Designing for Good Works
Six years ago, we started Studio Rodrigo. We were very intentional in establishing an independent studio, so that we could pursue projects that were meaningful.
One dimension of meaning comes from finding client work that is cool, innovative, and has the potential to reach lots of people.
Another dimension involves partnering with mission-driven organizations who we believe are doing important work in the world, and finding out how to use our skill sets to amplify their mission.
The past year has re-enforced the importance of this mission and values-driven work to our studio. We’ve tried to be vocal about our values — we think it’s important that businesses, and particularly creative businesses, are clear and loud about the kind of world we want to live and work in.
As we start 2018, we are seeking initiatives that could benefit from creative collaboration. Please get in touch — info [at] studiorodrigo [dot] com.
What Can We Do?
We are a team of talented designers + creative thinkers. We can help you with:
- branding, logo designs, and identity systems
- posters, stickers, pins, t-shirts, and other graphic design things
- websites (using Squarespace or something similar)
- more complex websites, if appropriate (with our partners at Shift Lab)
- digital communications and campaigns
We have a great space in the Flatiron that can host small meetings, brainstorms, or other events.
We will work on a volunteer basis or project basis.
What Makes A Good Collaboration
Your organization or initiative:
- is mission-aligned to our values
- has clear goals + a timeline
- has a small, core team that can own your vision + is reasonably well organized
- ideally, your project has some built in network effects, so we can work together to really make an impact
- your project would benefit from a great design partner
Where Do We Want to Make an Impact?
There’s a pretty wide range of things we care about + will get involved to support. Some of our recent collaborations showcase work that we are proud of with communities we care about.
Supporting Creative Entrepreneurs
We fundamentally believe in the power of creative entrepreneurs to make the world a better place. Specifically, we mean artists, artisans, and craftspeople who give form, flavor, texture, and quality to our lived experience — and who show how making wonderful things in the world and being entrepreneurial can go hand in hand.
We’ve had the pleasure of an ongoing working relationship with Tze Chun and Whitney Shaw and their team at Uprise Art, who are doing an incredible job representing emerging artists and providing a unique digital and real world platform to connect artists and collectors. From the outset, Tze and Whitney have had an incredible vision and been incredible collaborators, and we love helping them realize and extend their vision to their network of creative collaborators.
Amplifying Voices
Feministing has a long history as a platform featuring a diversity of feminist voices. Kate Proulx established a fresh visual identity, and working closely with Lori Adelman and Jos Truitt, we helped revamp Feministing.com in 2015 to provide a confident, vibrant online presence to this amazing community of writers and activists.
Telling Vital Stories
Stories that help communicate the truth, nuance, and complexity of life seem more necessary than ever. We’ve been lucky to be friends with a lot of incredible folks in the podcasting and public media world — and always happy to help when they need a hand.
We’ve had the pleasure to work with the team at This American Life on the S Town podcast and both seasons of Serial. The team at PRX and Radiotopia have allowed us to help with everything from branding to designing their websites. And we had fun helping the good folks at Oscilloscope with the initial digital promotion of Kedi.
Working with great story tellers is, in and of itself, incredibly rewarding creatively — but we definitely feel like the value of stories to connect and ground us is important in our current political and cultural moment
Promoting Civic Engagement
While we aren’t normally in the business of digital advertising, we were very happy to help the team at TurboVote with their Get Out the Vote campaigns for the 2016 election and the 2017 state elections in New Jersey and Virginia.
We’ll continue to be engaged through 2018 on civic initiatives and supporting progressive candidates for office where we can.
Want to collaborate? Please get in touch: info (at) studiorodrigo (dot) com
