95. ADAMSMORIOKA
AdamsMorioka was founded in 1994 after an epiphany on the People-mover at Disneyland. Ten years later, Sean Adams and Noreen Morioka published a 66-page book of highlights from their design partnership. “It’s not a capabilities brochure,” says Adams. “We did it for ourselves, to have our favorite things all in one place.” More than just being about Adams-Morioka, it’s about Adams and Morioka, with anecdotes from their personal lives, images of their workspace, and lots of examples of the clean, accessible, simple work they vowed to create while circling Tomorrowland on that fateful day. They sent the books to clients and friends, and word-of-mouth requests poured in from people requesting “the red book.”

Compiling the book’s contents proved to be a greater task than expected—2004 was the actual 10-year anniversary, but it took them a year to put it together. It also created a temporary rift between Adams and Morioka as they battled over the inclusion of an incendiary element: a photo of a pig statuette.

“We never fight,” says Adams. “But for one entire day, we weren’t talking because Noreen hated the pig.” Eventually, Adams made a substantial argument for the pig, Morioka conceded and AdamsMorioka settled into its second decade of creative bliss.
Alissa Walker