Design Week my favorite time of the year. Okay, let’s be real, I put ???? at the top of my list. But for sure it’s a close second… or third. ????
I use Design Week as a tool to continue my professional education and meet cool people. Sometimes I end up at an event that is a different topic than I expected, sometimes I’m blown away by an event I was unsure of. Either way, the festivities range from free to affordable and are pieced together by the hard work of our professional neighbors.
Don’t let the word “Design” deter you. Whatever your industry or status in life, there is something at Design Week you may find interesting and relevant to you. City planning, ethics, storytelling, apparel design, virtual reality and much, much more. Needless to say, I have been an advocate since its inception.
So, I was really excited when Coates Kokes decided to dip their toes in the water and participate as a host in the festivities! For our first year, we chose to do an Open House. Our goal was to show off our branding, video and PR work, raise our blinds for some city views, and most importantly get to know more members of our ad and design community.
James was our lead designer and prepared all of our super cool signage and display materials:
Tim led the portrait studio and took some amazing shots for our guests:
Chapin taught everyone how to color grade videos, ah-maze-ing:
Christina made sure we were on track and tied in many fellow B Corp organizations into our event: Elephants Delicatessen, A to Z Wineworks, Stoller Family Estates, Wild Friends Peanut Butter, Nossa Coffee, and more.
It was a great exercise to get out of my day job and plan and prepare for an event on a day that had so many other competitive offerings. With 24 events and 27 other open houses the same day, we had some serious competition!
Our event was a blast, we had an amazing turnout, met a bunch of new people in the community.
Thank you to everyone who attended and made our Open House a big success! And a special thank you to Jeanie Coates and Steve Kokes for opening our doors, embracing the Portland design community and giving us free rein to illustrate dinosaur buttons!
More events here: https://designportland.org/calendar
