Every year, I pick one or two non-profit, artistic, or educational organizations to donate creative services to. I specifically look out for organizations that are doing things in interesting, unique ways, and give back to the community that has given me so much.

I found the German International School in Portland, OR in a place that is probably familiar to you if you've seen any sort of educational advertising: trite and hollow messaging, accompanied by a direction that is one-note, endlessly mimicked, and at the end of the day, sort of meaningless.

We wanted to find something that embodied the feeling of pure kinetic energy I felt the moment I set foot on the GIS campus for the first time… It's like it had a pulse. We wanted to show their commitment to teaching well-rounded, bilingual students who are able to think across cultures (instead of just saying it). We wanted their students' lived empathy to be unmissable.

What we ended up with was key artwork and a campaign baseline so beloved that the students made murals of it after we launched the first ads.