Courtney & Company designer, Wendy Hu, traveled to Nicaragua with buildOn’s founder, Jim Ziolkowski, to capture stories and progress from the field. Wendy art directed photo shoots and video shoots, edited in the field and posted remotely to Jim’s newly launched blog. The efforts were part of a larger campaign to provide buildOn volunteers, donors and partners real-time stories of buildOn’s work in action, from the field, as it’s happening. Over 20 stories, photos and video clips have been posted from the trek, which included 11 students from various Detroit high schools. They traveled to a remote village in Nicaragua to break ground on a school.
Additional video’s from that trip as well new updates will be posted from buildOn’s ongoing after school program work here in the states.
We’re back from our trip to Mali, and the ground-breaking ceremony for a schoolhouse in a tiny village about 4 hours southeast of the capital city of Bamako.
We would especially like to thank 
Cover New York sent us a thank you gift recently for the studio tour we gave the visiting USC Roski design students from earlier this year. How did they know that I desparately need this book? Must be reading my blog posts. Anyway, it’s a timeless and beautifully illustrated book. Thank you for your thoughtful gift.
The featured speaker for the evening was Dr. Laura Thompson, PhD and Director, Sustainability & Technical Marketing from Sappi Fine Paper. Her multimedia presentation was informative and educational. Designers leaving the event felt better equipped to make recommendations to their clients about important topics like forest management, recycled vs. virgin, wind power printing, environmental issues, and sustainability when producing corporate communications. Calin Shope, from The Hennegan Company, rounded out the presentation, adding valuable perspective from the print production side, giving designers a complete understanding of all aspects of sustainability.