It's a proven rule that anything you create for yourself is much harder than creating something for someone else. At Radish it takes us, on average, twice as long to finish any internal creative project (like our own website redesign or a new proposal layout) than it would to do the same for any of our clients.
Part of this is because client work always comes first, and we're always sliding our own projects indefinitely into the future. But part is also because it's just harder.
Take our annual holiday card: a chance for us to snail mail thanks and creativity to all of the awesome people who've supported, hired, cheerleaded, and partnered with us over the past 12 months. You'd think this would be a fun project - quick to design and fun to print, after all, we're full of ideas.
Occasionally, too many ideas. This year, we got hung up on creative concepts: should we do something with a video? Could we commission an amazing illustrator to do something custom for us? What if we animated something? Because we sell design, we wanted it to be unforgettable: creative, cool, original, and fun.
Before we knew it, three weeks had past and we still didn't have an idea everyone could agree on. Then, as if by some holiday magic, we figured it out.
As an agency committed to working on social impact projects, we decided to donate the money we would have spent internally producing this project to a local arts organization, Studio in a School. In exchange, we asked them to help design our holiday card.
Sixth-grader, Mariah, at PS 171 in Manhattan created this awesome painting. Mariah was one of nearly 30,000 New York City public school students that participated in Studio in a School programs last year. Studio fosters the creative and intellectual development of New York City children and youth through quality visual arts programs led by professional artists and provides programs for teachers and administrators. Founded in 1977, Studio’s work is based on the premise that every child in New York City, especially those living in high-need communities, deserves access to high-quality arts education.