Happy At Studiomates

After discovering Happy In NYC a few days ago I kept telling my studiomate Kevin he should dance through Studiomates, our co-working space. Today is Kevin’s birthday and Bas (of Like Knows Like) made it happen. You should see the smile on my face. I was holding the stereo as we walked through our spaces, and I am making a quick cameo at the end.

HAPPY!

Happy birthday Kevin! You’re the best!

Studiomates Scuttlebutt #2

Studiomates photo by Julia Robbs(image by Julia Robbs, see the entire Studiomates set here)

Here is edition #2 of the Studiomates Scuttlebutt, brought to you by Wesley Verhoeve. Every month Wesley gathers the most recent and newsworthy accomplishments coming out of our coworking space and delivers them to me on a silver platter, so I can share them with you:

Jen Mussari designed a super fancy tee shirt for British luxury menswear brand, Sunspel, to commemorate their NYC pop-up shop.

Meg Lewis is teaching a Skillshare class on Introduction to Web Design.

– Fictive Kin launched a new web site showing off some of their recent work.

– Jonnie Hallman discussed his design career, working at Studiomates, and designing for designers in a recent interview with The Industry.

– Kevin Huynh wrote about his mother.

– Bekka Palmer launched her photography portfolio site with work she has produced in the past year.

GNTLMN is set to launch a pre-sale for their upcoming Brooklyn Picnic Quilt, a collaboration with 10 Jay neighbors Haptic Lab. Initially for newsletter subscribers only.

– Yoko Sakao Ohama’s shape designs: (XCircleSquare, and Triangle) were released as Tattlys.

– The dates for Brooklyn Beta 2013 have been announced.

– Oak Studios launched their new CMS, Siteleaf, which was a collaboration with studiomate Jonnie Hallman, who has since joined Oak as a partner.

Wesley Verhoeve was announced as the curator for WeTransfer‘s “Featured Creatives” program, and is taking submissions from visual creatives.

Rolling Stone sent Kisha Bari out on assignment to shoot ‘A Day in The Life’ of Charli XCX for a 29 image photo feature.

Erica Heinz designed and developed a microsite for The B Team, Richard Branson’s new startup to create systemic change in the business world.

Open Recipes announced that it now has more recipes than Punchfork did when it was shut down.

– I’ll be giving a brief talk at Brooklyn Public Library this Wednesday.

Studiomates Scuttlebutt

studiomates scuttlebutt

I am quite excited to introduce something new here, the Studiomates Scuttlebutt.

Wesley Verhoeve mentioned recently how hard it is to keep track of all the interesting projects coming out of our coworking space Studiomates. The pro-active gentleman that he is, he gathered the most recent and newsworthy accomplishments and delivered them to me on a silver platter, so I can share them with you:

Fictive Kin launched Slash Purpose, an effort to get websites, apps, and products to share the “Why?” behind the project.

Josh Stewart‘s Farmstand app, connecting users with locally-grown food, was featured in the App Store’s Food and Drink section.

Laura Bohill designed Appysnap, a photo game app that just went live in the App Store.

– The folks at GNTLMN launched their re-design, announcing new handmade men’s accessories and events to come in the next few weeks.

Kio Stark released her Kickstarter-backed book, “Don’t Go Back to School: a handbook for learning anything”, and is mailing out, by hand, about a 1000 books, by hand.

– Fifty CreativeMornings chapters will host events for May’s global theme: “Backwards”.

Kisha Bari and friends won the Tribeca Film Festival award for Transmedia last week for their project Sandy Storyline.

– Next week, TeuxDeux launches a Little Printer publication, which allows users to receive a printed list of their todos using Berg’s Little Printer.

Yoko Sakao Ohama and her friend Ken Quemuell announced At The Same Damn Time, a design project that illustrates a different song title every day.

– Marco Arment’s The Magazine published a history of Josh Clark‘s “Couch to 5k (c25k)” running plan.

– The folks at Symbolset released SS Steedicons.

– The folks at Oak had their app Blue featured in the App Store. Oak’s Skylar and Sawyer were also interviewed about their new project Gazette on Execute’s inaugural podcast.

Kary Campbell designed and coded a custom subreddit called “Social Citizens” for Collaborative Fund.

Jessi Arrington opened Typo San Francisco with a very personal talk on embracing your “you-ness.”

– Dan Blackman and Oak collaborated on the recently launched app Pizza Compass, which lets you find the slice nearest to you.

See you next month!

Tattly Video Shoot

Yesterday was quite an unusual day at Studiomates: We had the talented and charming team of This Is Made By Hand here. They turned our conference room into a professional video studio. They shot about 50 people wearing Tattlys. Needless to say I can’t wait to see the final product. For now, check out the above timelapse I took of the video shoot!

In case you’re wondering what camera I used. It’s this one. (And yes, it works with Mac)

Magic Skateboard

My studiomate Jessi is hands-down the most color loving and creative person I know. That being said, I wasn’t necessarily surprised with her plans of wanting to paint a skateboard in rainbow colors for the Bordo Bello Fundraiser. But I was amazed at the stop motion video she created documenting the process. It put the *biggest* smile on my face today. Check this out:

Bordo bello is a one-night only custom skatedeck show and fundraiser. bordobello.com

Interview with Cameron Koczon

Here’s an interesting interview with my studiomate Cameron Koczon. He is one of the geniuses behind Fictive Kin, TeuxDeux, and Brooklyn Beta and talks about entrepreneurship, creating the ideal workspace, and why his latest app GimmeBar will radically change the way we curate content online.

Made By Hand

Made by Hand is a new short film series by my studiomate Mandy Brown and her husband Keef. Made by Hand celebrates the people who make things by hand — sustainably, locally, and with a love for their craft. Their first film, on the Breuckelen Distilling Company, is coming soon.

I can’t wait.

Pandagram

My studiomates Jason Hawkins and Larry Legend released a simple (and free) iPad app called Pandagram last week. It’s a bare-bones but elegant Instagram photo viewer for your iPad. Check it out. (This is the app with the cutest icon ever, designed by yet another studiomate, the lovely Meagan Fisher)

swissmiss on The Post Family

My friends over at The Post Family just launched their new brand-new site. That’s reason enough to write about them, but it just so happens that they also currently feature an interview with me. And if that wasn’t enough to run around and scream Hoooray, check out the below video Sam Rosen shot while he was visiting Studiomates just a few weeks ago. Boy, this is quite a monday.

Studiomates from Sam Rosen on Vimeo.

Thank you Chad! Thank you Sam and Leo!

More Perfect Typography

Last night kicked off what will soon be a regular talk and workshop series here at our collaborative workspace Studiomates. Tim Brown, Type Manager of Typekit, gave a fantastic talk titled “More Perfect Typography”. (Yes, it was a typographic geek fest.) In this talk, Tim guided us through using typographic tools and perspectives that will change the way we design websites.

A big thank you goes to my studiomates Mandy Brown and Jason Santa Maria for putting the event together. We didn’t tape last night’s talk but here’s the same/similar talk Tim gave at last year’s Build Conference:

Tim Brown – More Perfect Typography from Build on Vimeo.

Desks opening up at Studiomates

Big exciting news from Studiomates headquarters: We are expanding. Starting March 1st, we will be renting out 6 more desks. The new space that we will be taking over includes a space that will allow us to host workshops. CreativeEvenings, anyone?

Our space is located in DUMBO, Brooklyn, right on the water. The picture above, with the bridge, that’s our view. For real. So, in case you’re in the market for a desk, here’s what $550 a month would get you:

– desk with drawer unit and chair
– conference room
– bike room
– internet
– laser printer
– kitchen with fridge, coffee maker, water
– a huge Ideapaint wall for brainstorming
– lots of geek talk over lunch with all of us Studiomates
(If you are looking for a space to store a lot of equipment/stuff, studiomates is not for you!)

We are a tight group of designers, developers and copywriters. Check out who we are over on our Studio site.

Do you think you’d be a good fit? Email me and tell us why! Send us a pitch, your url, stuff you’ve made on the web, or anything you think that would convince us to make you a studiomate.