It was only three years ago that I first stepped foot on the soil at Suzie’s Farm, and WOW have they come a long way in a short time! My hair, on the other hand, is still usually shaggy (but cut me some slack when I’m on bike).

Suzie’s Farm officially started their organic veggie program in 2004, spent a long while planting/failing/learning and had begun to pick up steam with restaurants and foodies around San Diego when the photo above was taken in ’09.

Fast forward to today and Suzie’s is now the largest urban farm in any major city in the United States – and all organic at that! Their CSA program has exploded. Restaurants across the county feature their produce. And perhaps more than any other success, Robin & Lucila are most proud of the community building that has occurred through their special events and tours on the farm.

Watching some of this transformation occur made it even more of an honor to be asked to help them more effectively tell their story online. Yep, a new website for Suzie’s was due.

We were blessed to work with an incredible team on this project – from Suzie’s motivated “in-barn” staff & visionary leaders Robin & Lucila, to the tireless programming of Joseph Niu & the whimsical hand of illustrator/designer Holly Jones. And now, we are proud to say that the new Suzie’s Farm website is now live!

Go check it out and tell us if it doesn’t make you want to eat more veggies – we dare you.

Photo by Jay Porter.

Jaime’s vision for the series is to faithfully depict the reality of the slaughtering process happening on small farms, arguably the best-case scenario in terms of humane meat production. In Fritsch’s words,

This is not a series on brutal, cruel slaughterhouses; nor is it a series on ethical, humane practices. This is about the sheer act of death for food.

WARNING: The chicken slaughter in the second half of this post is very graphic, so don’t scroll down if you’re concerned about seeing some pretty intense imagery of blood.

The first shoot includes two pigs, eating and mulling about their pen, with eerily human eyes and cute little curly-Q tails.

More from the PORK series…

The second shoot was during a chicken slaughter, capturing some intensely graphic images of the process, including some breathtaking mid-air blood droplets unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

More from the CHICKEN series…

We’re excited to see how the series unfolds and would love to hear what you think of Fritsch’s work.

It’s always fun for us to see clients getting attention from the press, especially when it steps outside their typical audience. With that in mind, we can’t help but share this little snippet on Societe Brewing Company’s tasting room decor, featured this month in Riviera Magazine’s Design Hot List.

Words & images are the most basic tools we use at MoSpo, so we’re always on the lookout for interesting examples that could inspire our work. The latest such inspiration, The Lexicon of Sustainability, is a series of photo collage pieces that attempt to decipher slow food terms that are becoming more and more common in the media.

The project came out of the minds of Douglas Gayeton and Laura Howard-Gayeton, who traveled all over the country creating images and gathering the input of food & sustainability experts (read, Joe Salatin, Alice Waters). Lucky for San Diegans, the project founders chose Slow Food Urban San Diego as curators to exhibit the images in our community.

Here are a few samples, and check the MoSpo Facebook page for news about shows in the San Diego area.

The San Diego Public Market is coming. And unsurprisingly, people are stoked. A final tally today found close to 1,400 people backed the project on Kickstarter, raising close to $150,000!

Catt White (one of our most prominent farmers’ market managers) and her partner in crime Dale Steel (public market guru) have spent many years researching and plotting to make this happen, so this current and highly social chapter is actually somewhere in the middle of their story. Lots of hard work lies ahead, but these two couldn’t be a better fit for the job.

Check out their Kickstarter video for more info… and we’ll drop more news as things progress down here in Barrio Logan.

A new chapter in the book of MIHO opened last night. The Vetted Table held a pop-up dinner at El Take It Easy in North Park, greeting guests at the entirely re-styled entry, complete with vintage love seats and service staff looking impeccable. (photo above by MIHO)

The Vetted Table crew brought in collaborators from the weddings & special events they cater to transform EZ into a one night Vetted Table experience. Mother Sponge was honored to be asked to develop the brand for The Vetted Table – and we were stoked with the results. Take a look over here at some of our design work for MIHO’s newest brand.

Cheers to the successful launch and a bright future for The Vetted Table!

We’ve been slightly obsessed with Cebicheria Erizo for a few years now, so it was only a matter of time before a pilgrimage to Javier Plascencia’s flagship Misión 19 would materialize. And the other day, materialize it did.

Our buds at Slow Food Urban San Diego extended an invite our way for a lunch that Javier was putting together – we did not, could not, should not decline. Here are some photos from the experience…

Part of the experience at Misión 19 is walking through the gorgeous new building that houses the restaurant. This is a shot taken directly under a giant skylight and glass-flanked atrium that winds through the center of the building.

One corner of the restaurant has a private dining area on a platform, with copious amounts of sunlight streaming through skylights above. I recall zero light fixtures – this is the first LEED certified building in Tijuana.

Restaurant entrance with signage. The tagline, “cocina de autor” is an apt description – where Erizo hosts Plascencia’s ceviche studies in charcoal, Misión 19 is a refined conceptual masterpiece in marble.

The long communal table setup especially for the SFUSD board members, with MoSpo tagging along and giddy with excitement at this point.

Now, onto the food! Disclaimer: some dishes were not documented as their aroma and plating were too enticing not to dive right in.

Steamed oyster.

Seared ahi with mole, chicharrones, radish, grilled shishito pepper.

Heirloom bean and Summer mushroom risotto with huitlacoche dust and epazote spume.

Tamarind martini.

Mezcalero with chapulin sea salt on the rim!

Local cheeses with guava puree, candied hibiscus and honey.

Banana brulee with oatmeal ice cream, strawberries and bougavillea.

Slow Food Urban San Diego board (and MoSpo’s Sean Kelley) with Javier Plascencia atop the Via Corporativo building where Misión 19 resides. Our SFUSD buddy Chelsea Coleman took the above photo, and many others, along with great notes on the courses – check them out here.

We’ve been busy busy busy, buried in our design cave in Barrio Logan, working closely with many friends and colleagues on a brand development project for Societe Brewing Company. These guys treat beer like art, which has made the long nights and beastly tasting room installation an honor to pour our creative energies into.

We’ll be posting a more comprehensive case study on the project soon, which includes everything from branding to tasting room decor. In the meantime, here’s a little background on the Societe Brewing Company Grand Opening event.

A friend lent me The Lean Startup over the weekend, and within two days the Mother Sponge universe has experienced a significant and fundamental thought-shift. The big lesson from author Eric Ries thus far – throw out assumptions, consider what you don’t really know, and find your way through new product development by testing ideas in the real world.

In other words, EXPERIMENT!

OK, experimental science is by no means a new idea, so what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that choosing between assumptions and experimental evidence can make or break you as a startup searching for an attentive audience, a product that’ll sell, a business in the black! And there is no way to really know if your assumptions are true unless you witness actual customers behaving in the way you hypothesized that they would.

Ries is among several current thought leaders in marketing and business discussing relating themes right now (see Seth Godin’s Poke the Box and 37Signals’ REWORK to name just a couple). And for good reason – experimentation is a lost art. Most of us lose the gift at some point in elementary school.

So ask yourself – do you really know there’s a market that will demand your incredible new product? Before assuming anything, couldn’t you start by running very quick, very inexpensive experiments to see who’s out there and what they want? And if you continued testing and learning in short cycles, might you collect a lot of invaluable data in a short span of time?

Maybe. Probably worth finding out.