The Design Office is a place where individuals work together. Each designer works on his or her own commissions (alone or in collaboration with others) and develops uncommissioned projects for various means of distribution. Besides projects, we are accumulating a collection of Web and physical resources for use by our members and guests. There are currently four core members working full-time from the Office. We have an open call for proposals to use the space and/or our equipment.
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Who we are
Full-time members are the backbone of the Office. We currently are maxed out at four, but are interested in expanding to meet demand. Full-time members have full use of facilities, backup servers, Web site presence, commerce in the store and more.
Part-time members share desk space, have no long-term storage, and pay printing fees, short-term use of image database, live servers.
Project-length collaborators use The Office for a set project — whether printing archival photographs for a show, making book prototypes, scanning, or otherwise. Please check with us for rates and availability by the project. In some cases we do donate materials or services.
If you're interested in any of the above, please contact John*
Where we are located
Gaspee Building /
204 Westminster Street / 4th floor, #14
Providence, R.I. 02903 /
401-274-1913 Google Map
Resources available
Archival 24" wide Epson roll printer, color and tabloid BW laser printers
Image database (high-resolution, redundant archiving), local server
Books, Pantone color chips, licensed fonts and software
Still and video cameras, high resolution film scanner, light table
Saddle-stitched binding stapler, other book arts materials
The Gaspee Building is located on historic Westminster Street in downtown Providence. Once called the "Westminster Mall" for its high density of shopping stores. Designed by Geo Waterman Cady in 1876 and joined by the Dorrance Building shortly thereafter, these two buildings face the old Providence Journal Building and the Biltmore Hotel.
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Additional information:
Our name
Our name describes what we do, and where we do it. It fits with Providence's pre-World War II heyday, before the transition to a brand-oriented society.
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See some names that we like:
About the Web site
The site is a growing resource of information for use by members and visitors to the site. It takes its cue from text-driven databases (pre-graphical??). Using delicious to manage links, resources and project categories (authors), the site is simple and is easy to learn/use for those who use The Office for short periods.
John and Rebecca designed and developed the site with a few concepts in mind. 1) As a digital resource. 2) With a timeless design that doesn't require constant redesigning. 3) to visually enforce our pre-mid century design fetish/mixed with a bit of early 80s technology.
In addition to our own xhtml, we use delicious to handle linking, Photoshelter as an image archive, Word Press for blogging and PayPal for the store.
