An Artful New Sign For Montpelier's Drawing Board

Note the picture frame and paint brush blade sign
at upper left, note 4th of July banners aren't
always there!

         About a month ago, our local artist materials and framing store, the Drawing Board in Montpelier, VT installed a new decorative sign supplementing the tasteful sign band already in place above the store.  The sign intrigued me with its artful whimsy and simple yet complex design.  

         Exterior store signage design can if done right serve to really extend the brand promise of the  business.  Done wrong it does nothing but drive people and business away on the street. Your store sign is the first thing many see about your business.  It's your symbolic front door.  It should be memorable and unique while tastefully designed and communicative.

       In the case of the Drawing Board, their new blade sign protrudes out of a corner brick pier in line with their sign band further enhancing the original signage in three dimensions. 

        Being a cultivator of good design, I took pictures and promised myself I'd ask the owners about it later and share what I found out.  So I sent them a few questions which Judy Brown, a co-owner of the store with her husband Ray Brown kindly answered.  

Blade sign depicting the essence of an art
supply & framing store

So here goes....

DC: Why did you add a new sign to the front of your store?  Who designed your sign?  What was the process you and the store went through. 

DB: Ray and I always liked the idea of a blade sign but it was not an option until Montpelier changed the rules fairly recently. My decision was based on a desire to draw attention to the store from the street, particularly to pull people from the center of town down Main Street. I also wanted to add an element of action and fun to the very classical, professional look of our logo and signage.

DC: Who fabricated the sign for you and installed it.

DB: We worked with Sparky Potter and his team at Wood & Wood in Waitsfield. They are incredibly talented and professional. It was a joint design effort. The design that they first came up with felt too conservative and so we came up with the angled frame and color idea.

Mindmapping Vermont's Energy Planning, a Beginning

Brainstorming Vermont's Energy Planning c.Steve Frey 2011

I missed the VT Energy Plan June 1st workshop and information gathering session held at National Life last week. So I thought I'd contribute a mind map or visual brainstorm of my recent thoughts about the planning effort and areas of focus I see as important to ensuring a sustainable and bright future for generations to come.  Check out a link to Renewable Energy Vermont's recent interview on VPR for other perspectives.  

So often in our overwhelming information overloaded world it's helpful to find ways to distill the issues quickly.  Visual thinking offers a quick pictorial way to lay it all out there and show connections and relationships not easy to make easily in writing or speaking.  Thus I offer these two brainstorming sketches which while inherently incomplete offer a "take" on the issues and opportunities before us in our great state.

We have precious natural resources here in Vermont with first and foremost the bright passionate and well educated people in Vermont.  I wonder if there's a way to crowd source feedback to the public service board in parallel to helpful meetings being held across the state?  By using Twitter and LinkedIn and other social media sites perhaps we can collect together perspectives and ideas not easily obtained otherwise.  Last night on Twitter I started a hashtage called #vermontenergyplan to help track the conversation.  I also used the hashtag #vermont as well.  Put either of these tags into Twitter's search function and you will see this growing conversation!

By tackling this effort with an integrated and systematic planning, public and private partnerships and ultimately actions we take, we can build a more sustainable visionary Vermont. 

CoWorking California and Vermont Style: Comparing CoLoft and Office Squared

Storefront Entry to CoLoft - Santa Monica, California

     Walking down Santa Monica Boulevard in sunny California about a month ago I serendipitously walked by CoLoft, a trendy yet down to earth co-working space. It caught my eye as I always on the lookout for interesting workspace environments. 

Office Squared Tree Covered Courtyard (courtesy of O2)

 

     Hailing from Vermont I was familiar with one in Burlington called Office Squared or 0² who I had yet to visit at that point but had mental notes to do so soon. CoLoft's easy going open converted retail storefront with high ceilings and ample day-lighting greeted me. Energized with enthusiasm to see new ideas like this at work, I retraced my steps opened the door and walked in. People typed away on laptops all around, talking on smartphones with some engaged together in quiet yet intense conversations.

     Simple workstations set up on elegant sawhorses with straightforward table tops were standard. Here and there desktop computers were set up with double screens with workers staring intently into them. Someone came up to me and there I asked If I could take pictures of the inside. He said no as it was against CoLoft policy to respect and protect the privacy of their work community. I asked if the owners were there and could I talk to them?

CoLoft Interior by Brandon Wise, Originally printed in Santa Monica Daily Press

     Shortly after Avesta Rasouli, one of the founders of CoLoft greeted me. I told him I was a vacationing architect just walking by and did he have a moment. He sighed and said, "Unfortunately I'm in the middle of a meeting where I'm looking at expanding my space. Take a look at our website and email me. We'll talk later." And so I did. That moment was a perfect diagram for the growing coworking phenomena, fitting within the "Sharing Economy" as so eloquently identified by Rachel Botswan and Roo Rogers in their exciting book "What's Mine is Yours – the Rise of Collaborative Consumption" published in 2010.

     The book talks about the rise of the sharing economy and collaborative consumption fueled by the growth of the internet and dissolving of barriers in trade and communication across geography and time. The rising fluidity of our how easy it is to communicate, organize, work together and shop manifested itself in businesses like Ebay, Craigs List among others. The sharing comes in recognizing there often is available capacity or excess capacity sitting idle of cars, sofas in apartments, hotel rooms laying empty, workers with time on their hands, money underinvested, land available for gardeners. The internet enabled unlikely new configurations of commerce and entrepreneurship impossible to envision only a generation ago. Within this larger movement of the sharing economy coworking emerged.

     Botswan and Rogers identified how this movement began with the Spiral Muse Group in 2005 or so whose founding members who ranged from at home professionals, consultants and independent contractors, who realized they "yearned for some form of working community where they could cross-pollinate ideas face to face." Up until then they worked a nomadic existence in coffeehouses and libraries and other spaces but soon found those places wanting for meaningful interactions and places to work effectively. Thus coworking as defined in Wikipedia as "a style of work involving a shared working environment, sometimes an office, yet (with) independent activity." Coworkers often share values or sets of ideals energizing their individual work yet are transformed by "synergies" of unlike but motivated professionals working together, percolating ideas and challenges off of one another.

     Coworking spaces can be full off cooperative style intentional working communities to independent businesses run by entrepreneurs who seized the opportunity to develop alternative work settings catering to this new breed of independent tech savvy workers. They realized the most critical aspect of these kind of businesses was not the space or access to shared resources but fostering a true sense of community and connection between members. They are generally not for rent larger scale Office Suites like HQ Global Workplaces or business incubator type spaces as they tend to lack the community appeal of coworking spaces while having many of the same amenities, yet in a more corporate setting.

     For those unfamiliar with this trend over the last ten years it's really taken off with coworking spaces now all around the world in most major cities. Fast Company in May published a brief article called Brave New Coworking World where they wrote about the 5M project, a four acre campus with three initial tenants serving up a hybridized version of coworking with Hub SoMa (a more traditional coworking space), TechShop (a so called do it yourself workshop) and Intersection for the Arts (an arts incubator type space). As FC says this growing campus offers both traditional office features with non-traditional options for prototyping and small scale manufacturing of business ideas and products. A veritable dynamo of entrepreneurism and as the website says "radical collaboration". 

View of Office Squared Reception Area

View of Office Squared Open Work Area

Office Squared Open Area & Conference Room

     Returning back to Vermont, I visited and had multiple conversations with Jen Mincar, the owner of Office Squared. O2's storefront is sandwiched between tall mid-rise turn of the century buildings with a beautiful tree covered plaza in front for outdoor events. Jan said her business is growing like "gangbusters" providing an integral component to help grow Burlington's creative economy saying also her business constantly evolves to match the needs of her members.