Here you are.
- Better World Books Blog is done and up
Designed by Dana Bruington, implemented in wordpress by me; take a look.
- The Art Monastery & the San Pancrazio Festival
My first attempt at “Early Baroque,” this is an announcement for the Art Monastery Project’s participation in Calvi dell’Umbria’s festiggiamento in Onore del Patron San Pancrazio. I’ll be giving a fuller update soon, but needless to say I’ve found a project that is a perfect combination of community economic development (my concentration at BGI), alternative business models, music and art.
- Site Launch: Full Circle Farm Blog
Maggie at Full Circle Farm approached my friends/colleagues at the Web Collective wanting a website where the company could begin to tell its unique story in blog format.
Taking advantage of the existing branding Full Circle Farms, one of the largest organic farms in Washington, I pulled together this logo and an simple customized wordpress blog (temporarily being hosted on wordpress.com).
- Site Launch: Generation Gatherings
Identity and web development for a new venture by Brian Cisneros and me, Generation Gatherings. More on this soon… check out the website for now.
For the website, we took advantage of the open source Joomla platform for content management. The logo features a colorful sunburst around the first G, which turns out to be a trail of adults leading children leading adults.
- Genevieve Catering is up
About a month ago, I did some illustrations for my friend and BGI classmate Emily Reilly’s company, Genevieve Catering. Check out summer, spring, and (eventually) fall versions of the mostly-hand-drawn, floral (squash blossom) theme she’s using for her website. Emily’s company serves locally and organically grown cuisine, to create meaningful “full-scale banquets, house parties, organizational functions, or casual office gatherings.”
- Design for Northwest Chocolate Festival
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- Events this Weekend in Seattle
- Punk Rock Flea Market — $1 admission, “Proceeds above expenses benefit the Low Income Housing Institute”
- Urban Craft Uprising— “growing the crafting community and showcasing the best indie crafts out there.”
- Cuz the Power of the People Don’t Stop! — “Commemorate the 8th Anniversary of the 1999 WTO Protests”
Today’s postsong is Billy Bragg’s “A New England”, and comes via Andres.
- Connecting Buyers and Sellers Locally = Protectionism?
David Hsu at Complexcities recently pointed me to a dialog happening over on Grist on the whole “local” thing. It (along with its long trail of attendant comments) deserves some attention.
Doing this would leave America and the world desperately poor.
I’m not going to go too deep into analyzing Avent’s arguments, which are fairly well-reasoned but seem to miss the point.
First, few people are saying we must produce absolutely everything locally.
Second, there is a world of difference between putting barriers on trade and catering to consumer demand for locally produced goods while reaping the benefits of local production. While Avent admits the issues are “complex”, he conflates the very idea of “free trade” (which in our already very-planned economy means as few as barriers to trade as possible, but enough as necessary) with a style of production that is an intentionally myopic, globalized race-to-the-bottom. He implies we can’t have one without the other. . . If we’re “buying locally”, then we’re supporting “a world of regional trade blocs,” he implies, and giving up specialization of labor entirely.
Here: If consumers demand local stuff, so be it. Producers will then produce locally. But consumers can’t afford to buy local stuff if no one is working on ways of producing local stuff cheaply. But producers won’t work on ways of producing locally cheaply if consumers don’t demand it.
Demand = willingness + ability to pay. Businesses should say to their customers, “You work on the ability to pay part, I will try to make something you’re willing to pay for. I will devote myself to this place and time and do my damnedest to make something of lasting value.”
PSFK.com’s Guy Brighton puts it reasonably from a consumer’s perspective:
Maybe what we need to do is apply a level of common sense: ensure that we import enough to maintain a decent diet, avoid foods that would be out of season locally and choose local when offered the choice. ::link
The question is, then, is there inherent value in local production and local buying/selling. In other words, does it help your business do what it set out to do in the world to make, sell and buy locally? If your
business exist to serve a place and its people (financially and otherwise), then yes. You will have a deeper connection to your customers, grow their trust and loyalty, know their wants, and be able to respond more agilely to market changes (before your distant competition can bring something to market). You will know the cities and the lands around them, what is good or bad for them, and how it affects the people.
You will be the first company in your industry to go carbon neutral, and it will be cheaper because you don’t have to buy offsets for shipping. You will take advantage of the urban landscape, you will commute less, your designers, engineers, and manufacturers will know each other and communicate better, face-to-face. You will know where your materials come from, where they are taken and who assembles them into value-added goods. You will never accidentally have a sweatshop in your value-stream.Businesses serve their workers and their communities by serving their customers. They do a better job if all their workers and all their customers are in their communities.
Which leads me an open-ended question, posed by Avent:
If the world would be better off, if production would be more efficient, with more localized industry, then why aren’t companies already doing it?
American Apparel almost fits the bill, but they just have half the equation (in that they manufacture in the U.S. but ship worldwide). I’m going hunting for other success stories.
In summary: I’m definitely not saying we shouldn’t buy things from other countries. We will. And if we can make money making it better here, we will do that too.
(painting: Soutine)
- Ludovico Technique
Murketing’s Rob Walker is in the New York Times magazine today, on “Why imaginary brands can be even better than the real thing.” I was curious about what the possibly-redundant phrase “imaginary brands” referred to, and my imagination went wild with what I might encounter after clicking over to the full article…
Would it be Shepherd Fairey’s once-imaginary Giant brand? Or how about American Apparel and the “brand-free” brand, or the jaded - about - branding branding of Blackspot and Antipreneur? Or did this have to do with the MacLeod / Doctorow / Fawkes / Godin dialectic of whether branding is dead or not or is or not, kinda? No one disputes that “people who like using the word ‘Brand’ a lot are assholes,” but how could anyone refute Godin’s final say, in haiku form:
Big brands are dying.
Little brands are doing great.
Branding is a weird gig.I ventured over to the article, for something else entirely:
There is no shortage of logos in the world, no dearth of brands striving for consumer allegiance and no chance that the creation of new brands and logos will cease. In fact there’s an interesting subset of brands and logos that don’t bother with what seems like a crucial component: an actual product, service or company. Consider the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. It’s part of the fictional universe depicted in the 1979 film “Alien” and its sequels; Nostromo, the spaceship freighter in the first movie, is a Weyland-Yutani vessel. The company doesn’t do much in the way of branding in, you know, reality. But as it turns out, it’s possible to buy yourself a Weyland-Yutani T-shirt, or even a Nostromo T. It also turns out many people have. ::link
Oh. Cool, t-shirts. I want one.
It’s the weekend. Let’s all just sit back and listen to Orchestra Baobab (c/o Andres).
- carrot/rope
“Finally, fresh, organic and locally grown clothes!” says Alex Lau (sarcastically?).
Consumers demanded fresh food before they understood what organic food was. Then we wanted local and fair trade food, or better yet, direct trade. Now we’re starting to see that clothing can be organic. But “locally grown” clothing? Even when the Economist tackles the question of whether ’tis nobler to shop locally, it’s just talking about food.
If what we eat is good for us and also our community, shouldn’t what we wear also be?
Just because most of what we wear is grown and manufactured overseas doesn’t mean it has to be that way. American Apparel has branded itself as “brand-free, sweatshop-free,” “made in downtown L.A.” and “vertically integrated manufacturing,” and at least some of their organic cotton comes from California. As the largest textile manufacturer in the U.S., the impact would be huge if they supported California agriculture by sourcing local (think of all the green-collar jobs). But if they’re going public, will that be an option?University of Vermont associate professor of environmental studies Stephanie Kaza, in describing a project by then-student Stevia Morton, says:
“‘Buying local’ is now a common phrase among those concerned about sustainability, but usually we think of it as applied to food,” explains Morton’s advisor, Stephanie Kaza, associate professor of environmental studies. “Stevia’s project raises the possibility of buying local in clothing — something almost impossible in the United States. Her work is on the forefront of what I hope will be an emerging values movement in support of locally grown clothing. Offering this alternative is one way to voice concern for sweatshop labor, corporate control of production and fashion homogenization.” ::link
Playing on the “100-mile diet” (the idea of only eating foods grown within a hundred miles of your table), Obviously.ca gets credit for coining the phrase “100-mile closet.” And just as the 100-mile diet is an impossibility for most of us on the planet, but serves as a standard to measure against, the 100-mile closet (the idea of a wardrobe packed with locally sourced and manufactured clothes) gives us the mental framework on which to “hang up” all the clothes we’ve ever owned. It gives us something to look for when we shop that we’ve never looked for before.
I’d love to find out who is actually working on making it happen.
Over the next months, as part of marketing and entrepreneurship classes at BGI, I’ll be exploring these ideas. I’m going to use this blog (the 100milecloset category, to be specific) as a space to explore what it means to start a company focused on “fresh, organic and locally grown clothes.” Between the food system and the clothing system, between textiles and consumables, the line is blurrier than we should think.
Also, I bought 100milecloset.org… now what can I put there?
100-mile music: “By Night into Paradise” by Victoria B.C. band Chet.
