News. Branding

We've been honored to be doing a lot of work lately for the United Nations Population Fund. We recently wrapped up a complete brand package for a new initiative called AccessRH. Combining their existing procurement system for ordering reproductive health supplies with the largest database tracking reproductive health supplies ordering in the world, the initiative is a giant leap forward in improving access to contraceptives, especially in developing countries. With 201 million women around the world expressing need for contraceptives that they cannot obtain, there is a huge need for improvement. Meeting their needs would avert some 52 million unwanted pregnancies each year. We are honored to be able to help UNFPA communicate the power of their groundbreaking efforts.

This week, we attended twin launch events for the 7 Billion Actions Campaign that we have been developing with The United Nations Population Fund. As you may or may not know, the global population will be hitting 7 billion on October 31, and the campaign aims not just to raise awareness of not just the population issues involved, but to highlight the efforts (big and small) that individuals and organizations have made to make the world a better place.<

The launch of BOOM!, a planned community for gays and lesbians in Palm Springs, has created quite a stir in the blogophere - with coverage in dozens of press outlets including design blogs like Core77 and Fast Company Design, gay magazines like The Advocate, and mainstream news outlets like The Huffington Post and The LA Times. We were fortunate to help get the project off the ground - working with the developer on brand strategy and positioning, and Bruce Mau Design, who developed the identity and web site graphics. BOOM is an unprecedented collaboration of ten of today's most talented architects (including Charles Renfro of DIller Scofidio + Renfro, Juergen Mayer H, and our friend Matthias Hollwich of HWKN), who collectively present a bold new vision for community and architecture. This is definitely a project to keep an eye on, as we feel it's influence on the way we live in the future will be widespread.

We recently had the pleasure of attending the groundbreaking New Aging Conference, which we had the opportunity to produce the branding and marketing materials for.

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.

Ever feel like the award juries just don't understand your work, and think you deserve a second chance? If you are an architect, then you now have the second chance you were looking for with Architizer's Competition Competition - a competition to determine the best designs from entries that lost in other competitions. We did the promotional graphics, using a crumpled paper background texture to help inspire architects to pull those losing entries from the recycling bin and give them a chance at redemption!

We've been busy at work on a number of projects for the elder care industry. One of the most interesting is the upcoming New Aging Conference in April, put together by our friends at UPenn. Examining Architecture and Aging, it will present exciting advances in the industry and hopes to develop a manifesto for the future of elder care. We just put up a holding page for the web site, and have some exciting materials in the works.

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.

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.

A lesson in brand equity: Freshening up a dated design is often a good idea. But if you have one of the most identifiable images in your industry (like Tropicana's straw-in-the-orange) don't dump it. Your consumers do care. p.s. To designers: After communicating what the product is, the most important challenge in packaging design is differentiation: stand out from the competition and clarify distinctions within the product line.