These are a few of our favorite things—

Like many companies, we send a special gift of appreciation to our clients at the end of each year. The gift is an original piece of art made by all of us and, in our opinion, sure beats the usual corporate t-shirt or coffee mug.

The initial brainstorming session stemmed from an office-wide ice cream binge. The entire team met in the lobby, various ice cream flavors in hand, intending to come up with the annual client appreciation art piece. The first concept  was to illustrate an ampersand or “&”,  filled with meaningful words that illustrate the relationship between us at Morvil and our clients.

However, the idea hit a rough spot once we began to be split the large ampersand into sections our artists were to design. Namely, it was too difficult to get all of the words to work together to allow the eye to complete the shape of the Ampersand. Each individual artist’s section began to compete with the adjacent, fighting the very concept of working together. The 50 percent chance of the piece actually working in the allotted time was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We had to scrap our first idea.

Expanding on the concept of things that bring Morvil and our clients together, we set out to create a list of things, places, sounds, sights and smells that resound and inspire our lives.  We were excited to see several overlapping items that held a special place in our lives. The result was a listing of things we appreciate at Morvil, each in a hand-crafted typographical style. To enrich the words even more was be our next challenge to tackle.

Combing through the list of words, we selected phrases and words that allowed the interactive element of the poster to come to life. Careful positioning of the key letters was important to give your eye a natural progression to decipher the message. Bringing this order to the letter arrangement helped us suggest that there was a hidden message. And like all things that are good and bright, we just need to take the time to stop and really look. So if you look closely, the highlighted letters in each item spells out “All Things Good & Bright”. The theme of the art poster, “All Things Good & Bright” was inspired by the hymn “All Things Bright and Beautiful” by Cecil Frances Alexander.

We used unique typographical characters to illustrate the meaning behind each word. With the second line, “Tiny White Lights,” you can notice that the letters are compiled of tiny white dots. “Outdoor showers,” has an upper-case “t” raining water from its ends while the “i” in “family” is surrounded by loved ones and the family pet.

Some of the lines give the viewer sensory memory. The line “freshly baked bread” is encased in an outline of hot bread, which triggers a delicious culinary memory. Another line has the “N” in “bonfire” outlined by an illustrated fire, giving the reader a warm sensation. These little illustrations and sensory memories make the piece a pleasure to view multiple times.

Sadly, our piece only had room for eleven items, leaving many other items on the cutting room floor. Here are a few that barely missed the cut:

•  double…no, triple rainbow!
•  Carolina basketball
•  sleeping in
•  i-EVERYTHING
•  chocolate
•  adventure
•  the cold side of the pillow

This is the third consecutive year that Morvil has put out an art piece for the holidays, so you’ll have to wait until the end of 2012 to see what we cook up next. For the time being, have a happy new year and check out the 2009 and 2010 pieces on our Facebook page. Please feel free to list some of your favorite things in the comment section below or post it to our  wall!