Graphic Design & Photography Work

We are pleased to see some of our graphic design and photography work, for client SustaiNext|EU, featured in the Sustainable Brands weekly communications bulletin.

Not only is this great news for a great event (being held in Dublin this October--for free!) but it also makes us here at 2 Miles Consulting smile to see our work amongst some of the best and brightest sustainable branding peeps out there!

Fun fact: 

The chairs you see in the background on the banner and on the site are the real ones from the auditorium where SustaiNext|EU will be taking place, the Helix Center!

Nice Design Work...From the White House?!?

Check out this cool piece of interactive design work developed by the White House. Yup, the  White House.

Ya know...the big cheese, head honcho, P. Ave, etc.

Gettin' Interactive With It!

Woah! 2 Miles now does interactive design work and we are super excited about it! This addition to our design services opens up a whole new world for communicating and educating others about sustainability. To us, this new capability is like bringing 'smores to a bar-b-que in Awesomeville.

The iPhone and Sustainabilty

This infographic by MBAonline.com is pretty cool and tells a good story about the iphone and its inherent (or lack there of) sustainability. Nicely done.

Created by MBAonline.com

#1 Branding Rule: Consistency

Time. Change. Review. The process of "becoming" a brand with a clear identity and message is cyclical. You have the "thing" that currently identifies your organization, you sit with it for a while, then you decide you need a change, and then you review the changes you made. Then, you keep going until the itness of your brand exists. Easier said than done, right? Well, sometimes getting closer to itness, is just a matter of consistency and some simplicity. 

Take the facelift we did of the Sustainability Collaborative website. In preparation for a marketing push for their upcoming conference in Ireland this summer, we wanted to make sure that the style of the main  site matched that of the sister site, made specifically made for conference informational purposes. We didn't have to change any content to the site and just tried to make the site clean, crisp, and consistent with color and feel. The best part is that these types of changes don't take too long and go a long way to get an organization more bang for its buck. Take a look below to see what we did to the site.

Before....

...And After...

...To Match The Style And Feel Of A Sister Site... 

...Success!! 

Growing A Garden In Philly

Did you know that 2 Miles also does consulting that might get your hand a little dirty but also produces beauty, relaxation, and food? Yup, we do gardening and not just your regular old tomato plant and herb gardening. Quite the contrary actually with our emphasis on permaculture, soil engineering, garden bed construction, rain water collection, irrigation planning, and stormwater management. Heading up these efforts is Principal Consulting, Avery McEachern. Avery is an ISA certified arborist and has his Master's in Sustainable Design with a focus on the urban tree canopy, permaculture, and stormwater management.

We will continue to post updates on projects as they come in. In the meantime, we'd like to post this press we received for a project completed in the early days of 2 Miles. With our friends at postgreen (and a few fellow graduate students who helped us tremendously in exchange for pizza, beer, and an open invitation to challenge us to a game of corn-hole), we design-built this garden, its 9 garden beds, shed, 2 season compost bin, arbor, patio, sidewalk rain garden, additional side garden, and installed rain barrels. This garden not only inspired the owners and their visitors but passers-by in the notorious North Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington, who informed their children, who called this 60' x 20' space a garden, that this was in fact a "farm".

Credits & Links:

The Week
Postgreen
ISA
Boutique Philly

Ad Placement for SustaiNext|EU

We are pretty stoked that the ad we designed is included in the Sustainable Brands newsletter. It's also inspiring, from the creative side, to see how other great brands are using a 200x200 px space to convey their message. In the live version, some of the other ads have used javascript to add some interactivity to their adds--pretty cool! 

The SustaiNext|EU Summit promises to be a great conference in Dublin, Ireland this summer by bringing together industry leaders in Global Healthcare, Agriculture & Food Services, Education, Transportation, and Global Society.  Speakers will present on topics that highlight global challenges and local solutions for creating, operating and improving sustainable business practices within these industries. For more information, go to www.sustainext.wordpress.com.

Hey! We've also got to give some credit to our friends at Bosha Design for their original logo design for the Sustainability Collaborative and SustaiNext|EU.

Simplicity & Purpose

When we begin to think about how to communicate through the digital world there is a complex web (no pun intended) of messaging techniques to keep in mind.  To figure out which ones to use, we must first ask the right questions; these will be the foundation that guide all further decisions about branding, images, style, language, color schemes, and audience.

Other items to consider when thinking about how to present a company, organization, firm, products, etc. in the digital world are:

• What is the point of the communication? For example, is the website being developed so that it can showcase a product, share information, or raise money for a foundation?
• Is the digital world your "store" or do you want to draw people in to a physical location?
• Are there supporters, partners, or sponsors of your organization that also need a presence on your digital space?
• How developed is your organization or project? If your business doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles (either from its nature or its stage of development), than neither should your website. The nice thing about the digital world is that there is a level of fluidity that is well adapted to the natural stages of organizational/project growth and complexities.

These are just a couple of questions to consider when starting to think about digital messaging. As an example of how this type of Integrated Design strategy (like that practiced here at 2 Miles), translates into a visual and digital presentation, take a look below at two different screen shots of websites we've designed.

This brightly colored website/blog was put together for a small, custom, woodworking shop located in Florida. The owner makes custom pens, bottle stoppers, and makeup brushes out of sustainably sourced wood. Still in its last phases of development, this website will serve as a portal to the Ebay store, an introduction to the small business, the types of products it produces, and its sourcing practices. The bright scripting of the background and logo help give the look and feel of the business location (sunny Florida) and the main type of products (high-end writing utensils).

This darkly themed site serves as online gallery and portfolio for artistic work. Its dark theme helps highlight the artwork presented through the site. Other than the images, and their titles, very little text is included on the site to ensure that the art is the main focus. There isn't even and "About Us" page for this very reason. Overall, the site is kept very plain but keeps a bit of whimsy with its name "-arooski", blog section named "caboodles", and the swirling background pattern. In addition to showing artwork, this site will serve as a portal to the artists' Etsy store.

Watchya been doin?

Well, since last summer we've been helping the folks over at the Sustainability Collaborative with the communications strategy for their SustaiNext Summit series. These international conferences address the greatest challenges for businesses and society in the 21st century.

In addition to coordinating and creating newsletters, digital, and print materials, we are also really excited about a particular accomplishment. We've upgraded and redesigned the site for their next Summit (June 21st & 22nd, 2012 - Dublin, Ireland). It's clean, modern, and [we think] a pretty neat Wordpress.com site.