Make Way for the Emerald Faerie
I simply can’t believe there is a designer named Emerald Faerie and that she makes such dainty beautiful things. It combines my love of emeralds, which is quite intense, with the woodland sprite elfin identity I’ve embraced since my teen years. (Are you an elf? If you are, you know what I mean. Some of us are just elfin? Prince, you out there?)
The “Trifid” (divided into three parts) lamp (above) and her “Cinderella’s Revenge” chandelier (below)
Emerald Faerie will be at ICFF at the end of the week and you do want to make sure you get a chance to check out her booth: Stand 2417
Jacob Javitz
11th Ave at 38th St
Designer Fiona Gall works out of her studio in East London
Image credit: Julian Abrams
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Stacie Go Eun Baek: Knitting Her Heart Out
From her artist statement: “Using the labor intensive technique of double-cloth weaving.. (Stacie) commemorates (her) disappearing (‘hastily typed’) thoughts and feelings” of the digital age.
Warning: The words in these pieces pack a wallop. Her pain is palpable but so is her discipline, artistry, skill, and most of all, courage.
This is an exhibit I attended back in January but it sat in my iphoto until I finally dredged it out to post this.
“Going to therapy in New York is about as expensive as dinner at Cipriani. I think I’ll start wearing a cocktail dress to my sessions.”
“Time went on I started noticing the weight loss then I had to ask him was he riding th white horse at first he said no then he said yes.”
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Top Picks: Women in Design at the Milan Furniture Fair 2012
Even in a crisis that is only getting worse in Europe, the Salone del Mobile (Milan Furniture Fair), the mother of all international design shows, attracted 331,649, visitors this year (just to the actual venue, trend seekers sometimes skip much of it and focus on offsite shows).
Kokeshi by A+A Cooren for Vertigo Bird
Inspired by the Japanese traditional wooden toy. I met Aki Cooren last year in Milan and loved the simple glowing pieces, understated but delightful, and have been following her and her husband’s work ever since.
This is them:
See more on my Pinterest including Marni, Mermelada (Barcelona), Emma Elizabeth, Anieke Branderhorst, Ella Doran, Carole Baijings, Mieke Meijer, and more.
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I Think Pinterest Is the Best Social Media Platform Ever Invented: Here’s Why
Pinterest has become my favorite way to curate, communicate, consume, and categorize. Along with Instagram which satisfies my mobile documenting impulses, it replaces traditional blogging software for me. When I’m sitting at my desk and not doing project-specific research or writing, but still being productive, (i.e. not looking up haircuts, why my ankles hurt so much after yoga, how to do a ‘burpee’, if Army Wives is right wing propaganda, the acting career of Zosia Mamet, etc.) my preference is to be on Pinterest.
This is why I find Pinterest such a revelation:
- A picture’s worth a thousand words. The trend sites will have you believe that everyone’s wearing mint green and buying tufted chairs but people’s tastes are really, really different. People just ‘have to have’ all kinds of things. They build a world of what interests them, what compels them, in a visceral intuitive way and it is so much easier to decipher when it’s visually laid out in a grid with just short notes if any, attached to them.
- Even though I’m a writer, I’m definitely a visual person. I make mind maps with clients and for myself. I pin up images of projects I’m working on in my office so I can see what I’m dealing with. Pinterest helps me to see what I like, see what I’m doing, and visually organize current projects as well as the future I want to have. It’s a digital visualization tool - another reason why I find Pinterest so effective.
- Blogging sucks up hours of my time. In the past, when I used to have girlonthestreet.com, I would be at my computer for 8 hours writing, rewriting, finding accompanying images, coding in html, formatting, reformatting, etc. I don’t have time or the desire to do that anymore because there is so much more I want to accomplish in my life (and so much more real world adventure and learning to be had!) When I started blogging again with What Women Make, it’s the thing I dreaded the most and it did eat away a lot of time for, to be honest, not the kind of pay-off I would really want.
- Pinterest is meditative. It doesn’t stop and start. It is not process heavy. Sometimes blogging began to feel like a smoking habit. you had to stop to smoke and it would weigh you down and zap your energy and your time. But I still like to share, curate, illustrate for myself and for others and I like to leave my writing for bigger ideas I’m developing both in fiction and in my work as half of Show Love. I find Pinterest the least taxing tool to use and the one with the most immediate gratification.
I’m on WordPress right now and know it’s the most robust, best blogging software but this post has taken me a lot longer than I want it to take and I’m busy running a company and can’t blog my day away anymore. I now have a What Women Make board on Pinterest which is so much more efficient and visually compelling than laboriously adding images to a post that take 30 seconds to load. Visit me on Pinterest and visit the (fledgling) Show Love Pinterest board.
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Influencers Map
Article written by Kristina Drury – founder of TYTHEdesign
Looking for ways to maintain reach with your community can be a challenge. When starting up a new endeavor you choose the most obvious paths such as popular blogs or specific stores to get in front of that community. However, after that first push it can be hard to reach that next round of people or re-engage your early adopters.
When I run across this challenge for TYTHEdesign or for any of my clients, we use a ‘design thinking’ activity called the Influencers Map, to identify all of the external elements (people, places, things, press…) that influence our community. If you can identify their behaviors, such as reading mommy blogs or watching specific TV shows, you will be able to identify new opportunities of outreach.
So how to create an influencers map?
- Using post-it notes, a wall or a whiteboard, identify as many of the external influences of your community as you can.
- Identify what your community READS (note… if they are teenagers don’t be presumptuous to think they read the newspaper… be realistic).
- Identify popular TV program or stations that your community WATCHES
- Identify what and who your community LISTENS to (friends, family, co-workers religious leaders, politicians, musicians… Be honest, not all products will engage each of these external influencers)
- Identify where your group is most EXPOSED to ADVERTISING (if you community is an on-line community think of popular sites or think of your community mode of transportation)
- Once you have as many post-its as you see fit in each category above, on a large paper or whiteboard, draw one large circle filling two-thirds of the page, then draw another circle inside about half the size and lastly place your user in the center.
- Then take your post-its and place each ‘influencer’ in the first ring if they have large impact or in the second if they have passive impact. For example, someone your community speaks to regularly will have more impact that a poster on a bus.
- Once all post-its have been placed on the map, you should be able to identify new possible opportunities, within the first circle, to reach your community. For example, if friends and blogs are the most important influencers – then perhaps your next campaign will be focus at blogs and give discount to friends who recommend another.
One thing to remember is that before you can reach your community you must know your community. If you can’t answer the question of what they read, watch, listen to or are exposed to then you need to do more research (both in person through interview/observation and on paper) about your community. Also, make sure you are identifying mediums that match your products or message as well. Just because your community read the newspaper doesn’t mean it’s the right avenue if you have an on-line product, for example.
To learn more about how to use this tool or have any questions about how to adapt it to your user or challenge please contact me.
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KRISTINA DRURY is an expert in design thinking and the Executive Director of TYTHEdesign, a consultancy serving the social sector based in New York City. TYTHEdesign uses design-based approaches to support the goals and needs of agencies in the social sector, drawing on communication and organizational design to increase the impact of their work. Feel free to contact her if you have questions at all! She’s here to help
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Detroit Optimists Get To Work
“try it”
Good Girls Go to Paris Crepes owner Torya Blanchard says ”it just gets better and better for those who believe in Detroit”
Signal-Return Letterpress director, Megan O’Connell. The shop ”seeks to connect the community to traditional + emergent forms of printing”. It’s a gallery. It’s a resource for design entrepreneurs. It’s a meeting space with all the signature displays of process and craft that we love so much.
Jessica Hicks (also a designer mentioned on Design Sponge) and her husband opened Astro Coffee in Detroit after living as expats for several years.
What her husband says about their choice to move to Detroit to do this:
“You can do something here that means something. Open a coffee shop in another city and you’d drown. Here there is cooperation.”
26-year-old Hostel Detroit owner, Emily Doerr cutting the ribbon in 2010 on her non-profit accomodations aimed at educating visitors about Detroit.
The Empowerment Plan: Veronika Scott invented a Sleeping Bag Coat to do something about the gargantuan homeless problem in Detroit (1 in 47 are homeless). It is “self-heated, waterproof, and transforms into a sleeping bag at night.” She employs homeless women to manufacture the coat.
The video by 4exit4 inspired this post. See them all here!
Links:
Good Girls Go to Paris Crepes!
Hostel Detroit
The Empowerment Plan
Signal-Return Letterpress
Astro Coffee
*lead image credit: Michael Goettner 0 Comments
If I Had Ten Million Dollars
Here’s what I’d invest in:
Digital Publishing - New platforms that offer immersive media experiences for literary fiction lovers
The literary fiction part is due to my own personal interests (and my fear of the death of imaginative work in a dumbed down world) – but this model could be applied to all fiction and non-fiction. The innovation and technology put into gaming could be applied to merging documentary, non-fiction writing, photojournalism as well as literature, independent cinema, the best in illustration, cinematography, music composition to create rich multi-lateral access to imagination, knowledge and story. Hell it could work for low culture too, that’s the low hanging fruit after all.
Pinterest Retail
I read on Fast Company that this already exists as The Fancy so I signed up – but Pinterest still gets my vote because it builds context with such fluidity as a visualization board for all kinds of planning and creativity. By placing objects or experiences that would lead to acquisition next to the the stuff of life that thankfully does not – plants, a cityscape, a curled up cat – buying becomes more of an act of careful consideration than blind consumption. Organic self-directed retail. Facilitated by a platform that takes the whole spectrum of your life and imagination into account.
Farm-to-Table Fast Food
A farm fresh menu with crops chosen by ease and season. The company would work in cooperation with various local producers. It would mimic the fast food experience in some useful and familiar ways but act as a teaching tool for change in the food system. Done right, it could be replicated anywhere (along the sidelines of the football field? On a corporate campus or at a university? In lower income or subsidized housing estates?) I haven’t worked out the kinks, but I’d invest in this. Jamie? Where are you?
Open Education and Other New Education Business Models
Browsing articles on the rise of homeschooling, statistics in online learning, and the movement against traditional degree programs, nothing on the horizon is due for such a complete overhaul as education. I’m appalled by the idea of the 40,000 dollar Manhattan preschool. (Nobody wins.) Nonetheless, I think progressive dynamic and creative education is invaluable. I look back to my fondness for Montessori and Bennington (no grades) and the New School (essays instead of tests) and know this approach, and ones that incorporate working in a natural environment, is applicable to the future. I’d love to sign on to a new model of education which balances real world social interaction and problem solving with democratic access to the best possible learning tools from top educators.
Micro-Manufacturing
Skip the middleman. Think. Plan. Make. Sell. I love the 3D printer and I can’t wait until prototypes can be passed onto small factories that can afford to make small batches putting the designer / maker / entrepreneur in the drivers seat. A mini version of this idea exists in Spoonflower.
Data-Mining For Good: Customer Service 3.0
Ignoring the spook factor of privacy concerns, I’d defer to someone else on that one – if you could know enough about your customer to serve them as well as they expect to be served, remembered, listened to, customized for, well I find that very exciting. Innovations in customer experience that really put the customer first could extend to healthcare and safety, travel, home buying, and finance. It could be a good thing put in the right hands. -Chauncey Zalkin
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Prescription: Design Therapy
Apartment Therapy Design Evenings at ABC Carpet are a bright spot in the design scene here – the incandescent lighting flowing through the oversized glasses of wine, the luxurious mishmash of couches and chairs, and a packed room of enthusiastic design and decor citizens smiling in their camaraderie.
It couldn’t be more fun, more lively. But as I looked around, I wondered, what exactly is this scene?
Coming from Europe where there’s a massive design presence to here where there are so many lovers of beauty and talented creative minds of every ilk, I’ve starting to see a distinction between Europe and Asia’s definition of design – the beautiful and functional and functionally beautiful object - and what design is in the U.S.
First, just to get it out of the way, yes there is the design awareness made possible by Steve Jobs and Apple Computers. There’s Fast Company’s championing of design thinking and design in business. But for the lovers of design festivals and design schools, furniture design, and manufacturing, the individual maker and craftsman, there is a big empty silence filled only by ICFF and it’s satellite shows.
New York is largely about Decor and Shelter. It’s Design Sponge and Etsy. Pinterest mood boards and Decor 8. It’s decorating tips and DIY. It’s interior design and real estate lust.
I love decor. I do. I mean where else are you going to put your design but within some sort of decor? Decor can be very practical and personal at the same time. Hey, even I found myself doing a DIY project for the first time and I’m pretty proud of it.
See? Here it is.
From this
To This
I found an old ugly beat up nightstand on the street and went out and bought some white high gloss paint, a bottle of Mod Podge, some paper from Paper Presentation and found endless how-to sites to make sure I didn’t screw the whole thing up.
Pretty cool, right?
But I’m not a designer. I would never call myself that. So there you go. You’ve got design and you have decor. America is about decor.
I really enjoyed what Maxwell, the founder of Apartment Therapy had to say when I asked about the state of American design (which meant where the hell is American design?) because it was clear that he cares about design as much as I do. He told me that it’s hard to nurture design here because manufacturing has left America. I told him about my experience in Europe and he said “yeah, Europe’s ahead of us.” So in our haste to automate and simplify everything, to sell everything and consume everything, to consolidate everything and to watch the bottom line on everything, we forgot about design. Not good. And honestly, not very modern. I think all of this DIY activity is just another sign of how desperately we need design leadership. It’s not just about dressing things up but making things that are truly beautiful, thoughtful and reflective. Right now, the design landscape is practical and commercial, not gutsy. It doesn’t marry inventiveness and innovation with reality. Design can be the perfect summation of right and left brain and, at the risk of sounding lofty, hope for the future. It’s a visual manifestation of spirit, intelligence, and hope. In other words, design is more than a gorgeous bedspread with eclectic throw pillows.
The last Apartment Therapy talk I attended was a few weeks back. It was with the very popular and very personable Deborah Needleman, the founding editor of Domino magazine who has gone on to start a beautiful style magazine at the Wall Street Journal. I was a subscriber of Domino. In fact, it was the very last magazine I subscribed to before moving to Paris at the end of 2006. Domino was so pretty and useful and collectible where nothing else really was. I was tired of the stuffy celebraphotog-generated nonsense, the Vogues and Visionnaires. I was tired of being talked down to and dictated to. Domino was different. It wasn’t ‘design’ but it was great. She herself admitted that while she loves the practical application of decor – she’s coming out with a book about making your home ‘cozy’ – she ‘doesn’t know anything about design’. It’s hard to wrap my head around but I think ultimately I know what she means. I just hope the dialogue will open up and decor-lovers will also start to see just what design is and how much value it has.
Just imagine, a New York with a design scene as robust as London.. Heaven!
(It looks like our company Show Love may be doing some yet-to-be-announced work with the American Design Club led by the effervescent designer and design advocate Kiel Mead so more excitement to come!)
-Chauncey Zalkin
links:
Apartment Therapy
Decor 8
Etsy
Design Sponge
Pinterest
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