Recently about What We're Doing

Since designing "green" is all the rage, we just launched our greenest web site yet for Legolas Media. It includes kelly, hunter, lime and mint. Not to mention our favorite: chartreuse.

We've been doing a lot of work lately gearing up for the New Aging Conference at UPenn in October (including the web site and this brochure). But I really love what the UPenn students did with these makeover videos: Aging 60 years in 60 seconds.

We just launched the initial materials for the New Aging Conference organized by the University of Pennsylvania and our good friend Matthias Hollwich of HWKN and Architizer fame. Assembling a world-class roster of provocative speakers from various industries, and culminating in a manifesto to reinvigorate the industry, it aspires to spark a new era of elder care. With that in mind, we developed a logo that imagines a "New & Improved!" aging experience and asked participants to imagine "How do you want to live when you are old?" through the brochure and web site. All with the goal of getting society to think beyond the current options; to imagine - and create - our own better future.

Heading up to Nova Scotia, Canada tomorrow for the first White Rabbit Installation Arts Festival. A week long artist residency on a 70 acre property by the Bay of Fundy. I'll be working on a multimedia outdoor installation and collaborating with 13 other artists-in-residence, culminating in a 24-hour public exhibit with live music and performances!

We just got print samples of the stationery system we designed for real estate investors KFT Capital. We tested both black and clear foil stamps, went with the clear, and are in love with subtle pattern it created on the back of the card.

The UltraVirgo team will be heading to Bruce Levingston's The Sacred + The Surreal performance at St. Bart's this Thursday. The program features eight piano pieces with three world premieres, as well as screenings of three surreal short films including a Salvador Dali home movie. Come join us! Drop me a line if you're interested.

Happy Earth day from Ultra Virgo! While we're firm believers in practicing sustainability year round, it's always nice to celebrate our mother. Check out some of the green events around town here, here and here  or take the opportunity to join Repower America

UVC client and piano virtuoso Bruce Levingston has a performance coming up entitled The Sacred + The Surreal. (Our poster here.) Just hearing him perform innovative new compositions would be enough. But screening a Salvador Dali home movie in St. Bart's church? Now, that's surreal.

I bought Happy Baby green puffs. Noticed on the bottom of the container that it says Method, the cleaning company. So, I googled to discover that Method had thousands of containers it was never going to use after a packaging redesign. So Happy Baby bought them, to package their puffs in non-toxic, recyclable, non-Bisphenol A containers. Interesting packaging choice. I'm still not sure if it's brilliant or anxiety inducing. 

We've been working overtime on a complete branding package for the Virgil nursing home in Los Angeles. And the first web page is now public. It's just a holding page for the moment, but we're working furiously on the full public site. Keep on eye on this facility. They're just getting started with a visionary new management and an innovative team of affiliates, and are reshaping the elder care industry. If you're interested in getting notified when the full web site is live, just sign up on the holding page, or contact us and we'll keep you in the loop on progress throughout.

Just returned from the first of the lecture series at UPenn on Transforming the Nursing Home - with special guests David Pollak of ADL Data and Charles Fishman, author of "The Wal-Mart Effect." See our poster design for the series, and stay posted on the upcoming lectures.

We recently wrapped up our first 800-page book: a reference guide on combustion technologies. If you're looking for a good beach read for summer, this is not it. So, to save you the reading, here are some pics of the cover, hardcover, title page, chapter opener, a spread, and a diagram or two out of the hundreds that were drawn from scratch.

I just got back from reviewing midterm research projects at a seminar at UPenn about Transforming the Nursing Home. There is a large number of organizations and facilities that are rethinking elder care, such as the Green House and (taking an entirely different tack) Kildegaarden in Denmark. All (okay maybe not all) of which will be informing the New Nursing Home we are branding in LA. Stay tuned.

We just launched a new site and identity for the fine folks at Gotham Tennis Academy. Did you know that blue is the new green? It takes a little getting used to, but is quite striking.

We just got the final copies of this invitation that we did pro-bono for a SEAS fundraiser. If you're looking to do some good this holiday season, we recommend you consider helping them out - these high school kids are doing some amazing things to aid students in disadvantaged areas, particularly in the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast regions.

Our work for PolyamorousNYC has just been added to the permanent collection at The Kinsey Institute (yes, the one founded by Alfred Kinsey). Definitely one of our more interesting distinctions. Which we are quite proud of, actually.

Wow, I can't believe the election is just six days away! Thought we should do our part in the Get out the Vote effort and point out a couple of really easy places that you can check your registration status, see if you're eligible for early voting and check your polling place.
Just think, we may be able to start talking about something else soon.

I've just returned freshly inspired from a visit to New Orleans, where the city is beginning to buzz with preparations for the Prospect 1 Biennial opening in 1 month. I was down there working on the open air project, sponsered by the Arts Council of New Orleans and opening concurrently. A friend's gallery/experiment was just written up in the style section of the NY times. KK Projects has taken over a block of hurricane destroyed houses and given a new life and a little magic to the area.

By some odd confluence of events, we've been doing a lot of HTML email formats lately. Can someone out there please implement some sort of standards that all email clients can adhere to? (That includes you, Microsoft.) I know it's a lot to ask, but my schedule would appreciate it.

As Pamela mentioned previously, we've been fascinated with music visualization lately. I came across this mesmerizing video of Bach. (Though I keep wanting a paddle and ball to appear.) Of course, the ultimate physical description of music was the grooves in LPs - I remember being fascinated by the guy that could identify records simply by looking at the vinyl grooves.

I want to thank the wonderful guys over at FontShop. Working on a book publishing project, I was trying to find the perfect text face. I decided to let their researchers make some suggestions, and gave them a set of parameters that I thought was near impossible to completely achieve - not just a complete feature set for mathematical and Greek characters, but also the right tone. Sure enough, they came through with a couple options that were spot on!

Just got some printed samples for our latest print piece for CoreNet's Orlando conference. I'm not sure if the photo does the orange justice. It's hot. Like Orlando in August hot.

For Bruce Levingston's upcoming album design, Patrick and I were interested in exploring visual representations of musical form. In researching for it, I came across this project: The Shape of Song. They've built a program which diagrams out the connection of notes in arches of varying size - they also have an extensive library of songs... in glorious MIDI.