Special stuff on this one ladies and lumbergents! While on our cross country trip this summer we visited Morgan’s Nana’s cabin in the wonderful Fishtail Montana. We made loads of new friends and had awesome adventures. While prowling around on the cabin property I checked out the garage… It was a virtual treasure trove of awesome looking tools. With hungry eyes I snatched em up to immortalize them on the blog. I conferred with Nan and some of these tools belonged to her father, Bopo (dating them back to nearly 1940!). Look at how sturdy all the hatchets are. Check the awesome leafy embellishments on the saws. Behold the magnificent patina nearly 70 years has put on the tools. Get this sucker quick for yer’ desktop. By special request: room for your icons on the right! (You are welcome Mr. Rockwood)

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Hello, long lost friends! David and I have been having a GRAND time seeing the sights in Montana and Seattle…here are the first few days in a nutshell.

Wednesday, July 28th

David and I get dropped off at the airport by Mr. John W. Slavens and our journey begins. Working on the airplane and in the airport, we actually got a lot accomplished on our day of travel. We finally arrived in Montana about 3pm Montana time to the Hans, Mads, and Nan waiting for us. We were so excited to be there. The pictures are of me and Bentley Rose, my cousin Jason’s slobbery bulldog and our arrival into the lovely town of Fishtail, MT.

Thursday, July 29th

Our new friend Michael comes to pick us up from the cabin and takes us (and his two adorable furry friends Rags and Twig) to hike Woodbine. It was absolutely beautiful, the weather, the sights…everything. In the evening, Nan drove us in her country van to look for elk around Fishtail. Saw no elk, but got a shot of this gorgeous sunset. OH yeah, and David found a Hatchet.

Friday, July 30th

We hiked up Sioux Charley (or, as David referred to it- Sioux Robert) and it was just as beautiful as Woodbine. The whole hike is along the Stillwater river, and once you get to the top you can see Sioux Charley lake. The view is absolutely incredible. Later that night, Nana planned a big dinner to introduce us to all of her Montana friends, and we had a blast. David cooked some prize winning steak (Larry the chef said it was “incredible”) and won everyone over, and Mads, Han and I made up a new sport…Speed Croquet. Like Nana says, everyone around those parts is a character- and the whole bunch is likened to the show Northern Exposure (and apparently we’re too young to really get the reference). We love our new Montana friends…they don’t make neighbors like these anymore.

The second picture below is our “cover of a romance novel” shot courtesy of the Mads. Sioux Charley is in the background through the trees.

Saturday, July 31st

This was one of the coolest experiences of my trip. A little background for you on the Slavens tribe…my grandfather came from a tiny town in Montana called Molt. When I say tiny, I mean its like mostly dirt and a few people live there. Anyways, his father, my great grandfather Herschel Slavens owned the Slavens Mercantile, which served as the post office, grocery, and several other town functions. Well, the new owners have transformed the Mercantile into a breakfast joint called the Prairie Winds Cafe that brings people in from all over. They have a bluegrass band that plays on Saturdays, which was super fun. We got to meet our cousins out there for some pickin’ and grub. After eating, I noticed there were a couple of old books on the shelf with some writing on them, and when I opened them up I found they were invoices Herschel signed in the 30s. So rad. We walked around and saw Pops’ old room, the Molt School, and the Holy Rollers Church. We pretty much got a view of the town at the top of the hill. I rescued a newspaper from the 50s that spoke of Chinese communist suspicions from an abandoned house. That afternoon, back in Fishtail, Maddie, Hannah, David and I walked over to the Muddy Lamb and painted some pottery. I included a couple of mugshots for ya…

More of Hatchet’s Transcontinental Trip in a Nutshell to come! Miss you all…

The lumberfolk here at Hatchet Design LLC have decided to take their shop on the road and sow their wild oats on the great plains, tall mountains, and frigid Pacific Oceans of this fair country. We have embarked on a two and a half week excursion into the heartland and out to the opposite coast of our fine shop, working, seeing sights, and experiencing new things to keep us fresh. With an itinerary spanning the entire North American Continent we are sure to encounter many new things and cool ideas. We will post photos and inspiration from the journey here on our blog. STAY TUNED

Here is a little sneak peek at some fresh roasted branding from your very own Lumber-people at hatchet design. Website Launch is happening very soon along with some more collateral coming down the pipe at light speed! Keep your eyes peeled on the horizon for more…

In an attempt to create some friendly competition between those in Orlando’s creative community, Hatchet Design LLC and Raphsodic Cooperative Company are hosting Central Florida’s First Annual Designer Showdown! If you haven’t already been to Raphsodic, you are in for a treat (no pun intended…OK…you’re right. Totally intended). They are pretty dang rad, and vegan friendly to boot! They state in their vision “We will make “community” our cause, and seek to cultivate it,” and they are definitely a bakery of their word.

We will be playing Win! Lose! Draw! (which I’ve been describing to people as glorified pictionary), so get ready to play. I can’t tell you the word/phrases you will be drawing from,  but I can tell you that hilarity must ensue…it just has to. You can form your team and show up ready to draw or pick a team when you get there. It would have been way cool to play at High Noon, but we planned to begin the festivities at 2pm, and start the Win! Lose! Draw! Tournament at 4pm. The winner will get a free box of goodies, complements of the lovely Raphsodic. We will also be holding a cupcake design competition, so be ready to create the best looking cupcake design of your whole entire life! Everyone is invited, and its open house style…so come grab a delicious cupcake and have a great time with your fellow Central Floridians. We look forward to seeing you!

Location:

Raphsodic Cooperative Company
www.raphsodic.com

MAP
710 N. Mills Ave.
Orlando, FL 32803
Telephone: 407.704.8615
Fax: 407.704.8615

Date: Saturday, July 24

Time: 2pm – 8pm, Open House style

Festivities: Cupcake design competition, come and go as you please. Win! Lose! Draw! Tournament, signup at 3pm- draw at 4pm.

Ahhhhh fresh air.

It was so nice to go to North Carolina and take a little break from the usual. Its funny how my perspective has changed of the place I’ve been going to since I was very young. Since getting into the program in college, I see everything through design goggles. Driving through the mountains makes me wonder where the art of the hand-painted sign has gone? I wonder why we’ve lost the creativity that is required of living a country lifestyle. With all of the flashy neon and sell out advertising, it is nice to go to a place where there is no flash required and loyalty is a priority. It is less about having the newest, fanciest product and more about the relationship and experience of actually getting a product that will do the job just fine. Could I get a good greasy breakfast sandwich in Orlando? Yes. Could I go to a local breakfast joint and watch customers interact with such intimacy? No. Not in these here parts. The difference between here and there is the service, the history, the community, and the people. The simplicity I used to know of the country has now become a complex mecca of design and psychology.

One thing that really stood out to me were these large square paintings on the side of barns and buildings. I first noticed them driving through a town called Old Fort, NC. I made David slow down while I snapped these pics (above and below) out the window. How incredible are these? They stood out like a sore thumb among the architecture there. I started to notice that they were all over the parts of NC I drove through. Jefferson, Valle Crucis, Banner Elk. Each square has a unique quilted pattern painted on it, so I started to think maybe there was some sort of secret underground society putting these up, or they were a clan or tribe of people I wasn’t aware of, or something really romantic like that. After doing a bit of research, I discovered they are part of a campaign called the Quilt Trails Project, funded by Blue Ridge National Heritage Area, an amazing non-profit dedicated to preserving the culture of craft and heritage of Western North Carolina.

The project was born out of an initiative started in 2001, when a woman from Ohio painted a wooden block with a quilt pattern to honor her mother. Now they are sprinkled along the highways and roads in 6 counties in NC (Ashe, Avery, Mitchell, Madison, Yancey, and Watauga). In the article I read about this project from the publication Carolina Country, the Ashe County Arts Council director Jane Lonon says “We’ve got some up hootin’ hollers.” …that makes for “some mighty pretty drives.” Love it.

The Ashe County Arts Council has some more pics from the project. From a purely design standpoint, they are incredible. From a culture and heritage perspective, they are even more incredible. I love that something that was so important and held so much meaning in the past (both within the patterns and the act of quilting) is preserved on the side of barns in the heart of the Carolina country. Heres to our mothers, grandmothers, aunts and cousins who kept us warm with this form of art.

Last week, I had the privilege of creating some signage for the 2010 Fishtail Family Fun Day parade in Fishtail, Montana. The turn around time was pretty ridiculous (created Thursday night, printed Friday morning, picked up by the Unc on his way into town, and paraded around on Saturday!), but it was definitely worth it. Apparently, in part because of my Aunt’s insane marketing skills, the design will be painted all over the town. Whether it is or not doesn’t quite matter to me, I’m just glad I could be part of Fishtail Fun Day from 2,350 miles away. The sign was proudly displayed on the front of the (legally blind) 82 year old Grand Marshall’s four wheeler and carted down Main Street (in the photo above). Classic.

Fishtail has a population of 518 people, thats 1.54 people per square mile). My grandmother is a resident every summer in her cabin, and will be there until my birthday in September. The picture below is of the Fishtail General Store (courtesy of their website) a little after July 4, 1910. That was 100 years ago for those that don’t do numbers. Note: The old Ford sits in front of the store and across the street, a horse is tied to a hitching rail outside Jewett’s Saloon and Dance Hall.

Montana has a place in my heart for many reasons. One is that it is the place where my grandmother and grandfather came from. Two is that it is one of the most beautiful places you’ll ever visit. And three, some of my favorite memories, or what few I have of them (I was cursed, or blessed? with a terrible memory) are there.

Hatchet is going to visit Fishtail at the end of July, and could not be more excited.

So anyone who has watched any sporting event with me in recent months knows a rather disturbing fact/fetish of mine. I am in love with… luxury car leasing screens! When a good Mercedes or Lexus leasing lock-up appears on screen, I jump up and yell something dorky like:

“Look at that grid, suckers!”

-or-

“Well kern my letters those Germans can sure make a handsome leasing screen!”

Yeesh… It’s really embarrassing. I scoured the web for examples for a good half hour and got nothing (I guess you need a camera, big TV, and great reflexes to catch one of these beauties in the wild.)

Now that my confessional is out, I used this sordid love affair as inspiration for a hatchet desktop. It was a really fun exercise and I hope to do more in the future. For now though you can plaster my self-indulgent lock-up on your computer screen and save up your pennies for a Hatchet brand Hatchback (obviously). Props to Mr. Neubau for the car.

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This just keeps getting better. I just read article two, and it was just as amazing as the first one. This article was written by Amy Smith, an instructor and founder of D-Lab (Development through dialogue, design, and dissemination) at MIT, who writes about the Fuel from the Fields project. This project aims to find a solution to the need for healthy, renewable fuel that plagues the nearly “2.5 billion people using wood, charcoal, or dung for their cooking and heating needs.” Smith highlights the fact that “the leading cause of death in children between the ages of one and five is not malnutrition, diarrhea, or malaria, but respiratory illness caused in large part by breathing the smoke from indoor cooking fires.” Shocking, isn’t it?

The Fuel from the Fields project, tested on the people of Haiti, is an example of true problem solving, as are most of the designs in this book. The article runs through the trial and error process that accompanied the development of a source of fuel for the poor. The result of this project, after much testing and collaboration with those actually using the technology, was the development of a process by which to create charcoal briquettes out of agricultural waste (corncobs, sugarcane, etc). This result has an incredibly positive impact on the common deforestation practices that occur because of the great need for firewood, and also has the benefit of being completely safe for those burning the fuel (as opposed to the other sources that caused the respiratory problems in children mentioned before). ALSO, this process has the ability to create jobs in that the only investment required to become a briquette-maker is $10, which can be made back within one week of selling the product. As Smith notes in the article, this is a “win-win-win situation…”

Smith credits this type of design with being influenced by three fundamental movements:

1. The “appropriate technology movement,” based on the book Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher. This movement established the need for design that uses a community’s resources to create jobs.

2. Participatory Development – Novel idea… communicating directly with those who have the problem, in order to be able to solve the problem effectively.

3. Co-creation, or collaboration with the community/customer in designing the product.

Remember when I went to Mexico? Maria Rogal’s d4d (or design for development) class I took at UF is a great example of all of these things.

The Charcoal Project is also doing things to solve this problem, make sure to take a look around.

The book is made up of several smaller articles by leaders in design and innovation of products for this audience. Last night, I read Paul Polak’s article. Paul Polak is the founder of IDE, or International Development Enterprises. He had so many amazing things to say, but his main points were…

• There is money to be made in designing for the other 90%. He says that the reason he thinks most designers design for the 10% of luxury consumers is “Because that’s where the money is.” There is this belief that there is no money in designing products for the world’s poorest customers. His counter to this, using the example of a high-cost drip irrigation system, is incredibly simple (yet brilliant):
  If a hundred million small farmers in the world each bought a quarter-acre drip system for $50— a total investment on their part of $5 billion—it would amount to more than ten times the current annual global sales of drip-irrigation equipment. These millions of small farmers could put ten million additional hectares under drip irrigation and increases current global acreage under drip irrigation by a factor of five.Well, when you put it that way…
• Going along with the last point, we must think of the world’s poorest as customers, not as charity cases. Polak says this completely changes the design process. He also has a “don’t bother” trilogy that I just love:
  - If you haven’t had good conversations with your eyes open with at least twenty-five poor people before you start designing, don’t bother.
  -If what you design won’t at least pay for itself in the first year, don’t bother.
  - If you don’t think you can sell at least a million units at an unsubsidized price to poor consumers after the design process is over, don’t bother.

• The three most important things to consider when designing for poor customers is:
  1. Miniaturization – make the design work on a smaller scale.
  2. Affordability (Polak quotes Vince Lombardi – Go Pack! – but changes a key word. Rather than “Winning isn’t everything; its the only thing,” Polak says “Affordability isn’t everything; its the only thing.”) – Quality is a key tradeoff for affordability.
  3. Infinite expandability – “If a farmer can only afford a drip system that irrigates a sixteenth of an acre, design it so he can use the income it generates to seamlessly double or triple its size the next year.”

Although these are just a few points in Polak’s short 7 page essay, he completely opened my eyes to designing for poor customers. I’m really excited to read what the rest of the essays are like…I’ve already seen the likes of a solar powered hearing aid, international video-conference doctor’s appointments, and the LifeStraw, a personal filter in the form of a straw that purifies water from the contaminated bodies many villages depend on. Very exciting stuff, I’ll post more as I go.