Swissmiss on The Brander

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

Collaborative Fund + Creative Mornings

 

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)

Daily Levitation



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)

Studiomates featured in the New York Times

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.

Interview by MY MODERN MET

I am honored to have been interviewed by Alice Yoo of MY MODERN MET for the Content Curator’s series.

swissmiss on Aeschbacher

A few hours ago today’s Kurt Aeschbacher show aired on Swiss TV. I had the incredible honor to be one of his four guests.

If you don’t speak Swiss-German, I am afraid you won’t understand all that much, but hey, I am saying an English word here an there! I admit, I am all giddy. I watched the Aeschbacher show growing up and I am incredibly flattered that my story qualified me as one of his guests.

Aeschbacher vom 31.03.2011

swissmiss on Aeschbacher

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!

Why I Can’t Wait For Summer:

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*.

swissmiss on Humble Pied

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.

Today’s Interjection: YAY!

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!

“The Power of Side Projects and Eccentric Aunts”

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.

RSVP opens today!

Chris Glass and his Barber

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?

Communication Crisis

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!

DesignChat Video

Last week I had the honor to be a guest on Ryan McGovern’s DesignChat. He just informed me that the video is now live. You can watch it below, on their site, over on iTunes.

(By the way, sorry that my volume is so much lower than Ryan’s. I had no idea.)

(I took the embedd down as I couldn’t figure out how to turn off autoplay and the Vimeo Upload is still converting)

Live on DesignChat at 2pm EST

I’ll be live on DesignChat at 2pm EST today. (in about 30 minutes) DesignChat is a weekly video and text-based conversation between creative types. They usually start at 8pm CST on Wednesdays and last about an hour on their site. But because I have little ones that have to be put to bed at that time, Ryan was so kind to agree and have the interview during working hours!

If you want to participate: Just go to their site. Before/after and during off hours – you can follow the conversation on twitterfall.com.

So, feel free to tune in at 2pm EST and ask questions. And let’s pray to the internet-connection-gods and hope that our connection will stay up for the duration of the interview.

SAY 100


Say Media approached me a while back and asked if I was interested in compiling a list of voices in the design community (bloggers) that I consider important. A list of voices that matter. Of course!

This was part of a larger effort to compile a global database of emerging talent in the age of modern media. Say media partnered with 10 experts to curate a list of the top 100 voices online. (I am humbled to be considered an expert)

Here is my list in the category Design.

Here are the other experts and their categories:

Technology: Stuart Miles, Founder and Editor of Pocket-Lint
Style: Jane Pratt, Founding Editor of Sassy and Jane Magazines
Parenting: Dana Wood, author of Momover
Business: Seth Goding, best-selling author, marketing expert, blogger
Food: Amanda Hesser, author and founder of Food52.com
Thought Leaders: Clay Shirky, Internet Thought Leaders, Adjunct Professor NYU
Travel: Nick Clarke, web editor of luxury city guide HG2.com
Entertainment: Rich Juzwiak, founder of fourfour
Games: Jeff Katz, founder of geekweek.com

If you are trying to discover some new gems online, start here. I bookmarked many new sites. A wonderful idea! Thank you Say Media!

SAY:100 Press Release from SAY Media on Vimeo.

Tilo Red = 1

As if Valentine’s day wasn’t enough to be giddy, we are also celebrating swissmisster’s 1st birthday over here at casa swissmiss! I feel like it was just yesterday when I wrote this post. And yes this means it took me an entire year to finally post about Tilo’s birth announcement cards which were printed by the wonderful Kyle Van Horn. The drawing in the front of the card is by Tilo’s sister Ella. It was her first stab at stick figures. I was 7months pregnant at the time. So she drew me with Tilo in my tummy. Adorable? YES!

Moving (Servers)

Lovely readers, pardon the silence for most of this week. I had a great time at the Altitude Design Summit in Salt Lake City where I had the honor to give the ending keynote.

I am already back in Brooklyn and gearing up for our server move tomorrow. Fabulous John Ford is helping me move swissmiss over to Happy Cog Hosting. In order to do so, we will be shutting off commenting temporarily, until everything’s working smoothly over on the new server. Thanks for understanding!

Back to packing up all those thousands of blogposts.

Icebreakertags.com



Are you an event organizer? Throwing a party? Do you want to help people strike up a conversation? That’s what Icebreakertags™ are for. Similar to name tags, people attach these conversation-starters to their clothes with a safety pin, but instead of a name, they answer a question.

It’s an idea I had while organizing CreativeMornings, a monthly breakfast lecture series here in New York. Icebreakertags™ make it easy to strike up a conversation with someone, even at 8.30am!

As I’ve seen a lot of buzz about the idea on Twitter, I figured why not build a site that let’s anyone use and customize them their liking. So, here it is, Icebreakertags.com let’s you generate your own icebreaktertag for your next party, conference or other gathering. Type directly into the tag to add your name/twitter/prompt, insert a good question, customize it with your logo or any graphic of your choice, and hit print. It will then generate a printout with 10 tags on it. Fun, no?

A big thank you to Ian Storm Taylor, our Studiomates Intern for building the site!

Make sure to add photos of your best tags to the Icebreakertag Flickr Group.

Happy conversing!

Apartment Therapy Offline Event

I am honored to be part of next week’s Apartment Therapy Offline Event with Judy Ross & Sandy Chilewich at the New York Design Meetup. We will be discussing how we manage to balance family and business.

What: Apartment Therapy’s New York Design Meetup
Panel: Judy Ross, Sandy Chilewich and moi
Topic: Balancing Family & Business: How 3 Designers Make it Work!
Members: 2,411 (rsvp here)
When: Wednesday, January 12: 6:30pm – 8:30pm
Where: Knoll Showroom | 76 9th Avenue (16th Street Entrance) 11th floor, NYC

Read Full Post over on Apartment Therapy. See you there?

Brooklyn Living

Are you in the market for a 2 bedroom in BoCoCa, Brooklyn? You should read on, as we are selling our place.

With the birth of our second child Tilo Red we realized that we will be outgrowing our wonderful 2 bedroom within a year or so. The time has come. We are heartbroken, but if we only had one child, we would never leave this place. The view is killer, the location couldn’t be any more perfect and the walk-in-closet and master bathroom makes every woman’s heart beat faster.

The apartment is in a designy new construction (3 years old). With many design-focused readers based in Brooklyn, it only makes sense for me to share this on my blog. So, please, bear with me.

Here are the facts:

Our apartment is a generous 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom with a super-awesome walk-in-closet (Currently Tilo’s bedroom) and a huge master bathroom. (The separate shower in there is to die for.)

We live on the 8th floor on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Smith Street. As I mentioned, it’s a new construction and we are the first owners.


View Larger Map

We are south facing which means our apartment is extremely bright. We see over the brownstones of Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens and even see the Verrazano bridge. And if you peek out the window, to the right, you can also get a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.

Some of you might have seen pictures of our lovely Brooklyn home in last year’s DesignSponge feature or in Apartment Therapy’s Big Book of Small Spaces.

If you have visitors and don’t feel like having them stay with you, just tell them to stay in the design/boutique Hotel NU below. (Floors 1-4 are Hotel, floors 5-12 are condos) It has proven incredibly practical to have a hotel right underneath us. And if you’re into working out, you can pay the hotel $60 a month and they let you use their always empty gym. And you don’t even need to go outside, all you need to do is take the elevator to the C level.

And then, of course, there’s Smith Street right outside your door. That means, lots (!) of wonderful restaurants and shops in close proximity.

If you have kids, you might want to know that we’re in a fantastic school district and zoned for PS 261. (literally one block away, in fact you can see the school from the living room)

There’s literally every Subway line you can think of in a 2-3 block radius, which makes this location so desirable. No matter where you need to go in the city, there will be a train closeby that will take you there. (In fact, we love this location so much that our new place is a whopping one block away!)

If you like you can see photos of our place over on Flickr.

If you’re interested in adopting our beloved home, check out the real estate listing and get in touch with our lovely broker Terry Naini.

Search For The Obvious: Umbrella

The Search For The Obvious is fantastic initiative by the Acumen Fund. And I have the honor to be one of the judges. The Search for the Obvious is all about harnessing and celebrating the creativity of our community. The people behind Search for the Obvious believe in the power of creativity to better the world. Instead of seeing problems, a creative mind sees obvious solutions. Acumen Fund started the project to help change how the world is addressing poverty by showing that there’s a better way.

Anyone who knows the story of how my husband and I met is not surprised at my pick: the umbrella! You can read my short write up over at searchfortheobvious.com/object/umbrella. (Click on “Read more” to reveal my little write up.)

Have you contributed your everday object or service that has changed the world and made life better?

TeuxDeux = 1

It’s a birthday day here at TeuxDeux headquarters.

A year ago today, my studiomates Cameron, Evan and I launched a To-Do App called TeuxDeux. Little did we know that our fun side project would touch so many people’s lives and increase the global productivity index by 34%. (joking)

Within hours of launching and announcing it on swissmiss, Fast Company wrote a blog post about it calling it “The Web’s most beautiful To-Do List“. Yes, we were speechless.

Within 24h of launch we had over 10k users, which grew to 50k users in a mere 4 weeks. Now, a year later, just by word-of-mouth we have over a 140k users. (That’s more than 46 times the size of the town I grew up in in Switzerland.)

We have been blown away by the response to our simple, calendar based app. It obviously struck a nerve with people that like to get things done. If you love making lists, you mostly like will like TeuxDeux.

The minute we launched everyone started asking for an iPhone app. We listened. Cameron and I, savvy when it comes to web sites and web apps, had never done an iPhone app. As you can imagine, the learning curve was steep, but the fun factor and overall excitement of getting into a new medium was high! Entering this new territory made me think back to the days when I just started out in web design. A few times, before a call with our developer, I looked over to Cameron and asked: “If I ask for this feature, will I come across like a client that asks for a Flash Site with a ‘Skip Intro’ page?”

The iPhone app development took us longer than we anticipated but in august of 2010 we finally launched the TeuxDeux App:

We built TeuxDeux for ourselves. We *never* anticipated this getting so big and having such a profound impact on so many people’s lives.

We now have a huge global fanbase that on a daily basis sends us love tweets:

A big giant thank you to all of our loyal users! If you’re wondering What deux yeux have teux deux teuxday? Have a piece of cake for us!

Happy-Birthday-TeuxDeux!
Yay Internet!

swissmiss on The Happiness Project

I had the pleasure to meet lovely Gretchen Rubin a few weeks ago. She is the force behind the powerful Happiness Project.

She currently features a short “Happiness Interview” with me on her site.

Make sure to check out her Book and the Happiness Project Toolbox.