A new restaurant coming to H Street in the near future, SMITH Commons is a fantastic concept that we can’t wait to see open.  We actually went the menu tasting awhile back, and SMITH’s chef, Frederik De Pue (who you might remember from our posts about 42° – his catering business), created some amazingly tasty dishes.  While we can’t really discuss all of the intricacies of the menu at this point, lets just say that we went home stuffed not only because that’s generally how one leaves a tasting (there’s always so much food!), but because we couldn’t stop ourselves from taking seconds and thirds.  Anyone who has ever been to a tasting will tell you this is foolish – after all, how can you expect to taste every single dish on the menu if you eat more than a bite of each – but we couldn’t help ourselves.  So good…

Anyway, Bryan and Tomas visited the restaurant which is still under construction and met up with Sheldon of SMITH Commons to consult on the environmental design.  They spent some time discussing the second floor patio…

and then chatted awhile about the interior…

It’s all a little rough around the edges at the moment and very much under construction, but it’s starting to come together which is always an exciting process.  To keep up to date on what’s happening with SMITH and for some more pictures, feel free to check out their temporary blog – smithcommonsdc.com.  We’ll have the full site up and running soon!

Later in the week we received an interesting email from the Washington Business Journal – it appears we were nominated for their Green Business Awards and were selected as a finalist!  We didn’t even know we’d been nominated in the first place!  They’ll be announcing the winners at a special breakfast at the Willard Intercontinental on the 24th of September, so keep your fingers crossed for us.  (Our name is down in the lower right hand corner… we apparently have to beat out the US General Services Administration which may be a bit tough )

In other news, it’s Friday the 13th which means a whole bunch of us will be watching horror movies tonight.  Some of the movies on our list: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (which you can watch for free here – oh Internet Archive, we love you), Rosemary’s Baby, 28 Days Later (one of the best zombie movies of all time), and, of course, Army of Darkness, which really isn’t a horror movie, but is awesome anyway.

We’re happy to announce that our brand for the Art of Peace Foundation was showcased in Designing For the Greater Good, an international collection of non-profit, cause-related design. As author Peleg Top says, “This work helps us create a sense of purpose that is bigger than us.”

The Art of Peace Foundation raises funds for peace projects close to the heart of the Dalai Lama, such as encouraging Western companies to stop aiding internet censorship in China. We’re proud to be featured in the “human rights” section of the book. You can get more info about the book on its website. We’ve been poring over our copies and getting inspired by the great designs and even better causes. ]]> http://ripe.com/blog/2010/06/07/art-of-peace-featured-in-designing-for-the-greater-good/feed/ 0 http://ripe.com/blog/2010/05/18/so-green-were-golden-glc-certified-that-is/ http://ripe.com/blog/2010/05/18/so-green-were-golden-glc-certified-that-is/#comments Tue, 18 May 2010 17:56:57 +0000 Maryam http://ripe.com/blog/?p=344 Make no mistake, declaring a set of corporate values can be an intimidating process.  While doing what we love (designing, that is) is more than enough to keep us happy and glowy, we’ve long felt that sustainable design and business practices are concepts everyone can rally around, and towards which it is worth dedicating some time and effort.  It’s for that reason we’ve spent the past several years refining our green ethics and working on an intra-studio cultural shift under the guidance of Adrienne Spahr Kim of Green Living Consulting.

Addie, who’s encyclopedic knowledge of green practices is intimidating to say the least, has been a nurturing guide, and has helped us raise our certification level from silver to gold.  Getting up to this level required a bit more than just swapping out old light bulbs for energy-thrifty CFL’s, or recycling paper products.  A few of the new practices we’ve implemented include increasing the incentives for employees to use green transportation, giving each ripie an air filtering plant for his or her work station, and shifting to all natural or environmentally friendly cleaning solutions.

It’d be easy for us to cozily rest on our laurels in our now certified greener studio, but we’re not finished yet!  We’re always working towards the elusive platinum level certification.  While many of the hurdles between gold and platinum are building/construction/infrastructure related (and thus, even more difficult to accomplish), we’ll continue puttin’ aside some green to be green(er)!

PS. If you’d like to start greening up your own business, you can start by taking a look at the tips in the Greener section of our site.  Or, better yet, you can give Addie a call.

You may remember the website we made for sweetgreen — it won Best of Category in the web division, which we were super happy to hear.  Our other wins included our work for Alembic Cocktail Catering in the logos & trademark division, the repositioning of the Agraria Farmers & Fishers brand in the complete branding systems category, the fun, plastic business cards we produced for VSAG in the business card division, and the Brick-Stainable branding package, again in the complete branding systems category.

So all in all it was a good year for ripe at the AGDA awards.  They’ll be publishing this year’s winners on their website in the near-ish future, so keep an eye on it. We look forward to next year’s competition!

The Art of Peace Foundation logo is also a PRINT 2009 Regional Design Annual winner, which is fantastic.  We really loved working on this project, and we’re glad that not only our design, but the Foundation itself is getting a little more exposure.  If you’re a music lover, or a Tibet lover, or someone who just has an extra sixteen bucks lying around, head on over to the Art of Peace’s website and buy a CD.  It’s for a good cause.  And be sure to keep an eye on PRINT for the Design Annual issue.

And yet another piece of ours, the invitation we created for SPIN LLC, won an award of distinction in the Announcements, Cards & Invitations category at the AGDA awards.

So that’s a lot of warm fuzzy feelings, as you can imagine.  It’s nice to have your hard work recognized!  For more images, please check out the Art of Peace and SPIN pages on our site.