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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, 16 August 2010 14:39 |
Every August we like to remind ourselves why we chose that bug for our logo. So we’re in Idaho, in rivers and breaking the line that connects us constantly to the interwebs, although, we hope, not the line connecting us to the fish. We wish pleasant summer days and nights to you all.
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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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Written by Dean Temple
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Thursday, 15 July 2010 16:43 |
 When our clients ask us how we’re going to do something, I often tell them it’s all theater, that there is no one right way to do it, and that the end result is good if their audience appreciates it. And for some jobs, like showing a tornado through the windows of Dorothy’s house on a live stage, it really is all theater.
Lou Trapani, director of the Center for Performing Arts in Rhinebeck, says that if people make the effort to buy their tickets and be in their seats when the curtain goes up, you have to do everything you can to give them a good show.
I’d add that when you have your chance in front of your audience, it’s not the time to look like everyone else, to blend in and not be heard. It’s your time to shine, to say what you have to say clearly, and earn your applause. (You can apply this metaphor to the real world too, hint, hint.)
And what better to blow an audience out of their seats than a tornado?
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Written by Dean Temple
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Thursday, 01 July 2010 13:56 |
When you're driving through a town you don’t know and you can’t find a street sign anywhere – and for the sake of argument, let's say your GPS isn’t working – what do you feel? Frustration? Fear? Hopelessness? Me, I have to go with rage, because thoughtfully placed signs would solve my problem, allowing me to understand where I am and where I am going.
Now multiply those feelings times twenty.
According to the Mayo Clinic, the inability to communicate and interact with others is the common symptom of all sufferers of autism. In a way, their lives are missing all of the street signs.
Our client, Sloan Architects, designed the master plan for the Anderson Center for Autism in Staatsburg, New York. In researching a white paper-style brochure for them about the project, I spent a day there. The inability to communicate, I learned, is a major cause for the challenging behavior associated with autism (the sort of behavior script writers like to use to dramatic effect).
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