Congratulations to Ultravirgo Design Director, Benjamin Tuttle, for being named an Ascender by the Type Directors Club. The Ascenders is the world's premier portfolio-based competition dedicated to type in all its forms, and the inspiring up-and-coming designers who are elevating the medium.
For the past year, we have been working with Better Work - a joint partnership between the UN's International Labour Organization and the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank, that works to improve conditions in garment factories - on a strategic rebrand.
Yesterday was World Population Day, an annual event to raise awareness of global population issues. This year, UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund chose the day to kick off a yearlong push to improve investment in adolescent girls. Girls around the world face greater challenges than their male counterparts. Yet with the largest percentage of youth in history, we - as a global population - have a great opportunity to improve the future of humanity by improving the fortunes of girls around the world right now.
Sometimes you need to challenge your assumptions. That was exactly what UN Women was looking to do when they asked us to create Transform magazine. The Evaluation Office routinely audits UN Women activities, generating lengthy reports with analysis, insights and recommendations... that few people actually read. Looking to make the insightful, but dry, content more appealing to a broader audience, we created a newsstand-quality magazine, with a journalistic design.
When UN Women approached Ultravirgo to provide a visual and messaging system for the "Knowledge Gateway for Women's Economic Empowerment," they had a complex web site with a great mission: "dedicated to empowering women to achieve their full economic potential." However, the site was burdened with a long name and an uninspiring design. Launched in 2011, the Knowledge Gateway had been gaining passionate supporters, but lacked a brand vision.
The Tow Center for Digital Journalism, part of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, explores how the development of technology is changing journalism, its practice and its consumption. Last year, we launched a new identity for the Center based on a radical idea - what if the logo itself analyzed journalism and morphed based on current activity in the industry?
We're proud to have recently added UN Women to our growing list of United Nations agency clients. We have some exciting projects in the works, but the first is this series of thematic icons. Honoring the 20th Anniversary of the landmark Beijing Declaration, each icon illustrates one of the twelve key critical areas of concern detailed in the document.
Last week, the 2014 Spirit of ABNY Awards honored those who have provided a distinguished level of service to New York City. Produced by the ABNY Foundation (affiliated with the Association for a Better New York), this was our third year producing materials for the event, and we love helping recognize the best of our city.
Twenty years ago, 179 countries met in Cairo to adopt a forward-looking 20-year plan to address the population issues of the early 21st century. The resulting ICPD Programme of Action was remarkable in its recognition that reproductive health and rights, as well as women's empowerment and gender equality, are cornerstones of population and development programmes. The visionary plan is rooted in principles of human rights and became the steering document of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
Last night, we had the pleasure of witnessing our good friend and client Bruce Levingston perform at Carnegie Hall. While we have seen Bruce perform in many venues over the years, Carnegie Hall always brings out the best in his programming.
Today, the Knight Foundation launched another of their breakthrough reports, this one taking a deep look into the fast-evolving Nonprofit News industry. Titled Finding a Foothold: How Nonprofit News Ventures Seek Sustainability, the report features tons of data and analysis on 18 different nonprofit news organizations. We are proud to work with Knight, to design the report and bring clarity to the mountains of data, and illustrator/journalist Susie Cagle to bring levity to the subject.
One year ago, The United Nations Population Fund asked us to help engage youth in a global discussion to help set UN population policy for the next 20 years. Hundreds of youth leaders met at the Global Youth Forum in Bali - joined by thousands participating online representing every country in the world (even Antartica!)- and drafted what has become known as the Bali Declaration. Setting specific, bold targets for improving the status of women, LGBT, and underprivelidged youth, as well as improving health, education, and employment worldwide, the Bali Declaration has been hailed by some as the most progressive UN Declaration to date.
Last week, the Knight Foundation released a watershed report titled Why Contests Improve Philanthropy to share the lessons they have learned as one of the pioneers in developing contests to identify and fund initiatives that show great potential but might not qualify for the traditional grantmaking process. The report centers on six lessons on creating effective contests that supplement traditional grantmaking.
Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) is a global partnership working to provide exactly what its name proclaims. While access to water has improved in recent years, 800 million people still do not have access to safe drinking water; and sanitation lags far behind with over a third of the world's people living without adequate sanitation facilities.
Currently running in The Netherlands, the ICPD International Conference on Human Rights is the second of three thematic conferences that will shape UN population policy for the next 20 years. (The first was the Global Youth Forum in December.) Hosted by UNFPA, the Government of the Netherlands and The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the conference is focused on identifying emerging challenges to delivering equal rights for all. We are proud to extend our relationship with the ICPD partners to deliver a visual identity system that set a tone of hope and empowerment for all conference materials.
Usablenet is a leading provider of mobile usability solutions to global brands. They provide the strategy, design and technology to create websites and apps tailored to each user's device and context. When you pull up the New Jersey Transit website on your phone, and get a mobile site optimized for train schedules, that's them.
As we approach Parkinson's awareness month in April, we are proud to share our latest work for the National Parkinson Foundation. What started as a project to design branded merchandise has become a national campaign involving NPF chapters around the country. The campaign, called Whatever It Takes, is designed to empower individuals and raise awareness of the many things that can be done to combat Parkinson's Disease. While other organizations are working on a cure, the National Parkinson Foundation has a unique mission: to improve the quality of life for the estimated 1 million people with Parkinson's in the US.
Did you know that 43% of the world is under age 25? Almost half! And that number is over 50% in developing countries. This number represents a half of the world that has long clamored to have its voice heard - and has found technology and social media to be the platforms that finally give them the influence they have long demanded. Just look to Egypt and the Arab Spring for potent examples of the power that youth wield today.
Last night we had the pleasure of attending the Young Audiences Arts for Learning Gala at the always-glamorous Waldorf-Astoria here in New York. Celebrating their 60th Anniversary, Young Audiences is the nation's leading source of arts-in-education programs and services. As an agency co-founded by a visual artist and a writer with a Master's degree in Educational Technology (and parents of two very creative kids), we are huge believers in the value of arts and creativity in education. And were thrilled to be able help Young Audiences celebrate their 60th by designing the anniversary book for the event.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.<
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.
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.
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.
Today we launched eMatters - a new practice group focused on technology issues within the education system - for long-time client Fagen Friedman & Fulfrost (or F3, as they like to be called). We have been working closely with F3 to launch the new brand, starting with creating the name and tagline, and culminating with the video and email announcement. Taking the theme "Navigating the e-education revolution" we animated the video to visually navigate through the key issues that F3 guides their clients through.
We just launched a new web site for the new Stadium Tennis Center at Mill Pond Park. Working with our long-time clients at Gotham Tennis Academy, this was one of our fastest web sites to date - designed and built in under 3 weeks. But with a large image slideshow header, clearly-organized content, and online registration forms for programs and court reservations, it provides easy access to everything you need to know about the facility. We've also been making some upgrades to the Gotham Tennis Academy web site that we designed as well, so take a look. If you have any interest in tennis, they're the kings in NYC.
Oh, and we have some unused tennis dome graphics from a previous project. Who wants to see a couple of friendly 282' long caterpillars over the East River?