Is Mercury in Retrograde is a question I asked myself a lot last week. Now I know. Considering just how much went wrong during my trip to Switzerland, I am not surprised the answer is currently YES.
Don’t know what it means, when Mercury is in retrograde? Read up here.
(via Sharon Lee)
Yesterday was our first day back in Brooklyn after 9 days in the Swiss Alps. We did a house swap with friends in the Appenzeller mountains and we could not have lived in a more stylish, designy house! (The only thing missing to make this absolutely perfect was an internet connection.) Here are a few impressions of our trip. #happytobeback
view from the Waldegg Restaurant in Teufen
view from the Eggli Restaurant in Appenzell
our amazing house swap living-room (yes, for real)
the completely stunning ‘office’ at our house swap home
yumm
always amazed at how tidy the Swiss keep their silverware arranged.
can’t get over the fact that my mom’s boyfriend owns 3 crocodiles. (seriously)
love this poster of my dad teaching at his former Apple computer school in Switzerland. Gotta love the perm action that’s going on in that picture.
my wonderful friend Martina came visit us from Munich. Here, she is taking in the view.
me speaking at the first TYPO St.Gallen. Thanks to Roland Stieger for the photo.
Some of you might have wondered about the light posting over the past few days. Well, clan Eisenberg traveled to Switzerland to visit my family. We did a house swap with an old friend of mine and so we are staying in the most stylish, designy place you can imagine. e are surrounded by lots of pieces by Eames and Corbusier. Heavenly, to say the least. Only draw-back: They have no wifi. And nor do the neighbors. Nada. Zilch. Kapputt. (Who knew? I just assumed everyone has wifi these days. Facepalm.)
Yes, I hear you all, it is great to disconnect, yadda yadda. But come on, just give me 10 minutes a day to have a teeny tiny looksie at the interwebs.
And as we are going to stay here all week, there will be unfortunately not much blogging goodness happening. Unless some wifi miracle will come upon us here in the lovely mountains of Appenzell.
I wish you all a fantastic week. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Gobble! Gobble!
Waving from the Swiss Alps.
(this is my first post done entirely on my iphone)
Here’s the current Halloween status at case Eisenberg. Can I just say what a good sport G is? Last year double rainbows, this year Superhero-family! He deserves a medal!
Happy Halloween everyone!
The brand new SVA MFA Product of Design Program, of which I am part of the faculty, is having their inaugural Information Session on November 5th. You have the chance to meet over twenty faculty members and Department Chair Allan Chochinov as they welcome prospective students, discuss the purpose and experience of the program, and answer questions. (I unfortunately won’t be able to make it myself.) But you can watch a video over on Vimeo in which I talk about what I’ll be teaching in my course and what my hopes are for this program.
The MFA in Products of Design is an immersive, two-year graduate program that prepares practitioners across various disciplines for leadership in the shifting terrain of design.
Interested in attending the Information Session? Make sure to R.S.V.P.
Last week I discovered one of the *coolest* places in Brooklyn: The Film Biz Recycling House in the Gowanus area. It is a not-for-profit organization that takes all the movie set decorations, saves them from becoming trash and sells them. Visiting the Film Biz Recycling makes my heart beat faster. Think vintage radios and photo cameras, neon signs, bikes, furniture, file cabinets… and so on. I barely made it out without loading up my car.
Film Biz Recycling is organizing a real life auction together with the folks of Krrb and my wonderful studiomate Jessi Arrington. I had the honor to go in and pick a few pieces that will be auctioned off. My selection consists of:
- a stylish black sofa
- white and black suitcases that work as side tables
- a vintage photo camera
- two vintage books that made me chuckle when you read both titles together
- a mysterious metal box
- a rubber shark
- a silver metal looking tray/dish
- two toy cars
- a vintage radio
- and a huuuuuge vintage chalkboard.
Other selected items are curated by Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan of Apartment Therapy; Oliver Jeffers; and Andrew Wagner of Krrb.
Want to join in on the fun on november 3rd? Get tickets here so you can bid on rescued props, wardrobe, and furnishings hot off the sets of NYC productions! This will be fun! Think free beer, dollar tacos and live music!
I consider myself the unofficial ambassador of Brooklyn. I moved to here 11 years ago and found a new home.
I live and work in Brooklyn. My work home is in DUMBO where my studio is overlooking the East River with stunning views on Manhattan.
DUMBO stands for “Down Under The Manhattan Bridge Overpass” and is the sliver between the Manhttan and Brooklyn Bridge. I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else. Why? Well, I might be giving my secret away here, but, DUMBO let’s you fake small-town living in a big city. DUMBO’s streets are fairly quiet, and I like that. Yet, we look over to Manhattan and think “Oh, look, there’s NYC!”
The Walentas had a lot to do with what DUMBO is today, and I am eternally grateful to them for so masterfully curating this little neighborhood.
And then there is the DUMBO Business Improvement District Bureau that is run by some wonderful folks and they just launched a fantastic DUMBO resource site.
There’s lots to see in DUMBO and dumbo.is makes it easy to plan your visit in advance. See what’s happening in DUMBO on the Decoder page. Read up on some businesses that are residing in DUMBO.
And if you’d like to see some of my DUMBO suggestions, then check out my itinerary.
And most of all, bookmark the homepage: www.dumbo.is
UPDATE: Please go to AmitGuptaNeedsYou.com to find out how you can help.
The amazing Amit Gupta, force behind Photojojo has recently been diagnosed with leukemia. His friends in the photography and tech communities have been rallying together to show their support and love in several ways and I’d like to encourage my swissmiss readers to do the same.
Here’s what you can do:
- Send Amit real mail to Yale-New Haven Hospital, Amit Gupta 11 220
Smilow Cancer Center 11 North, 20 York St., New Haven, CT 06511
- Add a message on fuckyeahamitgupta.tumblr.com
- Add a message to Yale-New Haven Hospital’s online board
- SoundCloud has created a space where well-wishers can send sound-based messages to Amit via SoundCloud’s Dropbox integration feature.
- Postagram has set up a code for folks to send Amit a free get-well-soon Postagram.
- Join me in sending Amit twitter messages by using the hashtag #4AMIT (image above)
UPDATE: Please go to AmitGuptaNeedsYou.com to find out how you can help.
Amit, we’re sending tons of good energy!
(Thank you Yoko for applying the Deming Tattly message)
(via Raul / laughingsquid)
Last night I had the honor to attend a Womens Salon organized by Acumen Fund founder Jacqueline Novgratz. At the event, we were asked to answer the following question:
If you could go back and change one decision in your life, what would it be?
I wish I would have embraced and trusted the entrepreneurial side in me earlier. If only I would have started my design studio BEFORE I had my first kid. For some reason I thought I first need to get a good 6 years of experience working for others until I could do it on my own. That’s not the case! You learn so much, and so much faster, when you are your own boss. And there is really nothing like working for yourself. When you’re younger, you have so much more flexibility. You can easily keep your overhead low and you can work late if necessary. I made it work, starting my first business when I had my daugther, but it could have been a much easier experience would I have started earlier. In my next life, I’ll be starting my first company in my early 20s.
What about you?
What do you give someone that explicitly says she wants NO gifts for her birthday? Well, in the case of my studiomate Maria, force behind Brain Pickings, I set up a Tumblr blog called Yellow Things For Maria. Why? Well, Maria has quite an obsession with the color yellow, and I simply can not email her every time I see something that makes me think “Oh-Look-It’s-Yellow-I-Neeed-To-Send-This-To-Maria”. So, now I am secretly collecting yellow stuff. Quite fun, I must say.
(Let me know if you have any yellow things I should add, in a comment below.)
And, now all together: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARIA!
I have exciting news! We just launched Tattly, a temporary tattoo store for design-minded kids and kids-at-heart. After applying many bad-clip-art tattoos on my daughter Ella, I decided to stop complaining and take matters into my own hands. I was ready to put designy, cool, typographic tattoos on my daughter, or myself for that matter. The idea for Tattly was born.
I looked through my rolodex and reached out to fellow designers I admire to see what they thought of the idea. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Within days I received my first tattoo submissions. And now, a good two months later, we have a site, a team and an impressive fulfillment-centerlike-set-up in our studio. Team Tattly is ready to ship and rock the world of temporary tattoos.
I get giddy when looking at our current list of contributing designers.
Jessi Arrington: Color Burst
Jessica Hische: Type Nerd
Marc Johns: Rabbit
Julia Rothman: You’re Late, Robot, Polaroid Instant Camera
Frank Chimero: Knucks
James Victore: Scribble, I <3 NYC
Jason Santa Maria: Aperture
Chris Glass: Mother
Kelli Anderson: Carpe Futurum
Josh Smith: Cursors, Tattone
Jennifer Ward: Speak Up
Tattlys are perfect for people like me, that can’t commit to a real tattoo and for designer parents, that want to raise their kids with style. Tattlys make a perfect small gift and sure will make your friends smile. Can’t decide which one to get? For two weeks only, you’ll be able to buy the Launch Special Everything Pack! (Shipping is included in the US and only $2 internationally. Yes, we ship *everywhere*!)
I could not have done this without my awesome Tattly team Rusty and Yoko. And our newest Studiomates member Kevin, who proved be an impressivley talented temporary tattoo model. He was even game to model all Tattlys for the Everything Pack.
And then there are my wicked smart and talented studiomates of Oak. They developed the site with all that responsive goodness. (Go resize your browser window or try the site on a mobile device!) The shop runs on Shopify, which, according to Team Oak, “was almost as painless to set up as applying a Tattly to your bicep”. (I’ll be writing about the Shopify experience in the coming days, just so much for now: Their iPhone App ROCKS!)
It’s a big day here at swissmiss studios! Tattly is born! I am so happy I might burst.
Now, the question is: Which one is your favorite?
I am incredibly honored to be featured on The Brander, a fine Swiss online journal that features stories about brands and their creators, generated by renowned journalists and photographers. The independent publication is the creation of Zurich’s branding agency Branders and aims to portray big, small und exclusive brands from all over the world.
A big thank you to Roman Elsener for the article, Stefan Falke for the photography and Tessa Pfenninger for the translation.
Here’s the link to my feature: Tina Roth Eisenberg – a modern Swiss Miss
I started CreativeMornings in september of 2009 wanting to create an accessible, inspring morning talk series. Little did I know that it would grow into a global series. With an evergrowing number of chapters, CreativeMornings currently take place in NYC, Zurich, LosAngeles, and SanFrancisco with Chicago kicking off this friday. A London chapter is starting in July and Berlin and Vancouver are going to be kicking off shortly after. All of this has came from the help of my fantastic hosts and their volunteers in every city. It’s impressive that my idea has been received such generous support. Every event fills up within minutes. (Take this week’s first ever Chicago CreativeMornings with Jim Coudal. It was full in a mere 3 minutes.)
And things are only going to get better. Why?
In the winter of 2010 I had the pleasure to meet Craig Shapiro, former president of GOOD Magazine and now force behind Collaborative Fund. Craig took me out to lunch and I could tell he was interested in CreativeMornings. To my surprise, he was so interested, he asked if he could become a partner. I was stunned to say the least. We are talking about a man that has invested in companies like Kickstarter, Skillshare and BankSimple. I was speechless.
Curious as to why he wanted to become a partner, I continued to listed. He explained that he is drawn to CreativeMornings because of two important things:
a) There is a new breed of entrepreneurship and it is based on using creative facilities to solve big and small problems.
b) When you Bring like-minded (creative) people together, magic happens. New projects, job and business opportunities, friends and much more can all come from thee meaningful gatherings.
After my initial shock, I realized what an incredible gift it was to have met Craig. I can tell that he understands my vision for CreativeMornings and seems as excited as I am to make it happen. Craig obviously is a very smart business man and I am excited to know that I have a skilled partner to help me navigate the CreativeMornings ship. His support is allowing me to spend more time on CreativeMornings and focus on growing the series.
Beyond that, we here at Studiomates love when Craig comes and hangs out at our space. He is fueling our entrepreneurial spirts and is just an overall wonderful person to have around.
I am excited and incredibly humbled to be part of Collaborative Fund. This year cannot get any better, I think.
(raising my glass of bubbly stuff in excitement)
Natsumi Hayashi is a Tokyo based photographer that makes flying look easy. She takes daily levitating self-portraits. Fascinating. “Sometimes I need to jump more than 300 times to get the perfect shot,” Hayashi told MSNBC.com on June 8.
(Thank you Nate, via Dare.co.uk)
What already was an amazing day has now been officially pushed into magical realms with this NewYorkTimes Style Section feature of Studiomates. A big thank you to the writer, David Hochman! My favorite line: “It turns out that 140 characters in a Twitter post cannot compete with 26 characters in a Brooklyn loft.”
Read the full article on Studiomates here.
I am honored to have been interviewed by Alice Yoo of MY MODERN MET for the Content Curator’s series.
Here’s some exciting news that most probably only my Swiss readers will get: I am going to be on Kurt Aeschbacher’s TV show, which is airing tomorrow, thursday march 31st at 10.20pm.
Here’s some info (in German) about all 4 guests on the show, including myself. (For those of you not familiar with Swiss TV, Kurt Aeschbacher is the Larry King of Switzerland.)
Exciting? Very!
Yes, this shoe is one of the reasons why I can’t wait for it to be summer. I have fallen in love with the Melissa Campagna Zig Zag last year and just stocked up on two new pairs. Most comfortable shoe *ever*.
I am honored to be part of Mig Reyes‘ wonderful Humbled Pied series. Here’s our brief chat and my piece of advice that I’d give to anyone starting out in the design field (or any field of that matter). Here’s a link to my video.
Check out the entire advice archive.
YAY is today’s Interjection of the day! Why? G and I closed on our new apartment! We have been working on this deal for 2 years now and can barely believe that we will have to get into packing boxes mode shortly. (We will be moving a whopping one block!)
So, once more, YAY!
I am very excited to be speaking about “The Power of Side Projects and Eccentric Aunts” at an upcoming SVA Interaction Design Talk Series here in NYC. It is taking place on Wednesday March 30th, 2011 from 6-8pm.
This Barber Shop Sign post is a prime example of just how awesome (and talented) my friend Chris Glass is.
Chris needed a haircut and his barber needed a new sign in the window. So, he designed one. Check it out on his site for rollover before/after effect.
Fellow designers, let’s follow Chris’ lead and make the world a more beautiful – typographically speaking – space! What sign are you taking on?
I have reached a personal communication crisis. Too many channels. Too many messages. Too much noise. Too much guilt.
My Twitter exchange with Jeffrey Zeldman this morning pushed me over the edge. Jeffrey sent me direct message on Twitter which I tried to reply to for hours on wednesday constantly getting an error message. I eventually sent a public reply and also an email the next morning. Today I find out that nothing reached him. Oh you modern world! (No, I didn’t have his phone number, otherwise I would have also sent him a text or imagine this, called him!)
What’s the problem?
I am inundated with messages! (And I am sure I am not alone, my case might be just a little bit more extreme!)
I get a ton of email. To the point where email has become my primary source of guilt.
The world also sends me tweets, direct messages, texts, chats with me on skype, sends me Facebook emails (!) and actual mail and also calls me. I am just waiting for messenger pigeons to show up on my window sill in my studio. Responding on all these channels is a full time job, extremely distracting and exhausting. I feel constantly behind. And guilty. In fact, GUILT is the word that comes to mind when I think about my state of communication. And I don’t like that. Not one bit. Life is too short too feel guilty.
Beyond just feeling overwhelmed and wanting to change the way I communicate I am also wondering about etiquette. What are the appropriate channels on how to approach someone? I had one of my readers call me yesterday morning at 7am asking me to edit one of his comments. I am sure he sent an email to my ‘submissions’ email address that I didn’t get to yet, so he felt entitled to call me.
While this is a bit extreme, I still wonder when is it ok to call someone? When do you DM someone vs emailing? When is appropriate to send chat messages?
I know that I need to drastically simplify how I communicate. Less channels. More focus. The question is how? Which channels do I cut off? Do we maybe invent an entirely new channel that combines all of the existing? Or do we need to redefine the rules around communicating? (e.g. When inquiry is strictly business, stick to email. When you’re friends with someone, you can DM them. etc)
My question to you: Have you taken drastic measures in the way you communicate? Do you have personal rules in terms of what channels you use for what purpose? Do you have a vision for how we can simplify the way we communicate?
I will try to convince my studiomates to talk about this topic today over lunch. We have quite some visionary spirits in our space and I hope I’ll be coming back with some good ideas. I’ll make sure to follow up this post… But until then, I’d *love* to hear your thoughts on this topic.
UPDATE: The99Percent posted a reaction to this post. Amazingly insightful!
