One of the great things about working for Gretel is the diversity of projects that they bring in. Case in point: Rockwell Unscripted.

Modern furniture gods / champions of Bauhaus design Knoll came to Gretel last year to help them launch their new workplace furniture system, “Rockwell Unscripted” – created with legendary interdisciplinary architecture and design guru, David Rockwell. I was tasked with doing all of the writing for the printed book, which was repurposed for the digital platform.

To my delight, I was given free rein to really get playful with the language. I created a lexicon of “Un-words” to describe all of the things that Rockwell Unscripted was not. I then wove these words into headlines, body copy, and free form poetry that filled two page spreads throughout the book.

Creative Diector Weston Bingham and art director/designer Dylan Mulvaney had their own challenge: figuring out how to promote a new furniture system that didn’t actually exist yet. There were CAD drawings and sketches, but no finished pieces were to be produced until the book was already printed and at the trade shows. Gretel decided to unshow the collection by inverting the usual approach of showing off the product, and instead, put the the user experience and environment at the forefront, shifting the focus from the design nuances of the objects themselves to the experience, the product, simultaneously highlighted and hidden. I think their solution was brilliant, don’t you?

Check out the full project at Gretel’s site.