Sometimes you need to challenge your assumptions. That was exactly what UN Women was looking to do when they asked us to create Transform magazine. The Evaluation Office routinely audits UN Women activities, generating lengthy reports with analysis, insights and recommendations... that few people actually read. Looking to make the insightful, but dry, content more appealing to a broader audience, we created a newsstand-quality magazine, with a journalistic design.
Last week, Brand New, the blog of record for branding critique and analysis, featured our recent rebrand of UN Women's Empower Women.
When UN Women approached Ultravirgo to provide a visual and messaging system for the "Knowledge Gateway for Women's Economic Empowerment," they had a complex web site with a great mission: "dedicated to empowering women to achieve their full economic potential." However, the site was burdened with a long name and an uninspiring design. Launched in 2011, the Knowledge Gateway had been gaining passionate supporters, but lacked a brand vision.
The Tow Center for Digital Journalism, part of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, explores how the development of technology is changing journalism, its practice and its consumption. Last year, we launched a new identity for the Center based on a radical idea - what if the logo itself analyzed journalism and morphed based on current activity in the industry?
3D printing - or additive manufacturing, as it's officially called - is still in it's infancy, especially for anything beyond prototyping. But with our launch of Mymo a little over a year ago, we've been considering possible applications to finished products, and have learned a lot along the way. I shared some wisdom in the recently-published book How to Become a 3D Printing Entrepreneur.
As we're all thinking about Earth Day today, we want to share a project we've been working on that aims to make climate-friendly technology more globally available. The Climate Technology Centre & Network (CTCN), part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was founded with the mission to speed up global adoption of envoronmentally-sound technologies. We were tasked with developing a visual system that makes their services more accessible, while clarifying the breadth of offerings.
A little fun after a busy week: InVision asked me and a group of other great designers and programmers what is in our work bags.
We're proud to have recently added UN Women to our growing list of United Nations agency clients. We have some exciting projects in the works, but the first is this series of thematic icons. Honoring the 20th Anniversary of the landmark Beijing Declaration, each icon illustrates one of the twelve key critical areas of concern detailed in the document.
I recently had the pleasure to sit down with the editors of Cool Hunting to discuss our plans for Mymo, our 3D-printed jewelry line.
Read the article:
Mymo's Reinvented Monograms
College Hill, in the heart of Macon, Georgia, has been experiencing a renaissance in recent years, and has become a case study in revitalization of economically-depressed areas. The Knight Foundation has been heavily involved in the turnaround, and released a report last week to share eleven lessons learned that can help other similar communities. Written and reported by veteran radio journalist Dan Grech, the report offers great insight, and we were thrilled to be able to bring it to life online and in print.