Photo by Michael Valčić

All of your stuff is so happy and clever! I’ve always been really drawn to it. When did you start making Objet d’Art?

I’ve always made art, since I was a child, but after college I liked the idea of these small, functional products that were affordable. I was really inspired by seeing an exhibition of Yoko Ono’s work, where she had all these small, miniature things that you could obtain at a reasonable price. And, I think the first object like this that I made was an artists’ book that I sold at Printed Matter, which used to be in Soho. It was a short story on folded-out rice paper, that went inside a match box. So once I started making these small, precious objects it just sort of kept rolling.

Can you talk about how your work has progressed? When did Optimism come along?

I started the Optimism project when I was in college. I had done a senior thesis, which was our gallery exhibition for the end of the year…

Did you study design?

Design and art and creative writing. You could mix it all up, where I went to school, at Clark University outside Boston. I had written a short poem about an event that happened between my father and I. When I was a little boy, we were outside the Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan. And my father was really a character – came from a very working class background, and worked hard to become a young urban professional, and had a unique sense of humor. So it was just after they passed the recycling law in New York, and you would see these homeless people collecting cans. And my father, empathizing to some extent, walked over to a homeless guy and handed him his soda can and said, “Here you go sir, here’s your 5 cents.” And the homeless man said, “I’m no sir.” My father said, “I don’t have the patience to argue with you,” and walked away.

So, I’d found a quote that said, “An optimist is someone that tells you to cheer up when things are going his way.” I wrote a poem with that line as the intro, and for my senior thesis I designed a line of soda called Optimism. It had the poem listed as the ingredients, and it was displayed as a six-pack. I made these buttons to support the launch of the “product”, as if it was a real brand. I like things that blur the line between consumerism and art. The buttons took off like wildfire. I gave them away, and it was this huge thing on campus. The buttons came to exist entirely separately from the original project.

They took on a life of their own.

Exactly. I made 500, and then I stopped. I moved to New York, and then I started making them again after 9/11. I’d always been interested in public art and things that appear in unexpected places. Some wise people in the art world once asked me what crazy ideas I had, and I said, “Well, I have the idea that this logo I designed could go on the back of a Metrocard.” A woman said, “I love that idea, hold on!” And she opened her purse and went through her rolodex, and gave me the number of the head of the Arts for Transit program at the MTA.

That’s crazy! And so exciting.

Yeah, so I called her, and to my shock, this person took the call! She said, “Oh, that sounds interesting, send me something.” I put together a press kit, sent it, and it came to life. There was some red tape, but we got here.

When I first approached them I thought, “Wow, if they do 100,000 Metrocards that would be so cool.” Well, they’ve done 20 million cards.

Have you gotten feedback from people?

Sure, and it’s been incredibly gratifying. I get random emails – especially when the cards first came out, it was fairly often. I’ve received, directly, only the most positive support for the project.

Well I’d hope so! Does anyone think, “I hate optimism.”

You never know! I’m sure you guys read blogs where people talk about your work. I accept all those things, especially in the context of the MTA.

Everybody has something negative to say about the MTA.

Exactly. So I get it, and I like the irony and the push-and-pull of of having “optimism” being supported by the MTA. Because they need it more than anyone! And they knew that.

Photo by Carolyn Nardiello

Let’s talk a little bit about other projects you’ve done. I just saw the “Forget” spray on Supermarket, which I hadn’t seen before.

Spray To Forget is a functional, conceptual, aromatherapeutic product, designed to help edit one’s consciousness. It allows the user to purposefully forget undesired memories and replace them with desired memories. I got a wonderful reception to that, and had a lot of fun making it. It’s conceptual, but I researched different essential oils that would calm the nervous system and help people let go of tension. I studied people who believe quartz crystals hold metaphysical properties, and I steeped the water with crystals. So I think it has the potential to work as a true healing device, but it also can be decorative art, or kitschy… However people take it.

Where is your work going now?

After doing 20 million Metrocards, I now wish to do precious, one-of-a-kind items. That’s what I’m working on now. They’ll probably involve type, and they’ll probably be personal, but that’s all I can say!

So you’ve gone through this really interesting journey of starting with very personal work, making it very public, and then going back to the very personal. What advice do you have for others who are just starting their creative journey?

I was very inspired by the artist that just passed on, Louise Bourgeois. She said, “I don’t make my art for other people. I make my art for myself.” In some ways, the Optimism project was art I made for other people.

It was very exhibitionist. Buttons are an advertisement, right?

Totally. But what I learned from the Louise Bourgeois quote is that art can be an incredibly personal, spiritual catharsis. So that’s what I’m going through right now.

That idea seems very much in line with the Spray to Forget.

Yes, and now I’m continuing in that direction. I’ve Sprayed to Forget whatever I needed to forget, and now I’m growing into a new space.

She’s managed to turn her cheeky sense of humor and fabulous fashion sense into a wildly successful business, at the crazy young age of 27. What more could we ask for? Check out more of her work at http://a-morir.com

Let’s start at the beginning – when did you start bedazzling and befabulousing sunglasses?

I will show you the first thing I bedazzled. It’s my Motorola flip phone from when I was sixteen. Which I like to keep around for when people say, “It’s not durable.” This is eleven years old.

Fast forward to a couple years ago – I’d just quit the marketing industry and gone through a life change. I was working at a boutique to kill time before starting grad school at NYU for a Masters in Costuming History. I wanted to either work at the Met or be an authenticity expert for films and TV.

One day I bedazzled a pair of eyewear for myself. I was like, “Oh, I’ve got these stones, I need new glasses, let me just… ” I wore them into the store i was working at, and literally they were like, “Um, why don’t you sell these?” I made four, and they sold out really quick. They were in the New York Post, and were on Mariah Carey. Rihanna and I met, and she bought four pieces, and she kind of helped champion it. When the biggest pop star in the world wears your most unique design… She wore the chain ones out, and it was very shortly thereafter that this blew up. It was really that quick.

In seven months I’d quit grad school, quit working at the store, and I’ve been doing this full time since July ‘09. It was just the thing, at the time, that made sense for me. And so I did it.

How great is it to be able to say, “I started a crazy eyewear company, that’s the thing that made the most sense!”

People that I haven’t seen in a while ask, “What do you do now?” and when I tell them they’re like, “Well of course!” I guess bedazzling is kind of my destiny.

That’s the title of the interview right there.

Yes!

How have you managed to get so much acclaim and your pieces on all these celebrities?

It’s funny, because I come from the marketing world, so you’d think I’d be really good at email blasts and reaching out to people. I do not do any of that. I’ve never sent out an email blast. This is probably the first season that I’ve actually emailed my line sheets to buyers. Last year I think I opened 17 accounts, and it was all because boutiques emailed me saying, “We love your stuff, do you wholesale?” Yes I do!

This all really just came to me, because I was doing something nobody else was doing. I’ve been really fortunate in that sense. And that’s how I always want it to be – I want the work to speak for itself. I think that’s why all the celebrity press happened quickly and has continued to happen, because the work does speak for itself.

What has been the hardest part of the business stuff to learn, once you started doing this full time?

Apparently I’ve got a really good sense for business, or so my accountant tells me. I feel like it’s a lot of common sense. But the legal formalities, like registering with the state, are tricky. Luckily there are books that are written about that.

Other than that, time management. Figuring out a good life balance has probably been the trickiest. For a long time I didn’t go to the gym, I didn’t go out, I didn’t see my friends. I was just here working. Which is part of what you have to do at the beginning. When you start a business, you spend basically every waking moment on it. Even if the business is doing well, and you’re not worried where the next bit of money is going to come from, it’s still the only thing that you do. “Why don’t you come to my party?” Bitch I have shit to do! I have emails to send out! The business completely envelopes your identity.

I always have this thing, this thing that’s much bigger than I am. But I love it – this is the stuff I would be doing in my free time anyway. I wouldn’t do anything else – I would just roll around in glitter all day!

Do you see yourself moving into more costuming? Looking around the studio, you have the helmets, masks, bras… all kinds of stuff.

Yes and no. It’s very difficult when you start off as one person and you control everything. If you look at any major business, there’s way more than one person working there. Even the most incredible “one-person operations” have three personal assistants, and there are teams of people running the show. I want to get there, and once i do I can focus less on actual manual production, I’ll be able to expand into designing more. But I don’t want to overextend myself. I’d rather focus on being the best at custom independent eyewear. I want to be the best eyewear designer that you know of.

Do you do a lot of custom pieces? How much of your work are things people commission?

I’d say it’s like 25% commissioned work, 75% what I already designed. It’s interesting because the pieces that are commissioned sometimes later turn into my new lines. All of the weird show-piecey stuff, like the helmet or the mask, were commissioned. A lot of the Lady Gaga stuff was commissioned. Her team will say, “These are your inspirations. We need these accessories, in this color, using these elements. Can you do this by tomorrow?” And I’ll be like, “Yes I can,” and then I’ll start to cry, but I’ll get it done.

What’s your favorite pair of glasses right now? What are you most excited about?

I’m most excited about the d’arcy [pictured below]. I feel like once a season, so far, I’ve done something that really pushes the envelope. This is the fourth collection I’ve put out. The first season was the very first four styles that I did, which was like the “aha!” moment. The second season was when I did the chains, and I was really happy with that. The next batch was when I did the Barracuda [black glasses]. People are lucky if they get one noteworthy piece in a lifetime. I was recognized as a master in design at a Nike conference, and on the top of every weird end-of-year best accessories list, from InStyle to Rolling Stone. And I was kind of like, “Really?! Awesome!” So the d’arcy is the style I’m most excited about now, where it looks you have a nose-to-ear chain.

All of your designs are a jump past eyewear – it’s eyewear mixed with things you know from other places.

Exactly. That’s my weird subversive humor.

How do you find your design inspiration? What’s your process? Even though I know it’s hard to put into words, because it’s kind of a thing we just do…

Yeah, if you are an authentic creative you just sort of do it. It’s harder for me to cook a meal properly than it is to come up for an idea for eyewear. It’s a whole mix of things – it can be I found a really good frame and want to do something with it because I like the shape, or I found this great material and I want to incorporate it into something, or I think up something I don’t think has ever been done before and challenge myself to do it.

Design duo Andy Pressman and Renda Morton share a love for design, sure, but it was a common obsession with a certain Fleetwood Mac album that launched Rumors — the name of their web, print and interactive design studio — which they founded in 2008 with original partner Holly Gressley. Now, Renda and Andy bounce ideas off of one another in a charming “sparring sibling” style, with all the bickering and building taking place in their Brooklyn studio. Unfortunately, Fleetwood Mac was not blasting as part of the creative process, but there was a Frank Sinatra-esque melody in the air.

Whatever they are listening to, the Rumors studio should keep that Pandora station streamin’, because their genius collaborations have already nabbed them clients like New York Times Magazine and Bidoun Magazine of the Middle East. With new designer Zack Seuberling on board, the Rumors team shows no sign of slowing down. Check out more of their work at http://rumors-studio.com

How did the name “rumors” come about?

Andy: We went through so many names. Part of the trick about having a collaborative studio is you only have so many things you share. And we all like Fleetwood Mac. At the time we were heavily, heavily into it.

Renda: Yeah. Tusk is our favorite album, but Rumors was the best studio name.

How did you two hook up and begin working together?

Renda: Andy can tell the story about how I met him.

Andy: I was hiring for a job. I had a website I was making and I needed a developer, and somebody pointed me towards Renda Morton. So I sent Renda an email. After I hit send, I thought to myself, “You know what I should do? I should go on Myspace and see who this person is.”

Renda: And this was back when Myspace was the thing.

Andy: So I do, and I search her by email address. Then I accidentally ended up sending her an invitation saying, “Andy Pressman wants to be your friend on Myspace,” and inviting her to join Myspace. As if this were an important business gesture.

Renda: He wrote me an email saying, “I’m really sorry. Please ignore this. Please continue to think of me as a consummate professional.”

Andy: I was like, “I know how to spin this—by being up front. That’s what professionals do.” But it turns out she never got the Myspace email in the first place.

Renda: That’s how we met. That’s how I knew Andy was cool.

Nice damage control. Some of the best relationships are formed through Myspace.

Andy: Separate from that, we shared studio space in Dumbo as independent designers. We were collaborating on projects and it just made sense at a certain point to bring these things together.

Renda: We went and interviewed other studios or collectives to see how they ran their business to try to figure out what the best way was for us.

What is the hardest part about collaborating on a design?

Andy: We’re pretty good collaborators. Do we run into disagreements? Sure.

Renda: That’s what makes it good!

Andy: What makes it good is the fact that you’re not talking to yourself. The nature of collaboration requires, to a certain extent, disagreement or at least a separate perspective. Maybe the most difficult part is working with somebody day in and day out and knowing their quirks and knowing what they are going to say about something. It is not unlike sparring siblings. Being able to know this is a safe space, but still be able to say that something is stupid.

Renda: We always have to sit next to each other.

Andy: We always conceptualize together, even if we are working on separate projects.

How do your design aesthetics differ?

Renda: I don’t know

Andy: Neither of us have a particular style.

Renda: But I can tell if Andy made something.

Andy: And I can tell if you made something. A designer does certain things because they appeal to him or her and you see that in their work. But I think part of our process is about the ideas more than it is about the design. We both have different things we like to do. I’m not anywhere near as capable a programmer as Renda.

Renda: He’s better at writing emails. Writing really difficult emails and awkward emails, like the ones where we are saying we can’t do something or need more money.

Andy: I would say I’m more invested in print typography than Renda.

Your job requires you to work closely with your clients and understand what they want. So what makes a good client?

Andy: Sometimes we try to give them what they don’t know they want.

Renda: We want something that will make them happy, but also something that will make the people that have to use the thing that they make—whether it’s a book or a website or an exhibition—those people have to be happy too. Which, in turn, makes the client happy.

Andy: We have two clients essentially. We have the people that hired us and we have the audience. So in some cases we end up being advocates for the audience and what the user would want. But what makes a good client? We’ve been trying to put our finger on this lately.

Renda: We had one project in Greece where we had a client who told us to do whatever we want and would approve everything, and money wasn’t so much an object. That turned out to be one of the worst clients because he just didn’t care. He wasn’t invested in the project.

Andy: The best clients are smart and engaged. They take part in this dialogue of what the output is. It’s a fundamentally collaborative process. Like what I said before, we are not fundamentally surface designers or graphic designers. At the heart of it, we think about what it is that we’re doing or saying and how we say it. So the very logic of the thing that we work on is up for grabs and discussion. We want clients to take part in the generative process. They need to be open to ideas and open to rethinking preconceived notions.

I would have guessed a designer would hope for a client that gives them more creative freedom to do whatever you want!

Renda: If I did whatever I want I would just sit. That’s what I wanna do.

Fair enough. You guys mix a lot of print work with online design. Does this say something about the future of graphic design or where your studio is headed?

Andy: It definitely says something about the present. That’s something that distinguishes us as a studio—we do all of those things… We like working with clients that want something in terms of an exhibition space, the Web, and even a catalogue too.

Renda: And it changes all the time. The iPad came out six months ago and now everything’s different. Six months from now, things will feel different again.

Andy: How things are made really is changing much faster people see. We like taking part in that.

So you guys are always adapting. How do you plan to grow in your studio in the coming years?

Andy: I don’t feel like we need to make an effort to stay on top of things because that’s just what we are curious about by our nature. We just follow those pursuits and it’s been taking us to interesting places. I’m content that we grow as readers as these objects grow as reading devices. As a studio, we do not want to grow to be a business where we have to manage multiple designers at once.

Renda: No. We live in this neighborhood and it’s nice walk to work everyday and not have to go to Manhattan.

Andy: Our ideal growth comes from clients and projects and not the size of our business. We are always looking for more clients that interest us.

What projects are you working on right now?

Renda: We are working on an exhibition for the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal. We are really excited about it.

Andy: We are excited because they are smart people and very engaged and really excited about the ideas. Because they are excited about the ideas, we can throw out things that are like….

Renda: What if the museum were re-curated this way?

Andy: Or what if the space wasn’t the way you traditionally conceive of an exhibition space?

Renda: And we get to go to Montreal, which is fun.

When is the exhibiton?

Renda: November 11. We also just finished a thing for the American Institute of Architects, New York Chapter—the Center for Architecture. This week is Architecture Week, so for the whole month of October, they bought all the ads at the West 4th Street Subway Station and they are showing all their members’ projects—architects that are based in New York and what things they are working on.

The opening ceremony of “Made in New York” will be held Friday, Oct. 8 from 6 to 8 p.m. in the West 4th St. Subway station. Stop by for a glass of wine (staying within the parameters of Subway boozing, of course) and some thoughtful analysis of New York architecture. If we’re lucky, the night will also include some clever dialogue on spinning classic rock into a savvy business influence—an art form that both Andy and Renda have clearly mastered.

GROW HOUSE GROW
Grow House Grow is a wallpaper line created by Katie Deedy, and it’s like nothing you’ve seen before. All of her wallpaper patterns are inspired by stories. At BKLYN Designs this year she’s showing three new patterns, all of which are inspired by female scientists from the 19th century. How cool is that?! If you want to learn more about Grow House Grow, read our interview with Katie from last year’s BKLYN Designs.

The lovely designer (and new mom!) herself, on the left:

HUGH HAYDEN AND KATIE VITALE
We met Hugh Hayden last year at the GSS Jello Competition, where we adored his jello “chicken” wrapped in “plastic wrap.” Well, this talented guy is at it again. At BKLYN Designs this year he’s showing a line of wall-hanging, framed, ANT FARMS.

Hugh and Katie:

This one is my personal favorite. Fun fact: The black stopper in the upper left is covering the hole that you can feed your ants through!

PALO SAMKO
Palo Samko was one of our favorites at BKLYN Designs last year, and this year he did not disappoint! His furniture pieces have a fun sense of whimsy about them, and his sculptures are incredibly intricate little worlds.

MATTHEW FAIRBANK
Matthew Fairbank returns with a new collection, branching out into hanging lamps and ceramics. I’m digging the bright colors and gold accents, and am always impressed by the impeccable craft of Matthew’s work. To learn more about Matthew, read our interview with him.

ESKAYEL
Shanan from Eskayel is another designer who’s branching out. She’s applied her patterns to ceramics and textiles this year, creating a comprehensive line for the home. We love the surreal quality of the having plates and pillows with the exact same pattern as your walls. For more Eskayel, read this interview!

RAM METALS
RAM Metals is a custom metal-fabrication studio that had a bunch of great pieces on display. Raine Heidenberg is completely new to us, and we love her work. She designed this huge, severe, geometric chandelier.

These planters were one of our favorite pieces in the whole show, designed by Charles Constantine for Platerworx.

The ‘Flight’ shelves below, designed by Charles Constantine for TIDES OUTDOOR, also have very striking geometry.

LAMACEK
Last but definitely not least, we completely fell in love with the lighting from Lamacek! They won Inhabitat’s award for Best Lighting, and we completely agree. I’ve sworn a million times that I never want to see anything again with antlers, and then someone goes and proves me wrong. And the robot with it’s little red heart is, well, irresistable.

THAT’S ALL FOLKS
These are our favorites – go see the show and let us know if you agree!

House of Yes’ Lady Circus

You’ve really turned your dreams into a reality. What advice do you have for anyone trying to do that for themselves?

Kae: Fundraising. It will save you a lot of time if you have money to start with. Find that money however you can – beg, borrow, or steal! Do it. We couldn’t have done this if we didn’t have the money to start it up. You’ll make it back and pay back your loans.

Anya: One of the most important things is to be accessible to as many people as possible. The more people in your network, the easier it is to fundraise or find other resources, delegate tasks, and get help. If you want to do something really avant-garde, how do you tie that in to something more accessible? Doing things that are super “out there” is great, but your audience will be very specific and you won’t be able to sustain yourself. You have to really balance out what you’re doing.

How have you done that?

Anya: We have the circus troop, the workshop, and the community space/venue. We want our space to be useful and somehow important to everyone and their mom. We have some things our friend’s 10-year-old can come to, and some borderline X-rated sex nonsense. We have music. We have DIY arts and crafts, but not too much, because we don’t want to be pigeonholed. It’s all about covering as much ground as possible, all the time. I think it’s great that people walk through the door and never know what to expect.

The House of Yes performance space (image via Brooklyn Vegan)

How do you two know each other?

Kae: Anya and I met in Rochester, where we grew up. I went to FIT and she came to New York a few months later. We thought, “Let’s make a creative space to live and work out of.” We found a large basement space, finagled some stuff with our landlord, and started a collective. It was pretty disgusting – full of mold, painted ridiculous colors. But it was really fun. We had that basement space for two years, and then Anya got a space in Ridgewood that became the House of Yes. I moved in 6 months after that, set up my sewing studio, and it became a collective of 8 people living and working.

Your previous space burned down, right?

Kae: Yeah, that space burned down in April of last year, 2008. We found this place on Craigslist and started building again. It was in awful shape – a dirty, dusty warehouse. There was a very tacky, dingy office space with fake wood paneling and linoleum floors. We had to put in a lot of work. Thankfully, people really pulled together and started collaborating. Volunteers came by to build, and we had a lot of help, financially, from people who felt bad for us when the old place burned down.

Aerial performance (image via Brooklyn Vegan)

Why did you choose this space for your new location?

Kae: It’s perfect, because it happens to have a 30-foot ceiling. It’s one of the only places like this in Brooklyn.

Anya: When the old space burned down, and we saw this building, we just went for it with the aerial studio.

Kae: When we started the old House of Yes, Anya and I would talk about how in five years we should have a theater and a costume shop. When we lost our old place, we ended up doing this much sooner than we ever expected. It was born out of necessity. To be able to afford the rent of this place, we had to get it together. The other place was more of a collective/ party space where people lived. Nobody lives here – it’s a business-oriented space.

What’s been the hardest part of turning this into a business?

Kae: The hardest part is finances. Trying to keep ours straight, and trying to find funding. And balancing everything. Between promoting, getting our name out there, and getting things done in here, and finding time to be creative and work on projects that don’t make money – it’s a lot.

Anya: You have to do a lot of entrepreneurial stuff, PR, and constantly think about how every single person you know can fit in to making this possible. Keeping track of all that, constantly scheduling and multitasking, is really hard.

Lady Circus in action (image via Brooklyn Vegan)

How do you hope for this to grow?

Kae: We’ve set it up now, but we’ve only been operating professionally for less then a year. It really has a lot of room for growth. We want to have more people come here, both to see shows and to perform. We’re at this nice spot where a lot of people know about us, but a lot more people could.

Anya: We want to write and produce more shows here. And we’re constantly tightening everything up – upgrading the lighting, getting new sewing machines. It’s great to have made a facility where artists don’t have to freak out and worry about hanging lights. They can come in and focus on their art instead.

It’s fantastic that you’ve created that! Most artists either aren’t able or just don’t want to take on the responsibility of setting up the structure.

Kae: It’s a real job, and it’s not always fun. I do jobs I don’t want to do. But without that, we would have been kicked out months ago because of not paying rent. I don’t want to sweep the floors, but it has to be done, and then we can move on to the creative things we want to do.

Anya: It’s still way better then a regular job because it’s really engaging. Whatever I’m doing, I’m actively using my brain. One of our interns has a “real job”, and she’s always telling us to give her more work because she’s so bored.

Kae: We’re always having creative input, whether it’s what color we’re going to paint the wall, or how to word the promotional material. We’re figuring out how to let the world know what we do, and what image we want to put out. Like any small business, it’s your voice.

Anya performing in the Karnival of Kuriosities

After being fans for a long time, we had a chance to ask him how he got started with photography and what he’s doing these days.

When did you first become interested in photography?

I took my first picture in the South of England, of a train going over a viaduct. I was probably around 9 or 10. I became interested in a box Brownie, and started taking pictures in London in the park. It was a large roll of film, in a Bakelite camera – fabulous design, all deco like a radio. You would get your negatives back, in these little glassine envelopes, and they would be fuzzy, or have light leaks and be all black.

Did you go to school to study photography?

When I was a schoolboy, I read all about how to develop film from these little books in the library, but it was when I was in college for interior design, that my friend Richard got himself a job in a lab. It suddenly re-ignited all my memories of photography. I started doing it quite a lot, and dropped out of college to try and become a photographer. I do miss never having a formal art training. I think that’s really important – the whole process of thinking. I ended up taking a more commercial approach to the field.

Once you realized it was your passion, how did you work towards becoming a professional photographer?

I tried to get a job as an assistant, to learn by sweeping the floors so to speak, but there was nothing out there. I blundered around for a bit, tried to find some work, and saw that Glaxo had a job for an assistant photographer in their research department. I went along, and got a job for two months in the summer.

I learned the technical stuff, which was very handy to know, but it was really dull. I couldn’t take it, so I left, and again there was no work. I was about to take a job selling over the telephone when I saw an ad in a popular English photography magazine.

There was an opening in this architectural firm for someone to develop a way to take pictures of their architectural models through this probe. The company had been around 100 years, and built all these incredible models of various places. They had this probe that allowed them to look inside the model, and wanted to be able to take pictures through it.

They took me on because I had done 3D design in school, and had looked through a microscope at Glaxo. It was a total fluke that I got the job. If he had put the ad in the British Journal of Photography, where the professional people look, I wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Was it difficult to learn the ropes of the job without much prior experience?

About 6 months into it, my boss said to me, “If you don’t get any better than this, I’m going to fire you.” So for one week, I stayed up all night, every day, developing and processing, and adjusting film. I pulled myself out of it, became quite good, and stayed on for 8 years.

How has your work evolved since then?

I’ve stopped wondering what I should be doing, and starting pressing the button. I’ve been around so many incredibly interesting people that are very inspiring, so it feeds off itself. At 54, I’ve also been through some unpleasant experiences, but the one thing that does, it gives you an awful lot of material to work with.

For a long time I didn’t know what kind of pictures to take when no one was hiring me, and the work I was doing for myself was very marginal. Now, it’s a mixture of fashion and portrait and architecture. I decided it was important to do what I like, and shoot things that have meaning to me. Try to do everything.

The last few years, I’ve been paying my rent with fashion catalogs. That’s an incredible training – bridal and evening wear. It requires a lot of thought. You’re dealing with very fussy clients. I’ve also always liked building and architecture. I don’t think you need to specialize – a photograph is a photograph, it’s cross-platform.

With advancements in technology, photography has become so much more accessible. How do you think this has changed the business?

Photography has become ubiquitous. It used to be a very expensive medium to work with, even more so because you had to buy film. It was very cost-prohibitive to test ideas. Now everybody has a camera. I go on a shoot and the client’s baby has a better camera then me!

My girlfriend and I were invited to a wedding, and there were two young photographers with four cameras each hanging off them, laptops and satellite dishes! I can’t compete with that. They did miss a few shots I got, though.

Then there’s crowd-sourcing. Buying stock photography used to be expensive. Now a company can just say, “We need a picture of someone shaking hands in front of a modern building” and a billion people will respond. They’re just happy to have a photograph out there. 90% of what’s being published is very good, and very free.

What advice do you have for people that want to turn their passion into their career?

Do what you love, and if you’re lucky, someone will pay you for it. Money was never a big issue for me. My friend Benjamin said, “If you wanted to make money you would have gone and made money, you wouldn’t have been a photographer.”

There’s nothing there that says if you do x, y and z, you’ll have a career. It’s very individual, you need to be incredibly independent, almost able to do it on your own. Then, when two independent people come together, the sum of the parts becomes greater then the individuals. For me, as long as I can take pictures I’ll be happy. That’s really it. I’m very fortunate, there are not very many people I would trade places with.

Check out more of his work at adrianbuckmaster.com.

I’m really curious to find out your story, because you’ve transitioned your creative work into a career so well.

I always get asked, “How did you end up where you are?” Looking back, I literally have no idea. I originally went to NYU and studied journalism. I didn’t really enjoy the school, so after 2 years I switched to William & Mary in Virginia, where I’m from. I ended up majoring in fine art. While what I’m doing now combines those two things in a really perfect way, when I graduated from college I felt completely lost. I felt like, “I have a degree I don’t know what to do with, I don’t have four full years of anything, what am I doing?”

So what did you decide to do?

I turned to my other passion in college, which was being a radio DJ. I thought, “I’m going to go into the music business. That’s what I’m interested in.” So I moved to New York the day after I graduated and worked for a record label. It was a giant disaster – not at all what I thought it was going to be.

6 months after moving to the city, I found myself looking for a new job. I wanted to do something in the arts, but I knew that I wasn’t ever going to make money on my own art. My strength was in my eye, but how do you make a living off of that?

I realized that I loved being around creative people. That’s always been my favorite thing – it’s why I went to NYU. So I tried a bunch of jobs, ended up at a super tiny PR firm in Brooklyn, and was there for two years. It was the perfect job because I got to meet a lot of really fantastic designers. We worked with Vitra. I got to meet the Bourellec brothers and Zaha Hadid – super cool people that I was just in awe to even be talking to.

The Design*Sponge site.

That’s amazing!

Also, part of my job was to deal with magazine editors. I’d always idolized magazine editors as a kid. I thought, “That’s it – that’s what I want to do. I want to go work for a magazine.” So that was my goal, but how on earth would I get to be a magazine editor? My boyfriend at the time said, “Why don’t you start a blog? It could be a fun way for you to discover your voice and build up a portfolio.”

When was that?

It was August of 2004. I spent probably 2 weeks just playing around with super basic stuff like, “How do you upload a picture?” and not publishing anything. Once I discovered the blog world, I wondered if there was anyone else who was into furniture and design. I looked around and found MoCoLoco and Apartment Therapy and DesignBoom. They were the only sites talking about that sort of stuff, and it wasn’t quite my aesthetic. So I decided to just write about things I like. I’d literally just put a picture up and say “This chair is cool!” And that was it.

Obviously Design*Sponge has come a long way since then! When did you really gain a following?

As I was writing and talking about things that I loved, I was covering Brooklyn design, which was literally just about to break and be a big deal. Sort of right place, right time, right content. I think a lot of people were looking for young, cool things. There were other design websites, but they were a lot more sophisticated and high-end.

The biggest turning point was probably when the New York Times did a big story on design bloggers. They picked up Maxwell and Harry and I. They put me on the front page of the Home section, which obviously was a huge deal. It brought a huge amount of traffic to the site. That was probably 6 months after I started. I had no mission, no goal, I was just sort of talking – and then I got thrown into a place where I had a lot of people reading.

Design*Sponge DIY project: Miniature helper tins.

You were still working in PR, right?

Yeah, I left in 2006.

So that was when you started doing your blog full time?

Pretty much. 2006 was the other big turning point. This weird thing happened where the magazines I’d always wanted to work for ended up coming to me! House & Garden came and said, “We’re an older magazine, and we want to connect to somebody younger. Will you come help work on our website?”

They offered me a full-time freelance position. I was able to leave the PR job, do work for them from home, and run my site at the same time. I helped them re-plan and re-design their website, and wrote a bunch of daily content for it. I did that for 2 years and absolutely loved it. It was so cool to have one foot in that world and one foot in the blog world. When House & Garden closed, I moved to Domino. Then Domino closed! So it’s been full-time Design*Sponge for the last year and a half.

I guess that whole world has moved online.

Yeah, it really has. There’s this bank of very talented writers, style directors, and stylists who have no jobs. There’s basically nowhere for them to go other than online, which is such a different world. I feel really fortunate to have learned my way up from both places. I’m not really firmly entrenched in one or the other.

Design*Sponge’s guide to Office Accessories.

Over time you have obviously found your voice. How would you describe what Design*Sponge is about now?

I’m writing a book now for Design*Sponge, and I have to sum up what we’re about in a sentence or two. I’m having a really hard time doing it. The site tends to move and change completely based on whims. I added a food column because I was obsessed with cooking and thought, “Maybe somebody else is too.” As we’ve learned and grown, we’ve just added stuff. That’s the great part about the web. You can literally come up with any idea and two hours later, have it online. It’s been so fun to test things out and see how people respond.

I want the blog to feel like a friend you have, who happens to know a lot about one particular subject, and talks about cool things. The staff and I really enjoy the work we do because it’s entirely based upon what we’re interested in. If I’m not interested in a topic I’m not going to cover it. I know everybody wants Top Ten Lists and everything under $25, but I don’t want to put anything out there that I’m not personally interested in.

Who are your readers?

We have a pretty niche audience. It’s almost all girls, between the ages of 25 and 35. Most live in big cities. So We’re sort of writing to ourselves, which I love. As I get older, so does the audience. I feel like as our tastes change and grow up a bit, so do theirs – it’s this nice, natural progression.

What is your team like, these days?

I have ten editors now, which blows my mind! I fought tooth and nail against that for the first four years. I didn’t want to have to worry about telling someone, “I don’t like the way you write.” That’s a sensitive thing.

As I went along, I ended up hiring an intern, who was my age. It just didn’t feel right having her as an intern, so she became my first editor. That’s Anne, who runs all the home tours. Then I just turned to the people who I’m friends with. I thought, “Hey, you’re really good at this one thing. Rather than me trying to pretend I’m an expert in that field, why not bring in the person who actually is?”

Design*Sponge’s guide to fresh fig mini-pies.

It still feels like it has a very coherent voice.

We’ve grown in such a way that it still feels small, because only three of us are in the same city. I never see anybody – they email me a post once a week. If we had an office and we were all together I think it would feel really weird and big. We’re all still sort of doing everything on a shoestring, and that’s how I prefer it.

Can you tell me a little about the book that you’re working on? When can we expect to see it?

Assuming I can meet my insane deadline, it’s going to come out next fall/holiday. It’s going to be a 400+ page hardback book with Artisan, which is my favorite publisher. We’ve been talking with publishers since like 2005. They’ve been wanting us to do books, which is flattering, but they sort of want to push you into a really narrow topic.

This is going to be a huge selection of our favorite home tours, DIY projects, and before-and-afters from the last five years, combined with new homes, new projects, new before-and-afters. There will also be some really great basic how-tos, details for hacking IKEA furniture, floral arrangements inspired by rooms and based on budgets, design history, and a design glossary.

I want it to be THE book that people will go to right now for inspiration and actual practical advice. Sort of like where the Domino book left off. I love it and it’s the only book I actually use these days, but it just doesn’t have enough in it for me. Plus I’d like it to be a bit more budget-conscious. So I thought, “I’m just going to have to do it myself.” I have two-and-a-half months to pull it all together.

Design*Sponge DIY project: Wallpaper file cabinet.

That’s crazy! Best of luck on pulling it all off, that sounds like an amazing project.

Thanks!

What was the hardest part of getting to where you are now?

Figuring out what I was good at. It was a hard realization to face the fact that I wasn’t actually an artist. I’m not a great artist. I happen to have a degree in it, but it’s not really what my strengths are. I think you just have to keep trying lots of things. Work two jobs at once. Take an internship on the weekends. I did all those things. I tried so many different jobs before I figured out what I wanted to do. So try it, and don’t be afraid.

What advice do you have for people who want to take their own passions and turn it into their career?

I think the key is to not listen to the people who tell you that it’s impractical. People will say you should go for a standard 9-to-5 with health insurance. You can get your health insurance other ways! Especially in an economy like this, everyone says, “No, stick with the safe thing, you’re crazy to follow what you enjoy.” But I think this is the best time to do it. I think this is the time when people are forced to realize, “I have to have a job no matter what – I might as well enjoy what I’m doing.”

Screenshot:

3rd Ward gives a free bike to each of their members.

How did 3rd Ward start? What’s the beginning of the story?

Wow. OK. In 2004, a bunch of other artists and I moved to New York from Boston. We moved in together in this big loft, and we thought, “We’re all going to become New York City art stars!”

Of course!

Right? And then we got hit with all these harsh New York realities. The cost of real estate down here was out of control, so we ended up way out in the middle of nowhere in a warehouse. Nobody could find work. Nobody was getting along. “Dude, you didn’t pay rent!” or “You broke my shit!” It was totally like a reality show.

For work, Jeremy and I started doing some construction jobs. We did a lot of work for this one guy who had a bunch of real estate. At the same time, we were still trying to do our own artwork and design work. We had a lot of problems finding the resources we needed. We needed access to a shop. We needed a place to do photo and video shoots. We needed access to good enough computers to do retouching. We thought, “Man, I wish there was a place that I could go do that.”

One day I just pitched our idea to the real estate guy. I said, “Look, I know it would work because I personally need this and there’s other people out here like me.” And he said OK. He had just bought the building that 3rd Ward’s in now. He asked me how it was going to work and I said, “How about you build everything out to our specs and pay for it all, and then we’ll pay you rent.”

So he did it?

He did it, and we opened in May 2006. And then we could never pay rent! We started throwing parties for rent. I was giving him his rent money in brown paper bags that had beer-soaked cash. So that’s how we got started. There’s a long way from the day we opened to now. We’re way stable now.

How did you get past the phase of figuring out how you were going to pay rent?

Basically by learning how to serve our members. We’re customer obsessed at 3rd Ward. It’s part of our culture. We are there to serve this community of people. And we are always figuring out how to do that. If we build something that doesn’t work, we rip it out. We had a whole dance program, it wasn’t working, so we just ripped that whole room out and added a lot more to the shop.

You have to keep listening to people and responding to them. We are our members. There is no 3rd Ward without them. We have to provide resources that members want to come and pay for. So we obsess over keeping them happy and making it more and more productive for them.

What was the hardest part of stabilizing?

There are a couple things that are really challenging. First of all, you’re always treading water trying to get money in the door. You have to learn how to be a business person really fast. I really wasn’t. So I got my indie-MBA on the streets of Williamsburg! Understanding cash flows and all that.

Then there’s learning to really look down the road long-term. What we’re going to do today, we’re not going to feel until 6 months from now. You have to think, “How are all these moving parts going to impact each other in 6 months?” You don’t want to fall into short-term thinking, where something might seem good right now but is going to hurt you down the road.

The front desk at 3rd Ward.

Can you walk us through all the different services 3rd Ward offers?

It’s a lot of interrelated resources that are under one roof – two roofs now. A big thing that we do is desk space for freelancers. All the furniture is there, all the internet is there, all the utilities are there, basic secretarial stuff is there, there’s always a lobby for clients to wait. We take your mail and packages, that kind of stuff.

We have four photo studios – there’s a lot of photographers who sign up for membership just based on that. We have a huge shop. There’s a digital media lab, which is free for all members to use whenever they want. And then we do a lot of classes.

The class program that we have at 3rd Ward is massive. The woodworking classes, the welding classes, and our core digital design classes, always fill up. We also try to do weird stuff, you know? We’re always trying new classes, and some work and some don’t. We know that and we’re comfortable with that. Somebody once said, “You have to learn to see failure as progress.” We believe that at 3rd Ward. We’ll always try new stuff. We did bag building, which was really popular. Screenprinting is really popular.

What are the plans for this second location?

There’s a drop-in co-working space, where you can just show up with your laptop and work. There’s a bunch of desk space and work studios. We’re going to have a couple new classroom spaces. Down the road there will probably be a real screenprinting setup. And we’re putting in a commercial kitchen and doing culinary classes. I’m really excited about the culinary program. It’s more universal, you know what I mean?

We’ve noticed a few people in Brooklyn starting up food companies, it’s pretty cool.

It’s true. There’s actually a kind of renaissance of culinary stuff happening in Brooklyn right now. I’m good friends with the guys at Roberta’s. They have a little farm in the backyard, and they have beehives on our roof.

Do you want to keep 3rd Ward in New York? Have you thought about expanding outside?

Yeah, I have thought about it, but we have a lot of work to do here. We get courted by a lot of people. Somebody from the Detroit government called me and was like, “Please come to Detroit. I’ll do all these great things for you guys.” But I can’t just go to Detroit. I am of this community. I know these people. I don’t know what’s going on in Detroit. So the short answer is, we’re focusing on New York right now. The long answer is, wherever we’re needed. 3rd Ward Moscow!

Jason Goodman and Jeremy Lovitt at 3rd Ward. [photo via NY Mag]

What’s been your happiest moment so far with 3rd Ward?

There’s this whole economy that happens, where the jewelry designer hires a photographer to shoot her work. And then the woodworker goes to the metal guy and says, “Hey, I’ve got this table I need to make. I’m doing the wood work on the top, but the client wants a steel base. ” It happens every single day, all the time. Seeing that happen is pretty magical. And giving the free bikes out was pretty exciting. I don’t know if you guys know about that.

I saw the sign outside and I was wondering about it.

Last year I was thinking, “What is another thing I can do to enrich my members?” and the lightbulb went off. “What if I could give everybody a good, urban bike for New York City? That would be amazing.” We threw a huge party and we were like, “Free bikes from now on!” The bikes are single-speed, so they can’t really break. They have a nostalgic old Schwinn frame look, set up for a street bike – skinny tires and straight bars. It’s something that meant a lot to our members, and it also did something good for the world. Every bike on the street is better. Every day with that is progress.

Absolutely. You guys are doing amazing things.

I have a super awesome team of brains. We have a really creative culture in the office. There aren’t a lot of rules, and we don’t need a lot of rules, because we’re all really engaged with what we’re doing. I would never be where we are today without them.

And we have a great front desk crew. We’re staffed from 8am to midnight every day. They’re constantly taking care of our members. Whether people need food delivered, or to packages coming in, or a circuit blew. We make it so you don’t have to worry about if the roof’s going to leak, or if the circuit’s going to pop, or if your delivery guy’s not going to be able to get in. You can focus on what’s in front of you right now and making this photograph happen, or whatever it is that you do.

Handmade Music at 3rd Ward.

MakerBot is a pretty new venture, right? How have you gotten so much traction so quickly?

We really just didn’t sleep properly for a few months, dreaming this thing up. When we started, we thought it would just be something that we’d do on the side. But no, it’s been like 80-hour weeks the entire way through! I’d go to bed and I’d literally be dreaming of the machine. My girlfriend would tell me I’d been talking about it in my sleep. Not exactly the most romantic thing!

We started our business in January. And then I took a prototype to SXSW in the middle of March. I would just go to a bar and set it down and start printing out shot glasses and 20-sided dies and giving them away. It was fun. People would come up and ask, “What is that thing?” And I’d say, “It’s the future. It’s a machine that can pretty much make anything you want. Right now it’s making shot glasses.”

3D printing has the potential to be pretty revolutionary. What’s your vision for the future?

Right now we have a way of distributing and manufacturing products that is completely alien, compared to what people were doing 100 years back. We shop for things, often online, and we find the thing that most suits us. We order it. It was probably built very far away, and it ends up getting shipped to some other place and some other place and some other place before it comes to you. Well, it doesn’t have to be like that. You could just shop for something online, download a file, and print it out at home on your 3D printer.

The MakerBot

What led you to developing this inexpensive 3D printer?

Zach Hoeken Smith and Adam Mayer and I knew each other from NYC Resistor, an electronics hacking collective here in Brooklyn. Zach had been involved in the RepRap project for a couple years, which is a research project to develop self-replicating rapid prototyper. Adam and I had both helped out on that.

A lot of energy had been put into being able to make a machine that could reproduce itself, but you have this chicken and egg problem. In order to make a machine that can reproduce itself, you have to HAVE a machine that’s reproduced itself. And so, we just wanted to make a 3D printer.

We figured out all the things we wanted it to do and mocked something up. I did the design of the body, Adam did the XY, and Zach did the plastic extruder and the electronics, and it all just came together. Most of the parts that go into a MakerBot are stock parts, so that if you need a replacement part, it’s very likely you could just go to the hardware store and get it. That was our focus.

How does it work?

There’s a plastic filament which feeds into the plastic extruder. It gets heated up and it becomes molten, and it comes out the bottom as like a very tiny stream of spaghetti. The machine builds up layers of that molten plastic to form an object.

MakerBot building a model of Walt Disney’s head.

Do you see the technology becoming more refined, so that the prints have a higher clarity to them?

Yep – we’re on the edge of that right now. Right now we get a layer height of about .375 of a millimeter, which is great. But we’d like to get down to .25 of a millimeter. We’ll get there. There’s another version of the plastruder that’s in development.

The challenge is, if you make that little tiny stream of plastic thinner, you have to apply more force. We have to build a slightly more robust, more powerful drive mechanism to get that much force. We’ve done it, but everything has to be completely perfect for it to work. With the layer height of .375, there’s more tolerance.

If someone already has a MakerBot and an upgraded plastruder comes out, can they just switch out that part on their machine?

Yeah, it’s totally modular. It would take you 5 seconds to undo the old plastruder and put the new one in. The cool thing is, because MakerBot is open source, it’s YOURS. You put it together, you know how it works, and you can modify it however you want. If you want to put it on wheels or something crazy, you can do it. We never know what people are going to do with these things.

Who are the people that are buying them?

It’s interesting – our kind of core audience is tinkerers, designers, architects, and just people who want to live in the future. You know what I mean? Where you can imagine something, and then walk over to your MakerBot and print it out, and suddenly it’s real. We’ve had someone at Microsoft buy one, people at Google and Disney, and we just shipped one to NASA.

What are the limits to what a MakerBot can make?

Right now you can do anything 100mm x 100mm x 130mm, which is about 4in x 4in x 6in. People always ask, “Can you make it bigger?” But most people aren’t even using that much space. Most of the things that will take under 3 hours to print will fit in that space.

The other constraint is that right now we don’t have support material. So when you make things that have an overhang, you have to keep the overhang to about 40 degrees. It’s turned out to be a really interesting design constraint. If there’s a box that you have to fit into, it makes your mind think that way. And we’re working on support material. We’ll get it eventually.

Plastic filament, which feeds into the plastruder to print 3D objects.

What colors can you print in?

We have three colors of filament that we sell – white, black, and clear. It’s ABS plastic, which is the same thing that Legos are made out of, so it’s strong and really durable. You can use it for making functional parts.

We can actually get any color we want, it’s just that it costs a bunch of money to have the filament made. We’ll ask our community what they want, but I think at some point we should do red, and blue, and I would love to see glow in the dark! One step at a time.

What has been the hardest part about turning this into a business?

The hardest part? Luckily all the problems we have are usually one-issue problems. We had a problem with missing parts in kits. So we just found a new way to make sure we had no missing parts in kits, and now we have a lot less missing parts in kits. I mean, we’re human, we make errors. Machines don’t do the whole thing. Yet!

What advice do you have for people who want to work on their own projects and turn it into a business?

First of all, do it because you love it. Put your heart into it. Spend all your spare time and energy on it. And commit to it – don’t just dream about it. Commit to doing something on it every day, whether that’s calling somebody to find out if you can get something, or doing design work, or making the things.

I would also say that you should get a community together. We had a community before we started, because we were part of a community of 3D printers before we were a 3D printer manufacturer. But connect with the community around your thing. If you’re going to make toasters, I’m sure there’s a toaster community. It might not be very big, but find them! That way you can learn from them about what works and what doesn’t. They’ll give you opinions and have discussions.

Salt and Pepper Hats designed by Design Glut, available on Thingiverse

Speaking of community, you guys started Thingiverse, which is another really important component of all this.

It is, actually. We’d been really frustrated because there was no place to download the files to make 3D objects. We had all these design files that we were generating, and people were putting them on their own servers, and there was no place to search them. So finally we challenged ourselves to make a site. It took a couple weeks for it to get up and running. It limped along for a while. But people needed it.

It sort of propels the whole thing, because that makes you more inclined to get a MakerBot, if there’s a whole library of designs available that you can download and make right away.

Yeah. Some guy had gotten some sort of medical scan of his skull, and then he uploaded his own skull to Thingiverse. Our intern Will designed some glasses. And now, instead of paying $300 for glasses, you can pay $750 for a MakerBot and print out as many glasses as you want! When he finishes the design for the glasses I’m going to get lenses put in them, just to confirm that they work.

What’s next?

Well, through the end of the year, our goal is to scale up the production of these machines. The holidays are coming, and we keep growing faster than we expect, so we have to be ready! We’re gearing up to get a couple hundred or a thousand machines out there.

Glasses designed by Will Langford, available on Thingiverse