Previous Projects

Ak Press

Front-End Services:
graphic design, user-interface

Technologies:
html, perl, css, javascript, ministry of information content-management system

AK Press is a worker run book publisher and distributor organized around anarchist principles. They publish and distribute many important and timely radical texts.

Our largest endowment to date, the new akpress.org required a complete database overhaul, redesign, inventory recategorization and a rollout of our premier content management system Ministry of Information. Now AK is sitting pretty with autonomous web management and a dynamic and powerful ecommerce bookstore.

From the client

Eggplant Active Media provides an invaluable resource to organizations fighting for social justice by providing cutting edge design and tech work, which truly make the revolution irresistible.

By remodeling our website, Eggplant has given us one of the most important tools, in this day and age, in appealing to and reaching the broader public.

-AK Press

ChangeThis

Front-End Services:
cross-browser compatability, templating

Technologies:
html, perl, css, javascript, rss, ministry of information content-management system

ChangeThis hired us in the summer of 2004 to help create a new kind of communication centered around web technologies and free speech. The result was changethis.com.

From the client

A rare plug

Readers know that it's extremely unusual for me to plug a business. PR people have learned that the worst way to show up on my blog is to pitch me.

So, it's with some excitement that I point you to eggplant active media workers collective | summer 2004. These are the guys who did all the technology behind ChangeThis.

On time
On a shoestring budget
With a smile.

I just want to commend them to anyone who needs great web tech and qualifies as a client. Nice work, Arthur!

- Seth Godin, from his blog at Typepad

Chelsea Green Publishing

Front-End Services:
graphic design, user-interface

Technologies:
html, perl, css, javascript, ministry of information content-management system

Chelsea Green Publishing is a vermont-based publisher of books on sustainable living and, more recently, progressive politics. They are the publisher of the renowned book Don't Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff.

Chelsea Green underwrote the development of the first version of Ministry of Information and continue to be its' biggest fan.

From the client

We couldn't be where we are as a leading edge progressive media company without the Eggplanters! They are superb creative collaborators and nice guys to boot. Having people on board with our mission makes all the difference as well.

-Margo Baldwin, Publisher and President of Chelsea Green Publishing

Fluoride Action Network

Front-End Services:
logo, brand, graphic design, user-interface

Technologies:
content management system, site migration, hosting

Eggplant Active Media created a full site solution based on the needs of unique web archive focused fluoridation issues. The challenge in this case was to both create a brand new design which could showcase the work of the Fluoride Action Network, provide client control of content, and simultaneously create a backend solution which would allow easy access to thousands of news articles on fluoridation issues. We created a customized solution based on the open source application ezpublish which has create a highly organized archive which has made Fluoride Action Network's archive of more than 2000 articles far more accessible.

Hellerwork International

Front-End Services:
graphic design, user-interface, branding, geography-based practitioner database

Technologies:
html, php, css, javascript, content-management system

Hellerwork International is an umbrella organization for independent bodywork practitioners specializing in the Hellerwork practice.

We created a standards-compliant and beautifully crafted website for Hellerwork International that effectively meets it's goal of being beautiful, useful, and communicative.

From the client

THANKS for our beautiful revised website! You (and Sharon) did a lovely job. A heartful thanks for stepping up and following through on your vision of what the website could be.

Way to go, guys! This website plus the new and improved Client Handbooks -- WOW! Hellerwork has never looked better.

The site is looking fantastic, re-freshing, smart, cool!!

-Hellerwork Practitioners

Institute for Social Ecology

Front-End Services:
graphic design, user-interface

Technologies:
content management system (geeklog), html, css, javascript, list serves, php, forums, perl

The mission of the Institute for Social Ecology (ISE) is the creation of educational experiences that enhance people's understanding of their relationship to the natural world and each other. By necessity, this involves the ISE in programs that deepen students' awareness of self and others, help them to think critically, and expand their perception of the creative potentialities for human action. The purpose of the ISE's programs is the preparation of well-rounded students who can work effectively as participants in the process of ecological reconstruction.

Eggplant Active Media worked with the Institute for Social Ecology to bring a flat html site over to a database driven content management system. Eggplant customized some features of Geeklog to match the ISE's needs, updated pieces of the current design, and implemented several software packages to flesh the site out.

Pictures of Palestine Film Festival

The Pictures of Palestine Film Festival took place in December of 2002 in Waterville, Maine. The focus of the festival was to provide an angle of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict from the point of view of Palestinian filmmakers - a radical departure from the pro-Israeli material that is often broadcasted by the US media.

The image of the dwellings and moon in this image is based on a piece of artwork by an unknown artist from the archives of the Palestine Poster Project at Liberation Graphics.

Three thousand 11x17 posters were printed and distributed throughout Maine, making the festival very well attended.

Prints of this poster are available from Pictures of Palestine. Email them for information.

Beehive Design Collective: Plan Colombia Poster

Pre-production editing, printing coordination.

The Beehive Design Collective is a collectively run, non-profit art activist workshop in eastern Maine. Along with creating beautiful hand-cut stone mosaics they also produce political graphics and posters for use as educational tools.

Eggplant Active Media provided printing, scanning, and pre-production editing serves for the Beehive's 2002 Plan Colombia poster, which as proven to be an incredible educational tool around issues of US Imperialism in Latin America.

Rural Vermont

Front-End Services:
graphic design, identity

Technologies:
html, css, javascript

Rural Vermont is a nonprofit farm advocacy group here in our hometown of Montpelier, VT. In the early part of 2005 we worked closely with them to create a standards-based website and content management system that would look sharp on new computers but gracefully downgrade on the older computer equipment of many rural vermonters.

The site features action-alerts, breaking news, legislative information and archives of their previous newsletters all rolled into a nice autonomously-managed and beautifully crafted website.

From the client

It was a pleasure working with Eggplant Active Media in designing the Rural Vermont web site. They took the rough ideas we had for our website and turned it into a functional, coherent and attractive resource. They offered great technical support and were able to explain things clearly so that we could use the movable type to update our site. The knowledge, creativity and the ability to explain things clearly made the project a great success.

-Rural Vermont

Treesit Blog

Front-End Services:
graphic design, template creation

Technologies:
html, css,

Fellow activists in the pacific northwest designed wireless internet link from Eureka, CA to the canopy of an old-growth forest 5-miles away in order to offer an online journal to forest activist Remedy. Eggplant Active Media created a design for use with the site.

Uchechi Kalu

Front-End Services:
graphic design, identity

Technologies:
html, perl, css, javascript

Uchechi Kalu is a Nigerian-born poet, performer, teacher and survivor of life. She has conducted writing workshops at universities, prisons, high schools and after school programs and with the San Francisco WritersCorps program. She spent four years with the late June Jordan's Poetry for the People program, teaching at Berkeley High School, the Federal Correctional Institute at Dublin, and at UC Berkeley.

Eggplant Active Media worked with Uchechi to develop a web identity and personal publishing system. The project was created in 2 days for very little money as part of an Eggplant Endowment.