Come see MSLK’s eco-art installation, Take-Less, at Brooklyn’s Dumbo Arts Festival on September 24th – 26th!

We’re pleased to be a part of this amazingly creative event once again, building on the success of last year’s event. Our project can be seen on Washington Street, the center of all the action for DUMBO’s annual art festival.

The event itself is described by the event planners as a showcase for: “touchable, accessible, and interactive art, on a scale that makes it the nation’s largest urban forum for experimental art.”

For over 55 years, the I.D. Annual Design Review has recognized the best in graphic, environmental, product and furniture design. We are very proud that MSLK’s own Sheri L Koetting has taken her place among a jury of the field’s leading practitioners. Her voice and sensibility played a large role in the winners chosen this year in the graphics category. Viewing everything through a lens of sustainability, Sheri not only examined the purpose and aesthetics of each piece, she questioned its material usage and life expectancy.

You can see all of the winning pieces on view now until September 10^th at the AIGA National Design Center. Read more to view some of the winners and what Sheri had to say about each of the pieces.

If you’re a marketer, you’ve probably thrown around those ubiquitous terms, push and pull marketing. The marketplace has seen a major paradigm shift from pushing products onto consumers, to pulling them in, inviting them to engage with the brand in novel and unique ways. At MSLK, we think this is especially important to consider when creating sophisticated branding campaigns in the beauty industry. How can you stop consumers dead in their tracks, invite an interaction or ignite a conversation? Burt’s Bees skincare installations do just that. In a series of three installations that have traveled to public spaces across Canada, the pieces educate women about the harmful effects of most allegedly natural skincare products on the market.

Proctor and Gamble unveiled last week a renewable sugarcane based alternative to plastic that will be implemented on their Pantene Pro-V, CoverGirl, and international Max Factor product lines over the next 2 years. This is truly groundbreaking news and frankly has me more excited about the future of mass production than I have been in a long time. Here’s why:

With the debut of our new eco-art installation, Take-Less, I among the rest of my MSLK colleagues have been more mindful than ever about minimizing our plastic consumption when it comes to take-out.  However, sometimes it isn’t so easy. Consider the following scenario: You stop by to grab ice cream or fro-yo at your favorite place. You aren’t “taking-out” and cannot eat with your fingers, so you are forced to use the plastic utensils and packaging given to you. Unfortunately, this is a situation where consumer behavior cannot be changed, but the change needs to happen on the company/seller level. Enter Sweet Green, the DC frozen yogurt & salad chain that has a remedy.

In today’s multi-media extravaganza, it’s hard to get anyone exited about one of the world’s oldest mediums, paper. However we at MSLK don’t think that paper has lost it’s place just yet, in fact, we believe that the true presence and importance of paper as a tactical impression you can touch, engage with and hold onto is even more important in this new world of virtual gratification.

Brooklyn seems to tbe the epicenter of New York City’s most forward-thinking green initiatives. Whether it’s urban farms, green roofs, farm-to-plate initiatives, or green buildings themselves — it’s got it all.

MSLK is proud to be partnering with Brooklyn Ecopolis, a non-profit 501(c)3, community-based education and resource center aimed at promoting access to sustainable products, services, and innovations for healthy living.

NY1, our favorite TV news source, ran a short feature on MSLK’s latest eco-art installation Take-Less, along with the Figment festival as something to check out this weekend.

Featured in the clip is are shots from our assembly, featuring Sheri Koetting, Ryan Nussbaum, Christel Fearon, and Daniela Morell. All shot by unofficial MSLK documentarian John Meehan.

Check it out!

I recently visited the Met to go see the bamboo installation that I’ve been hearing so much about. And it was not a disappointment! Big Bambú is an art installation created by the brothers Doug + Mike Starn. The impressive structure on top of the roof of the Met is already 100 feet wide and will continue to grow upwards as the artist work on it over the summer, their goal is to reach 50 feet high. If you’re in NY I highly recommend going for a visit, if not have a look at these photos!

Busy. That’s one word to describe things at MSLK these days.

While we have the benefit of working on many inspiring projects for our clients, we’re also hard at work on Take-Less, the third in a trilogy of what we’ve come to call eco-art installations. In an effort to be greener, we’re using our talents to focus people on the sheer volume of plastic we all consume in our daily lives. Whether it’s plastic bags, plastic water bottles, or the durable and resilient plastic containers we use for a moment with our take-out food — this cheap plastic comes at a cost.