This magnetic hammer design by Jung Soo Park is brilliant. Watch a video here.
(via Design Milk)
Regret
“If we have goals and dreams and we want to do our best, and if we love people and we don’t want to hurt them or lose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. The point isn’t to live without any regrets, the point is to not hate ourselves for having them… We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create, and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly — it reminds us that we know we can do better.”
- Kathryn Schulz
(via Brain Pickings)
12 year old explains national debt
In this video, 12-year old Victoria Grant explains why her homeland, Canada, and most of the world, is in debt.
(via explore)
Advice from Rob Giampietro
Advice by Rob Giampietro to designers getting ready to start their own studio:
1. An untended garden quickly becomes a field: plant what you want to grow.
2. Have partners, but don’t do the same things: make sure you both do something you enjoy.
3. Hire people for what they can teach you, not for what you can teach them.
4. Everyone should be able to take criticism: creative trust is built on critical honesty.
5. Design is only one part of the puzzle: savor the discussion, development, debate, and dissemination of your work just as much as the making of it.
6. Goals may be arbitrary, but not having them will be maddening when there’s no one else to tell you if you’re doing a good job: set 3-month, 6-month, and 1-year goals at the outset.
7. When you take your favorite clients out to lunch, it’s a good time to propose what you’d like to do together next.
8. Knowing more designers doesn’t necessarily translate into having good clients: spend your development time wisely.
9. Be known for something: it helps.
10. You will never work harder than when you’re building something: find balance. Sometimes the best way to solve a creative problem is to take a vacation or read a book.
(via One Skinnyj)
Nourishing Habits for Nourishing Design
Wonderful talk by Craig Mod on how great design is born from nourishing habits.
The best designer is an aware designer. The best design solutions are found by deconstructing problems as they arise in our own lives. What habits can we as designers form to provide us with a more objective clarity in answering these problems? How can we apply these solutions to existing products? When is it time to build new products? There is an intersection between the cultivation of habit, personal experience and design application – it is nourishing and magic and something we should all strive to evoke.
How to Scare Away Burglars
“Put your car keys beside your bed at night. If you hear a noise outside your home or someone trying to get in your house, just press the panic button of your car. The alarm tip came from a neighborhood watch coordinator.”
From this sobering list of 13 Things a Burglar won’t tell you.
(via fu**inghomepage.com)
So, how many Continents are there?
Last week I mentioned that CreativeMornings is now on 6 continents, which caused a bit of confusion over how many continents there are.
What I’ve since learned is that there are in fact different models being taught around the world. The seven-continent model is usually taught in China, India and most English-speaking countries. The six-continent combined-Eurasia model is sometimes preferred in the former states of the USSR and Japan. The six-continent combined-America model is taught in Latin America and in some parts of Europe including Greece, Portugal and Spain. I can somewhat understand that we can’t seem to get all of our outlets to be the same, but count of continents? Really?
Check the Wikipedia Entry on this Topic.
The Farmer & Farmer Review
The Farmer & Farmer Review is a site by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar on which they publish essays from leading practitioners in technology and the arts, exploring the relationship between humans and technology. File that under food for thought!
(Thank you Youngna)
A Hole
“Hire slow, fire fast! It’s better to have a hole than an a-hole”
- Neil Blumenthal
on hiring at Warby Parker at #99conf
The Ten Commandments of Teaching
1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.
Found this gem over at Brain Pickings.
Jonathan Harris’ PSFK Talk
I had the pleasure to see Jonathan Harris’ PSFK talk a few weeks ago. It is a moving talk and one that will make you think. Jonathan Harris is a new media artist and in this presentation talks to the audience about how he walked away from success and notoriety and was inspired to counter current trends to build Cowbird.com. Watch it!
Draw The Red Line
“The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.”
- Hugh McLeod
Too Early
“ If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late. ”
- Reid Hoffman
(via venturevoice)
The Secret
Amen to the message on this spread in Austin Kleon’s wonderful book Steal Like an Artist: Do good work and share it with people.
Manifesto for Visual Culture
The manifesto for visual culture from Rencontres d’Arles.
(via explore)
Brooklyn Beta/Summer Camp
It’s a pretty special day for my studiomates Chris and Cameron, forces behind Brooklyn Beta, the friendliest conference I have every attended. With today’s launch of Summer Camp they are moving beyond just being a conference.
Chris and Cameron were inspired by what Y Combinator has done for developers and hope to show some of the same love for designers. Not at the expense of developers, though. Their ideal team has both a designer and a developer working together.
With Summer Camp they aim to help “designer-developer teams” build the next generation of web products and change the world.
With the Brooklyn Beta conference, Chris and Cameron try to help spread big ideas and connect designers and developers together. With Summer Camp, they want to take it a step further and remove what is quite possibly the biggest barrier of all, money.
It’s a 12-week program in the summer leading up to the conference. They invest $25,000 in your company for a 6% stake, and give you a lot more help along the way.
Summer Camp is part of the Brooklyn Beta nonprofit, so any gains made in this year’s investments will go right back into the community and hopefully fund the next round of Summer Campers.
And lucky me, I have the honor to be one of the Summer Camp advisors. At the ready to offer advice and experience. Check out the impressive advisor list:
- Ben Pieratt, Co-founder of Svpply
- Charles Adler, Co-founder of Kickstarter
- Dan Mall, Founder of SuperFriendly
- Fred Wilson, Partner at Union Square Ventures
- Gina Bianchini, Founder and CEO of Mightybell
- Hayley Barna, Co-founder of Birchbox
- Jason Santa Maria, Creative Director of Typekit and A Book Apart
- Jeffrey Zeldman, Founder of Happy Cog and A List Apart
- Jessica Hische, Letterer and Type Designer
- Joe Gebbia, Co-founder of Airbnb
- John Borthwick, Founder and CEO of Betaworks
- Liz Danzico, Chair and Co-founder of SVA Interaction Design
- Matthew Smith, Creative Director of Zaarly
- Michael Galpert, Co-founder of Aviary
- Randy Hunt, Creative Director of Etsy
- Tim O’Reilly, Founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media Inc.
- Wilson Miner, Head of Design at Rdio
- and moi
Here’s what Chris and Cameron are hoping Summer Camp will fund:
“We are hoping to back big ideas looking to make a real impact. Don’t just make something for your peers. Build something that fixes the insanity of modern education. Or helps people weather the upcoming financial crises and rise in unemployment. Or improves the health of people around the world. Or brings neighbors closer together. Or helps people run small businesses. Or strengthens the bonds of families. Or puts existing abusive, mammoth institutions out of business (pretty please).”
Chris and Cameron deserve an internet hug for pulling this off.
Make them Look Up
“We aren’t doing anything to make them look up!”- Neil deGrasse-Tysson
A quote by Neil deGrasse-Tysson on why kids spend all of their time with their heads down looking at Facebook and playing video games. Captured by my studiomate Rusty at the Natural History Museum in NYC on March 15, 2012.
Reasons for Optimism
I thank the editors of Reasons for Optimism for their wonderful little corner they’ve created on the web. And I fully agree, with their statement:
“It’s easy to forget that in today’s not-so-optimistic world real progress continues, beauty appears, brave new worlds are explored, and creativity flows. We keep seeing–and occasionally finding–our best selves. There are, in fact, reason for optimism everywhere we look.”
A Small Town
“Be nice. (The world is a small town.)”
- Austin Kleon
A quote from Maria’s most recent heartfelt post regarding the wide range of responses to the introduction of Curator’s Code. As I said before, I don’t care if anyone ends up using the proposed symbols, all I care about is that attribution is on our minds and that we will try to come up with a standard that we all feel comfortable with. I am just plain happy the conversation is taking place.
I want express my respect for folks like Marco and Daniel who so thoughtfully and respectfully laid out why they disagree with the proposed solution.
To all the ones mocking and condescendingly making fun of Maria, let me just remind you again of the above quote.
Kindness and respect go a long way.
The World’s Population in One City
This is not a new infographic, but incredibly powerful nonetheless. If the world’s 6.9 billion people lived in one city, how large would that city be if it were as dense as…
(via Tim De Chant)
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost …. I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter Two
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter Three
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit … but, my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Chapter Five
I walk down another street.
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters, by Portia Nelson
(thank you Sorella)
This:
“Associate with people who are likely to improve you.”
— Seneca
(via The Happiness Project)
work for the right reasons
“Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.”
“Greg Smith in his resignation letter to Goldman Sachs: Why I am leaving Goldman Sachs”
(via @espiekermann)
