Business Is Personal

Anthony Medico and I have been best friends for 25 years. His father, Mike, has treated me like his third son from the moment we met. The Medicos are family to me, and I know who they are: honest, thoughtful, generous, and hard-working. When they asked me to make a piece for their media agency, E+M, I was thrilled.

There is an expression: "It's business -- nothing personal." The Medicos don’t subscribe to that policy. In fact, they live and work according to the opposite set of values; to them, everything in life has a personal element. It is upon this core belief that their business is built, and because they are so personally invested in it, their employees and clients feel like extended family. Therefore, the name of the piece was obvious: Business is Personal.

The overall industrial aesthetic represents good, old-fashioned hard work. I designed each element to communicate the Medicos’ ethics. The raw, exposed metal symbolizes truth and honesty. The cement base represents a solid, well-established foundation. The use of plumbing pipes represents a free flow of ideas, and the fittings -- elbows and tees -- represent an ability to adjust and redirect/reassess objectives.

The “spine" that projects from the base represents their unwavering core set of values and steady approach to conducting business. An intricate combination of pipes branch off of the spine, weaving through the live edge slab shelves, representing the roots that E+M has established in their field. The natural edge of these slabs represents E+M as a living, growing organism, not bound by older methods nor narrow-minded practices, but able to adjust to an ever-changing business environment. The back side of the slabs have a finished, square edge; their business philosophy is clear and consistent, based on years of experience and a proven history of success. And... the light bulbs represent bright ideas.