Tilt

Since 2004 we have been working with my Alma Mater, Mercersburg Academy on their Summer & Extended Programs. In 2008 we were given the opportunity to rebrand the camp and we came up with “Mercersburg Summer” as the chosen name. Since then, we have explored tons of different design options and finally landed on a solidified and clever design.

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Two years ago I was reading a blog and ran across Eric Benson’s Re-nourish.com website. I was amazed at his clever verbiage and thoughtful direction for how he focused his site to be both about great design and about the environment. Not the easiest feat, but one of the best opporutnities to highlight the environment being altered by design. I immediately contacted Eric and started to talk to him about how the information on his site could help us out with our PaperRep project. He was more than willing to work with me and to help on this project. I wish everyone were that kind and considerate.

Re-Nourish is an industry based site that really aims to provide quality information about how design can create change. The three partners are thoughtful, creative and considerate. Definitely go to their site… immediately! Click here!

Download the full article here >

This month, Re-Nourish was featured in HOW magazine. A complete honor!

At the Royal College of Art, we went to a Design Business Association (DBA) event based on the Design Inclusive Challenge. This project is a world recognized and specialty project to present a problem and receive an end product via designers who donate their time. Early on in the process, there is an elimination period where a proposal is entered and a group of designers are narrowed to begin development of their ideas. This time four groups were selected:

1. Clinic: Developed a collaborative trading website called Sage & Onions (They were the winner)
2. BWA: Designed a website called Footnote
3. 1HQ: Created a surface called Move using emerging technology
4. Epitype: Generated a clever marketing campaign to grow awareness and called it Open Age Brackets

The statement and question were posed at the beginning of the conversation; We design for Babies and have created a whole industry out of it. Why not design for old people? They make up £250 billion a year. Considered the “Third Age,” of life, this generation accounts for anyone above the age of 50. If you are a baby, child, tween, teen and young adult for the first 25 years of your life, you are only an adult for 25 years before you are considered old.

The goal of this challenge was to change perception and expected quality, creating a whole new series of products and efforts towards Our Future Selves. This is a great concept and should be cared for in generous terms.

How do we as a culture deal with people from 50 years or more continued to be the theme. Older people are slower typically and more cautious. Some are closer to the end of their lives and (hopefully) beginning to share in some of the enjoyments of retirement. But others still have the desire to work and are being effected and mistreated by employers, employees and fellow commuters by their speedy and unthoughtful attitudes.

Emma Soames from Saga Magazine, granddaughter of William Churchill spoke at length about her research working for an older persons publication. “No body wants to be old. So no one talks about it. Our arrogance gets in the way. You are in a powerful place to make the visible better and to get the best part out of being old.” When discussing design for this generation, here are her thoughts, “A lot of what ends of happening is based on being distracted and showing off to your peers instead of doing the task at hand and proving the problem. We need designers who are willing to do the research and solve the problem.”

Another speaker discussed her voice and mission at the University of the 3rd Age which was just fascinating. She kept bringing up the point about technology and how her age group needs to spend more time focused on learning it for fear that they will eventually become, “Digitally excluded or digitally allergic.” That’s an interesting comment.

Design is about consideration and problem solving. Getting bogged down with the day to day, we have forgotten this very important piece of information and we need to do whatever it takes to get back to my roots as a designer. It is about challenging yourself and being completely thoughtful of your audience… engaging them every step of the way throughout a project. It is important to remove egos from the design and just be totally focused on the task at hand.

So, the challenge is, can you solve the problem and remove your ego from the process?

Our wonderful Mid-Western clients, Kwik Trip Stores, comes to the UK and NYC often to connect with the latest and greatest packaging in the world. I would have to say, aside from Japan, the UK has some of the most interesting, effective and considerate packaging on the market. I am quite impressed.

Here there is a smattering of fantastic packaging that I have found at several To Go locations in London. Stores included in my research are:

Sainsbury Local
M&S Simple Foods (a Marks & Spencers Brand)
Salades
Eat.
Yo Sushi!

OBJECTIVES
The project objective is to provide a campaign, which would entice new users (Change Agents) to sign up, create awareness for users to generate change, and to provide a contest-like atmosphere for the users. This project will also be used to help receive funding from donors and investors.

The Create Change Challenge objective is to provide ideas on specific ways to make an impact on the planet while mastering self-goals. We want to provide the parallel of personal growth to help for the planet.

AUDIENCE
The audience can really be anyone who is interested in change, but we are primarily targeting:

• College Level Students
• Young Professionals
• Progressive Adults

Here are some of the first project examples from the Flex Studio Class. We are meeting tonight for our 3rd class to see progress and I will post updates!

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Last week I had the opportunity to celebrate with the Girl Scouts. Girl Scouts of Central Maryland and Port Discovery teamed up to celebrate the next wave of entrepreneurs – girls with the highest pre-order sales in Baltimore City and each county in central Maryland.

I had the opportunity to join in the fun. Check out the photos of me trying to keep up with the next generation.

I don’t know who said this, but my friend sent it to me and I thought it was a great passage regarding architecture and space:

“Americans are too impatient. They expect instant beauty. But they forget that cities are not built in one day. We may spend years agonizing over a renewal project and then we expect the city to be rebuilt instantly. Can you imagine what Paris must have looked like when Baron Haussmann finished with it? The social and cultural shock must have been tremendous. It’s like surgery; it takes a long time for the tissue around a wound to heal. The city has to echo life. If our life is rough and tumble, so is the city. I’ve always felt that ugliness with vitality is tolerable. The great danger our cities face today is that their vitality will be sapped by too much concern for instant beauty. New York is not a beautiful city. It may even be ugly, but it is exciting. It draws beauty from its vitality. If you drove all the residents out and made it a gleaming commercial center, it would only be beautiful in a narrow sense. It would be lifeless, and therefore intolerable.”

–Ieoh Ming Pei commonly known by his initials I. M. Pei, is a Pritzker Prize-winning Chinese-born American architect, known as the last master of high modernist architecture.

Monday night we had a focus group to help us understand what our consumers thought about Jes-M products. I wanted to say Thank You to everyone that participated. It was wonderful to hear everyone’s thoughts on the brand, the function of the products and the materials used.

If you are interested in taking part in the next focus group please contact us. Our next date is on November 19th from 7:00-8:30pm.

As dawn was touched with a glow of light we were out and about this morning, revving up for a great photoshoot for Flanigan’s 2010 Calendar. These limited edition items are always a hit and in the 125th Anniversary year, Flanigan is going to really tell a wonderful story in this piece. One of local clients, P. Flanigan & Sons is a horizontal construction business, boasting about 99% recycle-ability or re-usability in most of their projects. We have worked with Flanigan for 3 years on their branding, strategy and of course design presence in the marketplace. In addition, we have assisted them with their greening plan and assisting with marketing to that message. Check out the website to learn more about the great Flanigan company!
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At Tilt we pride ourselves on trying to design for sustainability without always using green. PaperRep.com is a tribute to that and was selected by CSS Mania as one of their internal “Favorites” on September 16th. We received an enormous response on the site with over 700 views in a single day from people all over the world. What a great opportunity for publicity!

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