Most people are too polite to tell you your baby is ugly. If it’s a real, authentic, from your loins flesh and blood baby, well, that’s probably a good thing. It’ll grow out of it (hopefully). But if your ugly baby is a business baby, a design baby, a project baby – it’s staying ugly until you do something about it.

Your Baby’s Ugly will be a starting point for improving the aesthetic appeal of your project, business, or brand. It will also be a useful lesson for non-designers in the basics of aesthetics and give you some simple advice you can apply daily to enhance the visual appeal of anything you work on.

Bring your business baby – corporate identity, marketing collateral, websites, product packaging, logos, etc – and a team of working artists and designers will direct an aesthetic critique. No excuses and no pulling punches – find out if you’ve got an ugly baby.

If you want to put your baby up for critique, please RSVP to Scott at info@cultivatedsm.org with “Ugly Baby” in the subject. Give a brief description of what you’d like to have critiqued and we will take it from there.

If you are a working designer or artist and would like to participate on the critique panel, please contact Scott at info@cultivatedsm.org with “Ugly Baby Designer” in the subject.

YES! You can attend Your Baby’s Ugly as a spectator, however, participation is STRONGLY encouraged.

Rewrite is a collaborative, hands-on copywriting workshop. Yes, copywriting, not copyrighting. We’re sure. Bring a small bit of copy – maybe an artist statement or the opening few paragraphs of a marketing piece or the welcome message on your website – and the room will tear it to shreds as nicely as possible. Subtle changes can mean huge differences in communicating your message effectively. THIS IS NOT A GRAMMAR WORKSHOP. Grammatical errors bug English teachers and grammar Nazis. Ill communication bugs everyone, unless it is a Beastie Boys album, in which case it’s fine.

To participate:

• Print your copy in a nice large font (Times/Helvetica is good) in black and white on a normal printer paper.
• Bring it with you
• Participate.

That’s it.

If you are completely printer-less and are trying to run a business or grow your arts career it might be time to sign up for Market Street or Impromptu. We have printers and a few other resources you might find useful.

We will produce photocopies and overheads as needed. Red pens will be provided.

Copy will be workshopped in a moderated, first-come first-serve setting. MSMF and Impromptu members may sign up in advance at MSMF to guarantee that their copy will be examined.