After a three week stay in the swiss alps, I am back in the studio. Our Switzerland stay was absolutely fantastic, but I admit that I loved coming home to Brooklyn. While I’ll miss the soothing cowbell sounds, the amazing tap water, the luxurious houseswap house we stayed in and all that yummy Bratwurst, I am simply *happy* to be back in my beloved NYC.
I apologize for the lack of posts over the past two weeks. I am back!
One of the many perks of doing a houseswap is that you get to try other people’s stuff. Take the kitchen for example. During our current amazing stay in Switzerland we get to use different kind of coffee makers, toasters, blenders, pots and lids. And yes, this post is about a multifunction lid. The Lekue Suction Lid has won my heart. (Didn’t know a simple silicone lid could do that.) Watch the video below to get the idea…
(what’s with the elevator music in this video?)
Our speaker at the June 2010 CreativeMornings was fabulous Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The event was generously hosted by the MoMA. Watch Paola’s talk below:
2010/06 Paola Antonelli from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.
A big giant thank you to Sy Abudu for offering her video and editing skills.
Finally: Linkedin now let’s you display your portfolio.
It seems that all of us, and every designer we know, is on LinkedIn. Why? Its the defacto professional directory, and its where our peers, big companies, agencies, and clients connect with us.
But there has never been a way to showcase our portfolio work on our LinkedIn profiles.
For over a year, Behance has been working with the LinkedIn folks to develop a special application within LinkedIn that allows ANY creative professional to showcase their multi-media portfolio.
The new “Portfolio Display” application allows anyone to create a free portfolio, display it on LinkedIn, and keep it in sync across other sites like AIGA, the Art Director’s Club Young Guns site, and the Behance Network. (YAY!)
You can create unlimited projects (with unlimited images, videos, multimedia) and upload them, via the Behance Network, to display on their LinkedIn profiles.
The application allows the 70+ million LinkedIn members – as well as hundreds of millions of visitors – to ACTUALLY SEE your creative work (rather than just read your resume).
If you are a creative professional on LinkedIn, you should join the Behance Network and then sync your portfolio with LinkedIn.
If you are already a member of the Behance Network, simply install the Creative Portfolio Display application on your LinkedIn Profile.
This is fantastic! Hat tip to Mattias and Scott of Behance.
We are already one week into our Switzerland visit and I am amazed. This is where I grew up, this is where I have my roots. While I am Swiss at heart, I am no longer a true Swiss, the past 10 years living in NYC contribute to that, no question.
While visiting a Swiss farm I couldn’t help but notice with what diligence, care and thoroughness this farmer piled his fireplace wood. Do you see how much love went into this stack of wood? How he built a roof to protect it? There were about 5 of these on his property. Each one of them a work of art. And he is not an exception, the Swiss are thorough when it comes to how they stack their wood, or do anything, really.
The Swiss do it right or not at all. While I admire this mentality it also drives me crazy. We should be able to marry the playfulness and joy to experiment that Americans tend to have with the thoroughness of the Swiss. No?
Letterboard turns your iPad or iPhone into a sign-board. It lets you create signs in the style seen in airports and convention centers everywhere. Oh, what fun can be had with this?!
AIGA Metro-North’s reSPECt is a civilized dialog between advocates and opponents of speculative branding and design work.
Is speculative (spec) work productive and fair? Can it enable clients to achieve goals that are not possible with traditional work-for hire practices? Does it advance the fortunes of some at the expense of others? What are the rewards and perils of speculative work?
Once a rare practice, spec, or “try before you buy”, work is being requested a growing number of businesses-startups to global organizations. Many believe that the call for unpaid work is being fueled by changing mores, new forms of crowd-sourcing, and economic stress–but whatever the cause, spec work has the potential to upend the economic model of the industry.
Moderated by New York State Supreme Court Justice Colleen D. Duffy, our diverse panel explored if, why, and how spec work has a rightful place in the way projects are structured. The evening’s goal was to outline a way forward that meets the functional, economic, and ethical needs of clients and practitioners.
The panel included:
• Ric Grefé, Executive Director, AIGA
• Brendán Murphy, Senior Partner, Lippincott
• Jerry Kathman, President & CEO, LPK
• John Gleason, Founder & President, A Better View
Held June 24th, 2010 at the The Ossining Public Library’s Camille Budarz Theater.
reSPECt (an AIGA Metro-North Event) from Scott Lerman on Vimeo.
UnderConsideration is starting a conference. Focusing on corporate and brand identity, the conference is a direct extension of the popular blog Brand New.
The inaugural conference takes place in New York City as it is undoubtedly one of the most important hubs of identity practice and, presumably, an allure to out-of-towners who might be inclined to attend the conference and make a weekend out of it. The venue for the conference will be the School of Visual Arts Theatre, in the Beatrice auditorium, which holds 266 attendees.
The speaker line-up is nothing short of impressive. I am not surprised. When Armin and Bryony do something, they do it right.
Very much looking forward to this. Yay!
For the month of july I will be broadcasting from Switzerland which means I’ll be indulging in way too much Zopf. (pictured above) Zopf is a traditional swiss sunday bread, usually found twisted or plaited.
Zopf Recipy German / English (ther german link has instructions on how to get the Zopf into its typical shape)
swissmiss family is spending july on the swiss country side. We are waking up to cowbells. I kid you not. We are so amazed by our audio surroundings that G and I spent a good portion of the morning not only staring at our view (above) but also recording the cowbell-moo-sound (thank you iPhone). Here, please enjoy, our 24/7 soundtrack to our vacation! Yay Switzerland! And pardon my slower pace in posting in the coming 3 weeks.
Designer Brad Denboer couldn’t quite find the toys he dreamed about so he decided to build them himself. Auditorium Toy Co. was founded with the intention of celebrating the elegance of simple designs fabricated by historical craftsmanship.
Auditorium Toys are of superb quality. They are unique toys that are quiet, timeless, durable and beautiful — the type of toys that your grandchildren’s grandchildren will love. Each design is carefully handcrafted and engineered in extremely limited, numbered editions in their small studio in Tucson, Arizona, using time honored techniques and tools. Auditorium believes that the slower you put things together, the slower they fall apart.
The Boattail Racer is simply stunning. Opening the box here at swissmiss studio was ceremonial to say the least. We all pretty much gathered around it going uuuhhh and aaaahhh!
What I love the most is the nice touch with the booklet the toy comes with implying that we will pass the toy on to other generations. Every previous owner writes their name into the booklet before passing it on. Beautiful.
Congrats Auditorium! We love what you’re doing! And wonderful thinking on the slowness part.
ManageFlitter is a useful tool to manage your Twitter account. It let’s you clean up and manage who you follow, find out who isn’t following you back, find out which inactive accounts you follow and let’s you easily search inside your Twitter stream.
(via amritrichmond)
I had the honor to be featured in the swiss Sonntagsblick Magazin yesterday. A big thank you to the lovely journalist Yvonne Eckert and wonderfully talented and smooth photographer Katja Heinemann. A big hello to all new readers because of the article.
Interested in reading the article (german only)? You can download the pdf here.
The Inspiration Pad by Marc Thomasset (and photographed by Marcel Veelo) put a smile on my face. Thumbs up! You can buy it here.
(thank you Nathalie)
Yes! Kiosk America 3: Just in Time for Summer, a Collection of Mostly Mid-Atlantic / Tri-State Items. Things to whittle away time with during the dog days and the heat at the beach, under an umbrella in the shade, getting tan while eating fried clams.
Web Invaders totally made my day. Best Deck Ad I’ve ever clicked on.
“My father used to read me bedtime stories out of this book called Evolution of Consciousness,” Case says. One night he drew two points on a piece of paper. He asked what the shortest distance was from point A to point B. “A straight line,” she said. “There’s an even shorter distance,” he responded. And he folded the paper over so the two points touched — “which is the idea of a worm hole. Compressed time and space,” Case says. “He told me this when I was 4 or 5, and I would think about it every single night.” – Amber Case
Amber Case, Digital Philosopher
This Mother Child Bag is ingenious. Parents of little ones know that sometimes they just don’t want to hold your hand, but they might be totally into holding on to their very own special pink (!) handle on your tote. Thumbs up! Excellent idea!
(via minordetails)
Not sure how one can turn down such a friendly request from a Panda in Asia. Seen over at AWholeLottaHappy.
Below are excerpts of an Article by Pete Cashmore over on cnn.com: Google building a Facebook rival? Let’s hope so
Facebook’s mountain of personal data could also provide the backbone of an ad network many times more targeted than Google’s keyword-based advertising. If Facebook were to launch both a search engine and ad network, it could put a significant dent in Google’s more than $23 billion in annual revenue.
..
So while it’s definitely a long shot, it’s time to rally behind Google. If the search giant is able to pull off a half-decent Facebook rival, the fast-growing social network will finally have a competitor to keep its power in check.
That would be a win not just for Google, but for the Web as a whole
Amen to that.
Our speaker at the May 2010 CreativeMornings was visionary Jay Parkinson. The event generously hosted by Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Watch Jay’s talk below:
2010/05 Jay Parkinson from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.
A big giant thank you to Sy Abudu for offering her video and editing skills.
And in case you’re in Switzerland on July 9th, join us for a swiss CreativeMornings in Zurich.
