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 just finished another project fairly recently as well; a logo for a program called “Art World” at the Cincinnati Art Museum.  Art World provides kids visiting the museum with a hands-on, fun approach towards art appreciation.

We knew that we’d hit it off with the client right off the bat when they told us in our first conference call that they didn’t want to see any sort of logo that resembled a “finger-painting or a bunch of kids holding hands or whatever.”  We couldn’t agree more… And yet, when faced with the task of designing a logo for children, it’s hard not to just pick up your pencil, doodle for awhile on a piece of paper, and call it a mark.

However, we’re very happy with the final product.  The logo, which we have come to call “the propeller”, was meant to represent some of the things that are found in childrens’ art while not falling into any cliché.  Thus, within the propeller there are several shapes that children often draw (stars, flowers), but the logo itself does not appear as a childish drawing.

It’ll be up in our portfolio fairly soon.  Feel free to give us your thoughts!

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.