Firebelly Design

Dawn to Speak at TEDxWindyCity

January 23, 2010

On February 10th, 2010, Dawn will be speaking at the first ever TEDxWindyCity event in Chicago. She is thrilled, completely honored and slightly terrified to have been selected as the sole woman to be representing Chicago's greatness for an 18 minute lecture. Alongside her will be Zach Kaplan the founder of Inventables and Don Marinelli from Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center. The evening will be moderated by Rabiah Mayas the Science Director at the Museum of Science and Industry with circuit bending sounds provided by Roth Mobot.

This will be a presentation like no other she's done before. It is already sold out, so we do apologize if you won't be able to be there in person. But in true TED fashion, it will be recorded and online shortly afterward. We will be sure to post the video once it is available.

And a huge thanks for all the words of encouragement, kind notes and continued support over the years. This would not have happened if it wasn't for the amazing people who've inspired her, believed in her and continually pushed her to be more (even if they weren't trying to).

Social Design Collective Interview

September 09, 2009

We're super excited that the Social Design Network reached out to the design community to ask us some questions. Our answers are a pretty transparent look into how we're able to do what we do.

Thanks so much to the many folks who sent in questions. We are always open to talking... so don't hesitate to ask if there is still more you'd like to know. Shoot us an email or post your questions to our Facebook page.  Read our answers at http://design21sdn.com

Big Props!

June 22, 2009

We don't often share all the awards the studio receives. We include a ribbon icon in our portfolio if a project has won an award or been given particular mention in a book, but we don't usually create a news post about each. And it's rare we talk about the folks in the studio who are behind each of them.

I feel like that mindset doesn't serve the folks who spend many hours and lose sleep over them... and it doesn't serve our clients very well either. So, I'd like to publicly congratulate the crew at Firebelly and the clients whose projects have recently won awards.

TheQueerist.com
Will, Keith, Antonio and of course Lissa (our client + new BFF) are Type Director's Club TDC 55 Winners for The Queerist website. If you haven't already been to the site, check it out because, not only is it beautiful to look at thanks to Will, but it's super technically cool on a count of Keith, and the witty, in-your-face writing is all the brainchild of Antonio (and he still claims he's not gay...).

CPSarts.org
Congrats also goes out to Will, Keith, Tom, Antonio and the crew over at the Office of Arts Education at Chicago Public Schools (David, Frank, Molly, Nancy, Charles Bill + Emily) for the tech savvy, ultra clean art department website that has been accepted into AIGA's 365 annual competition. Antonio's collaboration with the CPS folks on arcitecture made for a streamlined approach with Tom's clickable sitemap. With that bare-bones text version of the site, Will created a super sleek + modern site design to compliment the logo he had already done. Tom and Keith finished it up with a custom Rails backend system giving CPS complete control over all the content on their site at the same time allowing them to reach out to the over 400 schools and citywide arts partner organizations.

Both projects will be part of gallery exhibitions and appear in their respective annual design books. Jobs well done everyone!