At Bound everything is art. Including the art.
Art and enterprise is a balance. It’s easier when you get grounded in the facts first. Equal parts listening, design thinking, and conceptual art is how I shepherd brands and experiences toward connection. Maybe it’s more listening than anything.
Here we are.
Woven on Liberty is a new (type of) residential development in downtown Durham, NC. Woven was conceived as an option for folk who work downtown to live downtown. We crafted the strategy, name, and brand identity to reflect community in inclusive terms, not the same old “luxury apartment” schtick.
Human Insights : Brand Identity : Naming : Brand Strategy
Elegant relevance.
Bound helps Clarity of Place reach key community stakeholders in a suite of digital tools. We developed a new brand of destination insights dubbed Community Relevancy: the essential role of destination economies (and marketers) in quality of life and place for cities and residents.
Human Insights : Design Thinking : Primary Research : Data Visualization
The future’s so bright…
The School for Living Futures is an interdisciplinary, experimental school in Durham, NC. Say what? Climate justice, kinship, regeneration, and transformation are the curriculum. Artists, healers, scientists, activists, ancestral wisdom holders, scholars, scholars, designers, and storytellers are the teachers.
Brand Strategy : Brand Identity : Research : Mission, Vision, Purpose
In the pocket.
Quiksilver needed to refocus efforts across their portfolio of brands when their original customers started to age out. In collaboration with friends at The Paragraph Project, we conducted research and designed a series of booklets to bring each customer to life. The booklets were printed and distributed throughout their global network.
Human Insights : Graphic Design : Brand Strategy : Data Visualization
“Hold On, Be Strong”
“Hold On, Be Strong” is truly a Southern Hip Hop journey a decade in the making. For now it’s an installation of light, sound, and physical relics and assemblages including dirt gathered from pilgrimages to Southern Hip Hop sites. It is the stories of meeting people and travel companions along for the ride. It is the devoted hands who fabricated wood, metal, plexiglass, screen printing, video, vinyl and more to form this tribute. It is the community who speak into this body of work now. It’s Hip Hop. And it's decidedly Southern.
Slightly more detail here. More to come, including a mini-documentary in 2024.
Conceptual Art : Graphic Design : Installation Art : Community Engagement
Film: Dimitri Hale at Ex Deo Films
Image: Rotcelis Rose Photography
Images: Eric Waters Photography
“Pedestrian Love”
There’s a weird phenomenon how “being alone in the midst of many others” can occur in any urban setting. To offset this, I spread bear hugs in pedestrian areas of my city (and around the world) so anyone might catch one on the way to their next spot. And not a day goes by when you’ll find me not wearing a HUGS hat. Facts.
Conceptual Art : Graphic Design : Human Insights
People say the nicest things.
I'm grateful to help people with their amazing endeavors.
"Dave has an uncanny ability to reach inside a brand promise to fully extract its emotional connections. His methods of discovery, formulation, and implementation are what make Bound so valuable. Dave is flexible and adjusts timelines and inputs to meet needs.”
Tina V. - Principal, Marketer