Mayor Greg Nickels and the Seattle Design Commission recognized five recent public projects that “exhibit superior design” and “foster interaction with the public and enhance Seattle neighborhoods” at a ceremony in Seattle’s City Hall. “The Woodland Park Zoo Penguin Exhibit is a fantastic example of integrative design…(and) …has lead to a design that goes well beyond showcasing the penguins, their environment and survival.”

MCD was present at the 12/03/09 event and we’re very pleased and honored to be recognized as one of the (many) team members.

Studio Hanson/Roberts designed the exhibit. MCD developed the graphic design for the project.

http://woodlandparkzblog.blogspot.com/

SEATTLE DESIGN COMMISSION RECOGNIZES PUBLIC PROJECTS

Mayor Greg Nickels will join the Seattle Design Commission to recognize five recent public projects that exhibit superior design. The projects include a public park, a master plan, infrastructure improvements, and a new zoo exhibit. The Seattle Design Commission presents the awards for design excellence every two years after reviewing public projects that foster interaction with the public and enhance Seattle neighborhoods*. Five projects in total are being honored.

Woodland Park Zoo Humboldt Penguin Exhibit

“The Woodland Park Zoo Penguin Exhibit is a fantastic example of integrative design. Adherence to a comprehensive, well-defined scope and a vigorous process has lead to a design that goes well beyond showcasing the penguins, their environment and survival. The project achieves a new benchmark of impressive sustainability and multicultural educational objectives and includes the capacity for on- going monitoring and adjustment. The exhibit’s low-key attitude and careful attention to design fit strengthens a significant entrance to the zoo and reinforces the overall legibility of its environment.”

(From the City of Seattle and Seattle Design Commission Press Release)

*Past recipients include: distinctive civic and cultural projects and parks, buildings and spaces throughout Seattle including the Seattle Central Library (Rem Koolhaas, Office of Metropolitan Architecture; LMN Architects); Olympic Sculpture Park  (Weiss/Manfredi Architects; Charles Anderson Landscape Architecture) and Fremont Peak Park (GGLO).

It may be the ultimate branding test: helping a real-estate agent stand out in a field that is beyond crowded and market to an affluent audience looking for distinctive homes.

Fortunately, Carol Meachum gave us plenty to work with. As a experienced agent representing sellers in Seattle’s most desirable urban neighborhoods, she brings an exceptional level of professionalism and experience to her work. Our job was to counter the gravitational pull of the real estate industry, where scattershot direct mail is the favored marketing tool. Instead, we recommended developing smart, distinctive marketing materials that look like they belong on the coffee tables of these homes – alongside brochures for other lifestyle purchases and investments.

The result? A coordinated set of highly targeted print pieces, as well as a ‘can’t put it down’ leave-behind package. Details like embossing, rich color, textured paper, and materials align her image with the high-quality residences she sells. (And we managed to do all of this on a budget that was far from corporate-sized.)

Of course, printers are every designer’s secret weapon. For this job, we called on Robert Horsley of Robert Horsley Printing (Seattle) and Bellingham-based Bison Bindery, handled the unique, Japanese stab binding.

Though we’re known for our business-savvy solutions, sometimes a project comes along that is just plain fun.  Our latest? The penguin exhibit at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. Info and photos after the jump.

Though we’re known for our business-savvy solutions, sometimes a project comes along that is just plain fun.  Our latest? The Humbolt penguin exhibit at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo.

The Woodland Park Zoo (WPZ) recently gave a serious makeover to the 62-year old exhibit, which had originally been designed for seals and sea lions. We were honored to join a stellar team that included WPZ specialists and the exhibit designers: Studio Hanson/Roberts.

The new, $6.5 million, 17,000 sq. ft. outdoor exhibit presents an authentic view of the rugged, arid coastline of Peru, home to the penguins.

Our job? To create environmental graphics to make visitors feel they’d stepped into the Peruvian fishing village of Punta San Juan, at the largest Humboldt penguin conservation zone in the world.

We developed Peruvian-style graphics and applied them to murals, gates and other graphic elements to greet, inform, and persuade visitors they were in a remote village in South America. We used the same graphic style to develop donor recognition materials for partners and friends of the project. And in a proud first for our studio, we designed a graphic celebrating the merits of guano.

The real star of the show: the penguins. Visitors watch thru large walls of glass as the birds swim and dive. “The birds enjoy the public. They like to look (back) at them through the glass,” said a zoo keeper. “They like little kids with shiny shoes and sunglasses and fast-moving hands.”

http://www.zoo.org/penguins/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBYc_aO14jU&feature=fvsr

Project Team:

Woodland Park Zoo (Scott Vance, interpretive exhibit specialist: Monica Lake, project manager); Studio Hanson/Roberts (Becca Hanson and Jim McDonough – exhibit design); Dillion Works (fabricator of the graphic elements).

“We need help with the Zamboni!”

That was the call from our longtime client The Everett Clinic, which sponsors the iconic ice-resurfacing machine at the Everett’s Comcast Arena, home of the mighty Everett Silvertips, a Western Hockey League team.

It’s a well-documented phenomenon that the beloved Zamboni has a strangely hypnotic effect—crowds can’t take their eyes off it. So The Everett Clinic wanted to make sure their branded graphics were worth staring at.

We developed the tagline,  “For a healthier body check,” and matched it with a great action shot. It took more than a little tweaking to make the photo and graphics look great on a lumpy machine not designed to display them, but the final result was a big, er, hit.

http://www.everettsilvertips.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/sports/hockey/23zamboni.htmlzamboni

To listen to the broadcast click link: CBC Early Edition Clip

Link to the Early Edition’s site.
http://www.cbc.ca/earlyedition/

This year, the University of Washington (UW) and dozens of organizations are celebrating the AYPE centennial with special events, talks, tours, and more.

AYPE established important national and international bonds with business, civic and political institutions that exist today and created the initial physical plan of the University of Washington.

On the grounds of the then-undeveloped University, expo organizers erected a number of grand Beaux Arts buildings, a midway, and other structures. Most of those buildings—built more to wow fairgoers than to endure the passage of time—are long gone.

The UW invited us to work together on an interpretive program to mark the grand spectacle that once unfolded on campus.

MCD designed a system to display the information and to fit any location. Flexibility was our theme: the UW in-house team built the markers, and information panels will be replaced with new information after the current event.

Credits: UW Marketing for the design work on the panels; UW Facilities for fabrication.

Links:

University of Washington
http://www.washington.edu/visit/aype

City of Seattle
www.ayp100.org

UW Libraries Special Collections
http://content.lib.washington.edu/aypweb/index.html

Burke Museum
http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/exhibits/details.php?ID=72&type=upcoming