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Gangsta Lorem Ipsum.

(thank you John)

Time-Savers For Web Designers

This Smashing Magzine post called 50 Powerful Time-Savers For Web Designers is filled with amazing tools that I have never heard of. Take the Browser UI tool for example. It creates a browser window around any size Photoshop document you can throw at it. The Browser UI is easily installed and helps you get around with your Photoshop documents.

House of Buttons is a growing collection of various buttons spotted in the wild by Jason Long. Incredibly useful collection, and submissions are welcome.

PDFsam is a free open source tool (GPL License) designed to split and merge PDF documents. Whether it be only extracting sections into a single document or changing the order of the pages. The basic version can be downloaded and simply used on every platform with a Java support.

Typographic Sins (also available as PDF) by James Godfrey and Patrick Wilkey covers 35 mistakes commonly made by novice designers. The website puts them in a neat orderly list, but the PDF showcases them visually. It’s a great reference guide and learning tool if you want to learn better typography design.

Is email a distraction? SelfControl is an OS X application which blocks access to incoming and/or outgoing mail servers and websites for a predetermined period of time.

Check out the entire list of 50 Powerful Time-Savers For Web Designers.

(How excited are we here over at Team TeuxDeux for our app being one of them? *Sooo* excited!)

The right thing

Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.

- Caterina Fake

(via startup quote and michael’s post about the ‘power of time off‘)

NYC/CreativeMornings with Liz Danzico

I am delighted to announce next week’s NewYork/CreativeMornings with my friend and UX Expert, Author, Educator Liz Danzico as our speaker.

WHEN/WHERE

NewYork/CreativeMornings, October 29th 2010, 8.30am – 10am. This month’s event will be hosted at the Blurb PopUp/NYC store on Mercer street in Soho.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Liz Danzico is part designer, part educator, and part editor. She is an independent consultant, and user experience consultant for Happy Cog Studios. She is chairperson of the MFA in Interaction Design program, which will see its inaugural class graduate in spring 2011 at the School of Visual Arts, and co-founded the program with Steven Heller (our last month’s speaker). She’s a columnist for Core77 and Interactions Magazine, and is proud to be on the advisory boards for the Austin Center for Design, desigNYC, Design Ignites Change, and Rosenfeld Media. Find more about Liz and her thinking on her fantastic blog called Bobulate.

HOW TO SIGN UP

R.S.V.P will open at 10.55am on friday october 22, 2010 over at creativemornings.eventbrite.com!

Please let us know if you r.s.v.p’d but can no longer make it. Our events fill up quickly and we usually keep a waiting list. Thank you! And at the morning of the event, make sure to put on your chatty networking hats!

BREAKFAST SPONSORS

Breakfast will be sponsored by our main sponsor MailChimp and this month’s host Blurb.

MailChimp is a fantastic service that makes it easy to send email newsletters to your customers, manage your subscriber lists, and track campaign performance. A big yay-hooray to the team over at MailChimp!

Blurb is a company and a community that believes passionately in the joy of books – reading them, making them, sharing them, and selling them. Blurb developed a creative publishing service simple and smart enough to make anyone an author – every blogger, cook, photographer, parent, traveler, poet, pet owner, marketer, everyone. (This means you.)

ABOUT CREATIVEMORNINGS

CreativeMornings is a monthly morning gathering of creative types. Each event includes a 20 minute lecture, followed by a 20 minute group discussion. The gathering begins at 8:30am with the topic presentation starting at 9:00am and everyone taking off for work at 10am. CreativeMornings are free of charge! There are currently three chapters: Zurich, LosAngeles + NewYork/CreativeMornings. (More chapters are planned but not for another 2-3months)

Be the first to know when r.s.v.p’s open up, follow NewYork/CreativeMornings on twitter!

Check out pictures of previous NewYork/CreativeMornings over at Flickr.

View all the taped talks we’ve put up on the web so far over at Vimeo.com/creativemornings.

Ramsign

I don’t know about you but I *love* the vintage feel and look of enamel signs. So, the idea of creating my own custom sign makes my heart beat faster. Ramsign is a small Danish company that specializes in making and selling classic enamel signs based upon original designs and techniques. I am tempted to get one done for our studio door with 612a on it.

Does anyone know of US based companies doing the same?

Design Observer iPhone App


Design Observer just launched its iPhone App over on the App Store. The app lets users download a wealth of the world’s best design commentary on the go. It’s available for Free, download it here. More about it over on Design Observer.

♥ / Dirty Coast Press

A big giant thank you to Dirty Coast Press for sponsoring this week’s RSS Feed.

Dirty Coast Press launched in early 2005. After Katrina their designs became in demand as a very needed badge of honor and conversation starter about why New Orleans matters. Dirty Coast Press focuses on designs that only those who understand New Orleans and Louisiana might get. They are hyper-local in that respect however have customers in every state and now, all over the world. Folks being a New Orleanian, wherever they are.

Over 2,000,000 free stickers and 80+ shirt designs later, as well as an amazing community surrounding their brand, Dirty Coast Press is proud to keep the conversations about New Orleans and Louisiana going.

Check out some of my favorite Dirty Coast Press Designs: Second Line Till You Drop, Turdrucken and Savior.

Dirty Coast is the brain-child of Creative Director Blake Haney who is with The Canary Collective.

(Interested in sponsoring a week of my RSS feed, learn more here.)

Sense vs. Nonsense

This semi-sort-of-comic called “Sense vs Nonsense” or “How to Have an Idea” by Frank Chimero had me chuckle.

(via @dsgn)

Olimpia Zagnoli



I admire Olimpia Zagnoli’s work. She is a 26 year old illustrator, based in Milan, Italy. She has an adorable logo, an amazing sense of color and, of course, drives a yellow Fiat. Best of all for us NYC peeps: We will get a chance to meet her at an upcoming AIGA/NY Small Talk event here in the big apple.

Steff La Cheffe

Steff La Cheffe is a 23 year old Swiss from Breitsch, Switzerland. Yes, in case you were wondering, that language in the above song is indeed swiss-german. For those of you that don’t know. Swiss-German is a spoken-only language and most of the time sounds like you have a sore throat. I send a hat tip to Steff La Cheffe for pulling it off to actually make swiss german sound hip and cool.

(thank you Pascal)

five people

“You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with”.

- Jim Rohn

Life

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

- Soren Kierkegaard

Rhythm

“Quality of life is not a question of speed.
It’s a matter of rhythm.”

– rhythm

Blobs of Gel

These computer-controlled, shape changing blobs of gel made me look. Lisa Smith of Core77 writes:

A friend of ours loves to joke that the future will have no hard edges; experience will be defined in pastel-colored gels, foams and mists that deliver your voicemail and bring you milk. Probably to his dismay, this new project from the Wakita Laboratoray at Keio University may one day prove him right.

Not only do I love the sound of the word “Blob”, I also love the idea of having gel foams bring me milk.

Shape Changing is Real: Blob Motility by the Wakita Lab

7 Skills students need for their future

Tony Wagner is currently speaking at The Feast Conference. He is killing it. What a smart and fascinating man. I just found the above Youtube Video in which he talks about the 7 Skills students need for their future.

More on Tony Wagner.

Project 7

Brew for a Better World from Project 7 on Vimeo.

What if that cup of coffee you drink every day could change the world? Project7 is doing exactly that. Simply put, you buy coffee and you do good. Each of their seven coffees is attached to a specific cause and provides funding for worthy non-profits. These funds are put toward specific activities that make a difference. So, how does it really work?

Project 7 exists to give. They are a cause-related company that makes every day consumer goods, like bio-bottled water, gum, mints and coffee. They aren’t asking you to buy more stuff, just change the products that you already buy.

For every purchase of a Project 7 product, some good is done in seven areas of need – Feed the Hungry, Heal the Sick, Hope for Peace, House the Homeless, Quench the Thirsty, Teach them Well and Save the Earth.

This is fantastic. I want more businesses to take such a noble approach.

The Feast Conference

I am excited to be attending The Feast Conference by AlldayBuffet in the NewYorkTimes Center today. You can follow my live tweeting over at twitter.com/swissmiss and if you want to virtually attend, go and click on the livestream over at: http://www.livestream.com/alldaybuffet.

Rhythm



Rhythmrhythm.com is one stunningly beautiful site. And the objects are of a minimalistic beauty as well. Well done!

loosecubes

Loosecubes is a community of independent people building a global network of shared workspaces. They bring together people who have great space and people who want to work in it.

At Loosecubes, they want to change the way people work. Their members need the flexibility to work at home sometimes and in an office sometimes. They want the freedom to travel anywhere in the world and not have to worry about finding an internet connection and some intelligent people. They don’t think that Loosecubes hosts will participate just to make some extra money. They think they will participate because members are people they want to get to know. They’ll participate because they believe, that the only way to be truly independent work-wise is to have great workspace available when you need it – without paying an arm and a leg.

Find a big space and invite your friends and colleagues to work together. Spend a month coworking or a few weeks in another country.

Fantastic idea. We might just have to expand and put some desks up on Loosecubes here at swissmiss studio.

Charlotte Kids Table Set



Jimmy Chiang, the CEO of Way Basics sent me a note about their third generation design of their table set called Charlotte.

We have one of these sets, the second generation and it’s super sturdy, practical and good looking. What I love so much about Way Basics is that you can put it into recycling when you’re done with it. Let’s face it, kids furniture only has a shelf-life of a few years. Kids outgrow it or it breaks. The fact that I can take it apart and put it into recycling makes me happy and less guilty about owning a product that doesn’t stay with us for years on end.

And by the way, if your’e wondering if they are sturdy, as they are only ‘glued’ together, let me tell you they are. I sit on them daily, do crafty stuff with our Ella. It’s light weight yet sturdy furniture.

Two swissmiss thumbs up for Way Basics.

Beyond Helvetica…



Here’s an event I’d go to in a heartbeat if I’d live in Boston: “Beyond Helvetica: a look at the power of typography” – Lecture with Ken Barber and François Rappo at MIT.

On October 27, 2010 from 6.30-9pm at MIT Room 3-270

To Self-Publish or Not to Self-Publish



To Self-Publish or Not to Self-Publish. An interesting post by Eric Karjaluoto over on ideasonideas.com.

The School of Life

images via dezeen

Alain de Botton has always tried to get ideas to impact on the way we actually live. So in the summer of 2008, Alain and some colleagues set up The School of Life.

The School has a passionate belief in making learning relevant – and so runs courses in the important questions of everyday life. Whereas most colleges and universities chop up learning into abstract categories (‘agrarian history’ ‘the 18th century English novel’), The School of Life titles its courses according to things we all tend to care about: careers, relationships, politics, travels, families. An evening or weekend on one of its courses is likely to be spent reflecting on such matters as your moral responsibilities to an ex partner or how to resolve a career crisis.

The School offers communal meals, holidays and a beautiful shop with fascinating gift vouchers and other items. It also has a division offering psychotherapy for individuals, couples or families – and it does so in a completely stigma-free way. For the normally reserved British, it must be a first to have an institution that offers therapy from an ordinary high street location and moreover, treats the idea of having therapy as no more or less strange than having a haircut or pedicure, and perhaps a good deal more useful.

The School attempts to put learning and ideas back to where they should always have been – right in the middle of our lives.

I wish I could attend and send my kids to The School of Life.

Distraction

One of the more embarrassing and self-indulgent challenges of our time is the task of relearning how to concentrate. The past decade has seen an unparalleled assault on our capacity to fix our minds steadily on anything. To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible.

…

The need to diet, which we know so well in relation to food, and which runs so contrary to our natural impulses, should be brought to bear on what we now have to relearn in relation to knowledge, people, and ideas. Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting.

Alain de Botton on Distraction