EY Design Studio Philadelphia

06/02/2022

(re)Introduce yourself to EY Design Studio with STUDIOUS—a curated series featuring the people, work, and unique culture at EYDS across the Americas! Hit the link to see the premier issue, “Pilot Study.” Thanks to Rob Tannen for the concept and Jess Paley for the custom illustrations!

**EY DESIGN STUDIO (EYDS)** is a network of user experience and service design teams situated across the Americas, bringing together top talent, human-centered methodologies, and cutting-edge tools to transform digital experiences.

05/27/2022

EY Design Studio × HEART 17 × United Nations Development Programme - UNDP: Sustainable Visions, Ideas, Hope from the Americas, 2022

“Designers are inherently makers. We’re most happy and fulfilled being creative, shaping something of value. We took the call for creative activism from HEART 17 and United Nations Development Programme as an opportunity to make something physically with our hands. The project became artistic therapy, a break from screens, using simple materials to contribute to our environment and engage the viewer.

When you create meaningful art, you’re pushing boundaries. The work is born of our contemporary working world and I think we’ve created a hybrid community art exhibit. We’ve connected local and remote communities to consider global sustainability goals and offer ideas how to address them.” — Michael McAghon

🇨🇦🇺🇸🇲🇽🇨🇴🇧🇷🇦🇷🇺🇳🖤

05/26/2022

EY Design Studio is comprised of hundreds of people across the Americas: Canada, United States, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, & Argentina. We all wanted to participate in HEART 17’s call for creative activism to promote the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), however all of our Studio locations were unique and different. So making a public art installation that would work at one Studio could not be easily replicated at other Studios. So we opted to empower one physical installation with our collective diverse voices through another physical component to compliment our painting.

When pedestrians would visit the window murals in Philadelphia, we hoped the art would provoke ideas about how to make the 17 SDGs a reality. What could I change? What could I do? What if…

So we decided to prompt “What if…?” to everyone in our Design Studio locations in the Americas. Through a simple online form, individuals responded with a thought, a hope, an idea as it related to one of the SDGs. We incorporated every one of these messages into the exhibit.

Through the help of Studio artisans in Philadelphia, these messages were handwritten on to individual ribbons and attached outside our Studio in front of the window with the 17 SDGs displayed. Pedestrians can learn about the goals and read messages from people in Canada all the way down to South America. We even color coded the ribbons to reflect the region they originated from.

"It's powerful to see our Design Studio community 'at a glance' through the various ribbon colors we selected to capture our individual intentions for the Heart 17 initiative. It's also engaging to see passersby selecting a ribbon and reading an intention from different country." — Travis

The final touch was to make this participatory for the local community. We added some white blank ribbons that simply read “What if…” allowing anyone with a permanent marker the ability to add a thought of their own.

"We received a huge response from studios across the Americas so transcribing these messages was no small feat! Some volunteers spent the entire day writing ribbons and many took on the added challenge of writing in a different language. Walking up to the railing, you'll hear the sound of over 100 ribbons floating in the breeze and you'll find wishes written in Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English." — Nellie

🇨🇦🇺🇸🇲🇽🇨🇴🇧🇷🇦🇷

05/25/2022

Intuitive Art Space, an art gallery inside of our Studio, was an instant idea to be the vehicle for promoting HEART 17's message. With large, street-level windows the space provides a lot of visibility located right on a bustling Main Street in the neighborhood.

We came up with a plan through some photo renderings and mock-ups, deciding to utilize the two main windows for a large, bold interpretation of HEART 17's heart element, which is made up of 17 shapes, using our brand colors. We treated the windows as huge canvases and explored a new technique by painting directly on the inside of them. It was a big job and we wanted to make the creation of this artwork a team event, so we gave some consideration to the design of the shapes to help our Studio artisans stay aligned visually.

"We felt it appropriate to explore shapes, colors and concepts within the EY Design Studio visual language that communicated the 17 Sustainability Global Goals (SDGs) in an engaging way for the public. The symbols and figures within each shape of the heart represent each concept and are abstracted to compel the viewer to look deeper and decipher each one." — Kirk Bray

While the large mural would be large and impactful, we needed a way to better showcase the 17 individual SDGs. So we utilized a side window to show the individual 17 heart pieces labeled with the goals. Hand-written typography was done by Morgan.

"We first decided on a grid for the side window and then began to mock up how the shapes and typography would fall into place. It took a few test runs to decide on the best size of the type so that it could be readable from a few feet away, but still small enough that it caused onlookers to come closer and engage with the installation." — Morgan Knepper

While Intuitive Art Space would be the physical location of the installation, our EY Design Studio community extends across the Americas. We had a lot of Studio artisans help create these paintings in-person, but how might we virtually include participation from our colleagues in other EY Design Studio locations? More to come… 👀🎗✨✍️

05/24/2022

HEART 17 is a global social enterprise uniting people and business to accelerate the 17 Sustainability Global Goals (SDGs) throughout the world, not by charity but by the business of innovation, creativity and partnership. Standing alongside the vision of HEART 17 is the United Nations Development Programme - UNDP—fighting to end poverty, inequality and climate change in 170 countries.

When HEART 17 asked digital agencies around the world to engage in “creative activism” on their behalf to help get their message out, we wanted to get involved! 

How might EY Design Studio come together to use our collective voices and encourage our community to think about a more sustainable future AND have some fun along the way? More to come… 👀🎨✨📐

04/17/2020

We're getting the hang of this "working remotely -- together" thing! Here are 5 tips the leaders of our studio came up with to help other teams navigate virtual collaboration: https://studio.ey.com/5-ways-to-help-your-design-team-work-remotely/

01/24/2020

Our design team trekked into the woods for their latest annual outing. See why Michael McAghon thought it was their best one yet!

https://studio.ey.com/more-than-an-outing-design-camp/

01/10/2020

Ommmmmm.....

See how we're finding our zen in our latest blog post by Jena Marini.

Everyone has dealt with stress or anxiety at one point or another. Our lives only get busier as responsibilities grow, and sometimes it almost feels impossible to keep up with our to-do lists. So how do we step back from the chaos and cultivate a calm state of mind in both our personal and professio...

12/12/2019

Clearly the rest of us work here because of Bob... but why does *Bob* work here? He let's us know in the latest blog post on the EY Design Studio site:

When I’m conducting interviews, candidates often ask me why I like working at EY. It’s a great question — a question I may answer differently day to day. Some days I might say I love my job because of the variety of work. I have had opportunities to work for clients across the financial servic...

12/02/2019

One of the many great things about our studio is that we definitely recognize the importance of play. Nicole Dery recaps our recent playtime workshop:

“Go outside and play! Preferably in a natural setting and with as little structure as possible. See you in 30 minutes.” I asked my amazing sister Maia — a creative consultant and life coach — to come into our studio for a visit. I thought some of her ideas and training might be of service .....

11/12/2019

It's fair to say we got REALLY into the Inktober challenge, as Emily Hurley recaps here:

Here at the Philadelphia studio, we’re always talking about the importance of play and how to maintain balance within our workday. We’re often helping clients work through complex issues, so we try to find group activities to keep things lighthearted where we can, such as the Collab series our d...

11/07/2019

In this week's blog post, Erin Chan recaps her Design Brew session on how to think like an architect:

First things first: I’m not an architect. However, I did start my college career in architecture school. It didn’t take me too long to realize that path wasn’t right for me, but the early lessons I learned when studying architecture became a strong foundation for how I think and work today, as...