Spring break design field trip

Junior, Tom Morse-Brown gives us some highlights of the Colorado Spring break trip. Read Tom's review and his photos below:

"Sixteen of us from the Graphic Design department went on a four day trip to Boulder and Denver, Colorado to visit CP&B, Vermillion, Moxie Sozo, Ink Lounge and Matter plus a cooperative critique with 7 students and faculty from the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. It was an inspirational and fun visit. Here are a few snaps:

First stop - Crispin Porter and Bogusky, a design firm whose employees work around the clock all the time - work is very much a lifestyle for them. They are very creative and have a wonderful space. They grew from 50 employees to 600 in just two years! They do work for many major brands such as Burger King, Coke Zero and Microsoft.

Their space is basically a huge boring looking warehouse on the outside, in the middle of an industrial estate, but on the inside, very cool. Lots of different spaces to be inspired in.

Vermillion was our next stop. A much much smaller firm in Boulder, about 15 employees. One of their managers who spoke to us used to work in the big firms, Pentagram for example and have as many as 100 people under her. Vermillion is now sort of the end of the line for her, a quiet design firm, still doing very solid work of course. They do a lot of the advertising for Izze so, free drinks all round!

Moxie Sozo is about the same size as Vermillion. Quality work, small business, very creative people, quite brilliant I think at what they do.

Some of the crew: from left to right - Dmitri Kozlov, Luke Babb, Andrea Morris, Sean Shockley, Lance Flores and Abby Gallagher.

Ninety percent of Ink Lounge's work is run of the mill design for small businesses around the Denver area. More importantly is the ten percent they keep under wraps: some amazing screen printing of very individual design work.

We spent a few hours with some RMCAD students in the loft of Michael McCoy in downtown Denver. It was good to give and hear feedback in a place other than our own studio. It was also good to be around Michael and his work and work by the other students too. This is Sean presenting his environmental type project.

The last place we saw was Matter. A very cool letterpress studio in Denver. The manager Rick is hilarious. He is a very learned man. Has an amazing library and extensive knowledge in print. He's also from England which makes him even cooler!"