Congrats to My Earth Day Client!

April 23, 2013 Leave a Comment

JWR Inc, Johnson Creek, WI

It’s been online for a while, but there’s no better time than the week of Earth Day to congratulate JWR Inc. on their new website! And how fitting, considering JWR and its sister company NewWay Global are innovative leaders in the waste and recycling industry. They are my 2013 Earth Day clients!

Last year, the JWR marketing team came to me wanting an updated website. I did their site five years ago and it has served them well. It’s helped them earn recognition and they’ve built a reputation based on their quality products and reliable service. With this company image well established, JWR now wants to emphasize its forward thinking. As owner Dave Wolf says “JWR has always been successful with niche products. We’re always trying to be a year or two ahead of the game.”

What better way to communicate such eco-moxiness than a new website!

JWR’s team had a list of ideas of “must-haves” for their site. Earlier this year they were featured on The Environmental Report so they wanted a way to showcase this and any future videos. They wanted a responsive layout for a variety of communication devices. And they wanted to maintain their own content. Thanks to Ben Seigel, of Versa Studios, we came up with a great Expression Engine framework that allows easy CMS capabilities. JWR is doing a super job with it.

So congratulations JWR! And happy Earth Day to you!

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Filed Under: Creative Thinking: Good Business, Portfolio
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I’m So-So Sustainable. How About You?

May 22, 2012 Leave a Comment

Adunate's windmill

I’m starting a web design project for JWR, Inc., a major supplier of waste-to-recycling solutions. Meeting with their eco-forward team, which includes NewWay Global Energy, is like a shot in the arm of “I-wanna-save-the-earth” greenness.

Of course, this forces me to sit back and examine myself. I’m like all of you—I like to think I’m doing my fair share of green living. I work from home and save in commuting costs. We heat our home by burning wood that we cut ourselves (heck, we don’t even use air-conditioning). And we garden and raise our own meat.

But for all this, I wonder if I’m truly living a sustainable life? For every green thing I do, it seems there are anti-green consequences.

Take working from home, for example. I love my office in this old house out in the country (that’s my windmill by the way—isn’t it cool?). But really, whenever I need to meet a client, purchase office supplies or get out just to stay sane, I drive at least ten miles one way to the nearest town (a rather small town at that). A trip to Madison or Milwaukee, which I do weekly, is 45 miles one way. Obviously, I can’t get too smug about my not-so-minimal carbon emissions.

What I can do though is keep plugging away, even if it seems to be of little effect.

I can minimize electricity usage and shut down my technology at night (oh, that’s a hard one). I can make full use of my computers and not upgrade with every new gadget. I can educate my clients of sustainable paper options and environmentally-friendly inks.

I’m betting there is more I can do. In fact, Wisconsin has several organizations that offer education and point-based recognition to businesses striving to be sustainable.

  • Green Masters Program enables “Wisconsin businesses of all sizes and from all sectors to understand what needs to be done to justifiably claim that they are ‘on the road to sustainability.’ “
  • Travel Green Wisconsin is the “first state-sponsored sustainable travel green certification program in the nation and has become a model for sustainable travel efforts both nationally and internationally.”
  • Organic Consumers Association is a directory of eco-friendly products and businesses. Choose your state.

Anyone know of similar groups in other states? Or how about your ideas for operating a green business?

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Filed Under: Creative Thinking: Good Business, Where I Work
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Hamilton Wood Type Preserves a Magnificent Print

December 29, 2011 Leave a Comment

Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, Two Rivers, Wis.

This week I dragged my husband and son out of our holiday hibernation and up to the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin.

What a cool place!

Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, Two Rivers, Wis.

The museum is located in an age-old manufacturing plant used by the Hamilton Manufacturing Company, now known as Thermo Scientific. The building is as interesting as the wood type.

Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Wooden letters are everywhere! The museum has 1.5 million pieces of wood type in more than 1,000 styles and sizes. It also has an amazing collection of advertising cuts from the 1930s through the 1970s.

pantograph at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Back in the day, type cutters used this pantograph router to cut new letters while tracing an old letter. Hamilton manufactured wood type until the late 1980s.

Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Hamilton made the drawer pulls too. Aren’t they a wonderful contrast to the modern label-maker strips?

Letterpress ink at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

 Ink and supplies from the old days.

Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

The museum’s 40,000 square feet is packed with antique machinery — presses, sanders, and so much more. They’re beautiful.

lithograph machine at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Lithograph printing: An era that followed letterpress.

Learn letterpress at Hamilton Wood Type & Museum, Two Rivers, WI

Hamilton offers letterpress seminars and opportunities to use its equipment. I’m so planning to sign up for a class!

Artists customarily leave a sample of their work so the museum walls are truly a gallery. Aren’t they fun?

Letterpress blocks, Hamilton Wood Type & Museum

Wood Type: I think they’re so beautiful! Their use in letterpress is such an important part of our printing history, and, interestingly, it’s an art form being revitalized today.

Thanks Hamilton Wood Type & Museum for making this happen!

 

 

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Filed Under: Stepping Out
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Glamorous in Its Own Way

July 12, 2011 Leave a Comment

Drew Carrier Company, Waterloo Antique Mall, Waterloo, WIThis past weekend my husband and I were hit with the antique bug, a periodic affliction that sends us perusing auctions and antique shops. The auction we hit was a dud. But the Waterloo Antiques Mall in Waterloo, WI, was divine. As I told owner Sherry Rehm in an email, I’ve compiled my shopping list!

I also asked Sherry about her building. It’s such a beautifully restored, old structure and I wondered of its history.

Here’s what she has to say:

The 22,000-square-foot building was built in 1909 by the Drew Carrier Company, a manufacturer of dairy barn manure handling equipment. Not the most glamorous, as Sherry says. But, hey, anything dairy is so very Wisconsin.

The Drew Carrier Company was also impressive. According to Sherry, its equipment was a great time saver for farmers and very innovative for its day. Later the company added more dairy equipment to its production, as well as parts for doll buggies and other children’s toys.

In 1923 the Drew Carrier Company sold the building to McKay Nursery, a large, plant nursery in Waterloo. McKay used it for plant storage and makeshift housing for migrant workers.

Drew Carrier Company, Waterloo Antiques Mall, Waterloo, WI

When Sherry and her husband Bob bought the building in 2003, it had no lighting, heating or cooling systems. She describes it as a “solid building but it needed over 22 windows per floor, restrooms, elevator, interior walls, etc.”

Today, the renovated building offers a 10,000-square-foot showroom for quality, pre-1959 antiques and art from local artists. The lower level is home to the Waterloo Auction House, a monthly auction of consigned pieces. And the third floor provides office space for Bob’s business Badger Hotel Development Company LLC.

Maybe you’d also like to have an office in a great, old building? Sherry says her husband’s business doesn’t need the full third floor and they’re looking to rent out part of that space.

She also says the building has great karma. There you go!

 

 

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Wednesday Webs 2-9-11

February 9, 2011 Leave a Comment

Today I’m working at my office on 1st and Pittsburg. Looking out the window, there are old, manufacturing buildings everywhere, many of them now repurposed in new ways. Sad that not all buildings can be renovated as they age and maintained for a dignified usefulness.

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