The Office of Ordinary Things is a climate, sustainability, and social good-focused design studio based in San Francisco. Two important things to know about us:

  1. We only work with organizations who seek to benefit the earth or society (ideally both).

  2. We create work with wit and whimsy that subverts expectations, breaks clichés, and makes you look twice twice.

Legacy Name

From 2010 to late 2020, we were based in Boulder, Colorado and went by Cast Iron Design. In 2020, we moved our practice to San Francisco and changed our name to The Office of Ordinary Things (aka TOOOT).

Services

We’re at our best when we can work broadly and comprehensively. Most of our partnerships start with branding and extend to print, web, or packaging. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of what we can do:

  • Branding

  • Brand Strategy

  • Print and Editorial

  • Collateral (Swag)

  • Packaging

  • Web Design

  • Web Development

  • Copywriting

  • Signage

  • Wayfinding

  • Photography

  • Motion (Animation) & Video

  • 3D Modeling

Values are integral to our practice. We partner with liked-minded organizations who care deeply about the impact of their actions.

We seek out partners that represent or incorporate some or many elements from this list:

  • Sustainability

  • Equity

  • Anti-racism

  • Inclusivity

  • Feminism

  • Queer Allyship

  • Accessibility

  • Arts & Education

  • Non-profits

  • Veganism

Typically, as long as you’re making a positive impact, we’re pretty excited to work with clients of all shapes and sizes. However, there are a few things that really grind our gears:

  1. Industries that have a disproportionately harmful effect on the planet, people, and/or animals (e.g. fossil fuels, weapons manufacturing, factory farming).

  2. Dishonest, misleading, unproven, or disingenuous marketing (e.g. oversized packaging, sketchy fine print, “healing” crystals).

  3. Profiting off of fear and insecurity (e.g. pseudoscience, mysticism, body shaming, guilt-tripping).

  4. Ripping off a competitor’s style rather than finding your own voice.

View Our Social Good Resources →

Sustainability is one of the most pressing issues in design. We’re working to do better and help reshape our industry.

Design wields tremendous power and influence, often at the cost of the planet. We’re actively working to reduce our environmental impact while helping others to do the same, through:

  1. Sharing our knowledge with industry peers through the sustainability segments of our case studies.

  2. Speaking at conferences and in classrooms. We educate designers on sustainability, hoping to inspire, motivate, and catalyze action.

  3. Supporting plant-based diets and actively avoiding supporting the industrial meat industry, starting with our meat-free policy.

  4. Being part of One Percent for the Planet.

View Our Sustainability Resources →

The Office of
Ordinary Things