Taproot Progress
immixdesign | July 22, 2010For those of you not familiar with the Taproot Foundation, it’s way to donate your professional services over 6 months (100 hours!). As account director, I assist in staffing and developing professional teams to deliver critical consulting services to local non-profits in our community.
Together, our wonderful team of 6 has worked diligently over the last several months to produce a 28-page publication celebrating Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust’s 20th anniversary.

As you can see from the above overview, this is generally a 5-stage process involving interviews with the client, research and analysis resulting in a 7-page report, on-site photo shoots, 28-pages of content development and design. To accomplish this each team member participates in several in-person meetings, weekly conference calls, and personalized tours through the Mountains to Sound Greenway itself.
I have been working on this project since January with a carefully chosen team of professionals. Our team includes:
Tracy, Copywriter for MSN Money
John, Photojournalist for MSNBC
Kathy, Graphic Designer for Hornell Anderson
Joanne, Marketing for AT&T Mobility / Filter Talent
Cindy, Project Manager formally for Eddie Bauer
Jennifer, Account Director (That’s me!)

Challenges: Our project has had very little challenges that we couldn’t handle. The project has taken slightly over our goal of 6 months due to the sheer scale of photos to take spread out over approximately 100 miles (Thank goodness John is full of adventure!), research, copy and design needed. Since this is all done in our spare time… things like vacations, family emergencies, travel, etc naturally pop up! However, the extra time has allowed the team to give 100% to a perfect completed piece.

Things are coming together! For months, all our work has been fragmented into word documents and sketches. This week, we met up to see the comps! It is very rewarding to see the quality of the design, copy and photography and how it starts melding together into a finished piece. This top photo is a great example of John’s photography and how he seems to capture the essence of the moment. The grid you see is an inspiration of how the land was divided throughout the greenway long-ago. And the first page leads with a powerful opener “This is not a chance. This is a choice.”

This spread exhibits the “Unparalleled Playground” that the Mountains to Sound Greenway has helped build and preserve. John captured this kayaking photo in Bellevue… pretty amazing you don’t see any high rises! Also, did you know you can walk—almost entirely on a trail from Golden Gardens beach in Seattle all the way across the mountains to Ellensburg? These are just a few things you’ll find out when our final publication is done!

After our review meeting on Monday, we have all kinds of creative solutions for Kathy to implement. She’s doing a great job and I can’t wait to present to the client next Monday!
Overall, I can’t say enough good things about our teams reliability and professionalism as we have worked together to provide a comprehensive piece for Mountains to Sound Greenway to show what an impactful non-profit they truly are.








