Moving into a New Year!

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moving into a new year!

DECEMBER 24 · When it comes to projects like overhauling our studio (part of which is inside this very box), or updating our blog (this post is merely a sign of good things to come), we believe two are better than one—that’s Emily on the right, of course, you can tell by the hair. 2013 has brought us some amazing new projects, opportunities to think together with new clients and collaborators, and ways to continue working towards the issues we care about. We’re excited to share that work with you in 2014. So stop by our studio, or here on our blog, this January to find out more.

Happy Holidays from Jane & Emily!

Read all about it!

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extra, extra—read all about it!

OCTOBER 15 · Communicating effectively with funders is an ongoing (and sometimes perplexing) question for non-profits. Occasionally, we work with a client who’s willing to try something completely different to get their point across. We designed this newspaper for The Rhode Island Council for the Humanities as a way to share outcomes of a proposed grant to the vanBeuren Charitable Foundation. The newspaper spoke directly, providing prompts for conversation and questions during their meeting and also as an engaging take-away for grant officers after the meeting was over. One month later, RICH announced it had secured the funding—a three-year, $500,000 grant for its Catalyzing Culture initiative which leverages Newport’s history to build an innovative cultural and economic sector for the city and state. While we’re not taking credit for the grant itself, we believe strongly that non-profits benefit from the ways in which design helps to tell their story, gives form to their intentions, and brings them closer to achieving their goals.

Updating a Classic

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updating a classic

The Rhode Island Council for the Humanities keeps close track of our state’s culture and history—but, at first, no one could pin down exactly where, or when, its own logo first surfaced. Like a fixture in your childhood home, it had always just been there. A little sleuthing into their archives revealed that the mark was nearly as old as the organization itself—designed in the late 1970’s by a student studying with Malcolm Grear. It would surprise any undergraduate student that one of their designs was still going strong 30+ years later…I think they’d also agree, that a little polishing was in order. So we set about redrawing the mark—transforming line into plane and surfacing its internal geometry—to allow for more dynamic use across the materials we were designing for their 40th Celebration. (& check out the logo in quilt form!)

Wedding Bells

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wedding bells

SEPTEMBER 28 · Alongside our client-based work this fall, we were busy designing a full suite of materials for Emily and Jesse’s big day. Like any designer, who also happens to be the bride, Emily went to town on the concept for the wedding—hand-made and vintage aesthetics; a palette of greens to balance out the fall foliage in Vermont; puzzle-like fun for the invitations. Like any good urban farmer, who also happens to be the groom, Jesse got busy canning and pickling gifts for their guests. The rest of us were happy to play our own parts—Jane hand-painting the signs, Sara Raffo scavenging seasonal foliage for the flowers, Emily Steffian designing the rings (like any good friends would be!). A wedding, when you think about, is just one big visual system played out across print materials, event spaces and virtual ones too. It’s no different from what we do every other day of the year at Design Agency—though we can’t help but hold this particular project close to our hearts. Congrats Mr. & Mrs. Rye!

Locally Made, RISD Museum

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Locally Made at the RISD Museum

SEPTEMBER 25 · At the center of the RISD Museum’s Locally Made exhibition was “One Room,” an experimental space which drew over 250 local artists, designers, performers, and community innovators to share their ideas in daily presentations. On the invitation of Patti Philips, RISD’s Dean of Graduate Studies, we developed an interactive workshop about our relationship to branding and our local visual landscape. Workshop attendees were given a pop quiz, asking them to identify brands they recognized in the alphabet we presented—and in turn to identify leaves from 26 of the most commonly planted trees in and around the museum. It sparked a conversation about what we notice in our environment and how a sense of curiosity (agency!) can help us become more deeply engaged with our community.

“What a fabulous and provocative experience you crafted for us today. You used a simple, polished, and thoughtful framework to make us reconsider what we’ve incorporated into our visual lexicon. Thank you for creating such a comfortable environment and accessible way of considering complex ideas.” —Hollis Mickey, RISD museum educator

The Letters in Your Neighborhood

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the letters in your neighborhood

MARCH 8 · The Studio Art Faculty exhibit at Clark University, Form + Content + Context, featured work from 14 artists, including this typographic installation by Jane. Her work began as a sort-of scavenger hunt—just she and her camera, capturing letterforms on street signs & storefronts, manhole covers & newspaper boxes in the vicinity of the gallery. Here’s an excerpt from the statement which accompanied the piece: Typography is designed to be silent; invisible. We see right through it to the declaration underneath the form. But typography also coveys feeling and style—it speaks in its own voice. So in a city we know well, we sometimes need to pull these forms out in order to see them more clearly. When we do, we find they’re as beautiful as calligraphy, full of personality and presence. These letterforms are just a small selection of the millions that make up the face of this city, and this particular neighborhood. If you’re looking carefully enough, you’ll find them somewhere between the corner of Main & Hammond Streets. This is the route I drive to campus everyday. On a recent morning, I walked this route for the first time. It feels entirely different to me now, just for going more slowly, for looking with more curiosity, for letting myself be a traveler in a familiar place.

Cooking School of Design

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the cooking school of design

OCTOBER 18 · It’s our opinion, that you can learn a lot about design through cooking. So when we were invited to be part of RISD’s Visiting Designer Series, our “studio” was a fully-equipped kitchen. Our three-day workshop centered around a simple prompt. Students were asked to swap family recipes—ones which had stories as rich as their ingredients—and to prepare those dishes, together. Their exchange mimicked a client relationship, so attentive listening and carefully considered questions were key. When you’re making (someone else’s) Mom’s chicken wings, you better get it right! Kitchens are a natural place for conversation. Ours centered around storytelling & narrative, our individual habits as designers (good & bad), and the importance of clear communication in the design process. Thanks to all the students who participated, and to visiting food critic Douglas Scott, for an amazing workshop. Bon appetite!

Better World by Design

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Better World by Design

OCTOBER 1 · For the past two years, we’ve participated in BWxD—a three-day internationally-acclaimed conference that connects students, professionals, and individuals from a variety of disciplines to “build a global community of socially conscious & passionate innovators.” Most recently, we were invited to speak as part of a panel on Persuasive Communication with sculptor Richard Fishman, type designer Cyrus Highsmith, & Amy Sanaman, Executive Director of The Groundswell Mural Project. Never ones to adhere strictly to a given topic, we spoke about the importance of conscious communication through an illustrated presentation about our recent work for New Urban Arts. The booklets above, we produced as handouts to introduce perspectives we believe are important to the conversation around design & social change.

RISD Workshop

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RISD workshop

APRIL 4 · Open, generous, and careful listening is essential for designers, but rarely discussed directly. We offered this day-long workshop, by invitation of Tom Okerse, for the course Relational Design—in which students were embarking on design ethnography project. Our public talk offered inspiration from listeners as divergent as Naomi Shihab Nye and Paul Rand; and as varied in their approach as Andy Goldsworthy and Thomas Starr. We followed it up with a workshop which included silent meditation and a sequence of guided prompts that helped spark conversation around the role of listening in the design process.

Thank you to the students (all 60 of you!) who made this such a fun day.

FSU Workshop

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FSU workshop

MARCH 15 · We visited advanced-level graphic design students at Framingham State University recently, for a workshop on collaboration & community-based design. The students were working with city officials on a very real project—to revitalize Farm Pond, an underutilized natural resource right in the heart of their city. We talked briefly about our own experiences, shared projects by other designers & community-based practitioners, and talked through the particular challenges they were facing. We brought out the Tinker Toys for an activity which highlighted the complexities of a collaborative design process. Our goal for this workshop, as in others, was to bring a greater level of consciousness to the way we communicate as designers.