Welcome Nina + Robyn!

We are super excited to have two new interns with us for the summer. Nina and Robyn (pictured above left to right) are both Seattle-area natives, friends and sophomores at the Rhode Island School of Design. They will be working on a number of projects while they are with us, but they can't seem to get enough of making, so we are keeping them busy with lots of Electric Love ring production as well as Bound mirror wrapping starting next week.

Here are short bios that Nina and Robyn put together for us with links to their work:

Nina Raizel: "I am a rising sophomore at RISD, majoring in jewelry. When not making jewelry, I love beading, knitting, sewing, working with wood and metal, doing taekwondo, and baking cupcakes. I enjoy interning for Grain because of their innovative designs and their dedication to using sustainable materials. You can see my work on Etsy here."

Robyn Luk: "Having discovered an interest in woodworking and furniture design over wintersession, I will be studying Furniture Design when I return to RISD in the fall. My curiosities include the workings of sustainable design and business in this field, hence my enthusiasm about interning at Grain. During my spare time, I enjoys wildlife photography, woodworking, baking, and reading. Feel free to check out some of my work here."

Here's to a fun summer on Bainbridge!

Grain in the new RISD XYZ magazine!

Rhode Island School of Design's new alumni magazine, RISD XYZ designed by WellNow Design, is finally out. Inside, we were excited to find our Sololá purses featured next to Paul Loebach's Gradient Table and Micheal Maltzan's Skid Row Housing Trust which we hope to see when we are in LA later this week.

Thanks Liisa for thinking of us again!

Ty D.I.Y. Edition at RISD Works!

We just had to share the photo we received from RISD Works of their in store display of Ty D.I.Y. Edition. Kind of the best example ever! Thanks Matthew!

More places to find Ty in 2010...

Ty D.I.Y. Edition will soon be available at the following new retailers throughout the US and Canada:

Green Depot
Green Depot is the nation's largest green building supplier. Ty and Ty D.I.Y. Edition will be soon be available through their website and in their LIVE store in Manhattan on Bowery (between Spring and Prince).

Carbon Environmental Boutique

Our first Canadian retailer is located in the historic heart of downtown Edmonton, Alberta. Carbon’s mission is threefold – to showcase and support environmental manufacture, to encourage and fortify ethical business practices and to advocate and promote non-toxic living.

Annie's Blue Ribbon General Store
A modern general store for a well-lived life, combining the charm of a country general store with the sophistication of a modern city lifestyle in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.

MCA Denver Shop

Founded in 1996, MCA Denver became the city's first contemporary art museum. Two years ago David Adjaye designed it's new LEED GOLD Certified home in lower downtown. As of last week, you can find Ty D.I.Y. Edition's in their great museum shop.

risd|works

Located in Providence, every item featured is designed and made by Rhode Island School of Design alumni and faculty. All profits from risd|works sales are returned to RISD for use in furthering its mission.

Thanks RISD Views!

It was cool to find Grain mentioned on a number of pages of the Spring 2009 RISD Views magazine. Firstly, our Sustainability Systems Strategist, Sami Nerenberg (also the youngest adjunct faculty member at RISD) contributed an inspiring article (pages 10-13) entitled Changing Design / Designing Change. 

Reminder: Sami needs your vote on Ideablob this week. Please support her amazing Room by Room project here. 

Secondly, Grain was grouped with our friends at Ecolect and Dawn Danby of Aylanto in a section called Designing a Sustainable Future (page 28). 

Finally, there was a nice little mention of the summer program that I led at the Seattle Art Museum last year called Re+Vision: Design Your (Neighbor)hood (page 33). 

Download the full magazine here. Thanks again RISD!

Go Time! Please Vote!

Thanks to all of YOU, we're in the FINALS - but now the real competition begins! Please vote again for our Room by Room pilot here!! Or if you haven't already, please take a minute to sign up!

As an exciting update, Room by Room has gotten a grant! As part of the stimulus package, the Workforce Investment Act has chosen Room by Room as one of its pilot projects to provide job training for at-risk youth!!

Plus we have a sweet new video! See above. :-)

Thanks for VOTING!!!

Timberland's EarthKeeper Hero!!

Good News! I've been recruited by Timberland as an Earthkeeper Hero for 2009!  What does this mean?  Well, Timberland has partnered with a social network called Changents.com to develop the Earthkeeper Heroes program.  Together, they are "talent-scouting" around the world for six high-potential green agents of change from Generation Y and providing a promotional/consumer engagement engine to "break" these individuals onto the global environmental scene.  I am one of the six! 

The objective is for Timberland to position its Earthkeeper brand and ethos as a vehicle that helps individuals become the catalysts of environmental change around the world.  For me this means more horsepower to drive exposure for my work in Design for Social Entrepreneurship at RISD and my upcoming summer project! 

Please check out my story area on Changents and if you care to stay updated on my adventures, "back" me! 

What is Good Design Now?

This months issue of Metropolis Magazine is a special product issue titled What is Good Design Now?. We were happy to see our Sami Nerenberg quoted in the Products for a New Age article (p.96-99). When asked about her recent studio Design for Social Entrepreneurship at RISD Sami said:

"There is a real hunger to work on these projects. Two years ago I was part of a minority at RISD interested in these issues. Today students are looking at our economy, looking at where consumerism has led us. They want to shift away from producing excess and do something that makes them feel useful."

It was also cool to see (in the same article) the Baby Incubator by Design that Matters that James worked on with Mike Hahn while at RISD. See his contribution on the Grain website here.

Hello Intern!

In partnership with Brown’s Environmental Justice outreach group and RISD, Grain is developing an illustrated book depicting Rhode Island stories of Environmental Justice. The final result of the project will be used as an educational tool for afterschool programs on environmental health and possibly used for the upcoming Community Environmental College. 

To work on this project, Grain has adopted an intern! Please welcome Bee as we introduce her here. Bee will be working with Sami Nerenberg to illustrate the RI stories throughout the Spring semester.

 

Bee (Beeyun Sally Jo) is a senior in graphic design at the Rhode Island School of Design. Originally from South Korea, she moved to Germany when she was in 6^th grade. She considers herself a balanced by-product of this global epoch and as a designer believes it is her responsibility to create projects of socially redeeming purposes. With her core interest in e-waste management, in partnership with Brown University, she is currently developing her Degree Project to create an active e-waste collection system on the RISD campus.

Bee’s experiences include interning at SIEMENS (Frankfurt), INNOCEAN advertising company (Seoul), and Teaching Assistant in RISD's foundation classes. She is also a part of RISD’s Respond|Design group, a community of artists and designers to create better solutions to environmental and social problems.  

As a small taste of what is to come, below is a quick sketch Bee did to visually depict the term "environmental justice." Stay tuned for more...

Design for Local Sustainability

Check out the final projects of Sami's Design for Social Entrepreneurship class at RISD on their website! Amazing work!

Grain Workshop at A Better World By Design

Grain will be leading a workshop as part of the A Better World By Design Conference this weekend in Providence. The following is a description of our workshop. It is based on the curriculumn of Sami's current design studio, Design for Social Entreprenuership, at RISD: 

Design for Social Entrepreneurship 

Grain Design: Sami Nerenberg, Brittany Kleinman, James Minola, Chelsea Green

Grain Design will travel with you to introduce and explore the meaning of the UN Millennium Goals and how these as a framework can be used to uncover overlooked design opportunities. After jumping into the world of design you will walk out of this workshop filled with entrepreneurial ideas as well as a process to consider how the power of design and design thinking can be used to address some of the leading problems of our day – internationally and domestically.

Sami Nerenberg to teach new RISD studio: Design for Social Entrepreneurship!

The Rhode Island School of Design has asked our Sami Nerenberg to develop and teach a new course in RISD's industrial design department! Her answer? An innovative new senior studio: Design for Social Entrepreneurship. Reading the course description (below) it sounds like it will be an amazing and inspirational experience for the lucky RISD students who get to take her class. Makes me want to go back to school! We'll keep you posted as the course develops.

Design for Social Entrepreneurship (DeSE)
RISD Fall '08

A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. This course aims to cultivate social entrepreneurial designers by investigating the power of product, system and service design to create positive social and environmental change. Looking at both international and domestic issues, this course asks, how can design and design thinking be used to solve the world’s leading problems to achieve triple bottom line sustainability—environmentally, socially, and economically? Structured around holistic thinking, collaborative and individual design work, with mentorship from experts in the field, this course uncovers how to design products and/or services, wrap a business around it, and create tangible positive impact in our world today.

>Sami's Blog
>RISD
>Grain

IDSA interview with our very own Brit Kleinman!

Interview with Brit Kleinman now up on the IDSA Rhode Island website! Topics include Grain, sustainable design, and what she's got in store for the future. Click on the link, or see post below.

> Full article
> Grain

Brit Kleinman interviewed for the Industrial Designers Society of America's Rhode Island Chapter

What is Grain?
Grain is a multidisciplinary consultancy that unites sustainability and business through design. As consumers and businesses continue to realize the hidden costs of the objects they use and create, both must evolve towards a more sustainable future. At Grain, we do not consider this fact a burden but a chance for innovation. Our commitment is to find new opportunities within markets and provide sustainable solutions, which exceed the expectations of both our clients and end consumers.

How did you decide to form the company?
Founded in 2007 at the Rhode Island School of Design, a ‘dream team’ of RISD talent emerged collectively actively asking how, as designers, we could make our world a better more sustainable place to live. There are many ways one could go about changing our unsustainable consumer culture. One way is by force through various forms of government regulation. Another is through education over time. At Grain, our first step is always to question what sustainability means within the context of each project. Even if a product is made "sustainable", we still have to question its relevance to society. Is it necessary to create new products, or is it more sustainable to provide a service-based design? There are numerous creative ways of looking at a problem to optimize the economic, social, and environmental value. Grain believes that by optimizing all three systemically, one can achieve the greatest outcome for the greatest number of people. There is no reason sustainable products and services can't be even more desirable than their inefficient and/or toxic cousins. As designers, we must help both businesses and consumers want what is also good. This is why we've created Grain.

Who is involved and how?
Right now Grain operates as a mixture of full time and part time designers. James Minola (RISD BFA '07) is our Founder and was the driving force behind bringing us together as a business. Chelsea Green (RISD MID '07, Pratt BFA '02), Partner at Grain, has also been instrumental in getting us to where we are today. Together, they work full time on both the business and design aspects of the company. The rest of the team includes Jackie Guido (RISD BFA '07), Sami Nerenberg (RISD BFA '07), and myself Brit Kleinman (RISD BFA '07). We all work independently for outside companies but come together to collaborate on Grain projects. We're a well-rounded group that all worked (or are currently working) for some very high profile companies. We're proud of Grain and believe firmly in what we stand for. We take all our outside experiences and contribute them to our larger goals with Grain.

How is Rhode Island a good place for design and business?
RISD has, of course, been a huge resource for us. The richness of its community is unmatched. We miss being students there, but we're definitely taking our passion and dedication for design to inform how we move forward with Grain. When someone's passionate about their work, you can see it in the way they talk about it, the way they interact with their clients, and in their end product.

What's up next for Grain?
We're a new company, so we're still doing everything we can to get out there and make an impact. We recently had two pieces in Design Within Reach's Modern + Design + Function furniture show in Seattle where we won the "Best Green Design" award. We also do outreach and have various internal projects going. Two of our designers recently did a workshop on design and sustainability with a class of 4th graders. I'm also working on AVO:Market (www.avoavo.com) which is a collaborative image guide and think tank for street markets all over the world. Recently AVO has been featured in international magazines and design blogs. The rest of Grain may get more involved with AVO through projects here in Providence for Fresh Farm RI. As we move forward we continue to design for competitions and look for exciting prospects for Grain to be a part of. The dream projects are the ones where the client is open and able to understand the value of innovation. We also believe design's role should extend far beyond product. Our clients don’t have to already be a zero-impact, Cradle-to-Cradle company to work with Grain. We're working to make change, and it's a work in progress.

>IDSA Rhode Island
>Grain

Eco-Thinking

Grain mentioned in our.risd.edu blog for Earth Day! We spent our earth day planting tomatoes and sweet peas in the kitchen garden... and as always, working.

>article
>grain

Grain in RISD e-views!

Grain is featured in this month's edition of RISD e-views! That's issue #37 if you're counting. Find us in the Look Around section (and tell a friend).

> Grain
> RISD e-views