Ppl

Food & Fresno Fresno's food system is complex. We export our homegrown crops to feed the Nation and the world at a massive scale, but struggle with spotty availability of quality unprocessed foods in many of our communities.

Food Commons Fresno At Ppl, we're privileged to collaborate with local community benefit organization Food Commons Fresno. The organization's mission driven programs focus on improving the integrity of our local food systems. Ensuring the number of households and commercial food service providers with access to delicious and healthy food grows a little more each day.

We've helped Food Commons Fresno with their organization brand identity, leading a co-creative process that yielded a sincere cross-medium messaging platform for their endeavors to connect with the communities they serve.

Meet Your Farmer Recently we had the opportunity to add dimension to the story using video. We visited three unique farmers serving our region's household kitchen tables and restaurants with delicious, wholesome food.

As we got to know Tom @ T&D Willey Farms (Madera), Paul @ Sweet Home Ranch (Dinuba) and Joe @ Bounkhong Farms (Sanger) — we began to understand more fully how our fertile Central Valley soils support life beyond the plants themselves.

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Credits: Punit Dhesi, Director @ Ppl Floyd Sanchez, Creative Director @ Ppl Josh Harding, Editor @ Ppl Keith Pistoresi, Aerial Photography

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Visit Food Commons Fresno for more information about their work to change Fresno's food and agricultural paradigms.

Our founding team read this book by 99U at the beginning of 2015 and we're convinced it helped us forge new ways of getting things done. As the year comes to a close, we have five extra copies here at the studio we'd love to share with any of our friends that are interested.

The way our communities are policed has become a flashbang — rather, a flashpoint for contention, demonstrations, and most importantly, dialog.

One of the most common sentiments that has arisen from these discussions is that there is disharmony within the way communities and citizens perceive police officers and the work they do.

But a notion that fails to appear in most discussions is the apparent discord between many law enforcement agencies and their leadership, in the variance of their outlook on the most constructive ways to best actualize their promise to "Protect and Serve" their communities.

On the state and local level, law enforcement agencies are independent entities. Each has great license to tell their own story when it comes to how they wish the public to perceive them, and the promise they make to the communities they serve.

A business or traditional nonprofit organization with a negative image that places blame on their audience for how they perceive them will not be operational for long, but police organizations are funded differently than businesses and traditional nonprofit organizations. Often their motivation and incentive to communicate and build coalitions within their communities will be different.

PURPOSE IN POLICING

There's not many professions that have such an eloquently clear-cut purpose — Protect & Serve. Only one who has gone through police academy, training and spent time within the corridors of a department or precinct can speak through experience about how much this mantra permeates the agency they served.

But one thing is clear — many agencies may benefit from taking to heart how effectively they're communicating and following through on their commitment to this slogan. We view an organization's brand not just as a collection of logos, slogans, Pantone values and vehicle livery. A brand is the ground-up summation of the way an organization's leadership and staff view, deliver and communicate their mission, and ultimately these characteristics come to define perceptions of their commitment to the communities they serve.

When you lose sight of your purpose, even one as warm, endearing and beautiful as Protect & Serve, you stand to lose trust amongst those you've made that promise to.

FLIES & HONEY

Police recruitment videos are an interesting distillation of a law enforcement agency's priorities. They show how the leadership of a given organization philosophizes (or doesn't at all) the work they do. Ultimately they are en excellent metaphor for the effect an organization wishes to have on their community. Aside from that, they also do a great job of letting a potential candidate know what type of person they view as fit for the role of police officer in their jurisdiction.

The two videos above illustrate the fascinating spectrum of law enforcement philosophy. It's been said that it's easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar. It seems the Newport Beach Police Department may be one of many interested in using anti-insurgency weaponry and UFC finishing moves to attract flies that aspire to be post-apocalyptic armor plated exoskeleton battle wasps.

The Decatur Police Department seems to be interested in recruiting police officers that value integrity and harbor a genuine concern for the citizens in their community. Within the first 10 seconds, Decatur Police Chief Mike Booker even plainly states that his department has a commitment to empathy.

Protecting, serving and empathy seem like traits that would go a long way in making everyone safer and more comfortable in the communities we live in and police work in. Police organizations and their leadership should consider how their brands can better speak to their mission, how their operations can better reflect these ideals, and how their officers can better deliver on these promises.

F.U.S.E. 2014 is happening again this year in Downtown Fresno and our friends at Creative Fresno have been hard at work lining up a great lineup of venues and performances.

Once again we had the privilege of crafting the aesthetic identity for the event (it's our third time). This year we had help with the lettering from Lab friend Curve HTK.

Cliché time: Mumbai = sensory overload. Gazing from the car window constantly surrendering your sense of regularity, seeing a new idea of what normal means every 3 minutes. The first couple days in Mumbai was an exercise in relaxing my own personal sense of what I should expect to encounter in a given day. Flying through the cities streets with our driver Raj expertly navigating the ins-and-outs of the  unique Mumbaikar interpretation of acceptable driving practices was a case-study in making your own way — literally. The horn takes the place of the blinker, and any space wide enough to fit the natural taper of the front-end of Raj's Tata equated to our own lane. The city doesn't come alive until around 11am, and once you come to realize that — getting up-and-going just before dawn becomes your temporary key to the city. Wandering the streets of Lokhandwala, Andheri and Santacruz, we were fortunate enough to be able to spend most of our 7 days experiencing the real Mumbai. A Mumbai in which you can go days without seeing someone that's not 'local.'

Speaking of locals, here's Lab friend Poetik Justis of Slumgods crew doing a freestyle on the Santacruz Skywalk.

FALL 2013 PRODUCTION REEL

People often ask what I’ve been up to. Press play and find out. There is so much I want to say. Every scene in this production reel comes with one hell of a story and if you catch me at a bar one day, I’ll probably tell you one of them. People often ask me what I want to do now. The same thing I’ve been doing, only better. Music videos, commercials, and documentaries is where it’s at for me. I just want to build and grow and keep meeting inspiring people along the way. People often ask me why I’m back in Fresno. Why the hell not? I’ve traveled the world shooting videos in hella places. I can write treatments at any coffee shop in the world. It really doesn’t matter. My people are here. I’m from here. People often ask me "What is AntiLabs?" It’s the home of epic Chatroulette parties. But really, it's an approach — the method by which we tackle projects and help clients make the most of opportunities to build their brand. The product of that process has been seen by hundreds of millions of people around the globe, and that's something we're very proud of. Me and Floyd are working together closer than ever now. If you’re not familiar with AntiLabs, get familiar. Let’s do work.

Punit Dhesi Director [email protected]

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We're excited to share our new music video project for frequent Anti Laboratories collaborator and Fresno hip-hop standout Fashawn. Filmed in one take, the video is a first time partnership between Lab director Punit Dhesi and Evidence (yes, @mrevidence on Instagram) of Dilated Peoples.

"The Beginning” is a really minimal track, it doesn’t even have a hi hat, so there’s not really much to hide behind here. I liked the combination of the loop and the drums to keep the sound raw. Running the beat through some lo fi filters and keeping Fashawn’s vocals on top and clean was my objective. When he spit me his rhymes I felt every word needed to be heard. To me this record and video is about him. Visualizing an environment in which he came from and showing everyday distractions in his life both personal and public and how they constantly try to distract him while he was focused on his craft in which in this case was the camera. That was our main goal. Adding on the one take aspect of it really made it a challenge and shooting it illegally with no permit didn’t help make this an easy task. Both Punit Dhesi and I looked at every aspect. The Minimal beat and black and white video we felt it would compliment each other perfectly. To me the video looks how the song feels. Fashawn has some really notable lines, originally I was going to be on there with him, but decided not to once I felt how focused he was on the record. For a very versatile artist this is my favorite side of Fashawn the MC. I’m really excited about the video and am really excited about his album. The world needs to hear it already.” — Evidence

This project was a lot of fun to put together. As always, if you have any unique commercial video projects you need help with, or music videos you're accepting treatments for  — talk to Punit

FOOD, FRIENDS & FRESNO

PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY OF CHAMPAGNE & STYROFOAM CUPS

We had a lot of fun working with Fash to put together the art for the packaging of the project. Thanks to a big help from photographer Ryan C. Jones at his Downtown Fresno studio (r.i.p. studio), we got the perfect shot to grace the cover.

The LP ships 3/19/13 — available from Fat Beats:

When it comes to writing anything substantial, they say that starting is the hardest part. Now that I’ve got that out of the way, let me introduce myself (shhhh, this is my process).

My name is Hans Steele, but most people around these parts call me ‘H’. Ive been asked to write a little about myself, which is a surprisingly hard thing to do. When I want to learn about someone whom I’ve never met before, my instinct these days is to glance over their various social media profiles and make some assumptions (and I like to think I’m not the only one that does this). While this isn’t always the case, it’s a tactic that people in our culture often resort to. So let me save you the trouble. My LinkedIn labels me as a “Strategic Creative”, Twitter describes me as “fierce and beautiful (and bears)”, my Facebook is filled with occasionally-relevant links and images, and all three of those platforms might lead you to the realization that I just started working for a company called Anti Laboratories. 

FINDING DOWNTOWN

My deep interest in the Downtown area began just over a year ago when some classmates and I began a remodel project on an old home in the area. After learning a lot about construction, networking with some great people, and ultimately completing the project, I wasn’t sure what the next step was. I dabbled in some more construction related projects through the summer heat, but as an impatient youngster I wanted a bigger hand in making a difference downtown. 

While working part time for a contractor in the Fall, I had some classes at Fresno City and spent free time looking to get involved downtown. After a couple months of failed attempts in finding a position downtown, I finally got connected with a downtown nonprofit called Creative Fresno and simultaneously found an apartment in the area. CF offered me a volunteer position doing some legwork on this new project called “CartHop”, which was supposed to keep me busy a few hours a week. Soon after, through my desire to see the project expand and grow, a few hours a week turned into 25 hours a week and I found myself with a real job. All of the sudden, I was living, working, and playing in downtown Fresno, and I loved it. 

H STEELE, PROJECT MANAGER

So where does AntiLabs fit in? Well, quite perfectly. I met Floyd through Creative Fresno, and learned about his branding and design company through his work for CF and the CartHop project. Right away I noticed his unique focus on improving the downtown area through the creative outlets of his business. Like me, Floyd lives and works here, but he’s been doing it for years. My coordination work for CartHop caught his eye, and his passion for downtown caught mine, so he approached me with the opportunity to obtain and manage projects for his company (in a nutshell, I’ll be communicating with small business, nonprofits, and independent artists to ensure that they can get the most out of their image).

Of course, I jumped at the chance to be involved with AntiLabs, especially since it would allow for me to maintain my work at CartHop. I've admired frequent AntiLab collaborators Punit Dhesi and Conlan Spangler for some time, and working with them was an exciting opportunity.  The work coming out of this studio is striking, fresh, vocal, and ultimately screams innovation (it’s called Anti Laboratories, after all). Recent revitalization efforts have championed these very attributes, and I knew that it’s prudent for a small business like Floyd’s to be connected with the movement. Downtown has had a valuable asset not at its doorstep, but sitting right there in its living room, tweeting from the couch (but getting a lot of quality work done too). 

DOING THINGS DIFFERENTLY

Anti Laboratories is a company downtown needs. I met with a business owner just last week who asked me why AntiLabs doesn’t move up north where the money is. Our answer is simple: Its always tempting to take the easy way out and head to greener pastures, but that approach never brings change. Progress doesn’t happen on its own, committed people need to be involved. We want to make a difference. We want to breath life into a city-center. We innovate, we do, and at the end of the day we remember that downtown Fresno needs a little Anti in its quest for a new life. It needs to do things differently, and we’re the perfect guys for the job.

BYOMimosas.