reactions

Earth conscientious students at Smithton Middle School in Columbia, Missouri have recreated MSLK’s eco-art installation, Watershed. The installation was created by the Eco-Art Club and 6th grade Art Study Hall students. Several months ago, Amy H. Company, Art Specialist at Smithton Middle School read about MSLK’s eco-art installations Take-Less, Watershed, and Urban Tumbleweeds and became inspired. Amy reached out to MSLK asking if it would be ok if she led the students through the process of  recreating Watershed.

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MSLK is honored and humbled to have received two of the nine AIGA Making the Case Awards for our projects, Watershed and Figment 360° Branding. Beyond the mere beauty pageant that is the average design competition, “Making the Case” selects case studies that “demonstrate the value of design in a clear, compelling and accessible way” to clients and society. Given recent economic trends, now more than ever it is important for non-designers to understand how great design leads to business growth and/or positive societal change.
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We would like to hear your opinion on an idea for our newest eco-art installation.

Did you ever consider all of the products you use as part of your daily routine? Soaps, cleaners, air fresheners, shampoos, moisturizers—all are seemingly innocuous items that have become accepted cultural norms.  Rarely do we stop to consider whether the ingredients in these products are 100% safe.

As designers, we at MSLK are committed to using our talents to make the public aware of environmental issues facing the world today. Our eco-art installations: Urban Tumbleweeds, Watershed, and Take-Less focused on the dangers of our mass consumption of single-use plastics.  These plastic products seem harmless as you use them one at a time, but over time the refuse accumulates. Similarly, we wonder about all those unnatural ingredients in our beauty and personal care products. How does the accumulation of what we put on our skin, our largest organ, affect our health as a whole?

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We are happy honored, and humbled to receive word that MSLK won two out of the nine awards in the AIGA’s Making The Case competition! More than “just another beauty pageant” this competition emphasizes substance over style.

In their own words:

You know from experience that good design is effective design. But how do you prove it? Through case studies, this competition provides an opportunity for design firms to show not just what they make, but how they think. “Making the Case” recognizes narratives that demonstrate the value of design in a clear, compelling and accessible way. A discerning and qualified jury will identify submissions that serve as an effective tool to explain design thinking to clients, students, peers and the public in general. The case studies selected will be published on AIGA.org

Our two winning projects are our eco-art installation Watershed, as well as the 360° branding we created for the Figment Art Festival. It’s truly an honor to be recognized for the thinking that went into these two projects. This is often the most important — and overlooked — part for brands to leverage when seeking a design partner.

MSLK’s “Take Less” installation is featured in IUEOA Magazine’s 4th issue, Do Not Dump, as a selection by Petz Sholtus for his piece “Eco Design Products.”

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Thanks again to all those who helped make this project possible, and to all those who came out to the Dumbo Art Festival this weekend!

Click below to see some photographs of our installation.

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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.”
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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 see what Sheri had to say about each of the pieces.

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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.

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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:

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