Kindness&Humility

We just received our newborn Wacom Cintiq 21UX at the office today and I am very, very impressed. It is buttery smooth and as wispy as you could ever ask a machine to be. Mort took it for a spin today and it was fireworks. Some of us cried.

Over the course of our renovation, we tackled quite a few projects without having a clear idea of how we were going to accomplish them, but none more so than our firewood walls. They turned out to be far more time consuming than we anticipated, and they took three times more wood than we estimated, but no other part of the office gets as much attention. We regularly get uninvited visitors who get a peak of the walls through our entryway and decide to pop on in for a tour and a 30-minute Q & A.

Take my word for it, watching this time-lapse video will leave your computer far cleaner than witnessing the actual build. (Get your mind out of the gutter, I’m talking about sawdust, you creep.)

Of all the woodwork that was carried out for our office renovation, none was as detailed as our little kitchenette. We did some rough math and figure that the entire kitchenette is made of more than 600 individual pieces of wood, each of which had to be planed, joined, sanded, assembled and finished. It was worth it though — it’s a real workhorse and it turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the renovation.

Photo: Lincoln Barbour

* * * * * * * * *

The Wood

Apart from the doors, which are made from old crates, the entire kitchenette is made of fir that we got from a 1904 barn from Wenatchee, via the ReBuilding Center. No plywood. Nothing from Home Depot. Just 103-year-old fir.

The dark wood on the left is what the fir looked like when we picked it up. The pile on the right has been milled down. We did this for every piece of wood used in the office — it was extremely time consuming.

To facilitate impromptu discussions between designers and programmers, we designed a sitting-height work table to tag team with the taller Brooklyn Streets Work Table and placed it right in the middle of our production area. Like its big brother the Brooklyn Streets Work Table, this table originally lived as a pizza oven, but now a quick push off your desk sends your chair gliding into a magical collaborative wonderland.

Photo: Lincoln Barbour

The rough sawn fir came from a barn built in the 40s in Sherwood, Oregon.

Perhaps I’m alone on this one, but I don’t think there is a project out there that is more difficult than designing and defining your own brand. Playing the role of client and designer, simultaneously, is a real trick. There’s no budget or deadline, nothing is ever good enough, and it is impossible to come up with a solution that feels finished…there is always something else to play with or explore.

As a result, we’ve been in brand limbo for quite some time. But, after what feels like 50-years in the making, we’ve finally finished up the core pieces of Parliament’s branding overhaul. If years of experience has shown us anything one thing it’s that nothing says, “We’re professional,” like atoms and robots, so we’ve got them and we’ve got them hard. And, I think we’ve found the perfect balance between we are finished and we will never be finished, which couldn’t make me happier. Let me explain.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

STEP ONE: Start with the badge. Every Parliament badge has a few core elements that never change. They consist of a scalloped base, a few rings, and a proudly centered PARLIAMENT set in Knockout.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

STEP TWO: Add a mark and a bit of copy. Our primary mark reads, A Creative Services Company. It is honest and straightforward and I’m looking forward to not hearing folks ask, “Now, what do you do?,” quite as often, which will save me — literally — hours each and every day. Or, perhaps, more literally, minutes of every week. Regardless, I’m looking forward to transferring that burden to this unassuming mark, which calmly announces, “Sir, we are a creative services company.”

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

STEP THREE: Repeat step two. At this time, we’ve developed a bit more than a dozen really solid badges, some of which contain our primary message, but most of them refer to one of our internal departments. Most of them map directly to the different phases of a project, for example, the badge used for our Working Prototypes Division is typically displayed in conjunction with Production, and our Hazardous Idea Division is linked to Strategy.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

All in all I’m really happy with how everything came together visually. The real success of this approach, however, lies in its flexibility. It allows us to continuously change and play with our ID, without ever altering its foundation, and it also lets each everyone contribute to the collection and take some ownership. Our membership cards are a great example our visual brand latitude — each member was able to choose whichever badge that they wanted for their membership cards, making each card reflect the owner’s taste.

Ultimately, I’m happy to get this wrapped up, but also looking forward to seeing where Parliament continues to push it. I think we’ve found a good balance of finished and unfinishable.

Many thanks go out to everybody who put forth the blood, sweat and tears necessary to finish up our membership cards. Here are just a few of our favorite moments.

Carlos in our production facility tediously adhered the ID photos to each of the cards. Our prayers are with him as he recovers.

Many thanks to Clarence for carving out some time in his busy schedule to make sure we had a signature that adhered to his strict standards.

Dane had an old roommate that left this Underwood typewriter in his basement, which worked out to our favor. We used it to type out all of our information, giving it all a really authentically imperfect feel.

It took about eight pages before we finally created the perfect pair of thumb prints.

Parliament’s membership cards are fresh and they are hot! Now better than ever, each member’s card sports one of six different ID photos (real photographic prints), different departmental seals, and Clarence Witherspoon’s official signature. Thanks to Pinball Publishing for all their production guidance and attention to detail with the printing.

Mort is one hot agent. He'll be making design groupies hot and sweaty for sure.

For all you designerds, there are the specs. Each card is printed 5/5 with a base of PMS 7457 and has a herringbone pattern overprint of PMS 628. Each side was then printed with PMS 328 (dark blue) and Black. An overprint of Magenta on the front and Reflex Blue for the signature on the back rounded out the press time, and then they were diecut.

The back comes complete with our studio's contact information, a set of thumb prints, and our Director Clarence Witherspoon's official signature.

Parliament’s membership cards are hot off the press and they wouldn’t be complete with identification photos, so we threw together a classy shoot for our executive team Monday afternoon. Everyone wore their finest and I have to say we are a good looking bunch, myself excluded. My skimpy stache is depressing, clearly.

Top row: Dane, Jono, Mort / Bottom row: Chris, Aaron, John

Black-and-whites for the membership cards

Parliament is getting ready to roll out a new ID,  here is a quick sneak peak at things to come…

We went to a press check this morning to see how the herringbone overprint on our membership cards is coming along.

I read once that no office could ever enjoy success without a work table constructed from a pizza oven and street signs, so I felt obligated to buy one. I turns out that they are very difficult to find. Luckily, I know a guy who knows this other guy who said that he could make one. This is how it went down…

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

STEP ONE: Find a pizza oven and take the base. We found ours in the basement of Rose’s Equipment and Supply down on SE Clay. If you haven’t had a scary-back-alley-illegal-bloodsport-tournament type of experience then head down to Rose’s basement. Keep your eyes peeled, bring a friend, and expect to find some crazy stuff.