While our clients come from a diverse range of industries (financial services, education, travel, and medical to name a few), one sector that has become a specialty for us over the past decade is urban and environmental planning. Our clients in this sector include the Urban Land Institute (ULI), The Lawrence & Lillian Solomon Foundation; and the Mystic River Watershed Association. Many of the print and web projects we have designed and developed for these clients have also been among our most interesting and creatively rewarding.
Several of the books we have designed for the Urban Land Institute.
Our first client in this industry was the Urban Land Institute, an international organization of cross-disciplinary real estate and land use experts. Over more than twelve years we have designed and produced dozens of books and reports on urban planning and sustainable urban design for ULI. These include visual how-to books such as Getting Real About Urbanism, Pedestrian and Transit-Oriented Design, Master-Planned Communities; Creating Great Town Centers and Urban Villages, and Building Healthy Places. We also designed several annual award showcase books; technical reports on topics such as Infrastructure, demographics, and post-hurricane redevelopment; and dense textbooks such as the 400+ page Best Practices in Real Estate Development. In 2014, we even produced the organization’s Annual Report.
From Print to web
Last summer we launched our most robust website yet for the Solomon Foundation, an organization that designs and facilitates funding and development of a wide range or urban greenway and bikeway projects in Greater Boston.
This was a year-plus project to develop a new web platform on which to showcase the wide range of projects that the organization is involved with. Since the launch of the site, we continue to work with the foundation to add new project pages, and assist their inhouse staff in managing other content areas. Earlier this year we added a dynamic Year In Review section to showcase their recent accomplishments. And just last week we launched a new section of the site to promote a new initiative called Streets for Recovery that will allow the foundation to focus their expertise on helping communities create new shared open street networks as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Two years ago we also worked with the Mystic River Watershed Association to redesign their website to better present the news and events surrounding this busy urban waterway in metro-Boston.
In addition to these organizations we also have done work for other clients in related fields such as Landscape Architecture and Real Estate Development.
We often highlight how our editorial background and approach to design is a benefit to clients who produce content-heavy materials. For clients in a specific niche such as urban planning, having a deep understanding of their specific type of content, is even more of a plus.
These types of projects are also personally fulfilling, as John is deeply involved in development, open space, and preservation issues in his home city of Beverly, Massachusetts. He serves on the city’s Community Preservation Committee, Master Plan Committee, and an advisory committee that studied the reuse of a historic school building.
Please contact us if you have a project that would benefit from a design partner with experience and understanding of urban and environmental planning issues.
Solomon Foundation website design, development, and content management.
Mystic River Watershed Association website.