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.”

These days many people are visiting websites from their mobile devices. As we become as completely untethered and free to roam the internet at will, customers are checking emails and Googling key phrases as soon as the mood strikes.

Is your website ready for their call?

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!

A great video has been put together about the event we were part of earlier this month.

Please “click” here to see!

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!

The opening night for Uncomfortable Conversations on Sunday was a big success. The small gallery space in the Meatpacking District was jam-packed with visitors adding to the intimate uncomfortable vibe of the night. MSLK’s pieces were highly appreciated and initiated a lot of conversations about the design and message. Some people saw the “right” message while others saw the hidden unintended one. This often led to humorous conversations about “you see what you want to see” and “what’s really on your mind”. The question is: what do you see?

What do you see above? Do you read “click here” or something a little, well… different? If your first read made you blush and feel a little uncomfortable, well that’s exactly what can happen when type is poorly set!

Amid all of the comfortable furniture at The International Contemporary Furniture Fair next week, MSLK and 14 other designers will be sparking some Uncomfortable Conversations at a show of the same name. Conceived by our friends and colleagues at Design Glut and sponsored by Fast Company, the show challenges viewers to step outside their comfort zone and willfully engage in an uncomfortable conversation. As designers we are highly attuned to the unsettling feelings poor design can create, especially poorly set type.

For the show we explore five examples of how careless kerning can lead to unintended miscommunication. If you’re in NYC, please join us for the opening reception on Sunday, May 16th. We expect it to be uncomfortably crowded.

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.

It’s interesting to see how brands either are leading or following visual trends, especially as technology impacts the media that brands are showcased. The old rules about logos (i.e. must exist as a black & white version for faxing, fewer colors for ease of printing) are being completely re-written in the digital age.

MSLK’s logo — the embodiment of our brand featuring overlapping initial of its founders “MSL” and “SLK” — was borne from the concept of wanting to showcase that the company is the overlapping of two initials, and  talents. We experimented with a number of different ways to showcase this (different fonts, different sizes, etc.), and has existed intact for almost 14 years. The result still garners compliments from those who are being introduced to our brand.

The Swedish newspaper SN recently contacted me to talk a little bit about my move to New York and my new job at MSLK. As the article’s in Swedish I’ll give you a brief translation.