerful interface that gains users trust and allows users to securely screen and review films via password.

    Result

    The client was delighted with the result, and their customers found it very easy to find films in the ever-growing catalog.

    View site
  • National Treasures / Your Choice

    Good stories of those living abroad.

    National Treasures / Your Choice

    International Social Media Program

    Challenge

    Evoke Canadian pride in celebration of Canada Day and promote Air Canada as Canada’s national airline by featuring Canadian destinations.

    Approach

    An interactive social sharing experience that provided insight into Air Canada’s clientele by allowing users to explore Air Canada’s destinations. Present users with an interactive map of Canada and prompt them to select their desired destination and their reason for wanting to travel there. Users could view other submissions and learn about highlights of new places from each other.

    Result

    The overall experience was inspirational, collaborative, and educational. 60% of visitors submitted a response. The most popular words used in the responses were “love,” “visit” and “Canada.” The site won Bronze for both Best Interactive Content and Best Web Design at the 2013 Pearl Awards. It was so successful that we reused the codebase for another Air Canada campaign, but centered around Asian Canadian users, titled Your Choice, Your Trip, which was shortlisted for a 2015 Marketing Award.

  • Air Canada enRoute Eats: Canada’s Restaurant Guide

    iOS App

    enRoute EATS App

    International Social Media Program

    Challenge

    Create a guide to the top restaurants in Canada, with 250 listings curated by the editors of Air Canada’s enRoute magazine for the past 12 years.

    Approach

    A continuously updated interface to scale across the ever fragmented iOS devices. It features detailed listings and a fast and easy navigation to search by cuisine, location or dish. You can also share and save your favourites.

    Result

    Has a 4.5 star rating on the App Store. Featured as a key piece of the annual Canada’s Best New Restaurants campaign.

    Download on iTunes

  • Sparksheet

    Record-breaking Award-winning Magazine

    Sparksheet

    Record-breaking Award-winning Magazine

    Challenge

    Create a publication to sell the expertise of Spafax by rounding up thought leaders and curating the best ideas in the industry.

    Approach

    Sparksheet is a multiplatform magazine that explores the unexpected connections between different parts of the media and marketing universe, from journalism and entertainment, to advertising and technology. As the founding Creative Director (and columnist), I wanted to create a clean and focused reading experience to showcase the ideas as a contemporary magazine, rather than just another marketing blog. I also programmed the site myself.

    Result

    Besides great support through the upper ranks of Spafax and Tenthavenue, Sparksheet has won a bunch of awards, including three webby honorable mentions for the past three years, a Silver National Magazine award for Best Digital Design, and a record-shattering 22 Golds won at the Canadian Online Publishing Awards, the most by any publication ever. Along the way, I also won an Eddie award for a column about magazine apps.

    View site
  • Spafax.com

    Global corporate Website

    Spafax

    International Content Agency

    Challenge

    Create a “story hub,” giving all Spafax employees the opportunity to tell the company’s stories across the globe.

    Approach

    Over the years, I’ve redesigned Spafax’s corporate site three times and have served as Creative Director for its global corporate identity, from stationery to tradeshow booths. Before beginning this project, we pored through and documented all past feedback from the website’s previous incarnation in both style and structure. We wanted to reduce the barrier to publish and encourage content of any kind. We stripped away all the fluff and favoured a minimal aesthetic, led by a carefully crafted grid system with carefully cropped visuals flowing through it.

    Result

    Besides being a corporate website that the staff can be proud of, at its core, it’s a robust content platform that editors and general staff can easily update. It also spawned a universal visual design language that can be reused throughout all Spafax communications.

    View site

Some of my Writing

On my blog, Crooked Pixels, I write about design, technology, and everything in between.

More Info

I sometimes post on , and . You can find some of my writing on Crooked Pixels Logo. I’m currently the Head of Brand & Communications at PartnerStack.

Send an email to ask me anything or just to say hello.