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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
It's easy to get excited about a project that requires a crane, a cherry picker, a metal shop, and a crew of seven guys. Our most recent environmental graphic design project was just that kind of project – the kind that stops traffic.
For years now Alex and I have been looking to scrap the old sign at the Palace Diner, the one lots of people drove past but no one ever saw. Last Saturday, the time finally came, and all morning those drivers were rubbernecking to see what we were doing. Some of them even stopped to talk.
It started as a concept, a vague discussion over coffee — at the Palace in this case — that developed through rough sketches and more focused mock ups before it ever got to the approvals stage. You think you know how it will look, but you never really do until it's up. So you work your way through construction and eventually through installation, and at times you barely believe it's actually coming together.
But suddenly there it is, in this case our monument to the Vanikiotis family and their restaurant. Here's a little photo essay so you can see highlights.
Who knew asking someone to define what makes a martyr could be so upsetting?
Pearl, to our great delight, is someone who has no interest in the conventional. It makes her books a pleasure to read. It makes Pearl a fun working partner.
But the subject of her book: an American soul surfer fascinated with Sufism and caught up in the camps outside Peshawar? This theme of martyrdom in a post-9/11 world either gets people pumping their fists, or throwing them your direction. When we made the video trailer for this book, we decided with Pearl to avoid the conventional notion of a movie trailer style that reveals some bit of plot and intrigue, and worked instead toward posing the question:
How do you define what makes a martyr?
We’ve been thrilled to see some people stop and think about that, and it’s been amazing and gratifying to learn something of their core beliefs in the process, as if they broke open and exposed themselves. It’s been equally amazing to see the degree of venom that can result, and not just about beliefs, but about the creative choices we made.
It’s a special project that takes you somewhere like this.
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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.
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. 
Category: 
Pearl, to our great delight, is someone who has no interest in the conventional.