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Written by Dean Temple
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Thursday, 19 April 2012 00:00 |
Gloss. An explosion of color. A famous playwright, a cast of A-listers, a world of real women. Profiles of Haiti, Congo, a touring show of talented and passionate girls, the Tony Awards, the Ted Conferences, a movement that's touched 140 countries, and what to do with $80 million. V-Day's is not your typical, boring annual report, because V-Day is art become power.
So how do you represent that power and the magic behind it in print? You lose yourself in each and every project. You study the video and the images and grasp just what was accomplished. You find the spirit behind each and let that dictate how your pages come to life. You let their identity determine theme, and then develop it in ways that can surprise even their most ardent supporters. And you push color as far as your printer can take it because V-Day loves color.
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Written by Dean Temple
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Monday, 02 April 2012 00:00 |
 Category: Print, Content Development
Maplebrook is a school for students who find it difficult to thrive in traditional settings because they are slow learners or display learning differences, and their goal is to help these students and their families achieve the greatest level of independence possible. It's a noble mission. All we had to do was show how they do that on paper, show how meaningful a contribution can be when it results in a legacy that helps families for generations.
You learn a lot about human dignity and respect in a setting like Maplebrook. We wanted to convey that through the campaign, to create a feeling of hope, to deliver their vision for the future. And even though it's our work on those pages, we're thrilled they can close this book for good.
And now, on to phase two.
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Written by Dean Temple
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Monday, 19 March 2012 20:07 |
Alex and I share a trait with our dogs: we'll offer you unconditional love if you'll feed us. Maybe that's why we keep getting fun diners to design.
The new Red Line Diner is perfectly located at the busy intersection of two highways in Fishkill, New York. We wanted to create a fun and sexy beacon that would bring a good portion of that traffic into the restaurant. Given that all of the traffic would get there by car, we played with cars as our theme.
Using a tachometer was a no brainer. It says heat. It says speed. It says performance. It says fun. All characteristics you want when you walk through any diner's doors. And whether it's the location, the Vanikiotis' reputation for excellent restaurants, or that sexy red sign, they've been packed since they opened.
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Written by Dean Temple
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Thursday, 16 June 2011 12:49 |
We worked our first job with Eve Ensler in 2004, designing projected backdrops for a get-out-the-vote production of the Vagina Monologues at the Apollo Theater. That play, her best known, led Eve to found V-Day in 1998, an organization committed to ending violence against women and girls.
Our fourth V-Day project took place at the New Orleans Superdome in 2008, in honor of their ten-year anniversary. In that time, V-Day had raised over $50 million to end violence against women and girls.
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Written by Dean Temple
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Monday, 25 April 2011 14:41 |
I'll grant you the first time I heard the term local government efficiency, it mustered the same level of excitement as unsalted, steamed broccoli. Sure it sounds like it'd be good for me...I'll have the hot dog.
But whenever you have a client that is passionate about something, so much so that they devote their every resource to it, it's easy get to excited. Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress focuses on improving the our quality of life in our area. One of the ways they do that is by zeroing in on the efficiency of local governments. That's good for you, like broccoli.
In tackling this issue, Jonathan Drapkin, Pattern's President and CEO, and an avid scanner of the media for any coverage of anything that makes local governments work better, determined that a single a resource for the region that compiled and organized this information and presented best practices could be an invaluable resource to public servants and residents alike.
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Written by Dean Temple
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Tuesday, 16 November 2010 22:02 |
Category: Theatrical Design
You may never have seen the northern lights in person, but even a still image of them awes. They're so much bigger than we are. Other worldly. Delicately and overwhelmingly beautiful.
In John Cariani's play Almost, Maine, an aurora marks the transition between each vignette. They represent something magical happening both in the lives of the characters and in the world on the whole.
Given the romance attributed to these natural electromagnetic phenomena, you wouldn't want to portray them as random bursts of light. A light show trivializes them. You want to focus on something that ties your light to the preceding story. You want to create something with purposeful movement.
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Written by Dean Temple
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Friday, 15 October 2010 15:30 |
Most of our clients come to us looking to make money, so it’s a considerable exception when someone wants help giving it away. You might not think that would be difficult, but nothing worth doing is easy.
The Dyson Foundation plays a major role as a grantmaking institution in New York’s Hudson Valley, particularly here in Dutchess County. They awarded over $15 million in grants last year, with almost one third here at home, making them a substantial driver of our local economy. They are, in fact, the first name you hear mentioned when someone is looking for funding in these parts.
That sort of reputation can land you in an avalanche of grant applications. Sorting through all of it makes it hard to give money away.
So how does a website design alleviate a problem like that?
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Written by Dean Temple
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Thursday, 30 September 2010 11:49 |
Diners are fun. Fun to visit. Just as much fun to develop. You know what a person’s expectations are coming into a diner – there’s almost a century and a half of history there, dating back before the classic O’Mahony rail cars to lunch wagons in the Northeast. If expectations are involved, you have something you can beat.
In creating a mark for the Table Talk Diner in Poughkeepsie, New York, we wanted the result to have that same sense of fun, to have a capacity to engage as well as to be memorable. We succeeded in creating a logo that has unifying elements. It looks good on its own as used throughout the restaurant. And when broken into its various parts it has the interesting affect of bringing everything together into a unified whole: a single clear identity.
Table Talk is in soft launch for the next few weeks, so you have the chance to be one of the first people to eat there. Although I’ll warn you, Alex and I stopped in the other day and the line was out the door.
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Written by Dean Temple
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Thursday, 02 September 2010 15:09 |
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Category: Content Development
 As someone who accepts money from people, money he uses to pay his mortgage, I’m not prone to ranting about their weaknesses. But occasionally we have clients who give in to the temptation to sound like insiders by partaking in marketing speak.
It’s not their fault. I blame the manipulators who delight in enslaving and torturing language, in beating it into a sad submission of cliches, lingo and catch phrases, and then selling it in e-books and how-to videos to hard-working and unsuspecting people who are trying to make a living.
Take the word verbiage, for instance. It’s been exploited. Oppressed. Battered.
I can’t tell you how many times clients or potential clients have called asking me for verbiage.
Verbiage, noun, overabundance or superfluity of words, as in writing or speech; wordiness; verbosity. Origin: 1721, from Fr. verbiage "wordiness" (17c.), from M.Fr. verbier "to chatter," from O.Fr. verbe "word," from L. verbum "word"
That’s right: verbiage means excessive or unnecessary words. I don’t care how much someone pays me; I won’t give them that.
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Written by Dean Temple
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Monday, 02 August 2010 17:17 |
 I love a client that feeds me when I visit. Anyone who knows Alex or me knows we are suckers for food. When we set up shoots for food, we don’t allow any styling tricks. We like to eat it when we’re done.
We designed this website as part of a continuing brand effort for Barnabys Steakhouse in New Paltz, New York. You can’t work on something like this without the basic ingredients of invested owners and good food. In this case we had the added flourish of a setting that is beautiful and historic: Barnabys was built as a theater in 1863, out of brick from the local brickyard in New Paltz.
That sort of thing serves not only as great inspiration; it also works beautifully as backdrop. And who is going to turn down a great backdrop, whether you are shooting, or just eating dinner?
You can see more of our identity work for Barnabys here. You can visit their website here.
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