This is it. We're a few days away from 2016's 50 on Fire awards ceremony to recognize our city's most prominent movers, shakers and innovators. Before you descend upon the Moakley Courthouse on December 7, we wanted to give you more background on some of the finalists in the running for this year's honors.
This time around, let's dive into the businesses and folks in our Design category. Warning: It's about to get hella creative up in here so hold onto your seats.
CBT Architects
CBT is an award-winning architecture firm. Current projects CBT is working on include the Waterside Place development on 501 Congress Street in the Seaport district, which will feature a 330,000 square-foot residential building with 3,300 square feet of retail space, and Harrison Albany Block, a complex that will comprise 710 apartments, 40,000-square-feet of office and 14,000 square feet of retail space in the South End.
Creative Mornings Boston
CreativeMornings is a breakfast lecture series meant to bring together the tech and creative communities. The Boston chapter is headed up by Keith Frankel, a former HubSpotter. It's partnered with organizations like WeWork, General Assembly and Brooklyn Boulders. Past talks have included local entrepreneurs like the CEO of Vecna and the founder of Johnny Cupcakes.
Disruptor Beam
This game design firm has transformed some of the biggest entertainment franchises, like Game of Thrones and Star Trek, into free games. It developed "Game of Thrones Ascent," which has had 550 million users who logged hours via Facebook in 2015. It has more games in the works, including "The Walking Dead: March to War," which will be released next year. This past spring, the company closed more than $2 million in funding.
Formlabs
This year, Formlabs secured $35 million in Series B funding and added Brad Feld, a VC veteran, to its board. In addition to being named one of our Coolest Companies this summer, it landed on a Boston Business Journal list of top 25 Mass. startups with the highest valuations at $273.63 million.
Fresh Tilled Soil
The Waltham-based UX/UI design firm helps entrepreneurs and businesses launch personalized web applications and sites with snazzy, user-friendly interfaces. Since being founded in 2005, they've completed about 600 projects for people throughout the world.
Graffito
Graffito is an advisory firm specializing in retail development and urban planning. Most recently, it's been working on projects like Harvard University's North Allston Placemaking and Retail Development Study, athenahealth's work at The Arsenal in Watertown, MIT Investment Management Company's Kendall Square Initiative and the Union Square Revitalization Project.
IDEO
IDEO is a design company operating on the global scale. In the past year, it's managed to partner with Target to launch the Food + Future CoLab at MIT. It works with Planned Parenthood, through which it helped revamp patient experience, won the 2016 Fast Company Innovation By Design Award in the Health category. Meanwhile, its Toy Lab's new app, Monster Moves, was a finalist in the Apps category.
Jesse Louis-Rosenberg & Jessica Rosenkrantz: Nervous System
Both MIT alumni, Louis-Rosenberg and Rosenkrantz founded Somerville design studio Nervous System. Most notably, the duo was behind a 3D-printed, Kinematics Dress that was featured at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for the #techstyle summer exhibition. In general, they work within a space where science, art and technology meet. They write computer programs inspired by nature that create products like jewelry and home goods.
LovePop
The maker of 3D pop-up cards recently announced a $6 million Series A round led by Ryan Moore of Accomplice and included backing by Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary and other investors. (The startup first encountered O'Leary when it appeared on the popular television show last winter. Most recently, it opened two New York City retail locations and launched a new custom wedding invitation platform. It now has nearly 200 employees, with more than 30 operating out of its Boston HQ.
Rob Maloof: Gauntlet Films
Started in 2005, Gauntlet Films produces prime-quality films for its clients. Rob Maloof, the man behind Gauntlet, has worked with past 50 on Fire winners like Haymakers for Hope and George Foreman's Everybody Fights. He's also donated his time to produce a video for the St. Baldricks Foundation and he started to produce brand videos for tech startups in the Accomplice space.
RODE Architects
RODE is a full-service architectural design firm. It's been behind major development projects throughout Boston, such as West Broadway Hotel, Harvard Art Museums, Winthrop Square Tower, SRV Restaurant, Commonwealth Market & Restaurant, Coppersmith Restaurant and Dorchester Brewing Company.
Sam Aquillano: Design Museum Boston
Sam Aquillano is the founder and executive director of the Design Museum Foundation. The network of design museums runs out of three places across the country: the Design Museum Boston, Design Museum Portland in Oregon and Design Museum San Francisco. The organization continues to grow, spreading the word throughout the globe about how design impacts our daily lives.
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