Holidays by Design 2009

This year I was honored to participate in the Kansas City DIFFA (Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS) event on 11/21.

The annual event raises money to help in the fight against HIV/AIDS in the Kansas City area by auctioning off holiday wreaths created by local designers and artists.

It was a beautiful event! Check my Flickr page for more photos.

National World War I Muesum

Veteran's Day is this Wednesday November 11th, and I just found out through The Kansas City Convention & Visitors Association's (VisitKC) Twitter page, that the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial will be offering free admission to the public on this day of honor.

Liberty Memorial is a short walk away from Hallmark, and has beautiful views of downtown Kansas City and Union Station (as you saw on my Autumn post). I've always wanted to climb up to the top of the memorial, I'm thinking of going over on Wednesday!

KC Massacre

Hey Folks,
I know I have been gone for a while, but I'm not gone for good (not yet). Things have been absolutely insane with all the cool new products that Hallmark has been working on, but that's another blog for another time. For now, I just wanted to show you some of the cool stuff that was going on at T2, a video production company in the Crossroads of KC. Enjoy their horror movie inspired First Friday massacre...



I hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween (and sent lots of Halloween cards).

love,
Josh

Beautiful!

Moving from Florida to Kansas City and experiencing autumn for the second time has been really wonderful. Most of the trees in the city are changing, so yesterday I took the time during my lunch break to appreciate the colors and take a few photos. Some I took right outside our buildings, and the others I took at Liberty Memorial. Enjoy!

Ripple Glass

Keeping with the theme of Jeanee's recent post on climate change, I'm excited to post about a new Kansas City company that is impacting local recycling efforts in a big way. Under what is being called "the nation’s first self-contained metropolitan recycling system," Ripple Glass, which launches starting on November 1st, will help shatter the reluctance of Kansas City residents to recycle glass containers.

The Kansas City metro area has a pretty solid curbside recycling program, but that program no longer includes the pick of glass bottles and jars (pickup of bottles and jars in ended in 2003 due to the hazards of sorting broken glass and the problems of separating broken glass from other recyclables). When curbside pickup of glass ended, there were very few locations to recycle glass, so accessibility became an issue, and participation in glass recycling dropped drastically -- KC residents currently recycle only 5% of their glass, compared to the US average of over 28% -- eeeek!

That's where Stacia Stelk, Mike Utz, John McDonald and Jeff Krum, who also work for Boulevard Brewery, came up with a plan. Mike and John actually came to Hallmark about a year ago to present the Ripple Glass idea to Hallmark's Eco Team, an internal interest group focused on Hallmark's green initiatives. I was fortunate to see them present at that time. Their plan was simple: KC metro residents would be able to recycle their household glass (bottles, jars, etc.) at multiple area locations, the glass would then be picked up by a local company, taken to two local companies (Owens Corning and CertainTeed Corp), and recycled into fiberglass insulation and other products. They had me at hello, so to speak.

It took a little time, but they've now got all the logistics figured out, financing (by several local businesses) secured, and are ready to launch! I'm very excited that Hallmark has agreed to participate in the Ripple Glass efforts by having a glass drop-off bin right outside out building!

Read the full Ripple Glass story here, and if you're a KC local, support this program! With over 60 glass drop-off locations, 95% of metro residents will have less than a 5-minute drive to a drop-off location -- you have not reason not to support Ripple Glass! Thanks to Stacia, Mike, John and Jeff for seeing an opportunity to making a difference -- and to taking it!

Blog Action Day: climate change

Blog Action Day is today, October 15, 2009. Thousands of bloggers will unite to blog about a particular issue that is affecting our world on a grand scale. This year the topic is climate change.



Today I blogged on my blog about the connections between climate and food.

I talked about purchasing sustainable local food. Sustainable agriculture involves food production methods that are healthy, do not harm the environment, respect workers, are humane to animals, provide fair wages to farmers, and support farming communities.

At Hallmark we just completed the summer of a community supported agriculture program. Every Wednesday we picked up a bag of food from local Kanas City Farmers through Hen House. It was fun to get vegetables I'd never buy in the store. But next summer I need to be more adventurous and try to make more recipes. I threw some of the scary squashes away :(

Also, here are some local Kansas City spots that are supporting local farming.
In Kansas City, Bad Seed Farm Market is a local, natural & sustainable food producer marketing to nearby, conscientious consumers. Their farmer's market is open every Friday night, 4:30 - 9p (May thru Nov. 20th). They have a winter farmer's market also.

And... The Farmhouse in Kansas City has bi-weekly farm-to-table-dinners. Four courses meticulously planned for your enjoyment using only the most fresh ingredients available from the farms that week.

Buy local. Eat local.

Have you been to our careers website lately?

Our careers website has been revamped (by our in-house Marketing Design Studio) and is a great place to explore what it's like to work at Hallmark. There are videos, answers to the most asked questions, fun stuff about our Hallmark culture, info on Kansas City, etc. Search jobs, find out about internships, or just wander through it and be entertained.

www.hallmark.com/careers <----check it out!

ARTIST TRADING CARDS

September's Artist Trading Card (ATC) trade was our three year anniversary and me passing the reins onto Steph and Gayle! The theme for the at Hallmark was whatever we wanted.

Here are couple of the cards from the trade.



It's so fun to be able to get together and work and do creative stuff!

You can see more at the ATC blog.

Hallmark 100th anniversary

We're doing a cool project here at Hallmark. For the 100th anniversary celebration there are 500 crowns for designers to design on. We can do whatever we want!

Here are the blank white crowns waiting for us to have our way with.

They will be displayed here in the Hallmark art gallery in January 2010. Cool huh?

something something something... voiceovers for Disney...something something... Bret Iwan....

Previous blog post to return at a later date... I'm such a tease.

Exciting News!

Hallmark Among “Best Places to Work”

on Latest Corporate Equality Index

I am a member of the Hallmark Employee Resource group called HERE: Hallmark Employees Reaching Equality, and in our meeting today we celebrated a great accomplishment in our company history! As of yesterday Hallmark became one of the 305 major U.S. businesses to achieve a perfect 100 score in the annual Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI) survey.

Organizations receiving a score of 100 are recognized as one of the "Best Places to Work" for and support of equality for GLBT employees.

So congratulations to everyone who made this possible! Woohoo!!! News like this makes me proud to work here.

You can read the official press release
Also...Hallmark was featured in the GLBT News Magazine Advocate.

The Drifting Creatives

Last week, we had the pleasure of touring the Drifting Creatives around Hallmark!

If you are not familiar, these 2 guys, Martin and Gavin, are recent design graduates from Texas A&M University. Rather than sit around and be jobless after their May graduation into this tough economy, they hit the road. Now they're "designing their way across the country:" living in their cars, showering at car washes, picking up design projects here and there, and rubbing elbows with some of the nation's top designers and creatives.

They spent last Monday-Thursday in KC getting to know some of our local design firms such as Willoughby, Barkley, and Reactor. Keep and eye on their blog as they are sure to talk about their visit to Kansas City soon (though, we hear that when one lives in their car for months on end, the internet connection is spotty at best).

In the meantime, you can read about all of their adventures by visiting their blog.

Thanks to Martin and Gavin for visiting Hallmark! We wish you guys the best of luck (and are kinda jealous of your spontaneity and admire your sense of adventure!)