Consulting Work
Information design = web site prototypes, media materials, strategic visioning, advertising campaigns, conceptual development, perceptual consulting, cocktail napkins, pithy one-liners…and music soundtracks.
Studio Kumau, now ten years in its' new place, continues the 30-plus year legacy of Richard's production and consulting practice based in Seattle, Washington, called Beach Studio. He and his cohorts endeavor to help people identify and communicate their most essential messages and strategies. These days it's mostly about music, but it hasn't always been that way.
Communications are a work in progress. Communication is a team sport. At Studio Kumau, we are strategic designers, storytellers at heart, artists with computers. Authors, originators, researchers, writers, editors. Musicians with cameras. Media imagineers. Documentarians. We are helping design the future.
We have done everything from cocktail napkins to feature movies, all in preparation for our next project. We are also experienced guides for others' strategic visioning processes. This kind of work always depends on the client and what they may want and/or need at a given time, so that of course figures into and frames our designs. A favorite sign in Richard's Belltown (Seattle) studio read: TERMS: good, fast, cheap…please pick two.
Richard's speciality has been graphic facilitation, or the use of graphics to help understand or solve problems. Here is a current example:
Here is another example of this type of work, where Richard created a values "mandala" for an international youth training organization:
Richard often works on crafting graphic illustrations for a specific organization's core issues – trying to identify the essential characteristics of their work. He specialized in facilitating group sessions where participants generate the appropriate metaphors and pictures. The work ranges from focusing on identifying values and carifying strategy, to the "drawing out of visions" which, though sometimes a mysterious process, can lead to breakthrough improvements in an organization's alignments and performance, as well as opening the door for other pragmatic design and production opportunities, like web sites or video productions to illuminate their stories.
In the last few years Richard has been focusing increasing on music, composing and playing jazz with a wonderful cast of local characters. A recent project was to create the music and sound themes for a new public radio program called "Truth, Politics and Power" with Neal Conan on PRX. You can find it here: https://exchange.prx.org/series/37658-truth-politics-and-power
To learn more, visit the Studio Kumau website.
Mahalo for visiting.