Question for my readers: White Wooden Floors

G and I bought a new apartment (yay!) that we now have to renovate. We are in total researching mode and I am obsessed with the idea of white-ish wooden floors. And this is where I am reaching out to you, my readers: Would you be able to direct us to pre-finished white-ish looking wooden floors similar to the ones pictured above? I am sure lots of my Scandinavian readers will have tips. I hope to find a wooden floor manufacturer that carries a similar type of flooring here in the US.

By the way, the image above is from Unplggd. It is Lotta Agaton’s home and it’s making me swoon. Click here for more images.

Personal Side Projects…

I am researching side projects for an upcoming talk and was wondering if you can think of any personal side projects of fellow designers and developers that I might forget:

I am thinking of projects like my CreativeMornings or Teuxdeux. Then there’s Coudal’s The Deck, JewelBoxing and Fieldnotes. And then there’s Frank Chimero’s The Shape of Design, or Jessica Hische’s Daily Dropcap, Squared Eye’s Patterntap and so on.

What side projects would you add to the list?

Custom Lapel Pin

Has anyone of you ever had a custom lapel pin made? If so, is there a company/service you could recommend? I am thinking about having one made for CreativeMornings. Please add your recommendations in a comment below. Thank you!

Digital Tools helping in going Paperless

Based on my question from two days ago, I would like take the conversation a step further by asking the following:

What tools do you use (or know of) that help us in the quest to go digital and say goodbye to paper?

Here are some of the ones I use on a daily basis:

JotNot iPhone App, basically a scanner in your pocket. Email your photos as a PDF, back them up with various different services like Evernote or fax them. Fantastic app, highly recommend it to turn that receipt, that you might otherwise lose, into a pdf and store it in your files.

Don’t own one yet, but it’s on my wishlist: Neat Receipts Scanner and Filing Software.

Online based Project Management Tool Basecamp keeps me from printing out documents, knowing they are all up there in the cloud, always accessible.

Dropbox. Best $10 I spend every month. All my files, always synced on my various computers, at all times. As well always accessible on my iPhone and iPad. I have all my files on me at all times, at a click of a button. No need to print anything. Ever.

Google Docs. I used to bring a print out of my Class Rooster to class every week to keep track of attending students. No longer. I now log onto my Google Docs account while in class, check the boxes and save. Voila. Done.

What services do you use? Or dream of? What services does your company use to help you go digital?

Question for my readers…

So, the other day I was talking with a friend of mine about the overall desire to go paperless. More and more companies try to print less in their day to day business but reality is, that a lot of large companies, are far away from going paperless. We are 8 people in our studio, 8 different businesses and hardly anyone ever prints anything here. (I am in charger of replacing the toner, so I know!) My friend told me that in big companies, paper still rules.

So, we were thinking about solutions. What are specific steps companies/yourself are taking to go paperless? Are devices like the iPad helping? Are collaboration technologies the solution?

Can you tell us how you do it? What your company does to get you to print less? What works?

I am wondering…

I am currently trying to consolidate all of my backups, re-organize all my work and personal files, photos, music, videos etc. As I am going through my stacks of harddrives I am realizing that my kids will eventually inherit a mountain of data.

What will they do with all these files? Will I have to go through eventually and pick the good stuff and save them as ‘your mom in a nutshell’ folder? Or a ‘best of’ folder? Seriously, I find it overwhelming to deal with my own data of 15 years plus. How will they feel looking through it all? Should I handle my data the same as how I handle my ‘stuff at home’ – ‘active file only’? Well, that doesn’t work if we want to go down memory line every now and then, right?

Do you ever think about what your kids will do (or not) with all the data we’ll pass on? And is there data that shouldn’t be passed on?

searching for swiss design destinations

Jenny Lee, a swissmiss reader is about to travel to Switzerland, asked me the following question:

As a designer and avid type fan, I mainly associate Switzerland as the mecca of European design. Are there any places you suggest that are a must for a designer to visit?

Any swiss readers out there with some insider tips?

Do you have a swissmiss story?

I am currently working on a short talk for the upcoming swissmiss birthday bash as well on a book proposal and have the following question for you:

Do you have a swissmiss story? Did I cover a product/idea/design of yours and it impacted your life? Did a post on my blog inspire you to pursue an idea/dream you had? Did a post of mine kick off a new side business that turned into your new fulltime gig? …

If you, or anyone else you know has a ‘swissmiss story’ please have them email me.

Yay Internet!

Question for my readers…

I just asked my twitter followers if they had any SLR Camera Bag recommendations. I am looking for a SLR Camera bag that can hold 1-2 additional lenses and that is not too clunky, yet stylish!

Wow, the links have been pouring in. As it is virtually impossible to see all replies in one place (unless one uses a distinct hashtag, which I didn’t do) I am asking the same again here. Please add your suggestions below. I’ll make a round-up post later on.

Thanks everyone!

Classified Ad Crowd-Sourcing

I am participating in a silent auction event with the Type Director’s Club and it’s our task to re-interpret an existing classified ad.

Would you like to submit a classified ad you come across and think would be fun to typographically translate into a poster? If so, please submit your suggestions as a scan/image (link to flickr or similar service) in a comment below or email it to me at [email protected].

If your submission gets picked, you’ll get a mention on the poster! Please note that it needs to be a real existing classifieds ad that I will have to submit alongside with the poster, so please keep it!

Thank you!

Question for my readers: Letterpress Studios

Two days ago I put out this tweet asking for Letterpress studio recommendations:



A lot of my twitter followers asked to share the responses I got. So here they are. Feel free to add more in comments below.

Studio On Fire, Minneapolis
The Mandate Press
Skylab Letterpress, Kansas City
Earl Kallemeyn, Brooklyn
Coeur Noir, Brooklyn
The Mandate Press, Salt Lake City
LetterPressLove, South Dakota
Brown Parcel Press, Athens and Brooklyn
Peter Kruty, Brooklyn
Gilah Press, Baltimore
Letterpress, Austin Texas
Cranky Pressman, Salem OH
Sideshowpress, Charleston South Carolina
Lead Graffiti, Newark Delaware
EM Letterpress, New Bedford MA
Precious Bugarin
Wolfe Editions, Portland Maine
Black Stone Press, Vancouver
Boxcar Press, Syracuse
Bowe House Press, Richmond VA
Pointed Press, Swarthmore PA
Two Paperdolls, Wayne PA
Kyle Van Horn, Baltimore
Cinnamon Kiss Paper Studio
Moontree Letterpress, Brooklyn
Haven Press Studio
Mamas Sauce
Clean Wash Letterpress
Lucky Duck Press

Question for my readers

architecturfirm

Dear readers, I am looking to find architecture firms (or design firms in general) that managed to successfully incorporate a blog into their site. Do any come to mind? Would you mind to leave urls in a comment below? Thanks so much!

Extreme Crowdsourcing

crowdsourcing

Two nights ago, G and I were discussing potential boy’s names for our little unborn son. I spontaneously said: “Why don’t we ask the twittersphere for some ideas?” Within seconds of posting my quest for a cool 4 letter boy’s name suggestions came pouring in. We just sat there refreshing Tweetie and couldn’t believe the amazing and most of all international name suggestions we got.

Crowdsourcing at its best!

I would like to extend this experiment to my blog readers. Have any cool suggestions for a rather unique 4 letter boy’s name for our unborn son? If so, indulge in this extreme crowdsourcing experiment with me and share in a comment below.

Again, the only condition: it has to be a 4 Letter Boys Name.

Question for my readers:

question

What ConversationStarter Tag Question would you like to see answered at on one of our upcoming CreativeMornings?

Question for my readers:

Do you know where I can view some of the original 1971 Big Apple Tourism Campaign posters here in the city?

A 1971 campaign to increase tourism to New York City adopted the Big Apple as an officially recognized reference to New York City. The campaign featured red apples in an effort to lure visitors to New York City. It was hoped that the red apples would serve as a bright and cheery image of New York City, in contrast to the common belief that New York City was dark and dangerous. Since then, New York City has officially been The Big Apple.

Why is New York City called the “Big Apple”?

Question for my readers:

teacher

Next week I’ll be starting as a part time teacher at Parsons The New School for Design here in New York. (Yay!) My goal will be to educate a group of approx 12 students about web design and give them an introduction to designing and planning a site. I am (cautiously) excited and humbled by the learning curve that’s ahead of me, never having taught before.

Are you a professional teaching part-time? If so, what advice would you give someone like me who starting to teach? What was your biggest teaching epiphany? I would love to hear your experience!

question for my readers

We are looking for someone to help us record/film the CreativeMornings Talks to put them on the web and make them available to swissmiss readers. Are you a film student and interested in teaming up with us? Or are you a designer that knows a lot about filming, editing and would get a kick out of helping us? If so, please email us and tell us a little bit about you.

question for my readers: google results remove+promote

Googleresults

Can anyone explain what the remove/promote buttons are supposed to do on the google results pages? Have they been around for a while?

a question for my readers…

My wonderful G has been using a service called LogMeIn for a while now on his PC’s. It let’s him keep all of his computers synced at all times. It also allows him to gain access to his home or office PC from any computer with an Internet connection.

In my dreams, my iMac at work and my laptop at home would be completely mirrored at all times. I just saw that LogMeIn also has an Apple feature. Are you familiar with the Mac Version of this service and have used it? I am not sure a service like this would work for me as some of my project files are h-u-u-u-g-e!

Dear swissmiss readers, how do you keep your data on your multiple computers synced?

question for my readers: a printer in new zealand

Maplge

One of my current clients is based in Auckland, New Zealand and I need to find a local printer for business cards etc. Dear Kiwi-Print-Designers, do you have a printer recommendation for me? Thank you SO much! Waving from the other side of the planet!

question for my readers: what would you ask michael bierut?

Askmichaelbierut_2

Lovely Debbie Millman just emailed me with a fun request:

“I will be interviewing Michael Bierut at the HOW conference next week in Boston and he came up with an idea that I would like to undertake. He thought it might be fun to solicit questions from people *before* the interview via the design community blogs and I was wondering if you might be able to assist us by posting a “request for questions” on Swiss Miss.

I have interviewed Michael on Design Matters, and in my book (wherein he waxes sentimental about his passion for folding laundry), so the more inventive the questions, the better! (and the more personal!!!)
: )

In the request, folks can send the questions to [email protected]

So, lovely readers, if you could ask Michael Bierut ONE question, what would it be? Email it to Debbie and please also add it as a comment below.

question for my readers:

330063548_6a48f334ce

Do you know of a letterpress printer that works (successfully) with glow-in-the-dark inks? Ideally someone based in NY or Chicago?

(image found on mattborghi’s flickr)

question for my readers: how do you handle your inbox?

I just had an interesting email exchange with Fred. He nudged me, as I still owed him a reply to his latest email. In our conversation, he mentioned an app he uses called NEO (Nelson Email Organizer) that helps him stay on top of his conversations. Of course, it’s a windows app. Are you using anything similar on a mac?

I need overhaul the way I handle my inbox. Just yesterday, I had to completely erase my harddrive and reinstall everything. With that, my inbox went from over 1400 emails (approx 700 of them flagged) to zero. (enter happy sigh here)

The eternal question: How do you organize your inbox. How do you stay on top of ongoing conversations?

(Oh, and by the way, if I owe you a reply, please nudge me again!)

Question for my readers!

My designer friend Anke is researching applications that help her with project budgeting and time/expense tracking. So far she’s looked at mindsalt, functionfox and a few others. She wonders if there’s anything out there that would also include invoicing features like blinksale. What do you use?