Situatedness Animation

Understanding our situatedness, blowing up assumptions

What are the things your brain has been conditioned to believe as “true”? What should you re-examine, pull apart and re-assemble with intention?

Condensed

No lip, all heart: We are an Inc. Best Workplace 2019

The only way to truly be the best at what you do is to know that being “the best” isn’t static. It’s a measure that rises and falls.

B-Corp Declaration of Interdependence As Told by a Few Rebellious Black Sheep

90,000. A number we’re a bit obsessed with that represents how many hours, on average, people spend at work in their lifetime.

St. Louis Blues 🏆 on Twitter: "PLAY GLORIA!!!!!!!! 🎶

#WeAllBleedBlue #stlblues… "

Carolina Hurricanes on Twitter: "New Fans. Old Fans. We don't care. 

Every jerk is welcome to join the #Canes family. 

Available soon at The Eye.… "

Hamilton the Pig rallies Hurricanes fans for Game 4

Doc meets Barclay, the Blues' office puppy

Don’t Pull Your Goalie Too Early: An Ode to Playoff Hockey & What This Season Has Taught Me

An Ode to Playoff Hockey & What This Season Has Taught Me

Leading the conversation about women’s health starts with you—the new Digital and Social Media Strategist for Own Every Piece at the UTHealth School of Public Health.

WORK: Social Media Strategist Needed

It’s not all on you. It’s all on “we.”

I have been thinking so much about new beginnings. Right beginnings.

I have been thinking so much about new beginnings. Right beginnings. Taking risks into those beginnings. In my creative life, I believe firmly in the power of knowing you can do something at 75% percent and being terrified of the last quarter.

It’s not easy to ask the hard questions. Especially when it comes to the way we speak.

What’s in a Tribe?

It’s not easy to ask the hard questions. Especially when it comes to the way we speak. 

Flower Power

It’s Not Where Good Ideas Come From. It’s When.

In this office we’re always uncovering some new video, podcast, song or book—which is wonderful, because The More You Know and all that.

In this office we’re always uncovering some new video, podcast, song or book—which is wonderful, because The More You Know and all that. But what we don’t spend much time talking about is alone time. Or, to make it sound less frightening, “solitude.”

My love for comics and cartooning originated from the Detroit Free Press, mainly obsessively reading Calvin and Hobbes.

Drawn Together

Joan Didion is a journalist and essayist whose work has appeared in Life, Esquire, The Saturday Post and The New York Times.

The Uncomfortable Topic of Grief

Joan Didion is a journalist and essayist whose work has appeared inLife, Esquire, The Saturday PostandThe New York Times. 

As a creative agency, it’s no surprise we’re constantly trying to find new ways to be creative and mine ideas from our brains.

Creativity Daily

As a creative agency, it’s no surprise we’re constantly trying to find new ways to be creative and mine ideas from our brains. Sometimes they come freely, as if already in existence. Other times, creativity is an arduous process that feels like it may never lead anywhere.

A to (Z): How the Youngest Generation Sees the World On Screen

Self-named the Last Generation, or Generation Delta, Gen Z-ers are pragmatic souls who are well-versed in change and uncertainty.

Self-named the Last Generation, or Generation Delta, Gen Z-ers are pragmatic souls who are well-versed in change and uncertainty. Our youngest generation(now9 – 22) might be a little obsessed with Youtube and their favorite vegan-model-actress influencer, but their true obsession is creating a life that has answers to the angst that drives them. Why else identify themselves as the Last Generation on earth? 

Business With Purpose: Embracing The B Corp Movement

You have nothing to be afraid of (except these two things)

Turns out activism is a pretty far–flung topic. In our activism blog series, we’ve covered things like whether or not to even call it activism and why momentum can be difficult to maintain when progress is difficult to measure.

Getting off the Seesaw: An Illustrated Ode to @Dviyer

We live in interesting times. Like a 24/7 roller coaster, the news cycle and feelings of helplessness in the face of big issues can relentlessly nudge us toward the edge.

Admittedly, I haven’t been feeling super inspired this week, so I’ll keep this brief.

Judging Imaginary People

Life can be stressful for a full-time-working, grad-school-moonlighting, Marie Kondo-style folding, suburb-commuting lady like myself.

Finding that Forward Fold

The Miami Vice AJ1. An MTO handcrafted with white and pink crocodile leather as well as turquoise and black python. Lined with Japanese plonge leather liner.  Inspired by the vibrancy of Miami.

@levis x @jumpman23 IV . I’ll be dropping these somewhere in Paris . You find em you keep em . Stay tuned ✌🏽

We live in a high culture of customization—our diets, hair color, movie recommendations, travel experiences.

Customize this

“We activate audiences around things that matter.”

An Act(ivism) of Destruction

There’s a particular kind of project that doesn’t feel like a project.

It feels like something else entirely. Over Black Sheep’s 16 years, we’ve learned to recognize these engagements — the ones where the stakes are real, where the mission is load-bearing, where getting the story right genuinely changes what’s possible for the people an organization serves. We’ve also learned that these are the projects we want to fill our days with.

Right now, our roster is full of them. I want to talk about that — not as a highlight reel, but as a reflection of what we believe this work is for. And if you’re leading one of these organizations right now and it feels heavy or uncertain or like your story isn’t keeping pace with your mission, this is for you too.


Some projects aren’t a single scope — they’re a relationship, built over time, through the kind of trust that only comes from doing hard things together.

Houston Arts Alliance is in one of the most pivotal moments in its history. A new CEO — the first woman and person of color to lead the organization — has stepped into a role that carries both enormous expectation and extraordinary possibility. We are building alongside them from the ground up: immediate messaging and leadership transition tools, a mission and vision refresh, a public education campaign, a community engagement process and a full brand foundation. Long, layered, listening-first work. Some of our favorite kind.

Houston Parks Board is marking its 50th anniversary at the start of an exciting new chapter — bold new leadership, a visionary strategic plan and a future that has been a century in the making. We’re evolving their brand to match the scale of that moment. Being trusted when the foundation is strong and the future is wide open is its own kind of honor.

Good Reason Houston is an organization we know well — we built their original brand in 2018, and they’ve called on us at several points of strategic inflection since. This is one of those moments. The world these leaders are navigating looks almost nothing like it did seven years ago, and our work together right now is about finding language that tells their story with clarity and confidence for where things are today.

Civic Builders designs, finances and builds educational facilities in underserved communities across the country. We completed a full messaging and positioning strategy with them, and we’re now deep into their visual identity system — in genuine collaboration with their extraordinary internal team. This partnership is the kind we aspire to: the work belongs to all of us.

The Greater Houston Partnership is building an AI-powered tool to connect educators, employers and community partners in ways that expand workforce opportunity. We’re building the brand that makes it accessible and credible from day one.

Fervo Energy is redefining what clean energy looks like. We are their strategic design agency — giving visual and creative form to the complexity of what they’re building, because a breakthrough technology deserves a story told with equal craft.

The University of Nevada, Reno trusted us to direct a digital campaign for their Black Youth Mental Health Initiative — designed to reach young people at the right moment, in the right channels and keep them connected to support that can change the trajectory of their lives. This follows our branding and strategy work for their CDC-sponsored Safer Nights opioid overdose prevention campaign last year.

The Center for Civic and Tech Life is now publishing a magazine for local election officials — the people who make democracy function at the ground level. We named and developed the publication’s visual identity, because this community deserves tools that reflect the seriousness of their work.

In collaboration with January Advisors, we’re working with the League of Women Voters Houston on a set of core values and a strategic plan built for what comes next. The League has been doing this work longer than most organizations have existed. Helping them articulate where they’re headed is not something we take lightly.

Much of this work is happening in Houston — the city where Black Sheep was founded, where many of us live and where we feel the stakes of these institutions personally. When you’re a Houstonian working on Houston, it stops being a client list and starts being something else.

It takes something to make this call. The leaders we work with aren’t doing it because things are easy — they’re doing it because they’ve decided that a story that can’t carry the mission is a liability they can’t afford. That takes clarity about what’s actually at stake. It takes a willingness to look honestly at the gap between where you are and how you’re being perceived. And it takes the kind of courage that doesn’t always get named as courage — the quiet decision to invest in something foundational when there are a hundred urgent things competing for the same resources.

But the thread running through all of it — local and national — is the same: find the organizations doing the most necessary work, and make sure their story is strong enough to carry their mission forward.

If your organization is in a moment that demands more clarity, more confidence or a story that finally matches where you’re headed — we’d love to be in that room with you.

A reflection on 16 years of learning which projects are worth our days — and the mission-driven organizations we're building alongside right now.

The Work That Doesn't Feel Like Work | Black Sheep Agency

What it takes to build a story strong enough to carry a mission forward.

Regular

A reflection on the partnerships filling our roster right now — and what it takes for mission-driven organizations to build a story strong enough to carry their work forward.

The Black Sheep blog is turning up the volume on community engagement, social media strategy, Houston happenings and what it means to lead a purpose-driven life.

The Black Sheep Agency | Social impact and nonprofit blog

We like to type as much as we like to listen.

We're not shy.

The Work That Doesn’t Feel Like Work