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Yvette Helin has one of the coolest jobs ever, making custom costumes for everything from Broadway shows, to theme parks, to TV commercials. You’ve probably seen her work. She made the costume of the Geico gecko. She’s done Rugrats, Jimmy Neutron, Scooby Doo, Pokemon… The list goes on. Her amazing studio is in Greenpoint, and is one of many urban manufacturing companies based in the GMDC.
Yvette’s costume for Tracy Morgan in A Couple of Dicks
Could you describe what your studio does?
We do specialty costumes. I make things that most costume shops either can’t, or won’t, because it’s not cost-effective. They need to make 50 of something for it to work for them, since they have an army of stitchers that need to be fed work constantly.
The last job I did was a cell phone costume for Tracy Morgan, for the film A Couple of Dicks. I made 16 of them in 10 days. They need 16 because he’s going to go through many phases of destroying this costume – he gets attacked by a pit bull, etc.
What’s your background? How did you end up starting a studio like this?
When I went to art school, I was going to be a graphic designer. Along the way I discovered that everything I made related to the human figure, somehow. Whatever the assignment, I would make either a person or clothing or some sort of performance. (more…)
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The GMDC is a completely unique setup – a nonprofit landlord renting space to small manufacturers. Brian talked to us about the future of urban manufacturing, and all the cool stuff that their tenants are making.
How is the GMDC different from other studio spaces in the city?
We like to describe ourselves as a bit of a benevolent landlord. When a check’s late, they don’t get a letter from a lawyer – we kind of work with them, and sometimes we’ll find out that this guy doesn’t have a lot of work but this guy does, and we put them together.
That’s incredible – definitely not your average building!
We do things that a traditional landlord wouldn’t do. We know a lot about the individual businesses. One of the reasons we know a lot is because they’re so interesting and cool, quite honestly! It’s true. It’s really true. Another reason we know is because the more we know about them, the more we can help them.
There’s a lot of cross-pollination. A lot of our tenants do work with other tenants. The metal spinner here at 1155 Manhattan Ave. makes all the lamp bases for our lamp manufacturer at 810 Humboldt St. You bring together all these creative people and they find a way to work together somehow. (more…)
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Scott Ballum is another entrepreneur getting his start in Green Spaces – a shared office space for socially-responsible startups. His company is named Sheepless Co. Why? In Scott’s words:
“I stopped working to promote companies I didn’t know anything about. I stopped blindly spending my money on what others thought I should like. It’s an exciting new life, away from the herd.” Needless to say, we agree.
Scott Ballum of Sheepless Co.
We’ve found, with a lot of the people that we interview, that the companies they start fulfill many of their needs beyond the financial. Social needs, creative needs… Your job should fulfill all of those other needs. It’s your life’s work – it’s what you’re doing every day.
But most people don’t enjoy what they do every day. It’s surprising to me! Even when I was working for someone else, it was still at a design company. And a graphic design practice is still going to be more enjoyable than so many other jobs that are out there. I was still using this artistic skill that I wanted to use.
Since I’ve been working here at Green Spaces, and on a couple of other projects that I’ve done, I’ve met a lot of people who basically are finding ways to support themselves – but it’s around some issue, or some mission, that they feel really passionate about. Not just because, “I want to make money.” I find that really inspiring. I think a lot of people wish that they could do that, but they don’t think it’s possible. (more…)
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Crop To Cup is a startup fair-trade coffee-importing company. (Their office is in Green Spaces, who we interviewed last week.) Ever wonder who farmed the beans in your coffee? With Crop To Cup you can know – their website features profiles and videos of each of their growers. They take fair trade to a whole new level.
On the Crop To Cup site, you can learn about the farmers who grew your coffee.
What is the goal of Crop To Cup?
Our goal is to develop a model where the farmer is connected to the coffee drinker. We want to do that both socially and financially. Socially, we introduce them on these cards, and you can go on our website and check out their videos, meet their families, explore the communities. You can email the farmers, if you want. It goes through a lot of intermediaries, to get an email to a mountain where they probably don’t even have cell phone reception, but it’s possible! (more…)
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David Reid and James Klein create incredible ceramics in their studio in Long Island City. KleinReid is a true success story. After art school, the pair naively came to New York and set up a low-budget ceramics studio. They sold their first line to Bergdorf Goodman. (!!!) Now they have several lines and sell to hundreds of stores – read on to find out how they do it.
David and James with Eva Zeisel
Can you walk us through your process?
The process, when it works at its best, is almost subconscious. We talk a lot with Eva (Zeisel) about beauty and I once asked her how she makes something “beautiful.” And she said, “I stay out of the way.”
We start with a general idea, but stay open to lots of wandering. For the “8.5” collection, a beginning thought was 50’s Italian with a little Danish Modern thrown in. But ideas seep in from maybe ten other things we love, and then there probably ten more things we didn’t even realize are influencing us. It all gets boiled down and refined, and we stand back enough to let the good things rise. (more…)
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One of the hardest things, when you start working for yourself, is defining a workspace. Do you set up an office, or is that too expensive? Do you work out of your house? Will that drive you crazy? What do you do about client meetings? Jennie saw this problem and created a solution.
Green Spaces is a communal workspace where, for as little as $250 a month, you can get access to a space to work in and be in the company of about 30 other like-minded entrepreneurs. Sure beats working alone in your bedroom!
Can you describe what Green Spaces is all about?
We’re really trying to help green companies get off the ground without a lot of overhead. When you’re here, you’re in this community. It’s scary starting a company, but we’re all here going through the same thing. It makes it easier.
A desk in the space is $475 a month. Access to the more informal lounge space is $250 a month. It’s got chairs, couches, and you can come in and sit wherever you want, and plug your laptop in. WIth both the desks and the lounge, you get 24/7 access, interns, a conference room to hold meetings, and can throw events here. Plus have lunch together Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We call it our Socialist Lunch Program! (more…)
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You may notice that the site looks different.
I could lie and say we had a redesign planned. But one of our favorite topics here at the Design Glut blog is the convoluted path that leads to greatness. So here’s the real story: I had a minor heart attack this weekend when I upgraded our site to a new version of Wordpress without thinking about the fact that upgrading would rewrite the old files.
As I clicked the upgrade link, I looked at their warning to backup the files before upgrading, and thought, “Why would I do that?”
So I accidentally deleted all of our site’s formatting. All of the content is still here, thank god. I figured I had two options – slog through hours of code recreating the look of the old site, or slog through a few more hours of code and make a new, better site that I could get really excited about designing.
Mending things is one of my least favorite activities, so I went for the second option. The goal is to build it back better – even easier to read and navigate than it was before. The new design is a heavily modified version of Allan Cole’s Neutica.
I know there are still issues that need to be fixed, so please bear with us. If you notice anything that looks weird, or that you just plain don’t like, or that you miss from the old version, please leave it in the comments. (For bugs please let me know what browser you’re using – it’s really only been optimized for Firefox so far.) All feedback will be much appreciated.
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Piet’s conceptual sensibility leads to objects that are hard to forget, such as the Grenade Oil Lamp. Based in Long Island City (where all the studios we’ve seen have superior views, sigh!) he took some time out to discuss his inspiration and process with us.
Grenade Oil Lamp by Piet Houtenbos
Your grenade oil lamp really put you on the map as a designer to watch. How did you come up with the design?
I designed them in 1997, in college, during my freshman year at RISD. The idea was to take something that exists and turn it into something else. I found these grenades in an army surpulus store, held one, and thought it was incredible. I never thought I would hold a grenade. It’s such a powerful object and it was such a weird experience to hold it.
After a few ideas I realized I should put a wick in it and make it an oil lamp.
When did you start selling them?
After I graduated, Dave from The Future Perfect emailed me out of the blue. I’d just posted some of my college work on Coroflot. He said, “I’ve seen your pieces, I’m opening a store, and I’d love to sell your work.” I told him that I had these grenade lamps that I could easily make. It was at the height of the Iraq war, so the timing was perfect. (more…)
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Over the course of this interview, Matthew Fairbank coined the terms “academically roofied” and “wood nerds,” making him my new linguistic hero. On top of having a brilliant way with words, he also has a brilliant way with bandsaws, and wood, and metal, and lacquer.
One of the reasons we started our blog was because it was so hard for us to transition from art school into trying to run a business. You went to art school – you know!
Going from college to the real world was awful. Awful. College was not even an approximation of the real world. It was not even 1% similar. And I’m not saying that my degree was a wasted effort, but nothing I did really prepared me.
We always say that graduating art school feels like landing face-down on the cement.
It’s like you were just academically roofied! You’re waking up from like a bad night out, and you’re thinking, what the hell just happened to me?
That might be the best analogy EVER. What led you to furniture design?
Looking back, it all makes sense. My mom was an antique store owner. I grew up around that – the decorative arts, in a really broad sense. And I was always building things, like tree forts. While the other kids had a one-story tree fort – I had to build a five-story tree fort. I had to outdo every other kid on the block. (more…)
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I ended up at a party at VOOS the other night, on N 3rd St. in Williamsburg, and felt like I’d just walked into some strange alternate reality. This huge space that I’d never seen before was filled with designs by many, many of the people we’ve interviewed. Takeshi Miyakawa’s Fractal 23 cabinet was there. So were Sonic Design’s clocks! And pieces by Eskayel, and Brave Space, and Uhuru, and DESU… How cool!
We may have been late to the party, but we’re making up for it by bringing you an interview with the founders, Serap Demirag and Deger Cengiz, about how they started and their vision for the space.
You’ve got a great group of designers in here. How did you go about finding the people you wanted to work with?
We researched and came up with 35 different designers. Then we called them one by and one, and visited their studios. I’ll be honest with you, when I first came up with the idea, I though the designers would have huge egos and rock star personalities – but every time we left a studio, we’d be overwhelmed by how nice they were. (more…)
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