SEI Design Group BlogBlog about news, information, happenings and mojo at SEI Design Group

Lots of people said it couldn’t be done, but an aggressive schedule allowed sixth grade students at Syracuse City School District to move in to their new modular classroom wing at H. W. Smith School on school opening day.  It was just five months ago that the District authorized SEI Design to begin the design!   The project quickly moved forward with SED review and approval, and on August 24th, the modular units were delivered and installed on-site ready for furniture installation, the new foundation and corridor link constructed by the District.

SEI Design is participating in a really great charity event, Canstruction. This is a design build competition for design professionals and students using cans.   All the building materials (canned goods) get donated to food kitchens at the end of the event.  In Rochester, the entries will be displayed in the Bausch and Lomb Winter Garden in November.  While we can’t tell you what we are building, we can tell you that we would welcome your help in the form of donations toward the purchase of cans for the event.  Since 1992, Canstruction has donated 10 million pounds of food.  We will keep you posted on our progress.

If you don’t use Alltop yet, you simply must check it out.   Alltop is a product of Guy Kawasaki and friends.  The clean, uncluttered site collects the stories of the top news websites and blogs for many topics and displays headlines of the five most recent stories.   If you scroll over a headline, you can see part of the story so that you can decide if you’d like to read it.  There are many topics and they are adding topics daily.  We are usually aware of the new topics through Guy and Neenz on Twitter, but also have their RSS feed on our Google home page, so we don’t miss anything.  SEI is proud to be listed under architecture and design on Alltop.

How come Brian doesn’t look happy?  Our clients over at University of Rochester pulled a little prank on Brian and it appears everyone enjoyed it more than he did.  BTW, who are those masked men?

Our favorite blog designers over at Unique Blog Designs are sponsoring an anniversary contest.  Head on over and enter to win an iPod Touch or a Citrus theme for your blog, and wish them a happy anniversary.

We all need help remembering things.  For example: you are in the car driving and remember that you forgot to send an important file.  As we have told you before, Jott can come to your rescue.  Just call Jott hands free and leave a message to self.  Next time you open your email, a message will be waiting.  You have the option of a reminder message being sent (at a time of your choice) which generates a reminder email and text message.  Jott just came out of Beta and has some paid programs with major upgrades, but the free service (which includes links to Twitter) is still available.  

Another great self help organizer is emailfuture.com which allows you to send an email to yourself well into the future.

SEI Design Group was one of this year’s recipients of the 2008 AIA New York State Design Awards. SEI received one of 18 Awards of Merit for the Parry Building Office Renovation project in Rochester. SEI was one of 294 entries and will receive the award on Friday, September 26 at the Crowne Plaza in White Plains. In March, SEI was recognized for this project when they received top honor for the 2008 AIA Rochester Design Award.

The Parry Building Office Renovation project involved the first floor conversion of the former Parry manufacturing facility in the historic High Falls District to house SEI’s Rochester-based architectural office.

The four-story brick structure was built in the late 1800s. The interior consisted of heavy timber beams and old wooden columns. Into that setting, SEI integrated an office layout of new glass walls and wood veneers.

SEI welcomes Michele A. Volpe, Financial/ Administative Assistant. Michele has 18 years of experience including 9 years working in architectural firms.

Absolutely addicted to notebooks now.  Favorites  (used for different tasks for work and personal) are: Miquelrius Grid (thanks GP), Black and White Paperchase purchased at Borders,  Moleskine slim cahiers plain journals, and Circa.  Levenger’s Circa series lets you totally customize your notebook in letter, junior and compact sizes.  You can order a $40 sampler set which gives you a letter size setup and more plus a $40 gift card to pick the products you like (so the sampler is free).  Used the card to get the compact notebook with 300 page refill for $9.95 (regularly $40) and starter kits in all sizes.  Try these coupons.

Here is a coupon for Barnes & Noble that gives 30% off notebooks and journals including Spanish ones (think Miquelrius and Paperchase).  What are your favorite notebooks and how do you use them?

The IDEA® (International Design Excellence Awards) program is the premier international competition honoring design excellence in products, ecodesign, interaction design, packaging, strategy, research and concepts.  Happy to see that Apple got 5 awards (iMac, iPhone, keyboard, Macbook, Macbook AIr).  Also, several other items that we have written about on the blog won an award including the Zeppelin iPod Speaker Dock, the Curve, and the Flip video camera.