MSLK was recently honored with Second place in the Sustainable Design category of the 2009 AIGA (Re)designAwards. The winning pieces include identity, print collateral, web, video, package design, wayfinding, and exhibit design from designers, student designers and agencies across North America.

Receiving recognition from the AIGA is quite an honor as the competition is always steep. The fact that we were recognized for our sustainable design work was especially humbling.

Click more to see some photo montages of our latest installations of Watershed!

We just produced a short video about our environmental commitment. You can see it above, or on our fresh, new site: www.mslk.com.

Let us know what you think!

MSLK put our party and chef hats on to host the 3rd annual Spark BBQ. Spark, an organization made up of independent designers, holds a summer and winter event open to everyone, allowing for networking opportunities in addition to its monthly events specifically geared for creative professionals.

While I manned the grill for the most part, it was great seeing Old Guard members mingling with new members, who mingled with printers, copywriters, and business coaches.

One of the things which made this event so successful was the idea of name tags which had a pre-printed “Ask me about…” to spark conversations. A perfect fit for an organization named Spark.

Favorites “Ask me abouts…” included

“my new book”
“environmental graphics”
“learning to surf”
“Elvis” (which turned-out to be work-related)

and…

“California”

Maybe you’ll drop by for a veggie dog (or two) next year?

The East Deck Motel is at the epicenter of NY’s surf culture. Located directly on Montauk beach on the eastern-end  of Long Island, this iconic motel is seen by all brave enough to face the cold Atlantic surf.

I have taken to calling this local institution “Fast Deck” as its large, 1950s-style letters are set-back on the Motel’s roof, turning the “E”  into an “F.”

While “deck” is more of a skating term than a surfing term, I feel it’s a better name. If nothing else, “Fast Deck”  makes me want to surf even more.

Last week a new art exhibit was unveiled on Governors Island and a new work was installed in the tree we used for Watershed. Turns out I’m not the only artist inspired by that particular tree out of all the hundreds of trees on the island. However, it is a bit out of the ordinary to have two artists doing pieces in the same tree considering the wide variety of works in both festivals.

The piece by Klaus Weber is a giant wind chime tuned to a musica tritone, a musical interval that spans
three whole tones, producing a dissonant and melancholic effect. According to the website this sound,

Your chair is always there for you, day and night, 365 days a year. It never gives you any lip when you toss your coat over its back after a long day it without so much of a thanks. Think of all those times it’s supported you when you were feeling tired.

What about all the times you’ve strained it by forcing it to sit on its hind legs while you brag to your mom about how sweet your Facebook wall is looking these days? Nary a complaint from the stoic chair, the most loyal of  our four-legged friends.

So why do we make these poor things live out their days standing naked on a hardwood floor?

(HD) A More Perfect Union from Andrew Sloat on Vimeo.

The Macktez Summer Stipend back again for it’s 5th season. Started by our good friend, Noah Landow,  the stipend is a grant for creative development. Each year they try to reach out to junior designers, interns, and other creative individuals for whom a little extra cash could be the difference between a great idea and a great, finished project. Andrew Sloat won the stipend in 2007 and filmed the video above.

They have a simple set of criteria: originality, relevance, and conviction. They’d  also prefer a project already underway that $500 would push across the finish line. If you can wow them with your great idea, you’ll get $500 from Macktez to make it happen. It’s that simple. Apply online at www.macktez.com/stipend by July 24.

MSLK recently completed rebranding local, non-for-profit, arts festival, Figment. Held annually on Governors Island in New York City, the festival encourages people to find their inner artist and participate in any way imaginable.

The immediate task was to create a poster and supplementary materials for this year’s festival. In the process, we developed a simple yet flexible system for Figment to use in years to come that would help strengthen their identity and presence and still allow them to tap into a new creative theme each year. Read more about our process and see the results after the jump.

Affordable Luxury Webinar 5/6/09 from MSLK on Vimeo.

Thank you to everyone who joined us today for our first webinar on “Positioning Your Brand as an Affordable Luxury” . I really appreciate all of the great feedback, pointers and responses we’ve received thus far. It seems that many of you agree with the positioning opportunities that we’ve defined and I truly hope that our insights provided you with a new lens of how to view the marketing initiatives  you see all around.

Websites have become the most essential marketing tool for businesses. One click from a customer is a valuable opportunity that can make all the difference. If created properly, a Website should instinctively lead visitors where you want them to follow.

In spite of the known value a good Website can bring, take a moment and think about just how many poor Websites you encounter every day. While not every business needs their site to be a high-budget multimedia extravaganza, every site should be effective, and properly targeted to a company’s audience.

Too many times people rush into putting up a quick site, thinking this will hold them over until they get around to the big launch. This is a fallacy—it is almost always far more difficult to rebrand an existing Website than to start with a good one.

I love great editorial design. One of things I am especially drawn to is when publications hire a typographer/designer to enhance their headings and do something definitively different  for an issue. Granted the typography in this week’s New York Magazine is not the most legible face, but I do love it!

One of the things I love about summer in NYC, is hanging out at a rooftop garden or bar and enjoying the view. My favorite “local” rooftop is the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden at the Metropolitan Museum. This place offers an amazing summer mix: a spectacular view of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline, great drinks, and, of course – art.

Last Friday night I checked out their current summer exhibit, “Jeff Koons on the Roof”. The three giant, colorful Pop sculptures, mounted in this beautiful and dramatic outdoor space, are worth a trip to the Upper East Side…

The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) invited designers to participate in a get-out-the-vote campaign for the US national elections in fall 2008. The objective was to create a poster series showcasing the power of design for the public good with a nonpartisan message to encourage voter turnout.We created five posters targeting different audiences with unique messages: from a call to either vote or veto a candidate, to humorous statistics encouraging the 18-25 demographic to vote, or a fictitious personal ad showcasing that voters are in demand. Click below – the posters are available as online PDFs for anyone to download, print and post independently.

While at the ICFF, Sheri found herself at home in one particular exhibitor’s area. If it weren’t for the fact that multiple dot create interference patterns, she might have disappeared completely — being that her bag, earrings, shoes, umbrella, and socks were all done-up in polka-dots.

It reminded me of a song my friend Jaqui taught me in college:

When you take a ben-day,
And you turn it this way,
That’s a moiré!

While seeing the ICFF has an annual tradition, smelling it is something new. That’s me verifying the scent of banana on — that’s right folks — scratch n sniff wallpaper.

As Claudia mentioned, the show was in full-effect last week. Click below to see some of the highlights.

Being a big furniture design enthusiast, I was excited to go to the 20th annual International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) last weekend. The Javits Convention Center bustled with a vibrant mix of interior designers, architects, retailers, designers, and manufacturers. The national and international exhibitors offered an interesting insight in the latest trends in contemporary furniture. In my opinion, the star of the show was Loadbearing, a US/Swiss company providing furniture for the home and casual office. I swear, I fell in love with this shelving system before I even knew it was designed by a Swiss.

…only Small Business owners. Sheri was recently featured on the NY Times Small Business Summit web site. Here’s an excerpt:

What would you do if you weren’t in business for yourself? The learning curve from being an employee to running a company is steep, but with 10 years of it under my belt, I can’t imagine doing anything else. I see the world differently now and to do anything else would feel like I was moving backwards.

What tasks should the entrepreneur keep in-house, and what should get outsourced? Things like IT, SEO, accounting.

What “outsourcing rules of thumb” have you developed as MSLK has grown? MSLK realized early on that the number one thing we couldn’t outsource was the responsibilities of design. So many agencies outsource the creative aspects of a job — and it shows!

Click here to read the full article.

Summer Warm Ups at PS1 are the crown jewel of Long Island City. Marc was once quoted by a reporter for calling it “the Hipster Hamptons”. You go for the art, linger for the beer, and stay for the people watching. Of course there’s also the great summer weather and outdoor dancing.

The social aspects of the of the party are always dictated by the design of the museum’s court yard space which is transformed annually into a unique outdoor installation created by local architects. In the past I have spent my lazy summer afternoons in hammocks with misting machines, on large blocks of ice in meat coolers, in bamboo forests, beside foam bottomed wading pools, you name it. This year, I’ll apparently be spending it in an urban farm.

Ellen and Jason gave me a great birthday gift this January. It was on back-order, so it just arrived today! It is a super sleek cat dish holder. A gift for me and my crazy cat Nochie (this is fitting as I consider Ellen and Jason to be Nochie’s god-parents, ha ha). I can’t wait to go home and feed him tonight. It will be a nice design item to add to my kitchen — replacing the tupperware and old plate that he currently eats out of (we lost his real bowls in Christmas travels).

Ingo Maurer’s first US exhibit ended today at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. In fact, I’m not sure if Ingo’s 40+ years of designed lighting have received much notoriety in the art world or been exhibited anywhere previously. Thankfully the public is beginning to appreciate the blurry lines between art and commercial design. As a result we are able to enjoy this massive retrospective of Ingo’s work outside of the offerings at his Soho store.

In case you missed the exhibit, here are my highlights.