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“I think it’s so easy to extrapolate from this moment as if we know what’s going to happen in a week, or a month, or three months, or six months, or a year. And this is one of those situations. The Buddha was always talking about it, of the importance of uncertainty. That really, we don’t know what the next moment is going to bring.”
— Mark Epstein
This series of six posters was designed by Massimo Vignelli, Beatriz Cifuentes and Yoshiki Waterhouse in 2013. Each is a tight crop of the New York City Subway Diagram at matching scale. Lovely!
I am not particularly handy but wish I was. So, I started following Youtube channels run by carpenters. Let me tell you, I am discovering a whole new world. I am enjoying videos like the one above by the Honest Carpenter. File this under ‘the things you discover during a pandemic”.
– My dear multi-talented friend Jocelyn is offering a 12 week course to reconnect with your body, open your heart, and bring your intuition online. It’s called Hi-Fi. (She is also the force behind Hurry Slowly. She has a magic touch.)
– I love that Basecamp came out with a personal tier: Basecamp Personal is the 100% forever-free version of Basecamp you can use with up to 20 people to manage 3 projects together. Home improvement, travel, freelance, hobbies, even making your own EP.
– This pandemic is a pivotal moment for CreativeMornings: Not only are our hosts fearlessly moving our events online, our community is also stepping up and teaching each other, for free. Check out this incredible list of upcoming FieldTrips. They are all free. Completely, totally free.
– I hope Tattly will make it through this time. With all stores that carry us closed, the only source of income we have is online sales. Most don’t realize that wholesale is our biggest source of revenue, so stores being closed hurts us real bad. I thank all of you who have generously placed an order in the past few weeks and left a note during the check-out. I see them all, as I am personally fulfilling every order that comes in.
Yesterday was an emotional day: The New York CreativeMornings chapter hosted our first ever virtual CreativeMornings event and welcomed over 1,000 community members on Zoom and YouTube Livestream.
After 11.5 years of putting on IRL (in real life) events here in NYC, I felt ANXcited about the challenge of adapting our events to a digital format. What can we translate from the regular events to virtual? What needs to change? What are the opportunities here? What is at the core of the magic of CreativeMorning?
At 9am yesterday, people tuned in from around the world. We kicked everything off with a lighthearted, fun pre-show, hosted by Christina and Kyle, former CreativeMornings/Toronto hosts and now members of our HQ team.
Our amazing ASL interpreter volunteer Canara helps us keep our events accessible for our hearing impaired. (We love you Canara!)
The pre-show includes audience participation and we had planned to create a virtual ‘coffee line’ and have everyone go into breakout rooms to meet each other, but Zoom didn’t cooperate. Oh well, we improvised by engaging the audience in the chat.
One of my favorite moments of the morning was when Priya’s husband Anand walks into the room and tries to troubleshoot her wifi. Look at this! Glorious!
After Priya’s segment was over, we launched into our 30 second pitches, where we hand 3 of our audience members the mic for 30 seconds so they can pitch the room anything they want.
We danced out of the event to a Justin Timberlake song, which was an incredibly heartfelt experience, but unfortunately we can’t show this as YouTube would instantly take the video down. So, just imagine 450+ audience members dancing goodbye after our first ever CreativeMornings/NYC event.
And if you’re interested in how to meaningfully gather in a world of physical distancing, suggest you follow Priya and listen to her podcast Together Apart.
And if you have experienced interesting new creative ways of gatherings, or have some interesting ideas on how it could be done, please share them here in this Twitter Thread.
Yes, there is a global pandemic happening but looking at this this minimal, beautifully designed serving tray gives me so much temporary peace of mind. Indulge me, please.
“Meetings with Remarkable Men” is a deeply moving documentary about the role of men in our society. The director Mai Hua made it public, available for anyone to watch, for a few days. It’s an hour well spent. If it resonates, please consider donating a small token of appreciation.
Smokey Robinson spends a good three minutes trying to maintain composure while a googly-eyed letter U with an ironclad grip and no concept of boundaries tries to hug him. Oddly funny!
– What are you doing at 4:30pm ET on April 25th? I’ll be tuning in to the 2020 version of The Universe in Verse, one of Maria Popova‘s labors of love. The line up is completely bonkers and breathtaking.
– “Leading a team is a great privilege, never more so than when things are at their worst. Don’t miss your chance to live up to it.” The hard way, by Mandy Brown.
– Remote work for design teams: Learn the best practices for running a remote design team, and discover how designers can help teams collaborate while working apart.
– I mentioned in last week’s Link Pack that my company Tattly is hurting. Many of you have placed an order to support us. Thank you! I don’t know if we will make it through this storm. For now, I am singlehandedly fulfilling orders that come in carrying them over to the nearest post office. If there was ever a time you wanted to surprise someone with some Tattly, or buy some for yourself, this is a good moment. PS: I see your kind check-out-notes. I appreciate you!
– Thank you Float for sponsoring my blog this week. Float is a collaborative resource management tool to plan your projects and schedule tasks, in real time.
Two weeks ago my kids discovered Blinks. The initial excitement was big. And continues. I am in the stage of parenting where I never know what will be a hit with my kids – Blinks is a definite winner.
It too *me* a moment to wrap my head around the idea of Blinks as it is like nothing I have ever seen. My kids of course picked it all up way faster than me. I would describe Blinks as a table-top game from the future.
Each ‘Blink Node’ represents one game and if you decide to play it, it tells the other pieces to get on board and programs them to do so. It all feels quite magical. So, basically, you have multiple board games at your fingertips, and as you add more blinks over time (they continuously come out with new ones) your game library expands.
We have the Combo Set and have had so much fun discovering the various games you can play. My kids definitely love Wham and speed racer. My favorite is Puzzle 101.
We haven’t mastered all of them yet, as some of them seem more complex than others. I am thankful for the instructional videos. Show me and I understand. Whenever I have to read game instructions I am lost. Visual learner anyone else?
Anyhow, if you’re going stir crazy at home and want your kids to be entertained and challenged, I can’t recommend Blinks enough.
I got to video-chat-meet the founder Jon Bobrow. He was so kind to give my kids a little intro to Blinks. They loved it and him. What a joy to learn that the people behind the products you love are kind, generous humans. Jon is one of them.
Jon does live-streams on how to play with Blinks at home on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Here’s one.
And here’s the video we watched once we first got our Blinks:
Thank you Baratunde for sharing your full interview with the remarkable JR.
Fun fact: Baratunde used to live across the street from me and when he moved out he gifted me his fancy waffle iron. Now, every time I make waffles for my kids we scream #waffletunde. Sometimes I even photo-tweet the results at him. It’s the little things.
Face shields are typically made with multiple parts and are difficult to create and assemble at home. But Tokujin Yoshioka’s brilliant idea simplifies the design greatly, allowing it to be held in place with ordinary eyewear. Read more.
Swissmiss is an online garden Tina Roth Eisenberg started in 2005 and has lovingly tended to ever since.
Besides swissmiss, Tina founded and runs TeuxDeux, CreativeMornings and her Brooklyn based co-working community Friends Work Here. (She also started Tattly which was recently adopted by BIC)
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