Design Samples

Tree to Tree

Enjoy a glimpse into the singular experience of designing and building a fully accessible 450-foot walkway five stories into the treetops. The design incorporates education, play, perceived risk, architecture, green building strategies, and nature into an exhibit in the sky. The award-winning exhibit, designed by Metcalfe Architecture & Design of Philadelphia, has dramatically increased visitor numbers and membership at the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania, a 92-acre pleasure garden that is the official Arboretum of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

The tree canopy walk, designed by Metcalfe Architecture & Design for the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania, won the 2010 AIA Philadelphia Awards for Design Excellence Gold Medal and the American Association of Museums 2010 Excellence in Exhibition Design Award.

Tree to Tree was designed by Dede Cummings and printed at Springfield Printing Company in Vermont on recycled paper made from pulp that comes from post-consumer waste and not from Trees. Here is the full book on our Issuu page—thanks for you interest and feel free to share!

Arctic Visions: Encounters at the Top of the World

Stephen Gorman’s work focuses on understanding the connections between nature and humanity: how we depend on the ecosystems around us to sustain our material and spiritual lives, how we modify the landscapes in which we live and work, and how our ideas of nature shape our relationships with the world around us.

Stephen holds a Master’s Degree in Environmental Studies from Yale University, where he focused on the human dimensions of natural resource management; and a Bachelor’s Degree in American Studies from Wesleyan University, where he focused on American environmental history and the history of the North American Frontier.

Arctic Visions: Encounters at the Top of the World, which was commissioned by the Inuit of Nunavik and which won the 2011 Benjamin Franklin Award.

Books by Mary Oliver, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Winning Poet

When I first worked at Little, Brown & Company and The Atlantic Monthly Press in the late 80s, I lived in Somerville and worked on Beacon Hill in a spacious office as a trade book designer. My boss, Susan Windheim and I designed Mary’s book, American Primitive, which went on the win the Pulitzer Prize. After that book, I was fortunate to design House of Light, and many more books by Mary. She liked that I understood and was passionate about typesetting poetry – 12 pt. Monotype Perpetua was one of her favorite fonts to use for her poems with the Italic setting 1 point-size larger to match the x-height of the Roman text. I also started designing book covers which was a whole new world; but I always read the manuscript and fell into the style and setting of the poems or prose illuminating the author’s work, trying to evoke a design that carried through their words on a journey of sorts.