The Work Matters

Some of you know that I’ve had a mostly vegan diet for many, many years. Like many other folks leading a mostly plant-based diet, it was about washing my hands clean of animal cruelty, learning about and improving my health and - above all else - it was about the environment.

It’d be a lie to say that I always worried about my environmental impact. When I was just out of high school I couldn’t wrap my head around changes in the environment as being anything more than a natural ebb of earth’s climate. And boy, was I stubborn with that.

With time, research, and openness (and let’s be honest, just being wrong a lot of the time, and being cognizant of that) I gradually steered myself toward a diet that helped me feel like I was doing the best I could. Which, frankly, is all I feel we can hope for.

Well, this past year I got to take part in something much bigger than myself, and I’m proud of it. Imperfect Foods is a company with a compelling narrative. Sustainability is truly woven throughout their entire business - from sourcing and packing to delivery and recycling. Make&Model was able to collaborate with the incredible Imperfect Foods team - led by Jenn Vo and Benjamin Kane - to elevate the brand and better communicate the true impact, experience, and long-term value their service has to individual customers, for the planet, and for their producers.

We’ll release a more comprehensive case study in the future regarding our work with Imperfect, but for today, I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on the fact that there are so many things we could work on. Many of them might even turn out to be truly useful products. Many could be lucrative.

But honestly, nothing will ever hit home - at the core of what motivates me - like using design thinking to make the world a little bit better, a little more sustainable. It’s projects like these that remind me how important and time-critical the mission driven, impact design work we do at Make&Model truly is. Sometimes work can just be work, and that’s OK, but it’s so, so much better when you feel genuinely good about the effect your work can have on the world.

Thanks so much, again, to Jenn and Ben for bringing us in and giving us the opportunity to do the kind of work we love.