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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Over the years MSLK has had some truly gifted, inspired, and inspiring interns work in our studio. We find the experience to be rewarding and in many senses a way of giving back, showing others what we’ve learned over the years that has helped make our work award-winning.

Some of our best interns have been the youngest, and last year was no exception. We hosted a summer internship with a young gentleman named Leon Robinson as part of the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum’s 2011 Design Prep Scholar’s program. He worked with us to develop Read the Label, a self-initiated awareness campaign/eco-art project about the harmful ingredients found in everyday products.

The video above features Mr. Robinson recounting his experience here along with many other bright designers of tomorrow telling about their experiences. Congrats to all!

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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As the holiday season rapidly approaches, MSLK is once again offering something useful to make the gift giving process fun and easy. Introducing our Customizable Holiday Cards, which are now on sale at our Felt and Wire shop. Use these cards to create your own message for all holiday occasions. Get a set now.

New Yorkers can purchase a set at Teich in the West Village. Mention MSLK and receive a 15% discount!

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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There’s one trend in website design and development that we simply must call attention to. The curse of the “Coming Soon” page! In a world of up-datable content, blogs, and sites that change almost daily, a “coming soon” sign anywhere on a website pretty much guarantees that it’s a feature that is “never coming.”

How often do you get excited about a website, click over to the News section and see an exuberant “Coming Soon!” sign up there? Maybe there’s even an upbeat “Check Back Soon!” added for more dramatic flair.

It’s not your fault. It was probably your web designer’s idea, but it’s a bad one. If you are the web designer who suggested it — stop that!

Here’s our advice for what to do instead.

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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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Our website, www.mslk.com, is cited in the current issue of How Magazine in an article entitled, “The Marketing-Smart Website” written by Ilise Benun. The article gives examples of what to do — and what not to do — for designers setting out to redesign their site. Our site’s innovative and sorting features were given the following compliment:

“There are 90 examples of work in the portfolio section of MSLK.com, but it’s not overwhelming because visitors can sort by medium or industry category to find what they’re looking for. Mouse over any thumbnail and it automatically enlarges and identifies the image.”

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People love meeting graphic designers. Whenever I meet someone at a party or a prospective client at a meeting — nine times out of ten, it’s a game of twenty questions. Never  the same twenty, which is what keeps the game interesting. There is one question that is consistently asked by everyone: the Money Question. Everyone wants to know how much “it” (whatever “it” may be…) will cost.

There’s never a simple answer to this question because there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to what graphic designers do.

This is why I will be conducting one of two pricing workshops next month at How Magazine’s Mind Your Own Business Conference at the Sheraton Hotel here in NYC as a Spark event.

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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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