We've had a good week at Pinch. As we mentioned at the beginning of the month, we were anxious to get to work and that work began by reaching out to friends, clients and prospects. Those efforts have begun to bear fruit, and we couldn't be more excited by the quality of the organizations who are, in turn, seeking our assistance.
Our brand development work with Oregon Trout and Smith & Fong in San Francisco is some of the more fulfilling work that we've tackled in some time. We expect to announce the launch of the newly redesigned Smith & Fong site in fairly short order. And the new brand language, name, and visual identity for Oregon Trout will be unveiled at the end of February.
We were pleased to learn yesterday that we had been awarded the Metro Multifamily Recycling contract, particularly given the stiff competition from around the region. A multitude of very good firms were in the hunt for that work. The week has also provided inroads to good people within organizations for which we maintain great respect; Vancouver's Formos (developer of StreamBank), Oregon Wave Energy Trust, and Oregon Council for the Humanities to name just three. We hope to assist in their varied project development efforts, as well.
The kind words continue to flow with regard to the Pinch site redesign, for which we're quite proud. Like painting a bridge, it's a continual work in progress. At this point we can say that the primer has been applied. And during the writing of this post, we just learned that Bespoke (our little rant space) has been added to Alltop, Guy Kawasaki and Nonomina's collection of top-shelf news feeds from around the world in design. It's good to be considered in the same company as Josh Rubin's Cool Hunting, Design Observer, and Zeldman's various properties.
We hope your week is progressing with the same level of promise. And if not—as we did for so many weeks—we would encourage you to take heart. It's only Wednesday.
All in all, it's been a satisfying few weeks here at Pinch. We've welcomed a new member to our small team in Bowman Leigh, who has been instrumental in making contact with some organizations that we've long admired and were too shy to approach. From those discussions, we've met some wonderful people who have taken a keen interest in our humble endeavor. Apparently, it actually helps business to remind people that you're in business.
We're pleased to be working on a new identity program and brand platform, which results from the Oregon Trout and Oregon Water Trust merger and have established what we hope is a long-term relationship with e-Discovery developer, Exterro. We reconnected with Cynthia Fuhrman (formerly of Office of Sustainable Development) who has taken her rightful post as Director of Marketing and Communications at Portland Center Stage, and we've have had our collective heads down on a history book for Columbia Forest Products, and brand development for Metro's Multifamily Recycling program with Pyramid Communications. Take a breath... We enjoyed collaborating with Celery on a nice little billboard campaign for CleanFish, a provider of sustainably managed seafood and we revisited some product branding work for our friends at StormwateRx. Further work for OSD's BEST Business Center begins shortly, as does event development for the annual Portland Parks Foundation Legacy Circle event materials. And, of course, we hope that discussions with Oregon Institute of Technology (who offers a very interesting renewable energy program), Greater Yellowstone Coalition (stewards of the most diverse ecosystem in the lower 48) and fmyi (whose collaborative product brings people together) all continue to move forward.
As posted last week, it seems that our dabblings in the social media have also taken root. Due in no small part to our Flickr page, within the past ten or so days, Pinch has been featured in UK design aggregators AisleOne and SeptemberIndustry, as well as FFFFound! and Thinking for a Living. For their green issue, Media Inc. magazine picked up a story on our work for PureBond, the industry-shaping formaldehyde free plywood product from Columbia Forest Products. We've established our loosely-knit social strategy with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter; in part to test what it does for Pinch as well as to further our counsel in these areas with our client base in the not-for-profit sector. We've long maintained that design is not entirely about pretty pics and well-set type, but rather about considering every option for communicating an organizations' message. As the social networks have proven, it's about dialogue, not propaganda.
In addition to attending recent events at PNCA, Office PDX and our on-going AIGA Portland commitments (plus McIsaac's International Male tour schedule), it's safe to say that its been a bit busy around here. We realize, of course, that the door has only been opened due to the work and referrals that our long-time clients have been so gracious to provide. The success of those works is a result of so many positive and productive relationships. We don't say it nearly enough, but we simply wouldn't be here without them.
For the past couple of months, McIsaac and I have been working on rekindling past relationships, introducing ourselves in the hopes of making some new ones, as well as working to burrow deeper within the organizations with whom we're already working. It's a simple strategy, really. And yet with the state of this economy and what seems to be a collective inhale among marketers during a period of elongated crises—subprime mortgages, climate change, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran(?), the coming election race between two presumed candidates—we have, understandably, tweaked our approach a bit.
On at least one occasion in this publication, McIsaac has referred to our considerable opinion. Anyone who has sat down with us for a drink certainly recognizes that there is no shortage (of opinion) from either of us. Fact is, while our comments at very least entertain us, we're just working it out to see what sticks. The form that our utterances take varies, of course, depending on audience; whether during a new business meeting or a quip from the stage at Jimmy Mak's. But as with an initial logo sketch, we're simply testing the boundaries of what might work. During a recent e-mail exchange with the esteemed English designer Mike Dempsey, regarding the Web as the ideal platform for expressing opinion, he replied, "I have realised that I have over forty years of stuff in my head to upload." And while we're a few years, and a considerable number of quality projects behind the pace of Mr. Dempsey, that's basically been our recent sentiment as well. Share what you see, share what you know (or what you want to know), and see what happens.
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