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.

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.

Soon after they sent Brad Trent down from New York to photograph the ripe team and the studio.  What followed was a long, long day of shooting where Creative Director Tomás was heard stating several times, “Oh God, all this smiling is making my cheeks ache.”  Besides Tomás’ aching cheeks, however, it was a great experience.  It was a blast having Brad, his assistant Bo, and Business Week’s art director, Mike in the office… and we even surreptitiously snapped a few shots of our own to document the event. Afterwards it was a night of pizza and wine at Matchbox in Chinatown.

The article released yesterday in Business Week: Small Biz, and is also available online.  It details the green practices of six different businesses including a printer, an antifreeze recycling company, a beverage wholesaler and others.   A big thanks to the whole Business Week team for their thoroughness and effort.

So… want to know ways to make your business greener?  Why not read the article, or head over to the Greener section of the ripe site.  Although the first option is probably the most entertaining — there’s a picture in there where Tomás has a tree growing out of his head.  Or if you’re really serious, why not give Adrienne Spahr, our friend from Green Living Consulting, a call?  She’s helped us more than we possibly could have imagined.

It’s hard to be thinking about marketing yourself in this economic climate — not to mention marketing yourself in a sustainable fashion.  Most firms and businesses seem to be cowering and waiting for the next bit of bad news to surface.  But the smart, pro-active firms are making plans and preparing for a new wave of business to arrive, and when it does, they’ll be ready for it while their counterparts might not.

Marketing firms and design studios can make a positive ecological impact if they have the knowledge, and if their clients are serious about maintaining sustainable design.

At the end of our presentation, we’re going to ask attendees to post any additional questions on our blog.  If you attended our presentation, please feel free to ask us anything regarding green design, marketing, printing, etc. If you can’t think of any good sustainability related questions, ask us something else!  We’re happy to share (some of) our secrets. We’ll answer them in a new post in the next few days.

If you’re holding an event and would like us to come and speak, feel free to shoot us an email at sprout@ripe.com.

Not only does the ripe brand give an elegant suggestion of green practices, but material consideration was given throughout the stationary package design. Printed on Mohawk (a notable force in the industry’s green movement), the paper stock was created with wind power and is 30% Post Consumer Waste. Additionally, the unmistakable ripe green was printed with vegetable based inks. In integrating these practices ripe hopes to give an example in influencing our clients in making more verdant choices. Our continually growing knowledge in the field of sustainably can be seen as an added service. We can’t wait to order the book, and continue down our path of green advocacy. We hope you’ll join us.

It all began on a cool fall day last year. We were armed with nothing but a Pages document, a phone and relentless patience. Yes, we were calling each junk mailer and asking to get off of their un-rad mailing lists.

Admittedly, my junk mail epiphany came while watching Oprah’s Earth Day special (don’t judge), at which point Matt Damon brought GreenDimes into our lives, saving us time and money and the world some precious resources. We have seen the paperless light. They have two services: one which is free and for one person at a time, and another for $20 with unlimited names sans legwork. We have the $20 premium service that has the added bonus of keeping us off of new lists, while taking us off of the campaigns and catalogs that we specify.

We are highly recommending this product to our friends, clients, and colleagues. Do it for the trees. Do it for the back health of our mail carriers. But most importantly, do it so you can get back all those hours that would have otherwise been spent hating the direct-marketing-man.

We’ve been concerned with sustainable design for a long time.  Maryam, the studio eco-freak, has been cataloging, organizing and discovering new ways to offer earth-friendly design to our clients.  While this is great and we’re happy that it’s a service we can offer, we thought it’d be useful to share some of this insight with the greater design world.

The new Greener section of ripe (which can be found here or by clicking “Greener” on the ripe homepage) lists tips for making your studio and/or design greener, and links to various green resources we find helpful or informative.  We hope you’ll check it out and let us know what you think.  It’s a work in progress, so please check back now and then.

Art of Peace

Backed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Art of Peace Foundation strives to foster peaceful discourse between China and Tibet.  They’re in the process of releasing a CD titled Songs for Tibet – The Art of Peace which will be available for purchase on iTunes on August 5th, and at Amazon.com and other retailers on August 12th.

ripe was offered the opportunity to create the Foundation’s branding package, website and the artwork for their upcoming CD.  We were happy to accept, and are more than pleased with the results.  Check out their website, and stay tuned for more information regarding the CD release.

Blog

Last but not least, we recently decided to launch a blog… and here it is!  We’ll be posting here now and then with information regarding new work we’ve completed and are happy with, upcoming projects, interesting techniques we’ve discovered, etc.

It’s been a busy summer so far, and it shows no signs of letting up.  But at least being so busy keeps us out of trouble.