As our campaign for Mental Health Awareness Month gains recognition across the web - with features including AIGA Eye on Design, Design by Women, Fonts in Use, and Awwwards - our Creative Director, Patrick Durgin-Bruce, spoke to Communication Arts magazine about the behind-the-scenes challenges, influences and lessons from working on the campaign.
The current pandemic has fostered a lot of cooperation between people and organizations, and we are proud to have been able to help a couple of our clients out.
Our latest branding was launched in Times Square this week. We've been working with Solstreet over the last few months to brand their new company and product. They are bringing completely solar-powered street furniture to urban areas, starting with New York City. Their first product - a bench with integrated phone charging and community message board made its debut in Times Square as part of NYCxDESIGN.
This week, we launched our latest annual community project - following the great receptions we received for the prayer flags that we sent to an elder center in Nepal last year, and the holiday cards we sent to hospice patients. This year, we have produced stickers on the theme Borders are Imaginary.
Many powerful advancements were made toward women's equality this year, with some earth-shattering movements. But there is still much work to be done. To celebrate women's potential, we made a short year-end video for our friends at UN Women. Wishing you happy holidays and an empowered 2018!
We are proud to announce the launch of our brand for the new Parkinson's Foundation. Formed by the merger of our longtime client the National Parkinson Foundation with the Parkinson's Disease Foundation, the new organization is one of the global leaders fighting Parkinson's Disease. Parkinson's affects an estimated one million Americans and 10 million worldwide, making it the second-most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's.
For the past year, we have been working with Better Work - a joint partnership between the UN's International Labour Organization and the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank, that works to improve conditions in garment factories - on a strategic rebrand.
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.
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.
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.
It's that time of year again - when the long, lazy days of summer become long, productive days in school or at the office. While it can be a hard transition, it is also one of looking forward to the great achievements to come. In that spirit, we just launched a new video for our friends at Fagen Friedman & Fulfrost, celebrating California schools.
As part of their mission to improve quality of life for the one million people in the US living with Parkinson's Disease, the National Parkinson Foundation asked us to help create an educational series about living with the disease. Titled What You and Your Family Should Know About Parkinson's, the series is designed to empower local chapters and partners to produce ongoing educational events for patients, caregivers, and family members.
Twenty years ago, 179 countries met in Cairo to adopt a forward-looking 20-year plan to address the population issues of the early 21st century. The resulting ICPD Programme of Action was remarkable in its recognition that reproductive health and rights, as well as women's empowerment and gender equality, are cornerstones of population and development programmes. The visionary plan is rooted in principles of human rights and became the steering document of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
At the end of last year, we launched a bold new site for Sanitation and Water for All, a global partnership of the foremost leaders working to provide clean water and sanitation facilities around the world. A direct extension of the brand platform that we launched last summer, the site is built to express the core attributes of coordination, transparency and accountability that SWA pledges to bring to the sector.
Today, the Knight Foundation launched another of their breakthrough reports, this one taking a deep look into the fast-evolving Nonprofit News industry. Titled Finding a Foothold: How Nonprofit News Ventures Seek Sustainability, the report features tons of data and analysis on 18 different nonprofit news organizations. We are proud to work with Knight, to design the report and bring clarity to the mountains of data, and illustrator/journalist Susie Cagle to bring levity to the subject.
Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) is a global partnership working to provide exactly what its name proclaims. While access to water has improved in recent years, 800 million people still do not have access to safe drinking water; and sanitation lags far behind with over a third of the world's people living without adequate sanitation facilities.
Last week we attended the Spirit of ABNY Awards presented by the ABNY Foundation, honoring those who have provided a distinguished level of service to New York City. We were honored to provide designs for the invitation and event graphics. While last year honored the tech community of NYC, this year the recipients were chosen for their commitment and generosity to the city in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Honorees included the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City, the Empire State Relief Fund, and US Senator Chuck Schumer.
To honor Earth Day this year, our friends and longtime clients Fagen Friedman & Fulfrost decided to do a little more for the environment by planting trees in urban areas across California. To help them commemorate the occasion, we made a short video in honor of California, home to some of the most iconic trees in the country.
Usablenet is a leading provider of mobile usability solutions to global brands. They provide the strategy, design and technology to create websites and apps tailored to each user's device and context. When you pull up the New Jersey Transit website on your phone, and get a mobile site optimized for train schedules, that's them.
As we approach Parkinson's awareness month in April, we are proud to share our latest work for the National Parkinson Foundation. What started as a project to design branded merchandise has become a national campaign involving NPF chapters around the country. The campaign, called Whatever It Takes, is designed to empower individuals and raise awareness of the many things that can be done to combat Parkinson's Disease. While other organizations are working on a cure, the National Parkinson Foundation has a unique mission: to improve the quality of life for the estimated 1 million people with Parkinson's in the US.
We've been hard at work on a number of exciting projects that we can't wait to announce. In the meantime, check out this short 45-second animated video we did last week for the lawyers at Fagen Friedman & Fulfrost to promote their upcoming Special Education Symposia.
Did you know that 43% of the world is under age 25? Almost half! And that number is over 50% in developing countries. This number represents a half of the world that has long clamored to have its voice heard - and has found technology and social media to be the platforms that finally give them the influence they have long demanded. Just look to Egypt and the Arab Spring for potent examples of the power that youth wield today.
Last night we had the pleasure of attending the Young Audiences Arts for Learning Gala at the always-glamorous Waldorf-Astoria here in New York. Celebrating their 60th Anniversary, Young Audiences is the nation's leading source of arts-in-education programs and services. As an agency co-founded by a visual artist and a writer with a Master's degree in Educational Technology (and parents of two very creative kids), we are huge believers in the value of arts and creativity in education. And were thrilled to be able help Young Audiences celebrate their 60th by designing the anniversary book for the event.
We are currently rolling out a complete visual branding system for Sprague, a 142-year-old energy company based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The impetus for the rebranding was operational: Sprague is separating into two companies for regulatory reasons, offering similar products and services aimed at separate markets. With an array of products (including diesel, jet fuels, natural gas and biofuels, as well as material handling services at 15 ports), potential for customer confusion about the new entities drove the strong need to develop a comprehensive brand. The challenge was to create a visual system that would unite the separate companies while clarifying the overlapping offerings of each.
Last night was the Spirit of ABNY Awards, an annual awards ceremony and fundraiser for The ABNY Foundation, honoring those that make New York City a better place to live. This year, the focus was on the tech industry, honoring the "visionaries who connect tech to the big apple", including Foursquare, ideeli, Dawn Barber from NYTech Meetup, Alan Patricof, Deputy Mayor Robert Steel, and of course Cornell & Technion for their forthcoming applied sciences university on Roosevelt Island. And with presenters including Mayor Bloomberg, NYC Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne, and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, it was great to see firsthand the commitment that city government is putting behind the tech industry as the next big engine for growth in NYC.
UVC had a great year in 2011, working with clients we love to create design and branding for meaningful campaigns, products, and companies. One of our favorite projects was the UN's 7 Billion Actions campaign, which encouraged people to take action to help the other 6,999,999,999 people on Earth. So, we were thrilled to see the banner we created for the campaign appear in Google's Zeitgeist 2011 Year In Review video. With over 7 million views on YouTube (not to mention over 300,000 people who have seen the banner in person in front of the UN headquarters in NY), it might just be our most-seen project to date. Check out the video to see our work (at the 0:10 mark) and the other events and campaigns that changed the world in 2011.
In working on the promo materials for Premiere Commission's 10th Anniversary Gala, I couldn't help but notice the '10' hidden in the logo, just sitting there awaiting it's turn in the spotlight. A simple color change, and we have an instant anniversary logo - one that perfectly fits the master logo we designed in 2007, with it's embedded 1 nodding to the premieres the Commission supports.
Here at Ultravirgo, we are passionate about projects that improve public health. And we believe everyone has the right to enjoy quality reproductive health. But quality supplies and reliable information are often hard to come by in low-and middle-income countries, jeopardizing this right. Which is why we were proud to work with the United Nations Population Fund to help launch AccessRH, a new approach to reproductive health supplies procurement that also offers access to the largest database of contraceptive procurement statistics in the world.
The second disk in Bruce Levingston's Night trilogy was just released today, entitled Night Break. We've had the pleasure of working closely with Bruce and photographer Tony Notarberardino to create the cover designs for the series, starting with the first release, Heart Shadow. (The art for the final album in the trilogy, Still Sound, just went to the label yesterday).
As of today, according to the United Nations Population Fund, the global population has reached 7 billion people. It's a difficult number to comprehend. For example, when we were creating the 24 foot banner that is hanging outside the UN headquarters in New York (and other countries around the world) my first thought was to use the extra-large canvas to create a grid of 7 billion dots and recolor them to create the message. Until I did the math, realizing it would require 352,254 dots per square inch. To me, however, the number is just an abstract figure anyway, and not what is important about the milestone. What is important are the 7 billion individual people that it represents.
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.
As part of our ongoing work for Premiere Commission, we had the pleasure of designing the album covers for Bruce Levingston's new Night trilogy. We just received a copy of the first album released: Heart Shadow, which was recently named WQXR's album of the week. We were fortunate to work with the talented photographer Tony Notarberardino, a close friend of Bruce's who took the portraits used on each of the covers, during a series of photoshoots on top of the infamous Chelsea Hotel. He perfectly captured the twilight atmosphere we were looking for, with subtle variations to fit the mood of each album.
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.<
We are thrilled to be working with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to help support the recently-launched 7 Billion Actions campaign. With the global population set to hit 7 billion people (!!) late this year, UNFPA is taking the lead by starting a truly collaborative global movement. Partnering with corporations, NGOs, and non-profits around the world, the campaign aims to inspire awareness and action around the issues that impact our global experience - by moving the focus beyond the numbers, to the stories of the 7 billion individuals that share our planet. The entire Ultravirgo team is honored to be part of this historic moment, and look forward to contributing our expertise to the movement.
I had an amazing evening at Carnegie Hall enjoying the music of violinist Colin Jacobsen and pianist Bruce Levingston--founder of Premiere Commission, which we design the marketing materials and CD covers for.
We just got our invitation in the mail to the wedding of Katie's brother, which we had the pleasure of designing. With non-traditional weddings - like this one in the woods outside Ithaca, NY - comes the opportunity to design a suitably non-traditional invitation. With a friend at a digital printing company willing to donate the printing, we had the challenge and opportunity of designing the invite to print digitally. Which we took advantage of by designing the invitation as a large full-color poster with full-bleed lush forest imagery to communicate the unique environment of the ceremony itself. The back includes a detailed map with color-coded directions from the key areas guests will be coming from, and direct latitude/longitude coordinates of the ceremony site for those with GPS navigation.
Today we launched eMatters - a new practice group focused on technology issues within the education system - for long-time client Fagen Friedman & Fulfrost (or F3, as they like to be called). We have been working closely with F3 to launch the new brand, starting with creating the name and tagline, and culminating with the video and email announcement. Taking the theme "Navigating the e-education revolution" we animated the video to visually navigate through the key issues that F3 guides their clients through.