Did you catch our key in this week’s New York Times Magazine? They asked us to design an object to illustrate the opening page of their “Key” real estate section.
The theme they gave us to work with was “rebirth to renewal” – so our idea was to make a key rising up out of a [...]
Tags: Consulting, Design, Design Glut, Key, New York Times, Rapid prototyping
TOUCH works with designers and manufacturers to create meaningful, socially-responsible products, with a common goal of doing good together. It’s run by Zoë Melo – who for years has worked as a consultant helping companies develop products, and recently has slowly started to represent products herself. She also exhibits products and holds events in TOUCH’s [...]
Tags: Business, Consulting, Creative, Design, Interview, Los Angeles, Manufacturing, Products, Sustainability
Jim Coudal is a truly inspiring character. His company decided to shift from the standard model of selling their creative services to clients, to a model of creating products which they own and have full control over. And they’ve been very successful at it. Coudal Partners is proof that you can indeed create your own [...]
Tags: Advertising, Branding, Business, Chicago, Consulting, Creative, Design, Interview, Products
If anyone has turned their dreams into reality, it’s Jeff Staple. He started making t-shirts his sophomore year in college, and before the year was up he had so many orders that he had to drop out to fill them all. From there, he has built a creative empire. Staple Design encompasses a design consultancy, [...]
I ended up at a party at VOOS the other night, on N 3rd St. in Williamsburg, and felt like I’d just walked into some strange alternate reality. This huge space that I’d never seen before was filled with designs by many, many of the people we’ve interviewed. Takeshi Miyakawa’s Fractal 23 cabinet was there. [...]
Ethan started out as an engineer, re-routed as an industrial designer, and worked for top consultancies such as Ecco and Frog Design. Then he started designing vibrators. Which leads us to the story of Jimmyjane, his lifestyle company which makes life sexier and sex-products safer and more approachable. AMAZING. Enough of us – here it [...]
Tags: Accessories, Business, Consulting, Creative, Design, Interview, Pratt, Products, San Francisco, Sex toys
Dean Chapman and Ed Kilduff started Pollen Design in their Brooklyn apartments. They were both working for Smart Design when they thought, “Why not just get clients ourselves?” So they went off and started their own consultancy. After establishing Pollen and developing many successful products for their clients, they thought, “Why not just develop and [...]
Tags: Business, Carnegie Mellon, Consulting, Creative, Design, Housewares, Interview, Manufacturing, New York, Products, SoHo
We met Karl Zahn at the New York Gift Fair last month. He was showing his wooden tools (below) and we may have passed silly/amazing drawings back and forth between our booths to pass the time… But that’s another story.
This story is about how awesome Karl’s work is. He creates conceptual objects that we are [...]
Tags: Brooklyn, Business, Consulting, Creative, Design, Furniture, Greenpoint, Interview, Manufacturing, New York, Products, RISD, Woodworking
Blogger vs. Blogger: We sat down with Josh Spear and found out how he’s come to run a virtual media empire at the age of 24. Josh is one of the youngest marketing strategists in the world. In addition to JoshSpear.com, his internationally recognized trend-spotting blog, he is a founding partner of Undercurrent, a digital think-tank focused on new ways to reach young people without interrupting them.
BLOGGING
Did you actively promote your site, or did the traffic just grow organically?
No, I never actively promoted the site. I was always proud to say I never marketed it. I never did banner-swaps with anybody. I was fortunate enough to start the site when design blogs were few and far-between. There was Grace from Design*Sponge, Josh from Cool Hunting, myself, and only a few others. [...]
George Tsivikas is our landlord. How many people do you know who really like their landlords? Or who interview their landlords and post about it to their blogs? This might be the first time in history. So why do we like George so much, even though he takes all our money?
For some reason he let [...]
