LA/CreativeMornings Video with Andrew Gibbs

Our speaker at the January 2011 Los Angeles/CreativeMornings was Andrew Gibbs of The Dieline. This event took place on December 17, 2010 and was generously hosted by Ford & Ching.

I am hugely impressed what Andrew has accomplished being 25 years old. He is an inspiration to all young designers. And how much do I love that he called our upcoming NY/CreativeMornings speaker Debbie Millman the ‘Design Queen of the World’? Made me smile.

A big giant thank you to Grant Withington and Stephen Haynes for offering to shoot and edit the video, with assistance from Michael Mahaffey.

The Los Angeles chapter of Creative Mornings is run by Jon Setzen.

Spreadsheet

Illustrator Luc Latulippe and his partner Doug went analog by creating a simple spreadsheet that hangs on their fridge, to manually jot down their monthly expenses. They say that no “app” has managed to do for them what this simple sheet of paper had.

And of course, it’s not meant to replace proper bookkeeping, but rather to give them an overview of how they’re spending their money. They’ve uploaded it for public use (versions: Numbers, PDF, or Excel.

Why Can’t We Walk Straight?

Beautifully animated by Benjamin Arthur.

(via Luc Latulippe)

Icebreakertags.com



Are you an event organizer? Throwing a party? Do you want to help people strike up a conversation? That’s what Icebreakertags™ are for. Similar to name tags, people attach these conversation-starters to their clothes with a safety pin, but instead of a name, they answer a question.

It’s an idea I had while organizing CreativeMornings, a monthly breakfast lecture series here in New York. Icebreakertags™ make it easy to strike up a conversation with someone, even at 8.30am!

As I’ve seen a lot of buzz about the idea on Twitter, I figured why not build a site that let’s anyone use and customize them their liking. So, here it is, Icebreakertags.com let’s you generate your own icebreaktertag for your next party, conference or other gathering. Type directly into the tag to add your name/twitter/prompt, insert a good question, customize it with your logo or any graphic of your choice, and hit print. It will then generate a printout with 10 tags on it. Fun, no?

A big thank you to Ian Storm Taylor, our Studiomates Intern for building the site!

Make sure to add photos of your best tags to the Icebreakertag Flickr Group.

Happy conversing!

♥ / workisnotajob.

A big thank you to Catharina Bruns of workisnotajob. for sponsoring this week’s swissmiss RSS Feed.

workisnotajob. is a concept and design studio run by German born illustrator and designer Catharina Bruns. Catharina is on a mission to inspire others to work on what they love and live a creative life, all with the hopes to inspire a paradigm shift in the common definition of “work”. If you look for smart visual design combined with social responsibility, check out her cool shop with prints and clothing for inspiration and typography lovers or hire her to help with your creative projects. Care to share what you are working on? Send her a tweet and join the workisnotajob. revolution!

A small indie studio with a big mission – aren’t we all workers?

Smiling Valentine


Susan Kare, the woman behind the classic Mac icons has a special Valentine print out. Total winner!

New Challenges For Creative Leaders in 2011

Jocelyn K. Glei of 99percent.com asked me what my personal 2011 challenge is (as a creative leader). Here’s what I had to say:

Read the full blog post: New Challenges For Creative Leaders in 2011: What’s Your Take?

Walk a mile with 20 balloons

Matt Danzico, a full-time journalist with the BBC News, is the force behind a charming project called: TheTimeHack.com. It is an experiment aimed at exploring whether our perception of time is influenced by our actions. Each day, Matt engages in a new experience to understand how his perception of time speeds and slows in relation to each event. Can he accurately gauge how long each new experience lasted? Does he remember the details of the new experiences more accurately than repetitive events during the day?

Research suggests a person’s perception of how much time has passed between two points and how well memories are recorded onto an individual’s brain are partially dependent on the amount of new experiences that person has during any given day. Experts argue that when one engages in a new experience, that person’s perception of time differs from when that individual engages in a mundane or repetitive task.

He records each experience with the help of a stopwatch, a camera and, at times, a video camera. This documentation is then uploaded to the web and archived through the project’s Twitter and Vimeo accounts, both of which he is prohibited from viewing.

I especially like his Day 10 experiment, in which he walked a mile with 20 balloons.

www.thetimehack.com: A web-based effort to challenge one person’s perception of time through new and unusual experiences.

(Thank you Liz)

Erosion and Typography 3

This typographic print is third in a series of three, each of which explores the effects of erosion and weathering on the printed word.

The text itself is taken from a 1971 essay on experimental typography by the German designer and typographer Wolfgang Weingart, and is set in the Univers typeface. Univers was designed from 1954-57 by Adrian Frutiger.

Stunning. #wishlisted

Vintage Polaroid Land Camera

Somebody please (!) buy this Vintage Polaroid Land Camera over on Etsy so I don’t.

bloggers

My friend Jon Huck pointed me to this photoseries by Gabriela Herman, featuring Portraits of Bloggers. Beautiful.

Robot Cake

Our son’s first birthday is coming up. Is there a Robot Cake in our future?

(Thank you Ina)

Email Etiquette for the Super-Busy

In a recent blog post, venture capitalist Fred Wilson talked about his ongoing struggle with email management and the various solutions he’s tried, concluding: “Every time I make a productivity gain, the volume eventually overwhelms me.” It’s a familiar problem. We’re all extremely busy, and we all get too much email. So what to do? Read these fantastic recommendations over the 99% blog: Email Etiquette for the Super-Busy.

Signed, Tina, drowning in email.

Lawrence Pearsall Jacks on Work

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.
— Lawrence Pearsall Jacks

Yes! Yes! Yes!

(via caterina.net)

World Map Pillow

I discovered this World Map Pillow on Etsy and find it quite charming.

A to Z Magnatab



A to Z Magnatab helps your little one write his first letters via easy-to-follow arrows. A magnetic stylus pulls beads up to create solid lines. Erases with the tip of a finger.

Strongman’s

It’s a fact: Kids love band-aids. And our daughter has a near obsession. Ella’s are decorated with all kind’s of cartoon show characters, pretty much all of them are in shades of pink, of course. So, it comes to no surprise that these Strongman’s Plasters made me smile. What a nice change from all that pinkness that’s been going on at casa swissmiss.

It’s a bookshelf. It’s a desk.



Trick by Sakura Adachi, designed for Campeggi, is a book case that turns into a table with two chairs. Nifty!

(via my favorite new blog discovery: shoeboxdwelling)

IcebreakerTag: I ♥ ….

Last friday’s IcebreakerTag question was easy to come up with, given that Milton Glaser was our CreativeMornings speaker:

I ♥ ….

What would you have answered?

See all of the answers in this Flickr Set. (All photos by Emily Gilbert and Chasi Annexy.)

Collection of Sugar Cubes

I am loving (!) this picture of a Sugar Cube Collection a member of Arkadia & CO found in a family member’s attic. I recognize quite a few of those brands from when I was a kid. I simply love old-school typography! (see a larger version of the photo here)

Don’t show your kids

My studiomate Rob walked into the studio this morning wearing this t-shirt. I nearly fell off my chair laughing.

creativemornings.com

Finally, CreativeMornings has its own site! You can now easily see what events are coming up and watch the most recent videos. If you want to be kept in the loop for upcoming CreativeMornings, make sure to sign up for one of the newsletters. (Each chapter has its own!)

A big thank you to Caroline Keim for coding the site and for Miah’s help on the design.

CreativeMornings with Milton Glaser

(image by Matthew Kraus)

The CreativeMornings/NewYork crowd was in for a treat yesterday; design legend Milton Glaser was speaking. Milton’s presentation was tremendously insightful and inspiring. I think all of us left in complete admiration of Milton’s passsion for design. I can honestly say, that I hope to be as driven and hungry to learn, when I am in my 80’s. He still goes to work every day and looks forward to doing so. That right there must be the secret to aging happily; never losing interest in what you do and keeping your passion alive, wanting to learn something new, every single day.

Read some write-ups about the event here: Core77 and Campsite Studio.

I will share the video of his talk as soon as we have it ready.

Yesterday would not have been possible with the help of following wonderful people: David Rhodes, President of the School of Visual Arts (allowing us to use the SVA theatre), Steven Heller (for pulling strings), the entire team at the SVA theatre, Sy Abudu (Videographer), Emily Gilbert (Photography), Chasi Annexy (Photography), Aymie Spitzer (super-magic-helper), Michael (for helping at the door).

Should I work for free Flowchart

My former studiomate Jessica Hische put together this flowchart answering the question “Should I work for free?“