How you got involved with designing pop-up shops?

Well, let’s see. My partners, Jesse Warren and Josh warren, are cousins. I grew up with Josh. Last summer he called me saying, “My cousin’s opening up a store in Southampton, he needs help with the build-out and designing the interior.” It was very last-minute. I went out there over a long weekend and threw it together. We put in racks and hung a huge beam in the middle of the store to drop lights down from. We lucked out finding furniture – a couple stores in Williamsburg were going out of business, so we got lighting, racks, and mirrors from them.

The biggest thing I did was the dressing room. It looked like a Saharan tent made out of canvas drop cloth and 2×4s – which ended up being a total fire hazard. The first weekend that I built it, the fire marshall came in and said, “Not a chance, you guys have to change this.” It was a big learning experience. I ended up being able to just change the structure a little bit and keep the aesthetic.

T.B.D. pop-up boutique in the Hamptons

From there, how did you end up in Aspen?

My involvement in the first store was just on the front end – designing and building out the space, and I did it for free. I figured I’d put it in my portfolio and that would be it. But it ended up being a hugely successful season for Jesse, and when it came time to do another store, they brought me on as a partner. Originally I wasn’t planning on moving out here. Then 2 weeks before the trip I thought, you know what, my job is flexible, I can sublet my apartment, and I’m going to Aspen for the season!

How long have you been out there now?

I came out December 9th – we opened December 18th.

Whoa, that’s really fast.

Yeah, the build-out was intense. The craziest thing is that the first two weeks of our business were the busiest weeks of the season. We had to figure everything out so fast. We didn’t get our credit card machine until the day we opened.

How was it different planning a design and build out that was going to be in Colorado?

Here’s where it gets interesting. I had maybe a month’s notice that we were going to try to do this store. A week before we were supposed to leave New York, we still didn’t know if it was definite because we hadn’t signed the lease yet. My partners Josh and Jesse came out here, checked out the spaces, and locked in an incredible storefront right in the heart of Aspen. It’s across the street from Prada. It’s next to Dior and Gucci. The Ralph Lauren store on the corner is the company’s second-most profitable store location.

So you’re in good company.

We’re the small fish in a big pond. But we decided that if we were going to do this, we had to just go balls out and get the best spot possible.

Most businesses do pop-up shops as a marketing thing. Whereas our model is, wait until the last minute and get a lease in the best spot possible for the cheapest amount. That’s why everything had to be so last-minute – it’s all about negotiating a lease, in order for us to be profitable.

That makes a lot of sense, especially right now. There’s probably a lot of storefronts sitting empty since the economy’s so bad.

Exactly. There’s quite a few in Aspen and it’s a shame. But because of all this, I didn’t have the green light on this project until a week before we left New York. I rented a U-Haul in Bed-Sty and spent 2 or 3 days going around Brooklyn picking up things for the store. I cleaned out my studio in DUMBO, pulled a bunch of stuff from my apartment, and went to Build It Green in Astoria and bought some stuff there.

Before and after shots of the store space

Could you give me an idea of what kind of a budget you had for the store design?

I had pretty much no budget, because we had to pay for our entire lease upfront. We were running really low on capital in the beginning. The only place that we actually spent money was at Build It Green, where we bought the flooring, a couple chairs, some odds’n'ends. Then we drove the U-Haul to New Jersey, where our partner Mikey had just come up from Florida with his dual-H pickup truck and 30-ft horse trailer, which we loaded all of the stuff into.

That sounds like the world’s worst thing to drive across country in.

Oh my god, it was a nightmare. We had vehicle problems the entire way across country. Flat tires left and right. We didn’t even make it through Pennsylvania before we had to stop and get a fuel filter and all these things for his truck. Then we got stuck in Kansas because we didn’t have snow tires. We finally got here, and we arrived at like 3 in the morning, and it was -5 degrees out, and we had to unload this entire trailer into the store.

For the next week, we lived and slept in the store, trying to build it out. The first thing we had to do was lay the floor – there was this terrible carpet when we got here. There was horrible paneling on the walls which we ripped off. We had 6 guys out here at the time, and I had to keep everyone busy and make sure they were doing good work. The build-out went as smoothly as something like that could go. But in all honesty, the store is just now looking the way that I wanted it to.

There’s so many things to do here, and in the beginning it was just us, the owners, running it. Buying, selling retail, working the floor, crazy hours, all night long. We worked our asses off for a month and a half before we were able to take a breath. Now we have two full-time employees, which lightens the load considerably.

Now that you’ve gone through that whole process, what’s been the hardest thing to learn about running a successful store?

Honestly, there’s not enough time in the day to do everything that needs to get done. It’s just prioritizing. For me, the hardest thing was making sacrifices. Visually, things weren’t up to my standard of what I’d like them to look like, but there were other things that needed to be done for the business first.

This store has been the biggest learning experience for me. I was never really interested in designing stores or spaces before, and now I feel like I can make a living out of this. I feel like I just got a mini-MBA. I now know how to run a business, which is really cool. But I’m lucky, because Josh and Jesse both have finance backgrounds and business degrees. I could never do it without them.

Now that you’ve sort of gone through this crash-course in the business, do you think you’ll approach your own work differently?

That’s a great question – I’ve been thinking about that so much. I’ve always been so into furniture, and products, and jewelry, but now I fell into other this thing which could be a great opportunity for me to continue doing store design. I’m not sure where I’m going to be 2 months from now. I think we’re going to do a summer store in Southampton again, and we’re talking to someone about possibly opening down in Dallas. We’ll see!

During the holiday season, I received some lovely holiday cards from Parliament of Owls. I was taken aback by how delightful they were designed. The cards were letterpressed on a heavy card stock which made them even more special. Parliament of Owls is a New York based design collective that offer a range of services from branding and packaging design to custom lettering, illustration and poster design. Ariana Dilibero, Meg Paradise and Lauren Sheldon are the elite members of Parliament. I met these lovely ladies on a cold Winter’s evening over some pizza, wine and great conversation.

Design Glut: I wanted to start off with the Mailers you gals sent out for the holidays. What’s the thought behind that?
Lauren Sheldon: We had our business cards ready, but didn’t want to be like those guys passing out flyers on the street, we wanted to reach out to people we admire and introduce ourselves in a way that was more original and hopefully get a few jobs along the way.
Meg Paradise: We wanted to start out with a family of pieces, where we could each do our own thing and have it live under the same umbrella.
Ariana Dilibero: And honestly, we’re total suckers for letterpress.

What is Parliament of Owls?
AD: Parliament is… our powers combined. We each have a very different style, but the same approach to design. We all love making things.
LS: Yeah. I think it’s about good design for good people. Hopefully, that same feeling comes through in the work.
MP: I love working with these guys and it made sense to start doing that on a regular basis.

What do you think makes you (Parliament of Owls) special? How are you different?
AD: Honestly, we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel in terms of starting a business. We’re just trying to do what we love.
MP: We all have a serious love of pork products, particularly dumplings.
AD: Yeah. That was part of the joke with the holiday cards. Meg was a vegetarian until she moved to New York and we introduced her to Italian sandwiches.

What is your design background?
MP: I started out at Modern Dog in Seattle. Their work is really inspiring and in a weird way kinda provocative. They’re also into old-school tools and crafting things by hand. So that experience played a huge role in shaping how I work. Then I moved to NYC and landed at Mucca Design where I learned a whole different kind of craft, the very beautiful and detailed kind.
AD: I graduated from SVA and then spent some time at Martha Stewart as an intern. I was fascinated by all the facets of the Martha Stewart empire and how design was the focus through and through, it was a real eye opener. Then, Mucca Design took me in as a junior designer. There, I learned the ways of the branding world under the art direction of great designers.
LS: I studied design in school and had an internship turned full-time position at Mucca Design. I got thrown into branding and book jacket design, which was not something I focused on at all during my education. This was where I learned that drawing type wasn’t a weird thing.

I love the name, what’s the meaning behind the name?
AD: We had been looking for something that would speak to the fact that we’re a group of individuals. It also had something to do with us liking old-timey sounding things and wordplay.
LS: We were talking about absurd names for groups of animals like a Murder of Crows. Turns out a group of owls is called a parliament.
MP: Yeah. There’s a curiosity and cheekiness to the name.
LS: We also liked Fever of Stingrays, but we’re saving that for our indie band in which I play the violin, Ari does vocals and Meg mans the woodblock.

What was the hardest part starting PofO?
AD: I think getting started was the hardest part.
MP: We are still starting PofO to a certain extent.
LS: Parliament had just broken out from being an idea we’d chat about every Friday to something concrete. The holiday cards sort of solidified everything.

Who or what would be your perfect client/ project?
AD: I saw this Saul Bass interview where he spoke about how making things beautiful is a designer’s prerogative. The essence of what we do – regardless of the object. So for me, the ideal projects are the ones that challenge you to find elegance in a place you wouldn’t expect.
MP: Mainly it’s about trust in the relationship with the people we work with. Of course, we have to eat and pay the rent, but if you are into what I’m into and we feed off each other while learning something along the way, that’s my ideal client.
LS: Along the lines of what the other ladies said, an ideal client is one that shares in the idea you are creating. That’s when you’re able to do the best work. And an ideal client is perhaps a restaurant owner/chef who wants to pay us in delicious meals.

So where do you feel the future of graphic design is heading? I ask this because we hear a lot of talk recently about how print is dying.
LS: I’m not sure we’re really qualified to be answering that question but I think we’re just beginning to see the possibilities of what’s going to happen digitally. I think we’re going to see the spread of good graphic and information design into other industries – like healthcare and education.
AD: I think it’s already happening, if you look at the way household products are being rebranded and repackaged. There’s definitely an emphasis on bringing design to everyone.
MP: At the same time there’s a renewed value on craftsmanship and quality in printed work.

Which designer, living or deceased would you love to share a Colada with on a booze cruise?
AD: I don’t know, who would be Colada friendly? I bet Paul Rand would be a lot of fun.
MP: Yea, Paul Rand would be great or the Eames. That would be amazing.
LS: Bradbury Thompson. His work is really fun. Totally Colada worthy.

What things do you wish you knew earlier as a designer?
AD: I wish I knew the aspects of graphic design that actually have nothing to do with design. You get an entirely different kind of education when you start working. My advice would be to embrace the 1-2 years of being the go-to person who gets the grunt work done.
MP: The first 2 years are the most important of your design career. You learn so much in that period of time. You learn all the processes and the way things are done. I wasn’t a big fan of the grunt work, but I’m glad I did it because I learned how to do it well. Soak up as much as you can from the people around you, because everyone has random talents you can learn from. For example, Lauren has exceptional Photoshop skills, because she got to do fun things like make a fire skull.
LS: Yes, trial and error. Learn from your mistakes, because if a client wants a skull made out of glass, they might eventually want one made out of cosmos, water, grass or fire. You will hone your craft.
AD: We got to work at a great studio together and were surrounded by amazing designers and great people that we admire and are still friends with. They have been really supportive of our endeavor which is rewarding.

It’s 10pm, you stroll into a bar. What would you order?
AD: Dirty martini and a meat plate.
MP: Jamison and ginger with lime.
LS: Glass of red.
MP: Is this going to make us sound like alcoholics?
AD: Well, you have to drink a lot in this profession.

Judging from these answers and the fun evening. No doubt Parliament of Owls takes their craft and work seriously while always remembering to have fun along the way. Obviously, there’s a high level of skill to their work, but what strikes me the most is that there’s a sense of ease and whimsy to the work as well.

We look forward to checking in with the members of Parliament and excited to see what great things they will accomplish in the near future.

Even though I didn’t get a booth this time at the Gift Fair, I usually make sure I stop by- just to see what amazing things people are doing. After walking the aisles for 10 minutes, you can feel that things are still a bit slow for 2010. It wasn’t as busy as everyone hoped. On the plus side, people jumped at the chance to talk to someone us. The following are a few booths/things that caught my eye in the Accent on Design section.
Nervous System
I met Nervous System when I exhibited at the ICFF Design Boom Mart last summer. It’s great to see that they have their own booth this time. Their black and white booth and custom fixtures make a definite impact.

NS booth

Nervous System Pendants

Nervous System products and cool fixture.

AIAIAI
I’ve been a huge follower of AIAIAI. Their design aesthetic really appeals to me. I’ve been shopping around for one of these earphones, but I’ve never made the dive. I’m so glad they had a booth and after seeing the products in person, I think I will snatch one up soon.

AIAIAI ear buds

AIAIAI headsets

Headset packaging

The American Design Club (AmDC)
AmDC equipped with a new logo, concentrated on the a new design conscious newsletter they will be releasing. It was nice stopping by and catching up with my buddy and AmDC member, Henry Julier. Also, I love the new piñatas. I want!

AmDC booth ( Liz is a pinata head!)

AmDC, pages from the newsletter.

Loyal Luxe
Produits nouveau genre pour animaux! This is for Kegan. She’s been browsing for one of these online and was ecstatic when she saw them here. I have to admit, these cardboard play houses are surprisingly intricate. And after watching the kitty videos on the website ( where they are playing with the houses), I wished I was a had a cat.

Neo-Utility
I believed Design Glut mentioned Neo-Utility last time around, but I am always impressed by their collection of smart products/ companies they represent. I was impressed with IDEA International’s simple yet functional iPhone/iPod stand and their cubic kitchen timer.
Oh, and I’m still a huge fan of Boskke’s Sky Planters.

IDEA International's cubic timer and iPhone stand

Boskke's Sky Planters

Thorsten Van Elten
Again another great collection of beautifully designed and functional products. I always see a lot of the products in various design shops around the city. By the way, Thorsten is one funny chap!

Property Of….
Property of… is a fellow bag company. I was lucky enough to meet Jasen of Property of… two Gift Fairs ago (It was their first one ). Through him, he introduced me to the two founders and designers a few months later. They are really great guys and it was really generous of them to want to talk to me ( a young bag company just starting out). Since then, Property of… has blown up and are in all the big stores. I walked by their booth and it just keeps getting bigger and better every time. Property of…has great products, no doubt about that, but I want to shift gears a bit and talk about their booth.
The booth is wonderfully design and crafted. So detailed! (Especially the wood/ bag focal wall and the fixtures.)
I found out The Official Manufacturing Co. designed and built the booth for them. They are new and small Portland-based Design company consists of 3 members. They specialize in almost everything. From design and fabrication of furniture/fixtures to branding and identity. I’m dying to interview them. I hope they say yes.

Property Of...focal wall. (photo via Offical MFG.co)

Property of... booth (photo via Offical MFG.co)

Reclaimed wood panels..i think (photo via Official MFG.co)

That’s my 2 cents on the NYIGF this time around. I had a good time visiting the fair with Liz and Kegan. I’m wondering what caught their eye? Although, it might be the same stuff since we did walk around together.

The Breslin Bar and Restaurant

We’re always really interested in when people take the jump from being employed to being self-employed. When did that happen for you two?

Robin: Neither of us had a conventional job for years as we were working freelance in film. We met working as production designers.

Which is project to project.

Right. It is essentially being self employed so the leap to our own company was a pretty natural transition. And we have always been more interested in finding creative challenges than in any traditional notion of job security.

How did you get into the film world?

I was painting and working in an art gallery after college and Stephen was working in an architecture firm. We didn’t know each other then but we both entered the film business through somewhat different avenues. Because of my background, I was hired by Martin Scorsese as visual consultant on The Age of Innocence and Stephen was hired because of his drawing skills to work as a draftsman. We met a few years and few films later.

Film is a wonderful venue for people interested in design. There are many different kinds of opportunities, and you get to do a lot of different kinds of projects. Film is also very fast paced. I think people would be surprised by how incredibly rigorous it is. The schedules, the budgets, the demands are really extraordinary. Not to mention the fact that the camera is a very discerning eye from which flaws and inconsistencies cannot hide. In film, we were able to experiment with a variety of spaces that have really helped hone our skills.

211 Elizabeth Street: Interior

How did that lead you to architecture?

Stephen was an architect before working in the film industry and his passion for architecture has been forever present, even in our film work. I always had a devotion and deep interest in space and design that finally found its outlet.

We worked in film for several years and did a lot of amazing projects. But we always wanted to get back to a place of permanence in our work, back to building things that were not temporary and made purely to be seen on screen. In film, you build these amazing things and then they are torn down. As designers, Stephen and I are very devoted to a deep sense of materiality, craft and detailing. Our work is never thin in the way people think of sets. And it was hard, after time, to watch the designs being dismantled after filming.

Right. And for sets you’re usually faking the materiality, right?

On many sets that’s the case, but we never worked that way. This is an interesting paradox. We had a reputation for designing sets that were solid and real. Some of the actors and directors who saw and worked on the sets were taken by how well they were built and how convincing they were. At one point we were working with Ben Stiller who said, “Work on my house, because this set looks better than my house.” That is, in a nutshell, how we made the transition to our own architecture and design firm.

Stephen and I have always been interested in making things, large and small. We’re married, and we came together, in part, because that’s a big tenet in both of our lives. We wanted to create our own world – including our own business which was about building and making and creating all sorts of environments and objects.

211 Elizabeth Street: Interior

What were your first projects as Roman & Williams?

Initially, we designed furniture and small residences and then were hired to do a large residential project for Ben Stiller. Ben just believed in our ability from having seen our work in, as we had done several films together and he knew we were building a design firm. This project led to some other high profile residential work.

Our goal was always to come back to New York permanently, which we did in 2003. We opened this office in 2003 and pretty quickly met Andre Balazs and starting working on the New York Standard. Ace Hotels followed, as well as our client for 211 Elizabeth Street – our first ground up building – so we had the opportunity to develop our commercial practice while we continued to design residences.

How do the different types of design you’ve done inform each other?

We’ve found that designing hotels takes us back, almost full-circle, to our film work. There is something very theatrical about designing hotels. We’re creating spaces where people will eat and party and it is fascinating to see how people interact with the space.

There is a narrative element to all of our work that also takes us back to film. We really spend a lot of time thinking about who will use the space and how, which is exactly what we did with the characters in our films.

It’s great to be in a space we designed and see where people gravitate and want to sit. Our hotel work is definitely affected by our residential work. We make hotels that are comfortable, and sort of groovy – never generic. I never was that interested in staying in a Hilton. It just never felt personal enough.

And, though I mentioned the theatrical element, it is important to distinguish between design that is very theatrical and a theatrical way of thinking about design. We don’t respond to spaces that feel too theatrical or hyper-designed.

Ace Hotel: Room

Yes, sometimes that feels very forced, like this is “Design” with a capitol D.

Exactly! It’s important to define that. You have a design blog, we have a design firm, but Stephen and I often say we don’t like design. Not everyone understands what we mean when we say that. We don’t like when design is forced, or it’s fussy, or it feels precious. A residential building or an interior is not necessarily meant to be like a piece of avant-garde art. It’s in a neighborhood and people are living in it. There are ways to show your interest in design through materials, details and careful craftsmanship, versus any overarching concept that eclipses its humanity.

How would you describe your approach to architecture?

In some ways, inventing some brand new shape that no one has seen before is not that difficult. We have very active imaginations too. But we’re much more interested in creating something that is original but that somehow has cues that people recognize, that make them feel comfortable. Our ideas always begin with an amalgam of things that we understand from the world around us. We all have references and memories. If you refer to those things that occupy your memory, and then develop and advance them, we think it makes for a very interesting experience.

211 Elizabeth Street is a good example. It has a certain modesty in terms of its design approach. It is a hand-laid brick building with traditional details and when we started people said “It’s an historical building.” But now that it is finished, people understand that we didn’t copy anything, that we combined a lot of different ideas to create something new, but something that looks like it might have been there forever. Now the feedback we get is that it is a very human building that feels at ease in the neighborhood and that makes people feel comfortable. We don’t think anyone really wants to live in a sculpture.

211 Elizabeth Street: Rendering

Speaking of history and tradition – Stephen does all of your presentation renderings by hand, right?

Yes, Stephen draws, and beautifully. The entire set of construction drawings for Kate Hudson’s house was hand drafted. That is really unheard of today. It’s this beautiful relic that I keep in the drawer.

Stephen calls himself Rip Van Winkle because so few people still hand draw. Our big document sets have to be in CAD. There’s just no other way to sustain the business – there aren’t enough people who draw, and you can’t move fast enough. But for presentations it’s incredible to be able to use hand drawings. Stephen also designs as he draws and draws as he designs. The process is one for him so he is working out design problems as he’s drawing. We have always worked together using drawing as our starting point.

It has an emotional aspect to it.

Precisely. It is so engaging, even mesmerizing. I mean that in a very practical way. But, that wasn’t the goal – he just loves to draw and that is how we express ideas. And that is how we’ve always run our business. We started as a little mom and pop shop, the two of us in the living room. Seeing that reaction was one of the things that told us, “We might make this work.” And then we rented this office on Lafayette Street, with $4 left in the bank.

Fast forward to today, and you’re being called one of the year’s hottest design teams. How does that feel?

Of course, it is great to be recognized, to have the work appreciated. But there is an aspect of what we do that is becoming trendy now, and I’m a bit unhappy about that. There’s a big Victoriana thing happening right now and we don’t want to get lumped in with anything that feels theme driven. We don’t believe our way of thinking about design is trendy. It’s about what we feel is important to put on the planet, and what we want to do with our lives. We’re interested in developing a lasting structure within which our ideas can evolve. So we’re happy about the press and we’re happy about the interest, but I’d like it to continue past the moment.

211 Elizabeth Street

Cindy Gallop and software engineer Wendell Davis. [image via Wired]

What exactly is If We Ran The World?

IfWeRanTheWorld.com is a web platform for anyone who’s ever gone, “I want to do something to change the world, but I don’t know what or how.” Now if you feel that and you go to any one of a raft of websites that are all trying to tackle this issue – socialactions.org, changents.com, changetheworld.com, etc, what happens is that you are instantly met and assailed by causes. You are met by AIDS, poverty, world health, Iran… And you are paralyzed into inactivity through too much choice.

When, on the other hand, you are asked to answer the question, “If you ran the world, what would you do?” it forces you to stop and think about what you believe in, what you value, what YOU care enough about to want to do something about, and it literally draws the answer out of you. It begins the process of owning that answer, as the first step of a platform that’s designed to make it impossible for you not to act.

How else does If We Ran The World compel people to take action?

I want to find a way to integrate doing something into everyone’s day-to-day lives online as much as doing nothing currently is.

That is effectively what large amounts of time spent on Myspace and Facebook and Youtube is – doing nothing. People spend hours of time playing Farmville, Mafia Wars, and poking each other. I imagine all that time and energy and effort spent on doing something that will have an impact on the real world – as opposed to doing nothing that has an impact in the virtual world.

That means our platform has to be as entertaining, as engaging, as fun – it has to work like a game. We designed it based on game theory and gaming principals. We call it literally “competitive collaboration.” We are leveraging the human competitive sprit to act. We are using all the emotional dynamics that make for the utterly addictive experience those site provide for hours and days on end. There’s a lot of psychology baked into this.

All online social networks currently are underpinned by one fundamental human truth: sex and dating. I’d like to make “taking action” the new social and sexual attractiveness value. I would like to make “Do you act?” the new measure of how attractive someone is. It’s not too much of a stretch, as we already admire people who get shit done.

How will this play out on your site?

On existing social networks, when you post your profile, you can post a photo of you at your most attractive, and a carefully-crafted mosaic of the books and music you like that gives a certain impression. You can lie. On If We Ran the World, you can’t lie. Apart from some basic information you enter upfront, your profile is entirely dynamically-generated by your actions. The more you act, the more it builds. You are what you do. You are the sums of your actions.

I call this “action branding.” Personal action branding for individuals, and corporate action branding for business. Company profiles work the same way – entirely generated by actions, not PR spin or greenwashing. I believe the advertising of the future isn’t about saying but doing. Action branding is communication through demonstration. It’s walking the walk.

Can you describe how it will work?

This whole platform is built around the concept of the micro-action. The micro-action is the atomic unit of If We Ran the World, in the same way the tweet is the atomic unit of Twitter. It’s an incredibly small, simple, easy to do action. We have micro-financing with Kiva, we have micro-blogging with Twitter. Take it to the next level: micro-actions. If it’s so easy to do, why wouldn’t you?

At its simplest, If We Ran the World allows you to sent up an action platform to achieve any goal that is your answer to the question. You break that goal down into micro-actions, and issue them as invitations to act to your friends, family, neighbors, employees, brands, businesses, celebrities. And every micro-action, once completed, reports back to your personal or business profile.

If We Ran the World is based on the fact that as you compete each micro-action, you feel good about yourself. You build your self-esteem. The more you do, the more you feel you can do. The feeling that you can take one small step to take control of your circumstances, do something about life, your community – that’s the dynamic that gets people out of poverty, despair, abuse.

What gave you the idea for all this?

If We Ran The World is combination of all my personal experience and learning and philosophy. It’s based very simply on basic human psychology and ordinary common sense – but if we all operated according to ordinary common sense, the billion dollar self-help industry wouldn’t exist.

It’s an idea that really came out of two places. It came out of the kind of person that I am, and it came out of the industry that I work in. When I say it came out of the kind of person that I am – I’m somebody who is naturally very action-oriented. I’m all about making things happen. I totally believe in “Be the change you want to see.” And I have a very low tolerance level for people who whine and whine about stuff and never do anything to change it. Too low a tolerance level, on occasion.

All of that got me thinking. You could argue that the single biggest pool of untapped natural resource in this world, is human good intentions that never translate into action. I found myself thinking, “If you could find a way to take all of those good intentions that all of us have on a daily basis and somehow find a way to turn them, at the moment of intention, into action, you would then unleash a source of energy and power that really could do extraordinary things in the world.”

Absolutely.

So that was one half of my thinking. The second half of my thinking was born out of 24 years working in brand-building, marketing and advertising. I happen to know that there is another equally large, equally powerful, equally untapped pool of resources – which is corporate good intentions. Companies know that in order to earn the right to do business in the world today, they have to be “Corporately Socially Responsible.”

They often have very large budgets dedicated to CSR, and employ whole teams of people whose sole purpose in life is to find effective ways to spend those budgets, but who nevertheless all-too-often waste them. Waste them doing things like taking out full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal saying, “Look how green we are,” that maybe nobody reads. And missing the opportunity to align their CSR agenda with their day-to-day business objectives and integrate the two in a way that proves you can do good and make money simultaneously.

So I decided I wanted to find a way to bring those two things together – human good intentions and corporate good intentions. And find a way to activate them collectively into shared action against shared objectives that will produce shared and mutually beneficial end results. An idea is only as good as its execution. Ideas are ten a penny. Everyone’s having ideas. It’s all about execution. Bloody make it happen.

What gave you the idea for Make Love Not Porn?

What I’ll do guys, is I will give you my 3-minute TED talk. I’ve realized that it’s really needed to contextualize where Make Love Not Porn came from and what it’s all about.

I must admit, I submitted the idea as an application for one of the audience 3-minute slots at TED almost as a joke. I had thought, “I’d love to see Chris Anderson’s face when he sees this.” And to give him his due, he got straight back to me and said, “I think this is a very serious issue, and I’d love to do it. We just need to kind of talk about it first.” He was extremely supportive, and gave me a fantastic slot on the opening day of TED, which is traditionally the best attended.

Bill Gates spoke at the end of the first session, and then I came on in the second session right behind Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. And I must admit I was very nervous before I gave this talk. I had no idea how the concept would be received. Chris and the TED team knew what I was going to talk about, but nobody else did. When Chris introduced me, he just said, “This is Cindy Gallop, she’s been on the TED stage before, please welcome her back.”

So I walked out on stage and I said,

“Those of you who saw my previous lecture at TED University know that I date younger men. Predominantly men in their twenties. When I date younger men, I have sex with younger men. And when I have sex with younger men, I encounter, very directly and personally, the real ramifications of the creeping ubiquity of hardcore pornography in our culture.

Now, as a confident, mature, experienced older woman, when I encounter this personally, I have no problem accepting that a certain amount of re-education, rehabilitation, and reorientation needs to take place. I have no problem responding, as I’ve had to on a number of occasions, “Actually, no thanks, I’d much rather if you did not, in fact, come on my face.” My concern is not for me, it’s for the young guy who believes, because hardcore porn has taught him, that all women love having men come on their faces. And it’s particularly for the young girl, whose boyfriend wants to come on her face. She does not want him to come on her face, but hardcore porn has taught her that all men love coming on women’s faces, therefore she must let him come on her face and she must pretend to like it.”

As one twitterer said, it was probably the first time the words “come on my face” have ever been used six times consecutively on the TED stage! And I went on,

“So, I’m launching at TED today a website called makelovenotporn.com. And what this site does is it take the myths of hardcore porn and it balance them with the reality. Two very important things about this site – the first is that Make Love Not Porn is in no way whatsoever about judgment. This is not about ‘this is good’ or ‘this is bad.’ Because sex is the area of human experience that embraces the widest possible range of activities. Secondly, Make Love Not Porn is not anti-porn. I’m a big fan of hardcore porn; I watch it regularly myself. But hardcore porn as an industry is predominantly funded by men, managed by men, driven by men, directed by men and targeted at men. And so hardcore porn tends to have one worldview. Hardcore porn goes, ‘This is the way sex is.’ And I just want to say, ‘Not necessarily.’

I’m asking the audience to be aware this is an issue, because I would never have thought about it had I not encountered it myself. Check out the website. Forward it to anyone you think might be interested. All I want to do with this is help stimulate and inspire an open, healthy discussion about sex, in the interest of encouraging more open, healthy, and thoroughly enjoyable sexual relationships. Thank you very much.”

Brought the house down. Totally.

That’s awesome. So you launched the site, and then what?

Make Love Not Porn was massively well received. For the next 3 days of TED, everybody came up to me and said, “That was fantastic.” A lot of people said that they particularly liked it because, while TED talks a lot about big ideas and art and science, it touches much less often on human emotions and behavior. They found it very interesting in that context. And it absolutely exploded all over the blogosphere. What really pleased me was that, if you look at the comments, it did what I wanted it to do – it got to young people in the mainstream.

The site is very basic at the moment. You can only do 3 things. You can leave comments, you can send in your own porn world/real world ideas (and I have a shitload, by the way) and you can write to info [at] makelovenotporn.com. Now, I’m not promoting it in any way at the moment. Nevertheless, It’s getting 900 hits a day. Obviously it has the word “porn” in the title, that helps. But any way that they come at it, that’s fine by me.

One of the most recent emails that I got was from a young guy in Morocco. He wrote to say, “Thank you so much. Young people in Morocco are just like young people in the US. They are heavily influenced by porn. Now, at last, I can tell my friends how to make love to a girl, thanks to your wonderful website.” I love getting emails like that.

Do you have intentions to grow the site?

I’m looking for funding, at the moment, because I want to build makelovenotporn.com out into a broader interactive community and discussion platform. The need is absolutely there. I’ve been looking in two areas for funding. On the one hand, I’ve been looking for commercial brand partners. Whenever I say that, people’s minds always go to the obvious. They go, “Oh, condoms. KY jelly.” I’m actually interested in the not-obvious. I’m interested in, for example, youth-targeted brands, who want guaranteed youth attention, interest, and an engagement platform. It obviously requires a very brave brand. BBH, my ex-agency, loved this, and thought it would be great for Axe. They talked to Unilever, who felt it was a bit of a bridge too far. Which I understand. The corporate world is a little nervous about this.

The other place that I would love to get funding from is the porn industry. This could be the porn industry’s version of corporate social responsibility.

Which would be amazing.

In the same way the big tobacco makers fund anti-smoking campaigns, this could be the porn industry going, “We know what we do is fantasy.” The site would be a way to balance it out with the real-world picture.

I started Make Love Not Porn effectively as a public service announcement. I would like to embed a business model in it. And I see a very interesting business model in the other URL that I own, which is makelovenotporn.tv. I won’t say anything more about that at the moment, but I’m looking for far-sighted and broad-minded investors who are interested in something that has the potential to do something very, very different versus the porn category. That’s all I’ll say about that at this point in time!

Want more? Watch Cindy’s entire TED talk here:

I heart Carbonmade’s graphics.

This past year has been hard on most companies, especially small businesses. How are you guys holding up?

I think part of our success has been tied to the recession. Artists and illustrators are getting killed right now. A lot of our members are super talented and never needed a portfolio. Now that they’re out of work – they do. They also don’t have time to spend creating one, or don’t know the html code to do it. We’re here to help them out.

Who are your main users?

We thought it was going to be web designers and graphic designers, but it’s all sorts of people. We have interior designers, architects, photographers, and sock-puppet makers. If you go to our site, there’s a list of all the categories that have 500 or more portfolios. Photographers and illustrators are our #1 – we have 10,000 of each.

So how did Carbonmade start?

Dave and Jason, my two partners, started the company. They met in 2001, in a chat room, and started doing consulting work. They were some of the first designers for scribd.com, a huge start-up that does online text storing.

They built Carbonmade in 2006. Dave, the designer, wanted a tool to help upload his work, as opposed to manually editing HTML files. He wanted to create a system. Jason did the coding for the backend. It was really just a private system, until a few of his design buddies wanted access to it, and he opened it up. Carbonmade wasn’t built for money; we didn’t even have a payment plan for the first 6 months. It wasn’t until server expenses started to ramp up that we had to find a way to cover it.

SilvioAR’s Carbonmade portfolio – http://sar.carbonmade.com

How did you get involved?

I met Jason and Dave online, wanting to hire them to do some design work. We got along really well. They needed someone with business experience to do the day-to-day stuff – marketing, support, copy etc., so I came on board. During 2007 we were mostly doing consulting to pay the bills and Carbonmade was a side project. Mid-2008 it became “ramen profitable.” We could track our growth and see that we were going somewhere.

What gets you excited about working on Carbonmade?

Yesterday we had out biggest sign-up day ever – 466 people! That’s crazy. I love the idea that a bunch of creative people are coming together to use our product, and show off their work – that they think our platform is good for that. It makes me want to come to work every day. Yesterday, I was on the phone with a customer for an hour. He didn’t understand how to create a portfolio, and he would have been pretty lost without us.

That’s customer service!

In 2008, I made it a goal that we were going to be really good about customer service. That we would support our users and make sure people understood that we are listening to them. I answered 6 months of old email. You learn the business by talking to your users.

Do you incorporate your users’ requests for features into the interface?

We’ve been working a new version of Carbonmade for over a year now. Hopefully it will be released in a month. Creating something that looks simple, and seems simple, is the hardest thing to do. It’s also what’s made us popular. If we screw that up it’s going to be bad! We have 160,000 users. Coming out with a new version and introducing them to a new experience is very nerve wracking. We want to create new features and make the interface more flexible, but still keep that simplicity. It’s the hardest thing in the world.

Super easy-to-use interface for updating your Carbonmade site.

Do you have any other advice for those looking to start their own company?

If you see a need, and have a problem, chances are other people have that problem. It has to be something you enjoy doing – not for the money. You can’t put yourself into a project fully if you don’t care about it. I can see myself working on Carbonmade for 5 or 10 years, or even scary as this sounds, for the rest of my life. As long as you really like it, you will eventually make a profit, and be able to continue to work on it.

“We create our designs through an iterative and experimental process. After brainstorming an initial concept, we write a pattern-generating algorithm in the computer through which we further explore our ideas and ultimately create the finished product. You can use the applets we share here to create your own one of a kind jewelry designs or just to play and learn.”

Pinch Bracelet

One thing that really sets Nervous system apart is that your products aren’t just about the final pieces, but the programs you build to generate the designs.

Jessica: That’s what’s always interested us. It’s how we would want to design anything. People at Harvard heard I went to MIT and said, “Oh, do you know how to program computers?” I got pushed into that box, and decided to explore it. I had previously done a lot of programming, and worked as a research assistant at the Media Lab. Jessie’s background is in computer science. We have a shared interest in computational design.

I just opened up one of your applets and started playing with it – it’s really cool. How many of your customers are getting custom jewelry? Is that a big selling point?

Jessica: Conceptually, it is. We have a lot of people who use the applets. But not that many people actually purchase the things they designed themselves. We’re not really pushing that aspect. It’s there as an educational tool which allows people to understand our process.

How did you two meet?

Jessica: We lived in the same dorm. MIT has this crazy dorm system where houses get to choose the people who move into them, so they maintain a certain culture.

Jesse: And we started Nervous System when we were both still in school. At that point, Jessica was studying architecture at Harvard’s GSD and I was at MIT. The jewelry sort of emerged from work we were doing for Jessica’s architecture degree, which used a script to generate a spring mesh.

Filament Necklace

So how did an architecture project transition into designing jewelry?

Jessica: I was just working on a project for school, and making a lot of laser cut models, and eventually 3D-printed models. Some of the pieces were lying around on my desk. The weirdly-cut paper started to curl up. People kept coming up to my desk and asking, “Is that a bracelet?” I started thinking that I could try making bracelets.

Jesse: We threw them up on Etsy, on a whim.

Jessica: Once I did it, there was a tremendous response, so I decided to keep doing it on the side and make a little extra money while I was in school.

What were they made out of?

Jessica: They were polystyrene, which was totally horrible, because they didn’t have longevity. They were very fragile. But we sold them only $15 or something. I was making them at school – I wasn’t considering outsourcing, so they weren’t as durable as I wanted them to be.

You use a lot of unconventional materials for jewelry, like rubber and rapid prototypes.

Jesse: We approach materials practically. We wanted to make stuff out of a strong metal that would be durable and affordable, so we naturally chose stainless steel. We wanted to use a flexible material that wasn’t likely to break, so rubber was the natural choice. We take things as they come. We don’t have a background in jewelry design, so we don’t have a predetermined conception about how things should be made.

Radiolara Necklace

When did Nervous System become more than a side project?

Jessica: I was selling these products, and doing studio and classes, and it got to be too much. I decided to stop doing the jewelry after a month or two. But since we thought it was fun, during the next summer we looked into doing it more seriously and maybe making it a business. We spent time looking for manufacturers, coming up with new designs, and working on the website. By November of 2007, we decided to produce a lot of pieces and try to market them. Every time we had time off, we’d work on this project again.

Jesse: It happened slowly. Our business basically launched that November. We launched the website, did our first show, and met the west coast editor of Metropolis, which led to a great article. That was pretty cool and fortuitous. Then, around February, we moved back to the east coast. The company I’d been working for also had an office in NYC, where I started working part time. In May 2008, we did the ICFF with DesignBoom, and did really well. After that, Nervous System became full-time.

Do you mostly sell through jewelry stores, or through your website?

Jessica: We sell a lot on our website, and wholesale to museum stores, boutiques, and clothing stores that sell jewelry. The larger orders are coming from museum stores. Our wholesale business is getting a lot larger, right now.

Where do you hope for your company to head?

Jessica: We’re interested in larger-scale projects. We don’t innately have any interest in jewelry, in an intellectual way. We want to work on furniture, housewares, and architectural-scale projects. A small building of some sort. Hopefully we’ll start on that in the next year. We’re hoping to move from Boston to a more rural area where we can have the land to do large-scale projects.

Radiolara Brooch

What advice do you have for creatives going into business for themselves?

Jesse: We’ve just focused on doing things that are interesting, exciting and new. We’ve gotten our stuff out there and then let the blogs and press spread it.

Jessica: There’s never been a better time than now to be out on your own, as a designer or businessperson. It’s never been easier to get your product out there. Through the internet, you can get exposed to everybody at almost no cost. You can send your things out to manufacturers and just get a couple pieces made by rapid prototyping. It’s easy to explore and see what it’s like to have a business, without putting in a huge amount of investment. People should just start doing it. Even if it’s just in their weekends or evenings.

Jesse: I was giving a talk yesterday at MassArt, and one thing the professor mentioned ties into that. In traditional manufacturing, the designer might get thousands of units made because that will bring down the cost. Then you’re stuck with thousands of units that you have to sell. I’ve seen people at shows with ceramics they’ve gotten produced, and at the end of the show they just want to give them away. They’ve already paid for the thousands of them, and they just need to get rid of them. But now there are manufacturing technologies that allow designers to do small runs and not make such an investment. You can just test out the waters – see what works and go with that.