industrial

Goodman Center is More Than Fancy

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A few weeks ago we attended a fundraising dinner for the Goodman Community Center in Madison. I have to mention the promotional pieces they put out for the event because they did such a super job.

Each of the pieces was spot on—uniformity of branding, educational information, and a “fancy-filled” style. Madison, by nature, is a casual town, but when the invitation uses key words like “fancy” (four times), “investment,” “secure future” and “sponsorship,” you know not only should you dress up, but you also need to bring your checkbook. That is, after all, the objective of a fundraising dinner.

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Graphic design and copywriting aside, I was excited to get inside this building!

According to its website, the Center’s architecture “demonstrates a classic factory form characterized by an abundance of ground floor windows and two rows of high central clerestory windows, maximizing natural light and ventilation.” Built in the turn of the last century, the 30,000-square-foot building has a diverse industrial history.

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In 2005, with the help of local philanthropists, the Center bought the building and began a complete renovation. Today, it houses classrooms, art rooms, game rooms, a fitness center, a café run by teens training in the culinary arts, a food pantry and offices. A covered walkway connects the building to a newly built 12,000-square-foot gymnasium.

Isn’t the steel gantry shown above cool? Once part of an iron works operation, it now it forms a giant gazebo over the gardens and playground.

Inside the Goodman Community Center, Madison, WI

THIS  is why I wanted to see inside this building! Isn’t it beautiful?!

Eppstein Uhen Architects and Vogel Brothers Building Company, both of Madison, did the renovation. They mindfully considered environmentally friendly techniques and the building’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

Inside the Goodman Community Center, Madison, WISo, yes, the dinner promotional pieces were well done. And, yes, the building is stunningly beautiful.

But here’s why the Goodman Center really shines:

Each day it provides food, educates young people, cares for older adults and supports the families of four Madison communities. As the Goodman Center says, it strengthens people’s lives.

GCC_5Now that the Goodman Center has room to expand in this wonderful building, it offers new and improved programs. Here are those they highlighted in their fancy-filled and well-designed dinner program:

  • Seed to Table: Gives at-risk students the chance to learn through an urban agriculture curriculum with hands-on propagating, planting, harvesting, preserving and cooking.
  • Dane County Nutrition Site: Fed 8,000 affordable meals to older adults in 2012.
  • Food Preservation Program: Teens preserve abundant local produce for the center’s food pantry customers.
  • Thanksgiving Basket Distribution: Distributed holiday meals to 2,600 families in 2012.
  • Parent Programs: Strengthen the link between parents, children, school and the Center.
  • Madison Empowering Responsibility in Teens (MERIT): Helps Madison teens make good decisions about their sexual health.
  • Vocationally Integrated Pathways (VIP): An alternative high school program where students earn credits through academics and work.
  • 5-Star Childcare (Young Star rating): Programs provide quality care to Madison’s youth.

 Want to support this caring organization? Check out their site here. 

 

Congrats to My Earth Day Client!

JWR Inc, Johnson Creek, WI

It’s been online for a while, but there’s no better time than the week of Earth Day to congratulate JWR Inc. on their new website! And how fitting, considering JWR and its sister company NewWay Global are innovative leaders in the waste and recycling industry. They are my 2013 Earth Day clients!

Last year, the JWR marketing team came to me wanting an updated website. I did their site five years ago and it has served them well. It’s helped them earn recognition and they’ve built a reputation based on their quality products and reliable service. With this company image well established, JWR now wants to emphasize its forward thinking. As owner Dave Wolf says “JWR has always been successful with niche products. We’re always trying to be a year or two ahead of the game.”

What better way to communicate such eco-moxiness than a new website!

JWR’s team had a list of ideas of “must-haves” for their site. Earlier this year they were featured on The Environmental Report so they wanted a way to showcase this and any future videos. They wanted a responsive layout for a variety of communication devices. And they wanted to maintain their own content. Thanks to Ben Seigel, of Versa Studios, we came up with a great Expression Engine framework that allows easy CMS capabilities. JWR is doing a super job with it.

So congratulations JWR! And happy Earth Day to you!

I’m So-So Sustainable. How About You?

Adunate's windmill

I’m starting a web design project for JWR, Inc., a major supplier of waste-to-recycling solutions. Meeting with their eco-forward team, which includes NewWay Global Energy, is like a shot in the arm of “I-wanna-save-the-earth” greenness.

Of course, this forces me to sit back and examine myself. I’m like all of you—I like to think I’m doing my fair share of green living. I work from home and save in commuting costs. We heat our home by burning wood that we cut ourselves (heck, we don’t even use air-conditioning). And we garden and raise our own meat.

But for all this, I wonder if I’m truly living a sustainable life? For every green thing I do, it seems there are anti-green consequences.

Take working from home, for example. I love my office in this old house out in the country (that’s my windmill by the way—isn’t it cool?). But really, whenever I need to meet a client, purchase office supplies or get out just to stay sane, I drive at least ten miles one way to the nearest town (a rather small town at that). A trip to Madison or Milwaukee, which I do weekly, is 45 miles one way. Obviously, I can’t get too smug about my not-so-minimal carbon emissions.

What I can do though is keep plugging away, even if it seems to be of little effect.

I can minimize electricity usage and shut down my technology at night (oh, that’s a hard one). I can make full use of my computers and not upgrade with every new gadget. I can educate my clients of sustainable paper options and environmentally-friendly inks.

I’m betting there is more I can do. In fact, Wisconsin has several organizations that offer education and point-based recognition to businesses striving to be sustainable.

  • Green Masters Program enables “Wisconsin businesses of all sizes and from all sectors to understand what needs to be done to justifiably claim that they are ‘on the road to sustainability.’ “
  • Travel Green Wisconsin is the “first state-sponsored sustainable travel green certification program in the nation and has become a model for sustainable travel efforts both nationally and internationally.”
  • Organic Consumers Association is a directory of eco-friendly products and businesses. Choose your state.

Anyone know of similar groups in other states? Or how about your ideas for operating a green business?

Hamilton Wood Type Preserves a Magnificent Print

Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, Two Rivers, Wis.

This week I dragged my husband and son out of our holiday hibernation and up to the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin.

What a cool place!

Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, Two Rivers, Wis.

The museum is located in an age-old manufacturing plant used by the Hamilton Manufacturing Company, now known as Thermo Scientific. The building is as interesting as the wood type.

Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Wooden letters are everywhere! The museum has 1.5 million pieces of wood type in more than 1,000 styles and sizes. It also has an amazing collection of advertising cuts from the 1930s through the 1970s.

pantograph at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Back in the day, type cutters used this pantograph router to cut new letters while tracing an old letter. Hamilton manufactured wood type until the late 1980s.

Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Hamilton made the drawer pulls too. Aren’t they a wonderful contrast to the modern label-maker strips?

Letterpress ink at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

 Ink and supplies from the old days.

Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

The museum’s 40,000 square feet is packed with antique machinery — presses, sanders and so much more. They’re beautiful.

lithograph machine at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Lithograph printing: An era that followed letterpress.

Learn letterpress at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Hamilton offers letterpress seminars and opportunities to use its equipment. I’m so planning to sign up for a class!

Artists customarily leave a sample of their work so the museum walls are truly a gallery. Aren’t they fun?

Letterpress blocks, Hamilton Wood Type & Museum

Wood Type: I think they’re so beautiful! Their use in letterpress is such an important part of our printing history, and, interestingly, it’s an art form being revitalized today.

Thanks Hamilton Wood Type & Museum for making this happen!

 

 

Glamorous in Its Own Way

Drew Carrier Company, Waterloo Antique Mall, Waterloo, WIThis past weekend my husband and I were hit with the antique bug, a periodic affliction that sends us perusing auctions and antique shops. The auction we hit was a dud. But the Waterloo Antiques Mall in Waterloo, WI, was divine. As I told owner Sherry Rehm in an email, I’ve compiled my shopping list!

I also asked Sherry about her building. It’s such a beautifully restored, old structure and I wondered of its history.

Here’s what she has to say:

The 22,000-square-foot building was built in 1909 by the Drew Carrier Company, a manufacturer of dairy barn manure handling equipment. Not the most glamorous, as Sherry says. But, hey, anything dairy is so very Wisconsin.

The Drew Carrier Company was also impressive. According to Sherry, its equipment was a great time saver for farmers and very innovative for its day. Later the company added more dairy equipment to its production, as well as parts for doll buggies and other children’s toys.

In 1923 the Drew Carrier Company sold the building to McKay Nursery, a large, plant nursery in Waterloo. McKay used it for plant storage and makeshift housing for migrant workers.

Drew Carrier Company, Waterloo Antiques Mall, Waterloo, WI

When Sherry and her husband Bob bought the building in 2003, it had no lighting, heating or cooling systems. She describes it as a “solid building but it needed over 22 windows per floor, restrooms, elevator, interior walls, etc.”

Today, the renovated building offers a 10,000-square-foot showroom for quality, pre-1959 antiques and art from local artists. The lower level is home to the Waterloo Auction House, a monthly auction of consigned pieces. And the third floor provides office space for Bob’s business Badger Hotel Development Company LLC.

Maybe you’d also like to have an office in a great, old building? Sherry says her husband’s business doesn’t need the full third floor and they’re looking to rent out part of that space.

She also says the building has great karma. There you go!

 

 

Wednesday Webs 2-9-11

Today I’m working at my office on 1st and Pittsburg. Looking out the window, there are old, manufacturing buildings everywhere, many of them now repurposed in new ways. Sad that not all buildings can be renovated as they age and maintained for a dignified usefulness.

Communication Isn’t Just for the Birds

Every year about this time we get birds lining up on the wires. In August, it’s barn swallows. In September, its mourning doves. They sit on the wires and chatter, chatter, chatter away. When my kids were young, I told them the birds were discussing their migratory route.

Communication isn’t just for the birds. When you’re working with a graphic designer, how the two of you communicate makes all the difference. Poor communication can bomb the project. Good communication makes it soar.

Lately, I’ve been working with NewWay Global Energy and the folks there have done a super job communicating.

Right from the get-go, NewWay’s Carrie, Cory, Dave and Mona knew their product, their audience and their marketing objectives. Together we brainstormed the logo and website they wanted me to create, and they showed me samples they liked and didn’t like.

Here are some of the things we discussed:

  • Because NewWay is a subsidiary of JWR, Inc., logos for both companies need to share a commonality. We did this by taking JWR’s swoosh, reversing it and putting it in front of NewWay’s name.
  • NewWay’s product is a cutting edge waste-to-energy system. Their logo and website need a confident, clean, natural, and earth-friendly look. We chose a bold typeface for the NewWay name; a contrasting, very round type for Global Energy; and a clean, san-serif type for the website content.
  • Carrie, Cory, Dave and Mona wanted the logo done in green and blue. But not just any green and blue. They had specifics for me, which was so helpful because, after all, my idea of green could easily be different from theirs. We could have wasted a lot of time going back and forth before hitting it right.

So what colors did they like?

Mountain Dew green and Chex Mix blue. Way to go, Carrie, Cory, Dave and Mona!

NewWay Global Energy, Johnson Creek, WI

Energy in a New Way

NewWay Global Energy, Johnson Creek, WI

Here’s a project I was real excited to take on—a new company making a new kind of energy!

NewWay Global Energy is a subsidiary of JWR, Inc., a leading waste and recycling management company. I’ve done web design work for JWR in the past and when they asked me to help brand their new company, I was totally honored. Honored for two reasons: I love being part of new ventures and I really love people putting their brains together for alternative earth-saving ideas. NewWay Global Energy is doing just that.

But first, since I’m not at all scientific, I had some major research to do!

NewWay is a front-running company working to develop the first pyrolysis-based waste-to-energy recycling plant in the U.S. In this case, pyrolysis is the decomposition of non-recyclable materials by use of high, oxygen-free temperatures. NewWay’s system not only addresses the problem of overflowing landfills, it also creates an energy alternative to the fossil fuels we’re so quickly depleting.

This is awesome!

So check out NewWay’s home page. And mark this innovative new company as one to follow—we’ll be adding pages in the weeks ahead!

 

Need a website for your new company? Give me a holler!