Modern Species Turns Eight Years Old
It's hard to believe that it's been eight years since we launched this design studio in Madison, Wisconsin. Yet, when we look back on the company we launched in 2009 and compare it where we are now, it's almost hard to comprehend how we got here. In fact, it reminds me of the quote "most people overestimate what they can accomplish in one year, and underestimate what they can accomplish in ten". This has definitely be true for us, and I imagine for most of our clients as well. While we're super excited to see what Modern Species will look like when we hit that big ten year mark, for now we'd like to take a moment and reflect on some of the bigger changes we made during our eighth year in business.
1. New Team
With our co-founder and partner, Jen, deciding to go back to school to pursue a PhD in work psychology (Industrial Organizational Psychology), we had to shake a few things up. We started by bringing Tracy Wade Strand onto the team as a part-time contractor to help fill in for Jen's office admin duties. The rest of Jen's duties were then covered by Gage and Carla as they took on more of the project management, account management, and copywriting. Then when it was time for Tracy to move onto the new full-time role she accepted, we brought in Jake Jones to be our guinea pig project coordinator. He helped us research new project management and customer relationship management tools, helped us set up new processes and systems, and helped us fill our B Corp Impact Assessment. Once his contract period ended, we were ready to search for our full-time, permanent, project coordinator.
2. New Office
We recently moved into an awesome new office space in the historic Alaska Trade Building in Pike Place Market where we also started the Give A Shit collective to share space and ideas with fellow do-gooders, like Loxley CX.
3. New Clients
In our eighth year we started working with Javazen, Matchaful, Kickapoo Coffee, Fair World Project, Scratch And Peck, Brunner, Tuusso, Clean Pivot, and Ona Foods and continued working with our existing line up of amazing clients. We truly love them all.
4. New Recognition & Awards
We won GDUSA American Package Design Awards for Farmer Direct & Yumbutter. Our founder, Gage, spoke at Natural Products Association Northwest Expo and Organicology. Our packaging for Qet Botanicals were featured in Design to Renourish, a book on sustainable. Gage was interviewed for In Good Tilth an Oregon Tilth podcast (episode yet to be released) and a Design for Good webcast panel hosted by AIGA, the professional for design, and was also featured in the Organic Report in the Millennial Face of Organic article.
Cheers to the next eight years!