Emspace + Lovgren glossary

In honor of our 30th anniversary, here are 30 phrases you’ll hear around the E+L office. Many of these phrases are borrowed – we claim no original authorship, but they’ve all become a part of the E+L vernacular.

1. BC – shorthand for our project management platform, Basecamp

2. Cheers Thirty – our weekly Friday end-of-day, end-of-week celebration

3. Come On This Journey With Me – a longer-winded explanation of something, but worth the focus

4. Conference Room C – our third meeting space at our old office was the Interlude Lounge, which was right around the corner

5. Delicious Doorways – in websites, the engaging content you can’t help but click that drives you deeper into the rabbit hole of the site

6. Dharma – something significant (could be personal or job-related) we want to share with the whole team at our weekly staff meeting or on the special Slack channel

7. DND – Do Not Disturb. A lot of our work requires focus and concentration, so we’ll often put this notice on our shared Google calendar so we can hunker down and do the work

8. Don’t Throw the Baby Out With the Bath Water – just because an idea isn’t used or a phrase is edited out, doesn’t mean that the whole campaign should be re-thought. Save these ideas for later and forge ahead!

9. Emspace – a typographical term used in graphic design (it is the space the width of an M), and also a nod to the initials of our founder, Elizebeth Murphy

10. Forge – our expansive outreach program for up-and-coming creatives (and hopefully future collaborators!)

11. French Fryday – beloved food of choice for ordering in lunch at the end of the week

12. Friend of Emspace – our ever-expanding, valued network of people we love working with, whether that’s as clients, vendors or partners

13. Friyay – an expression of joy at the end of an exhausting yet rewarding week

14. Huddle – every morning we let each other know what our day is like (lots of meetings? working from home? DND on an urgent project?) on a special Slack channel

15. IDEA – our Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accountability work group that helps inform our organizational culture

16. Libby – Elizebeth’s nickname among her friends and family

17. Make a Baby Out of It – taking two ideas, concepts or thoughts and combining them to make them better

18. Make It Go – our variation on Tim Gunn’s iconic phrase “make it work.” In our world, it means create a plan and then implement it.

19. Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch – when multiple things are happening at once, we’ll often say this phrase to indicate that we’ll keep a project moving in our office, while something else is happening to it externally (like a collaborator working on their aspect of the project)

20. Mushy – when all the facts aren’t available, when all the specs aren’t confirmed, when the strategy may change, but we keep pushing forward given the information we know

21. No One Goes It Alone – collaboration is the standard and we’re all in this together

22. OFA – Out For Approval. This is always a mini celebration, when clients get to see our work!

23. Once an Emspacer, Always an Emspacer – when you’ve worked here, you’re a part of a special crew

24. Outerspace – at our old office, this was a meeting room that was only accessible by going outside, but now our meeting rooms are all enclosed and weather-proof 

25. Put a Pin In It – also known as the parking lot or the back channel…this is when a conversation strays, but the new topic is a good thought to come back to later

26. Scoot – because there was a Scooter’s near our old office, “I’m going to scoot” means going on a coffee run

27. Spin the Wheel – we celebrate birthdays by spinning a wheel of joy that contains gift cards to local businesses

28. Tee Up – sets up an idea in a strategic and/or creative way, so that the main point is understood better

29. The Squeeze Isn’t Worth the Juice – making sure our efforts are worth the outcome

30. Yum Factor – that je ne sais quoi, that certain something that makes a piece special