AIGA/NY: When is Design Like Sitting Around a Campfire Talking About Survival?

A. When you are part of BEST MADE, sniffing the breeze and hunting for a genuine
connection to your audience, honing axe blades and emblazoning handles, refining the oldest tool known to man...until your audience responds to you with stories, an emotional connection that extends way beyond the realm of commerce.

B. When you revel in the mystique of a blade, see its light and dark side, and rise to the four maxims of BEST MADE: Courage, Compassion, Grace and Fortitude and then you go outside and work with your hands, and are fulfilled by this modest, manual calling.

C. When you start your business on a lark in the middle of an international financial—and moral—crisis, and create, in a workshop in Tribeca, quality products to empower and inspire people: products ranging from axes (see A., above) to cloth extension cords, whistles, first aid kits, clay pipes, shoe oil, sew-on badges and, naturally, horn whiskey tumblers.

D. All of the above—which you can hear about in illustrated detail when
Peter Buchanan-Smith takes to the stage at MAD on April 24th, armed with tales of tracking wolves in Northern Wisconsin, living off the land in Lumberland NY, and even finding the perfect pair of wool underwear at a mobbed trade show in Berlin. Come hear about the wilderness within—and about patience, precision, preposterous provisions and pragmatism that make BEST MADE a new paradigm for work and play, commerce and connection.