BRUTE LABS teamed up designers Laura Stevenson, Nestor Brito & Tim Daw to inspire people to action by enticing the masses in Dolores Park to beat back the beast that is inequality, embodied by a giant monster piñata. The team encouraged participants to create video testimonials about their personal struggles and views on equality. The event demonstrated that we CAN take down this monster IF we all take part.

Josh To met Gregory Mchopa, a talented fine artist based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. After getting a chance to understand some of the challenges that artists face, we have launched a website, www.mchopa.com to help Mchopa share his art with the world. Next up, packaging the solution for artists anywhere to use.

To support Well Done, a sister non-profit that started as a BRUTE LABS project, we designed a t-shirt emphasizing the importance of clean water in the lives of the 1 billion people who do not have access to this basic necessity.

Taking the basic elements that make up a t-shirt: Cotton & Ink, to make a powerful difference in the lives of the victims of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar. 100% of the proceeds of the t-shirt sales went to iDE’s relief effort, which provided cyclone victims with immediate needs necessary for their survival.

Continuing in the JUMP! project spirit of promoting exercise to students, we partnered with a local school in East Palo Alto to incentivize students to get their legs going. Through a pre-existing mile-run program, we were fortunate to contribute to students’ participation and excitement about physical education.

It was November 2007, almost a year since we had last attended Oduro Takyi’s “Business Entrepreneurship 55″, but we were glad to be in a room full of Silicon Valley’s future entrepreneurs. We began with a case study. We recounted the early steps that Google took as it grew from an idea to a small company and eventually a multi-national corporation. …. “Who are these kids” murmured the back of the room.

We struggled to get our laptop hooked up to the projector and after reaching deep into the back of the podium and pulling out a cable we got underway. It was November 2007, almost a year since we had last attended Oduro Takyi’s “Business Entrepreneurship 55″, but we were glad to be in a room full of Silicon Valley’s future entrepreneurs. We began with a case study. We recounted the early steps that Google took as it grew from an idea, to a small company and eventually a multi-national corporation. As we elaborated I could tell that we had the full attention of the class; people began to ask more questions. Do they really have free food? How does Google make its money? How does AdSense work? As people got more excited we transitioned to the next part of the presentation. We covered Josh and My involvement in BRUTE LABS and the room began to light up. Project Run, then Josh’s lecture series that he delivered at Believe-Begin-Become, an entrepreneurship conference based out of Tanzania. Finally we began to cover the story of Gregory Mchopa from Tanzania and how within 36 hours we set up his website and a local artist became an international entrepreneur. Harnessing the power of Web 2.0, a bit of motivation and a few free online products it seems that anyone can truly be enabled to find success in business. Take a look at the presentation in the downloads section. Although the deck is just a collection of random facts and images, the stories they tell inspired a room in a little over an hour. You can inspire too. Go out, make your own stories, document them and share. As always, feel free to reach out to us along the way.

Business Presentation (PDF)

You hear it everywhere—on the news, in newspapers and magazines—America’s children need to be more active. Children need to eat healthier and exercise more, particularly in low-income neighborhoods. Doing this will not only keep kids healthy, but contribute to their focus and academic performance. Sounds like an easy solution to a complicated problem. Many of these neighborhoods aren’t safe to play outside in.

BRUTE LABS aims to help alleviate this problem by increasing the awareness of alternative and fun forms of exercise that can be enjoyed at school and close to home. Happening to have around 200 jumpropes donated from a friend, we chose JUMP as our first project in this area. We chose local schools and put up four displays consisting of the jumpropes and flyers, aiming to bring more attention to the benefits of physical activity. Jumping rope is a great form of exercise and play, both of which children need more of. With this project, we hope to remind both the kids and their parents of the small steps they can take to get and stay healthy. With the recent release of the Disney movie, “Jump In”, we hope to add to the returning popularity of jumprope as a favored form of play. Together we can get kids stronger, faster, and smarter.

Change, picture that. We realize that it’s just not enough to think big, but that we have to start small, if we can ever hope to see a busy, distracted world make an impact. So we’ve defined a few big goals like energy conservation and opening minds, and broken them down into bite-size actions that anyone with a few minutes and a little willpower can do. And why are we asking people to take pictures of these little actions? Well, you can take a look at the gallery and draw your own conclusions, but we can’t help but feel just a little encouraged by what we’ve seen from people like you.

We at BRUTE LABS believe that through our simple efforts and the resources we have access to, we can make a profound difference in this matter, be it even for a single village or a small group of children. In response to this belief, we have partnered with Pioneers-Africa, an organization stationed in Ghana, to implement a well drilling project in a remote village in the country.

BRUTE LABS teamed up with Vestal Design and Stanford University for a pro bono project to produce decals that highlight Stanford’s use of biodiesel in its campus shuttle buses, the Marguerite. The concept behind the bus decal is to use graphic design to build public awareness for biodiesel and to generate momentum for a more aggressive switch to renewable fuels. Stanford currently uses B5 biodiesel, a blend of conventional petroleum diesel with 5% vegetable derived diesel fuel.

While this isn’t much, it’s certainly a start. In anticipation for a continually improving program that transitions to higher blends of biodiesel (eg. B10 >> B20 >> B100), we wanted to design a decal that can adapt and improve alongside the program. Early in 2008, Google expressed interest in the decals that we designed and decided to put the decals on select vehicles from their fleet of buses.

projectOPEN assists the homeless in various city sites by creating a map with resources, routes to get there using public transport and a list of laws that pertain to them. Our first target site was the City of Santa Monica. First guide version designed June 2005 and went on to win design awards from AIGA and Adobe. Guide updated and distributed February 2009 thanks to generous support from UCLA and Google.

BRUTE LABS rolled up their sleeves on Saturday, September 26 to clean up the streets of the Mission district of San Francisco. Traveling south-east from 17t and Shotwell, the team scoured over 2.5 miles of city neighborhoods through the Mission district collecting, sorting and recycling trash found on the street. Passers-by paused from their cell phone conversations to deliver enthusiastic thank-yous