A Treasury of Wood Type Online, an interesting new read over at Hoefler & Frere-Jones
Shark Eating Girl
Shark Eating Girl by Christina Vantzou.
Humanity Ring
Simple, powerful…a ring becomes a tool for spiritual awakening with words to remind us of the HUMANITY that is us. Using the inscription on this ring to send the deeper message to always remember the most important things in life; people to people, heart to heart, love is life.
Scissor Letter Opener
Scissor Letter Opener by Jean-Sebastien Ides and Ivan Duval. Clever.
First Mondays at Meet
On the first Monday of every month this Summer, MEET AT THE APARTMENT will open its doors to consultants, freelancers and job-seekers with cabin fever free of charge. Throughout the day, speakers and specialists will be giving seminars on topics such as self-branding, job hunting and blogging.
Perks include: Free WiFi, coffee in the AM, snacks and beverages in the PM, power outlets to keep your laptops juiced, plus all the office supplies you could need.
The first meetup will be Monday, May 4th 2009 from 9am-6pm. Email hello@welcometomeet to receive more information.
Fantastic idea! MEET is a beautiful space and I might just ditch swissmiss studio for the day and head over to SoHo! Hat tip to Marc and Sara Schiller!
iPhotoBuddy
I might be late to the game but there hasn’t been a free app in a long time that has rocked my world as much as iPhoto Buddy. It is a Mac OS X application that allows you to easily create, manage, and switch between multiple iPhoto Libraries. The advantages of splitting your One Huge Photo Library into multiple, smaller ones include improved iPhoto performance, increased flexibility in organizing your digital photo collection, and a consistency with most other Mac applications that allow their respective data to be stored in as many documents (in this case, “Libraries”) as you like.
If you happen to download and use iPhotoBuddy, make sure to send a donation!
(thank you sorella!)
Glass is the new Plastic
I love these Wee-Go Glass Baby Bottles.
Candle Forks
Light bite candle forks. Fantastic!
Peter Chmela
Don’t Judge People According To Their Appearance by Peter Chmela. If you look carefully, you can see that each photo spells out a word of the title phrase. View the full sequence here.
(via ashleysimko)
Image Spark
ImageSpark: A creative tool that helps you collect, discover, share, tag and converge images that inspire you and your work.
Hitting Reset
I agree with BigSpaceship: Well said: Paul Isakson: Hitting Reset.
Lost and Found
Oliver Jeffer’s beautiful book Lost and Found has been turned into an animated movie, which I had the honor to see a few months ago at a screening in his Brooklyn studio. It’s a heart-warming story celebrating the value of friendship.
I have been itching to get my hands on it, so I can show it to our little EllaBella. One can now finally pre-order it! Yay!
H is for Holy Crap
Marc Johns is coming out with a Book: Serious Drawings. I am gasping for air, can’t wait to get my hands on it. Pre-order it now! (Holy Crap is right!)
YES!
47 Year old Susan Boyle wows the judges with her performance in the auditions for Britains Got Talent, singing I dreamed a dream from Les Miserables. Who could not be genuinely happy for Susan Boyle?
Here are the Lyrics:
I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high,
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.
Then I was young and unafraid
When dreams were made and used,
And wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung,
No wine untasted.
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hopes apart
As they turn your dreams to shame.
And still I dream he’ll come to me
And we will live our lives together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms
We cannot weather…
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seems
Now life has killed
The dream I dreamed.
Fan site for Susan Boyle: Susan-Boyle.com
(thank you max)
99% | Seth Godin
My personal highlight of today was Seth Godin. Here’s a few points he made during his entertaining and prop filled 20minute talk (he had a plastic chicken with him, really):
– You don’t need to be more creative, all of you are too creative.
– Be a person that always ends up ‘shipping’. If you are proud of what you ‘ship’ and are on time, you will be successful and you will get to do it over and over again. What you do for a living is ‘ship’ and not ‘being creative’.
– The resistance gets worse and worse the closer we get to ‘shipping’. Of course we come to the meeting before ship date as our ‘lizard brain’ says I need to speak up now. The genius part (in getting ideas realized) is to get the Lizard brain to shut up long enough to overcome resistance.
The last point he made was that if he is going to take the first two breaths (going to first steps in a project) he is going to finish it. So he has a lot of arguments and discussions with ‘lizard brain’ in the beginning. But once he decides to continue, he takes it all the way. He will ‘ship’.
You can tell that he really looks at presenting at a conference as an honor and not an obligation. Seth was a breath of fresh air and an already amazing conference. (Recent post on his site, somewhat related: Hierarchy of presentations)
I wish he would have had more time to talk. I could have listened to Seth all day.
99% | Ji Lee
Ji Lee, Creative Director or Google Creative Lab, talked on some of his personal projects:
After working at an ad agency for 4 years he grew tired of producing predictable ideas. He started the Bubble Project.
He printed hunders of speech bubble stickers which he then (illegaly) pasted on ad campaigns all around the city. People started filling them in with copy. And a lot of people started their own bubbles. Even advertising agencies took the bubble idea and created Guerilla campaigns. He made it public and available for everyone to download on his site. Once BoinbBoing picked it up, it crashed his server and the project exploded. The Bubble Project even got coverage on abc News. Thanks to the internet, Bubbling has spread around the globe.
One of his latest projects is the WTC Logo Preservation Project. World Trade Center buildings are present in thousands of classic New York skyline logos owned by local businesses in the city. They tend to belong to small businesses that are likely to disappear over the years to come. So are their logos and the Twin Towers. Ji started the project to preserve them, forever.
Ji at the end mentioned that he believes that personal and professional projects complement each other. A lot of his personal projects caught influential people’s attention and opened up new opportunities. He truly believes that creating platforms for other people to collaborate and engage is powerful. Sharing is rewarding! I couldn’t agree more. Ji’s talk was humble and surprising. Definitely a designer that earned my respect.
99% | Cheryl Dorsey
Cheryl Dorsey of Echoing Green spoke on the core qualities of a Social Change Agent.
1. Core identity formation and alignment: Social Agents have reached a level of authenticity. They have found their purpose and their passion. They get what they were put on this earth to do. They are in the ‘social change zone’: they are living it, they are breathing it.
2. Focused and Ability to Execute with Alacrity: As a Social Change Agents it’s not just about having the idea, you have to execute on it. You have to build on your mission driven business.
3. Solutions-Oriented: As a Social Change Agent you are in the business of solving problems and not in the business of generating ideas.
4. Asset based thinking: Every prolbem that the rest of us see, a Social Change Agent sees an opportunity. That idea of executing against all odds, is a very powerful force.
5. A resource magent: A social change agent is a resource magnet, able to get volunteers, media attention, funding etc.
6. A Social Change agent has a deep and unshakable obligation to his cause.
… there are more qualities but unfortunately Cheryl ran out of time.
Social change agents are putting most of their emphasis on execution as opposed to the idea generation.
While the qualities of a Social Agent was interesting, I honestly didn’t like the slightly arrogant tone of Cheryl’s presentation. Also, what really bugged me is that she kept skipping over slides. I have a feeling that she used a presenation she always uses but didn’t bother to take out the extra slides?
Reporting from the 99% Conference
I am thrilled to be blogging from the 99% conference here in NYC today. Scott Belsky of Behance is on stage right now talking about the idea behind the conference which focuses on everything after an idea happens. I am very curious to see how the fabulous line up of speakers is going to deal with the unusual request to speak on the topic of execution, on how they make ideas happen.
Sit tight, I’ll be live-blogging as much as I can. (There is no outlet in the conference space, so let’s hope my battery plays along…)