RIGHT: KIND COMPANY STUDIO SITE | WWW.KINDCOMPANY.COM

Through simple, smart, usable design solutions, Kind Company has made the web, well, kinder. With a focus on working for small and medium-sized businesses, partners Patricia Belen and Greg D’Onofrio have collaborated closely with their clients to commu­nicate the value of everything from pizza to rare books.

“For us, good design is successful when it speaks in an honest and direct way,” notes D’Onofrio. “Our approach has always cen­tered around designing for our client’s business goals. Therefore, the solutions we recommend are always tailored, but still empha­size our beliefs in good design—a combination of function and aes­thetics.” Design is a communication tool, not art, suggests Kind Company, and they use design to get messages across with clarity, beauty and minimalism. This duo definitely comes from the “less is more” school of thought.

Both Belen and D’Onofrio are 100-percent self–taught designers. Their work encompasses a wide range of solutions in print and identity, but they are getting the most attention for their clean, spare websites, including blogs, e-commerce sites and database-driven content management systems. Kind Company’s large con­tent-driven sites, like the AIGA New York Chapter site, manage to present a lot of material without overwhelming the user.

In addition to purely commercial work, Kind Company has designed and developed several invaluable resources for designers, including the Alvin Lustig Online Archive, which celebrates the work of this important mid-century Modernist American designer. Steven Heller, who contributed essays on Lustig for the site, says of Belen and D’Onofrio, “I didn’t know where Greg and Patricia came from, but I was certainly glad they emerged. Their website devoted to Alvin Lustig reveals a commitment to design history couched in a firm understanding of how the new—or not so new anymore— media will serve us all in communicating and educating. They are not prettifying designers, but designer/authors with a true vision.”

The Lustig project made Belen and D’Onofrio think about their personal work much differently. “We’ve realized there are ways to work on projects that truly interest us on a personal level while serving as a contribution to the design community at large,” says D’Onofrio. “It’s our small but important contribution.” As a result, the partners are in the process of creating an organization called Display that will focus on archiving and displaying online important modern graphic design and designers.

From their Brooklyn studio, Kind Company contemplates the future. The partners are optimistic and excited about tack­ling self-initiated projects as well as expanding their client base, skills and concepts. “Because of our size—two people,” admits D’Onofrio, “it’s often difficult to step back and see the big picture when we’re busy focusing on the day-to-day business and design tasks of running a small studio. Like many of our projects, this too is a work in progress.”

www.kindcompany.com | www.thisisdisplay.org | www.alvinlustig.org | www.aigany.org