Glossary
The following is a list of terms and concepts that The Moderns have developed or are commonly used to describe our marketing, branding and design processes.
ALCHEMY
n. A method or power of transmutation; especially the seemingly miraculous change of one thing into something better.
THE BIG THREE
- Create commerce
- Sustain the environment
- Uplift the human spirit
These three requirements act as a filter for the conception of every project.
BRANDING
The synthesis of all attributes of an organization or group that create an identity including company name and tag line, location, structure and interior space, signage, logo and all communications materials or media, product or service and its packaging or presentation, spokespersons and staff, values and beliefs, practices or actions, and more. An evolved brand is developed to embody a visual, verbal, social, political, and cultural language that magnetically attracts a like-minded population of individuals.
BRAND COMMUNITY
As a brand culture gathers diversity and becomes more ordered, it reaches a point of critical mass through which it has evolved into a self sustaining natural community.
BRAND CULTURE
These initial pollinators are naturally drawn to the brand by a magnetic - pulling force, welcoming individuals into the brand culture by promoting discovery, providing an experience and creating a destination. These elements inspire an interaction with the customer that forge a memory that inspires brand loyalty. This self-evolving, self-aggregating culture, based on a visual and verbal language, begins to solidify into a well-defined, cohesive entity as it gathers cultural diversity.
BRAND FILTER
A tool created by The Moderns to distill the essential elements of the clients’ identity into a cohesive guide that provides a visual vocabulary, consistent voice, and strategic foundation for everything the company is, says, and does.
COMMUNITY CLUSTER
As cultural diversity continues to grow in the various aspects of the natural community, individual pods of diversity will reach a point of critical mass in which they spontaneously spawn their own self-aggregating natural community that are still connected to, but autonomous from, the parental population. These natural communities develop into independent but interacting clusters of brand communities.
CORPORATE ALCHEMY™
A process developed by The Moderns that gathers the elements of a brand – its past, it goals, its values, its quirks, its image, its ambition, its reality – and transmutes all the pieces into a strategic, organically-generated brand direction that can evolve, regardless of market dynamics, into a culture.
CULTURE BUILDING
Culture building brands rely on magnetism, a pulling force, to welcome customers into their space. They carve out a quiet presence, allowing customers to connect with them on a personal level. In essence, culture building brands provide an experience, promote discovery, create a destination and forge a memory allowing the brand culture to spontaneously self-evolve. It still requires all the work of branding – defining who you are, promoting your attributes, and staying consistent - but it also requires the brand to interact with customers on a personal level, encouraging great loyalty through the brand culture.
CULTURAL CREATIVES
Culture building brands are especially appealing to Cultural Creatives, an American sub-group that’s 40-50 million strong. The Cultural Creatives are people who care deeply about ecology and saving the planet, about relationships, peace, social justice, and about authenticity, self-actualization, spirituality and self-expression. Surprisingly, they are both inner-directed and socially concerned. They're activists, volunteers and contributors to good causes. Most important, women make up about 60% of this growing demographic.
G-FORCE
The G-Force Theory: A proprietary theory that employs socially relevant marketing and New Bauhaus design to stimulate sales, build brand loyalty, provide significant competitive advantage, and transform capitalism into a powerful vehicle for social change – all by eliminating guilt.
IDEA CIRCLE
A fluid multidisciplinary holistic team that generates creative and flexible solutions. It is made up of designers, engineers, scientists, business people, psychological/Spiritual leaders, health specialists, and marketers who together ditch their respective titles and go by the term “solutionists.”
THE NEW BAUHAUS
A new design paradigm that goes beyond the pre-established paradigm of the original Bauhaus (Good Design) to incorporate Cradle-to-Cradle Design™ methodologies, Socially Relevant Marketing, evolved marketing strategies and holistic design initiatives.
SOCIALLY RELEVANT MARKETING
A marketing tool that eliminates customer guilt by incorporating socially relevant elements into the marketing program and by offering the benefit of “doing good” through basic purchases. Also known as the G-Force.
THE FOUR P’s
Price, Promotion, Place, Product. These four qualifiers have traditionally been the driving forces behind marketing.
3D BRANDING
A holistic strategic tool developed by The Moderns, 3D-Branding merges traditional feasibility and programming studies used in architecture and interior design with the Corporate Alchemy™ process of marketing and branding to create a visual, spatial and viable positioning concept from which all subsequent design decisions are made. Here's How.
The following is a list of terms and concepts that Dr. Michael Braungart and William McDonough have developed or that are commonly used to describe the Cradle-to-Cradle Design™ Protocol.
BIOLOGICAL METABOLISM
The natural processes of ecosystems are a biological metabolism, making safe and healthy use of materials in cycles of abundance.
BIOLOGICAL NUTRIENT
A biodegradable material posing no immediate or eventual hazard to living systems that can be used for human purposes and can safely return to the environment to feed environmental processes.
CRADLE-TO-CRADLE DESIGN™
A design strategy in which all materials in a product are designed for perpetual reuse in cycles that use either natural or industrial processes.
DESIGN FOR DISASSEMBLY
Designing a product to be dismantled for easier maintenance, repair, recovery, and reuse of components and materials.
DOWNCYCLING
The practice of recycling a material in such a way that much of its inherent value is degraded or lost (for example, recycling plastic into park benches), revealing poor design of a life cycle and the related material flows.
ECO-EFFECTIVENESS
Strategy for designing human industry that is safe, profitable, and regenerative, producing economic, ecological, and social value, by creating products and systems that celebrate abundance by design, eliminate the concept of waste by becoming food for new products, and restore natural and industrial systems over and over going far beyond efficiency as a goal.
ECO-EFFICIENCY
The strategy for "sustainability" of minimizing harm to natural systems by reducing the amount of waste and pollution human activities generate. This concept is often forwarded as a model for sustainable commerce however it merely delays an inevitable problem - being "less-bad" through waste "reduction" and pollution "prevention" does not fully address the flaws at the root of our design.
ECOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE
A product or process designed to embody the intelligence of natural systems (such as nutrient cycling, interdependence, abundance, diversity, solar power, regeneration).
INDUSTRIAL METABOLISM
Modeled on natural systems, the industrial metabolism is MBDC's term for the processes of human industry that maintain and perpetually reuse valuable synthetic and mineral materials in closed loops.
LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT
A technique for assessing the potential environmental impacts of a product by examining all the material and energy inputs and outputs at each life cycle stage.
PRODUCT OF CONSUMPTION
A product designed for safe and complete return to the environment, which becomes nutrients for living systems. The product of consumption design strategy allows products to offer effectiveness without the liability of materials that must be recycled or "managed" after use.
PRODUCT OF SERVICE
A product that is used by the customer, formally or in effect, but owned by the manufacturer. The manufacturer maintains ownership of valuable material assets for continual reuse while the customer receives the service of the product without assuming its material liability. Products that can utilize valuable but potentially hazardous materials can be optimized as Products of Service.
TECHNICAL NUTRIENT
A material that remains in a closed-loop system of manufacture, reuse, and recovery (the industrial metabolism), maintaining its value through many product life cycles.
UNMARKETABLES
Materials to be eliminated from human use because they cannot be maintained safely in either biological or industrial metabolisms.
UPCYCLING
The practice of recycling a material in such a way that more of its inherent value is gained in subsequent use, revealing intelligent design of a life cycle and the related material flows.
WASTE EQUALS FOOD™
A principle of natural systems and Cradle-to-Cradle Design™ that eliminates the concept of waste. In this design strategy, all materials are viewed as continuously valuable, circulating in closed loops of production, use, and recycling.
We continue to be inspired by our collaboration with colleagues Dr. Michael Braungart and William McDonough, FAIA, whose work provides a conceptual approach or protocol which informs our thinking and practice regarding sustainable design. Braungart and McDonough are co-authors of The NEXT Industrial Revolution published in The Atlantic Monthly, October 1998.