Have you heard about Fabrica? Design fellowships underwritten by Bennetton for design-focused people under 25. I’m not under 25 – if you are you should be applying to this. I’m interested in fellowship, grants, sabbaticals – coming to that point in my career when I think I could benefit from such a thing. Anybody out there want to connect me to a great fellowship? Rome Prize nomination? 
But really, I’m serious!
Radioactivity at QPC
We were on-press today at Quality Printing for the IS183 Radioactive Bodega invitation. This beauty is going to be hitting mailboxes all over the region in about a week or so, and you won’ be able to miss it! Studio Two Designer Amanda Bettis (the talent behind everything BIFF) has been crafting this piece with the help of is183’s Executive Director, Hope Sullivan. “If it glows, it goes” is the creative brief here.
What we were going for was something that reflects the crazy ambitious nature of the annual art school dance party, arguably “the” social event of the year in the Berkshires – a time when all the Creative Community comes out to outdo the year before. So the piece is big, over-the-top colorful, dense, post-apocalyptic, dazzling… But, we also wanted to get that scrappy, is183/Bodega quality into the piece, so we went with a lightweight 60lbs Cougar uncoated sheet, basically the weight of decent typing paper.
For those of you who are into ink on paper, you can almost see the train wreck coming – super high ink saturation, absolute coverage, and a thin uncoated sheet. An incipient disaster for dot gain if there ever was one. By all rights this job should have been a real problem on-press, with the colors dulling down and the blacks washing out. But thanks to a lot of careful prepress on our end learned over years of printing saturated images in 4-color process on uncoated sheets (it’s kind of our trademark) and some absolutely fabulous proofing, plate making and press-handling at QPC the job looks amazing. Kudos to Mike Hickey and Kim Czarnecki and all the other talented professionals at Quality who have made a huge effort and a multi-million dollar investment in new presses and CTP workflow (computer to plate) the last few years.
Look for it in your mailbox. And I think it is fair to say that QPC and Studio Two will be celebrating a national print award later in 2010 for this one.
Radioactive Press Sheet
Pros at work at QPC
Studio Two Designer Amanda Bettis and Intern Allana Kellog This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 7:17 pm and is filed under Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Edit this entry.
We’re launching a new website – an addition to our home site, www.studiotwo.com. This new site is a place where we can show people more about what we do, how we do it, and the things that we are thinking about or inspired by. After 15 years as one of the leading creative studios in the region, we are enjoying new opportunities, directions and challenges thanks to our inquisitive and entrepreneurial clients and the revolution happening all around us in media. Take a look!
Nick Whalen is in Haiti. Nick has had a long association with the troubled country and has travelled there numerous times over the last 5 years or more. He has worked as a photojournalist for NGO’s and created a non-profit foundation to bring surplus soccer 9football) gear to Haitian children over the last few years, creating teams in the slums that compete, get food and clothing support, and a chance for something better.
I’ve helped Nick out a little the last 4 or 5 years as he has worked to develop his career as a photographer and social thinker. Take a look at his photos, if you can bear to. He’s in the thick of it.
Nice blog post about the new packaging for Barrington Coffee Roasting Co. It’s great to see real-world customer experience out there with one’s efforts. Oh, and by the way, the new packaging just won a Graphic Design USA award for Packaging! Congratulations to Heather and the whole Studio Two/BCRC team for a great creative effort on bringing this to fruition. Creativity Lives Here!
A juried show of contemporary photography of Pittsfield’s urban landscape.
January 15 -March 6, 2010 Lichtenstein Center for the Arts. I’ve got a shot of the old Eagle building going into the show. Still have to make the print and deliver it. SHould be a fun show.
We are now entering the Lace Economy (exiting the Web + Bubble Economy).
The Lace Economy is both a fine-tuning of our networks and relationships, and a demand for services and products that are well crafted, genuine, and trend towards supporting the local and regional.
Fine Tuning:
New networks are being amassed through a mix of web-based tools (Facebooks, LinkedIn) and traditional channels (networking, associations). These form into a tangled, limitless, and underproductive web. Though there is an intoxicating excitement in the chaos of tangled relationships, the ever-increasing girth of networks makes these connections fragile and meaningless. In the Lace Economy, networks will be filtered, gathered and sewn into manageable, identifiable, and productive patterns.Genuine:
Branding, advertising and communications will continue on a shift away from “attraction” towards “resonation.” Bright, shiny, and flashy objects might gain immediate attention, but a real resonation through matching specific ideas, services and products to the desires and needs of a market will lead to sustainable and genuine relationships. Opportunity will arrive through resonation.Local & Regional:
The first wave of this Fine Tuning and Genuine is appearing within local and regional movements, primarily through food and craft. The slow-food, farmer’s market, and quality handmade trends point to an audience making purchases of well-made, well-crafted, nourishing, and sound products and services. Restaurants, as well as consumers, are seeking local produce to influence and boost their menus. Farmers in turn are supplying diverse regional specialties in opposition to the cookie-cutter flavors found in national chain restaurants and blanket-marketed by national brands. “You can only get it here,” will increase.Important Points:
- The Lace Economy will reward and invite ventures that foster uniqueness and offer quality
- Individuals will no longer be caught in a web; they will spin their own tightly knit lace of relationships, both real and virtual
- There will be a deeper reliance on strong partnerships and trusted collaboration
- Shift from blanket “wide net” approach to specificity in messaging and markets
- Markets will seek well-made, well-crafted, nourishing, and sound products and services
- The immediate shift is a turn towards the local and regionalThe Lace Economy has arrived. The grass roots are strong, and national brands, such as Starbucks (locally branded shops), and media outlets such as AOL and Yahoo (local news sites) and the New York Times (local neighborhood blogs), have already begun to interpret and act on the data. This shift is not an about-face from where we’ve been, it’s a fine-tuning of what we have into something genuine with a greater value.
Nice article from Jason Moriber that I think does a great job of elucidating what we are seeing in all kinds of markets – a trend towards the unique, authentic and real within relationships between people, business, and ideas.
We made it! 223 backers, over $15,000 raised in 90 days! Thank You to
everyone who had the faith, took the time, and believed in the
project.
Now I’ll be doing one last edit on the manuscript and prepping it to
go to the printers. I’ll keep you posted about the status of the book
as it proceeds through the process and once we know when they will be
delivered, we’ll schedule a great big Kickstarter-supporter
booksigning party.
Kevin Sprague Here’s the video of my tricks of the trade presentation.
The link to the slides (hard to see them on the video clearly) is here.
via housatonicrivermuseum.com This should be a fun show celebrating all things water in our lands
via iberkshires.com I had the opportunity to sit at the roundtable at MassMOCA yesterday with many
Here’s a little compilation video of a recent shoot for knitting-phenom Catherine Lowe at the
The gravitron: test case for ten year olds. Sent from my iPhone Posted via email from Kevin Sprague
Kevin Sprague Elizabeth Raetz as Olivia, and Ryan Winkles as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in “Twelf
