Ultravirgo Creative News

Spirit of ABNY Awards

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:35:11 -0500

Last night was the Spirit of ABNY Awards, an annual awards ceremony and fundraiser for The ABNY Foundation, honoring those that make New York City a better place to live. This year, the focus was on the tech industry, honoring the "visionaries who connect tech to the big apple", including Foursquare, ideeli, Dawn Barber from NYTech Meetup, Alan Patricof, Deputy Mayor Robert Steel, and of course Cornell & Technion for their forthcoming applied sciences university on Roosevelt Island. And with presenters including Mayor Bloomberg, NYC Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne, and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, it was great to see firsthand the commitment that city government is putting behind the tech industry as the next big engine for growth in NYC.

Three things from the Healthcare Experience Design Conference that I am still thinking about

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:00:04 -0500

At Ultravirgo, we have long been passionate about using our creative skills to improve health, and many of our favorite projects have been for clients in health-related industries. With this in mind, I headed up to the Healthcare Experience Design Conference in Boston a couple weeks ago to get more perspective on the issues at the intersection of design and healthcare. While most of our work is on the communication side - branding and design, rather than developing the experience itself* - our ever-growing interest in health has us constantly looking for new ways to use design to improve health.

New Portfolio Projects and Quotes

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:30:00 -0500

We just added a handful of projects to the Work portfolio on our site, including the 7 Billion Actions campaign and AccessRH program that we branded for The United Nations Population Fund, the trilogy of album covers we did for Bruce Levingston, as well as a gallery of event invitations that we have produced in the last few years.

In addition, we've begun writing down some of the great things clients have been saying about us. We have added quotes from our longtime client Fagen Friedman & Fulfrost as well as the United Nations Development Program to accompany the projects in our portfolio section. We have some others coming soon, and all are being collected on our Clients page.

UVC founders' apartment featured

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:35:12 -0500

Ultravirgo founders, Patrick and Katherine Durgin-Bruce, recently had their apartment featured in the "Beautiful Spaces" section of Bellissima Kids. Founded by our friend Jeanne, Bellissima Kids is an international blog dedicated to stylish kid-friendly ideas, and we're honored to be included.

See the feature >

7 Billion Actions featured in Google Zeitgeist 2011

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:06:41 -0500

UVC had a great year in 2011, working with clients we love to create design and branding for meaningful campaigns, products, and companies. One of our favorite projects was the UN's 7 Billion Actions campaign, which encouraged people to take action to help the other 6,999,999,999 people on Earth. So, we were thrilled to see the banner we created for the campaign appear in Google's Zeitgeist 2011 Year In Review video. With over 7 million views on YouTube (not to mention over 300,000 people who have seen the banner in person in front of the UN headquarters in NY), it might just be our most-seen project to date. Check out the video to see our work (at the 0:10 mark) and the other events and campaigns that changed the world in 2011.

Sometimes the answer is already in front of you

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:30:48 -0500

In working on the promo materials for Premiere Commission's 10th Anniversary Gala, I couldn't help but notice the '10' hidden in the logo, just sitting there awaiting it's turn in the spotlight. A simple color change, and we have an instant anniversary logo - one that perfectly fits the master logo we designed in 2007, with it's embedded 1 nodding to the premieres the Commission supports.

Empowering Global Reproductive Health

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:04:11 -0500

Here at Ultravirgo, we are passionate about projects that improve public health. And we believe everyone has the right to enjoy quality reproductive health. But quality supplies and reliable information are often hard to come by in low-and middle-income countries, jeopardizing this right. Which is why we were proud to work with the United Nations Population Fund to help launch AccessRH, a new approach to reproductive health supplies procurement that also offers access to the largest database of contraceptive procurement statistics in the world.

Night Break

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:02:14 -0500

The second disk in Bruce Levingston's Night trilogy was just released today, entitled Night Break. We've had the pleasure of working closely with Bruce and photographer Tony Notarberardino to create the cover designs for the series, starting with the first release, Heart Shadow. (The art for the final album in the trilogy, Still Sound, just went to the label yesterday).

Hello, number 7 Billion

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:00:23 -0500

As of today, according to the United Nations Population Fund, the global population has reached 7 billion people. It's a difficult number to comprehend. For example, when we were creating the 24 foot banner that is hanging outside the UN headquarters in New York (and other countries around the world) my first thought was to use the extra-large canvas to create a grid of 7 billion dots and recolor them to create the message. Until I did the math, realizing it would require 352,254 dots per square inch. To me, however, the number is just an abstract figure anyway, and not what is important about the milestone. What is important are the 7 billion individual people that it represents.

AccessRH

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 18:05:20 -0500

We've been honored to be doing a lot of work lately for the United Nations Population Fund. We recently wrapped up a complete brand package for a new initiative called AccessRH. Combining their existing procurement system for ordering reproductive health supplies with the largest database tracking reproductive health supplies ordering in the world, the initiative is a giant leap forward in improving access to contraceptives, especially in developing countries. With 201 million women around the world expressing need for contraceptives that they cannot obtain, there is a huge need for improvement. Meeting their needs would avert some 52 million unwanted pregnancies each year. We are honored to be able to help UNFPA communicate the power of their groundbreaking efforts.

Heart Shadow

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:41:38 -0500

As part of our ongoing work for Premiere Commission, we had the pleasure of designing the album covers for Bruce Levingston's new Night trilogy. We just received a copy of the first album released: Heart Shadow, which was recently named WQXR's album of the week. We were fortunate to work with the talented photographer Tony Notarberardino, a close friend of Bruce's who took the portraits used on each of the covers, during a series of photoshoots on top of the infamous Chelsea Hotel. He perfectly captured the twilight atmosphere we were looking for, with subtle variations to fit the mood of each album.

Launching 7 Billion Actions

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 13:52:09 -0500

This week, we attended twin launch events for the 7 Billion Actions Campaign that we have been developing with The United Nations Population Fund. As you may or may not know, the global population will be hitting 7 billion on October 31, and the campaign aims not just to raise awareness of not just the population issues involved, but to highlight the efforts (big and small) that individuals and organizations have made to make the world a better place.<

A global movement for all humanity

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 11:00:44 -0500

We are thrilled to be working with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to help support the recently-launched 7 Billion Actions campaign. With the global population set to hit 7 billion people (!!) late this year, UNFPA is taking the lead by starting a truly collaborative global movement. Partnering with corporations, NGOs, and non-profits around the world, the campaign aims to inspire awareness and action around the issues that impact our global experience - by moving the focus beyond the numbers, to the stories of the 7 billion individuals that share our planet. The entire Ultravirgo team is honored to be part of this historic moment, and look forward to contributing our expertise to the movement.

Impressions + Influences

Tue, 24 May 2011 14:20:44 -0500

I had an amazing evening at Carnegie Hall enjoying the music of violinist Colin Jacobsen and pianist Bruce Levingston--founder of Premiere Commission, which we design the marketing materials and CD covers for.

A Wedding in the Woods

Tue, 03 May 2011 09:02:17 -0500

We just got our invitation in the mail to the wedding of Katie's brother, which we had the pleasure of designing. With non-traditional weddings - like this one in the woods outside Ithaca, NY - comes the opportunity to design a suitably non-traditional invitation. With a friend at a digital printing company willing to donate the printing, we had the challenge and opportunity of designing the invite to print digitally. Which we took advantage of by designing the invitation as a large full-color poster with full-bleed lush forest imagery to communicate the unique environment of the ceremony itself. The back includes a detailed map with color-coded directions from the key areas guests will be coming from, and direct latitude/longitude coordinates of the ceremony site for those with GPS navigation.