Essex Two is a vertically integrated communication practice.

We help our clients; organizations, institutions and entrepreneurs, identify the elements of their culture that connect them with their audiences. By translating values, artifacts and rituals into language, images and actions, we transform expectations, relationships and reputations into sustainable brands.

Our Design by Objectives® process identifies and defines for our clients, those strategic and the emotional tenets that connect them to their audiences, building respect and loyalty. Our Design is a Verb® philosophy produces an intellectually and aesthetically charged environment where an active, integrated hands-on approach to meaningful communication is exceptionally productive.

We care about what we do and those we serve, as well as those served by our clients.

Joseph Michael Essex Creative Director, Managing Partner

WORK is both a place and an activity, a process and a product. The same can be said of DESIGN.

For more than several decades the focus of our WORK has been identification and branding. This is the strategic and cultural activity that connects needs with wants, ideas with actions, clients with customers and products with people.

We are committed to the hands-on development of research and its evaluation, strategy and positioning, language and imagery as well as the application and assessment of branding initiatives. We have helped our clients connect their products and services with their audiences in ways that are memorable and meaningful.

This website is new and far from complete, but rather than wait to publish, we have chosen to be a WORK in progress. Over the next few weeks, maybe months we will be expanding and affirming the positioning of what we do, who we serve and how we do it.

Click on ABOUT and TOOLS for more on our process and products.

Joseph Michael Essex Creative Director, Managing Partner

Steve Jobs and Charles Eames were keynote speakers at the International Design Conference in Aspen, in the late 70s. Jobs presented a view of the future where streams of information will be racing towards us like water from a 1,000 fire hoses. Charles Eames, speaking a day later, suggested said information is not the same as intelligence.

A few years later John Massey was being interviewed, on stage, at an AIGA/Chicago event. Toward the end of the evening John was asked, What is the most important quality a designer should have? His answer, awareness.

Our approach to design and how we do what we do is shaped by understanding and awareness. To us design is both the process and a product. In the same way that work is both a place and an activity.

This methodology may not be exclusive to Essex Two, however we have embraced it as culturally defining.

Joseph Michael Essex Creative Director, Managing Partner

George Bernard Shaw once said, professionals in almost every discipline, foster a language designed to speak only with one another and keep the rest of us out. The design profession, unfortunately, is not an outlier.

After many decades, we have determined that by actively engaging with our clients in the process of designing anything and everything the results are almost always better, certainly more satisfying and longer lasting.

We will never know or fully appreciate the businesses of our clients in the ways that they do. That is our disadvantage and our advantage.

What we know is how to identify and translate the core elements of an organization’s culture, character and values into the language and imagery that will connect them with those they wish to serve.

Joseph Michael Essex Creative Director, Managing Partner

The idiom, You can’t judge a book by it’s cover, first appeared in the mid-19th century. It was certainly meaningful then. However, since the advent of the Internet, digital marketing experts estimate that most Americans are exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 ads each day, much less those images we are receiving from television, films, books, magazines or a round trip to Walgreens.

If we don’t judge what we see, in one way or another, if we attempt to ignore, disregard or just plain close our eyes to the 10’s of thousands of images we see every day, there will be consequences. We need to make judgments, maybe even 10’s of thousands of judgments, if only to avoid the dead stop of an intellectual traffic jam.

Unlike posters that are exhibited where everyone might run across them, books and publications are distributed where they have the best opportunity to connect with those who share an interest in their content. In this context, side-by-side comparisons/judgments are impossible to avoid.

So, go ahead choose; whatever attracts your attention, engages your mind or just tweaks your fancy. It’s OK.

Joseph Michael Essex Creative Director, Managing Partner

Posters are to design, what poetry is to literature.

Posters present 90% of an idea while providing an opportunity for anyone, viewing the poster, to contribute to the experience.

Just like answering a clever a riddle, completing a difficult puzzle or getting a new joke; the act of contributing is rewarding.

This active collaboration enhances understanding and affirms ownership of a shared idea.

With all two dimensional hubris aside, a poster’s job is to attract the attention of everyone from 25 feet away.

To be a successful, the attraction must be meaningful enough to bring those viewers closer to the poster and than even close enough for them to appreciate how it’s content benefits them.

Posters, like all effective communication, have more to do with engagement and awareness than selling/marketing.

Joseph Michael Essex Creative Director, Managing Partner

Typography, in appearance and application, is said to be anonymous when it does not influence or color the meaning of the message it’s represents. In this way, the messenger is not part of the message, only its conveyance, without affirmation or contradiction. The careful placement of typography can also support its position of anonymity, by keeping its focus on the content of the message rather than the appearance of the text.

When the typography, or its arrangement, is manipulated to embellish the text, one of two conditions results. Less becomes more when the application technique, of the typography, overwhelms the content of the message. Or, more becomes less when typography is applied in ways that negates the meaning of the text.

Balance between just so and too much is achieved when the visual arrangement of the typography is supportive of the text. In this way typography contributes to the understanding and the acceptance of the content.

Joseph Michael Essex Creative Director, Managing Partner

Essex Two first opened its doors in January of 1989, in 5000 square feet, on the seventh floor of 116 South Michigan Avenue, across the street from the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 1995 Essex Two moved sixteen blocks North, into its own building, almost 5000 square feet at 2210 West North Avenue. At that time the business was refocused to take on primarily Naming, Positioning, Branding and Identification assignments.

Our goal was to focus on fewer projects with longer relationships. This would enable the partners/principles the time and energy to begin a family. The design of this live-work building accommodated 6-7 employees and eventually two newborns, now in their late-twenties.

While in that building we managed to server over 300 clients, a few for 30+ years. At the same time we’ve been fortunate enough to be recognized by our peers for the quality of our work and our active and sustained engagement with several professional organizations and associations.

After 30 plus years and two grown sons we have closed Essex Two (except for a few ongoing projects) and opened J.M.Essex, Ltd. a Design by Objectives™ consultancy. The office advises individuals and groups on developing and nourishing creative excellence and leadership.

Addendum: The design and construction of the completed building has been recognized by the American Institute of Architects, the American Concrete Institute and featured on HGTV’s Extreme Homes, publication the New American House 2, Innovations in Residential Design and Construction by Oscar Riera Ojeda as well as published in the Sunday supplement of the Chicago Tribune.

Architect: Wheeler Kearns Architects

Engineers: LeMessuries Consultants and Spancrete Industries

Contractors: Firehouse Construction

J.M.Essex,Ltd. A Design by Objectives™ Consultancy

J.M.Essex,Ltd. is a sole proprietor providing advice & counsel to clients, concerning brand related issues & initiatives as well as staffing & organizational configurations for ambitious design offices & corporate creative departments.

What I Hope to Accomplish is No Small Thing.

Over the past 50+ years I‘ve learned how to be useful. I’ve created and managed my own office for over 30 years, serving the needs and aspirations of our clients in over 20 states and 4 countries. I’ve also committed 12 years building creative groups, as a senior officer of a multi-national corporation, with over 45 offices worldwide serving clients in more than 30 business categories.

My goal is to apply what I’ve learned, helping clients, companies and colleagues develop and implement plans created just for them, to achieves their goals.

I Can Be Useful to You.

With a Brand Audit I can help Corporations and Institutions measure current and long-term objectives against future communication and marketing goals. In addition, I can provide a Creative Team Audit evaluating the talent requirements and skill sets of internal/external teams against future wants and needs.

For Independent Creative Offices and Agencies I can help evaluate and recommend Office Configurations designed to dramatically shape how a particular office performs, for its clients and their client’s audiences. How the creative team collaborates with others, to deliver their best work, is a critical factor.

Someone whose been where you want to go, doing what you want done could be very useful to you and your future success.

Joseph Michael Essex 773.489.1400 joseph@sx2.com

Our sons, Graham and Reed, started their formal education at The Near North Montessori School in Chicago, from preschool to eighth grade. For high school they applied to and were excepted into at International Baccalaureate and Double Honors programs at Lincoln Park High School part of the Chicago Public School system.

At mainstream, public high schools lunch boxes weren’t cool. “Tray” lunches or “bag” lunches were acceptable, if still not quite cool. Four years later Graham was off to college and Reed had two more years at Lincoln Park.

In an effort to support his efforts each bag lunch was made a little more special, a little more individual reminding him that we thought he was cool.

PS: Mornings being what they are, not all of the bags were photographed and accept for the last few, unused bags, none of them were saved.

Art for art's sake has always been presumptuous, at least presumptuous for me.

At this point in time I’m not an artist, I am a designer by training, trade and practice. Designers transform the ephemeral into the practical, ideas are actuated, wants and needs are made manifest.

An artist creates for themselves without filters, breaks or a destination in mind. They share their particular vision with the rest of us whether we appreciate it or not.

Designers produce for others with goals and a destination predetermined early. While the difference between the two may be fundamental, it isn't a canyon to be leaped but rather a threshold to be stepped crossed.

All but a small few of the 4” x 6” post cards are original to the collection, almost all have been mailed to someone. I’m hopping to gain grace and courage with this experience and move past aspiration, to anticipation, to application, ie. larger.

Always, Joseph