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.

Design Public is a fantastic entrepreneurial story. Started by Drew and his partner Sina in 2003, they’ve truly turned their passion into a successful and personally-fulfilling business.

Thanks for talking to us Drew! Let’s start with one of my favorite questions – what’s been your happiest moment at Design Public?

I think my happiest moment was when our company first passed $1000 a day in revenue back in the early days, because by my back of the envelope calculation that meant that I could feed myself and wouldn’t have to take another job any time soon. True, I was only eating ramen, but still — the feeling of personal freedom was and is intoxicating. I go to bed every night excited about getting up the next morning and working on my business. I never expected to find this in life. I very quickly went from a design fan who started a company to an entrepreneur who happens to work in design. Entrepreneurship has become my true passion.

How did Design Public start? Why did you choose to start a design shop?

We started in 2003. Sina Djafari and I had graduated from business school and were focusing in on the design industry as one we were very passionate about. (Sina has a degree in engineering and industrial design; I’m just a big fan). Our research led us down a lot of dead-end streets — we thought at one time that we were going to create slipcovers, for example — before we just said “the hell with it” and threw up a website to learn more about the industry and what sells. The logic was that we’d gain experience and then create our own products. Low and behold the retail part took off and seven years later we are still focused on retail and customer service.

What a great story! What makes Design Public a special destination to shop online?

When we started the company, we wanted to focus on two big things — product and the public. We launched in 2003, and at the time most design was sold through high-end, condescending showrooms. You either knew your stuff or you weren’t part of the cool club. My business partner Sina and I looked in the mirror and knew we were not designers — we were design fans. So we wanted to build a site that aimed the spotlight on the “design public” — the customers and designers that take part in the design conversation — and let them speak in their own words. We were the first design retailer to blog and start throwing up designer and customer interviews, and it is something core to our mission. And today our focus is on delivering a great customer experience with knowledgeable, fun phone “design consultants” who can help you choose the perfect item for your home.

How has the site changed since you started? What have you guys learned along the way?

The industry has become a lot more crowded! It seems like you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a new modern design shop. The barriers to entry are so low — it takes all of $50 a month to set up a web store — that more and more entrants pour into the market every year. So we’ve learned that in order to create a good niche, you have to earn repeat business — you have to focus on your customer and on exceeding their expectations so that they come back. Starting a store is easy, but this part is very, very hard.

That makes a lot of sense. Let’s talk about design for a minute. What do you look for, and how do you find new designers and objects?

We look for great emerging design. Established brands are available everywhere these days, so we wanted to focus on the new, fresh stuff. Thing that solve real problems or create an emotional attachment in the buyer. In the early days, we pounded the pavement at design schools out in San Francisco and at ICFF here in NYC. Today we do a little of that, but rely more and more on customer recommendations and designer referrals.

What new item are you most excited about, and what are your favorite “classics” ?

I’m a fan of all Blu Dot items — I love those guys. Everything they make is well thought out. Take the Chicago 8-box for example. It ships flat-pack, so it reduces waste and shipping cost. And it is essentially one piece of furniture repeated eight times to reduce manufacturing cost. Brilliant. I’d put them in our “classics” category since we’ve been selling them since the beginning. As for new items, right now I’m backing the Stadler Form Otto Fan. It’s a bit of a departure from the categories we usually merchandise, but it’s functional and has a great stylish wood panel detail that is exciting.

What’s been the hardest part of starting your company?

It’s been walking the line between entrepreneur and developer. My business partner Sina would agree. We did a lot of the software development that allows us to manage shipments and operations of over 150 different design vendors. But when we have our head in the code, we aren’t able to lead or focus on the big picture. So it takes a lot of mental discipline to carve out time to do both and ensure you are always being productive.

How many people are a part of your team? What’s your office like?
We are a small team — a couple in marketing, a couple in operations and merchandising, and a strong customer service team. We are also virtual — so we don’t have a company HQ. Our team works from all over the US, and we love the fact that our approach allows for a ton of individual flexibility in work style. I spent May working from Paris, for example. Many of our customer service team have small children, so they can balance company time with family time. I really love this aspect of our culture — it’s what I wanted when I started a business. Today I’m typing this from a personal office I have off Madison Square Park in NYC and I’m on IM with about eight people in eight states.

It definitely sounds like you’re living the dream! So inspiring. Last question – what advice do you have for fledgling entrepreneurs?

Wow, I have enough to fill a book! I could pass on some truisms like “just go for it” or “keep on trying”, but I’m not sure how helpful those really are. The thing that has helped me the most has been “iterate quickly”. Get your product out the door as soon as you can, even if it isn’t perfect. The feedback you’ll receive from the market is gold.

When did you decide to start Fair Folks & a Goat?

Aurora: This is something that Anthony had been thinking about for a while. We met and started working on this just about exactly a year ago – September 1st. Anthony had this idea and he told me about it. It was exactly the kind of thing that I wanted to be involved in. It seemed like a project that had heart. Something that would keep me up at night, and I would want to be up working on it. We officially opened the New York space on November 1st.

Anthony: I lived down in the village, and I would walk around at night all the time. I would see these beautiful houses, and I was living in a 350 sq. ft. apartment on the top floor of a 6-floor walk-up. And I was thinking that there a lot of people, like my friends and I, that were living similar experiences. I was so hungry to take in New York, but I was seeing so much of it via New York Magazine and the internet.

There’s all these worlds that you aren’t in, that are behind closed doors.

Anthony: Yeah, and I wanted a place that could function the way these magazines were functioning for me. But rather than flipping through pages and reading about art and culture and fashion and cuisine, I could walk in and experience them with other people. Walking around the village, seeing all these beautiful townhouses, I said to myself, “This is why I came to New York. Not to live in this hovel!”

So Aurora and I started talking. If we could display those old, iconic images that we grew up reading about in the Fitzgerald stories and the Edith Wharton stories and the old movies we watched… I wasn’t seeing them in my life, but I was still looking for them, endlessly. We had big ideas to open a community space which gave that to people. They have their job, they have their home, and then they have this third place called Fair Folks for art, culture, and conversation. That’s what we’re hoping to grow.

How did you find this beautiful space that you’re in?

Anthony: I used to live here. I think I was either going to the Guggenheim or the Met, and I saw all these buildings, and a sign that said, “Carnegie Hill District.” When I got home, I looked it up online and started browsing through spaces just for fun. I wanted to see what the inside of one of these places looked like. That was really it – I didn’t expect it to change my life dramatically. Then I walked into this room. I tried to play it cool, but as soon as I left, all I could think was, “How am I going to get to that point?” I went back to my old job with a new sense of drive, and got out of my old lease, and moved in here. It was just something that once I saw it, had to happen.

When Aurora and I were kicking around the idea for Fair Folks, we were thinking that we had to find space in the West Village, or near Lafayette Street, somewhere downtown. We looked at all kinds of properties, but we wanted a different narrative. When someone walks into our space, we want them to feel transported. We want them to forget what they’re used to. And it works here, with our entrance and our staircase, and the fact that you have to take a physical journey uptown. So this space lent to a lot of the things we wanted to do, understanding tradition and things that will forever be beautiful and connecting them to things that are contemporary.

Can you talk about some of the events you’ve had here, and how you’ve been using the space to make that connection?

Aurora: When we first started, our plan was to do teas on the weekends. Having people come together around a cup of tea was the initial way to get people to come to the space and stay for a little while. I think it’s something that speaks to an older way of socializing that people aren’t used to anymore, but it doesn’t have to be so out of the ordinary. We still do those, and we’ve been upping the number of special events that we’ve been having. There have been brunches, and musical performances…

That seems like it would go really well.

Aurora: Yeah, it was great. One of them was Meshiya Lake, who’s a musician from New Orleans. It was great to have that bridge between this space and our newer space in New Orleans. Her band and her are ragtime, definitely from another era, and having them lined up here – it was really transformative. The windows were all open, and there were people out on the street who stopped and listened. When the band realized that there were so many people out there watching, they all leaned out the window and played to them. It was really cool.

Anthony: And the acoustics in here were amazing. It’s what the room was built for, I think. There was no microphone.

Aurora: We keep trying to get other musicians to come in and do a show for us, because it was great.

Anthony: The guy that lived in here before was a sound engineer for Lenny Kravitz, so he wrote a lot of music in here. And there were two sisters that were in here that were channelers before that. Some scary things have probably happened in this space!

Ooooh! Before I completely digress and talk about channelers – let’s talk about your New Orleans space. Why did you open that?

Anthony: Well, after getting a little frustrated trying to find the right space here in New York, we started looking all over the place.

Aurora: We love this space, and it’s been really great for us as far as getting our vision out there, but we really wanted an entire house to work with.

Anthony: In New Orleans, it is the full idea. It’s a great challenge, and challenges are fun! We want to create a fully curated space, all the way down to the lightswitches, and provide spaces for people to connect and interact. And in New Orleans, there is a little more heart to it – it feels good to be doing business there. It feels good to be in a place that really needs community building.

How have people been finding out about your spaces? Their allure is that they’re kind of secret and hidden, which is both a bonus and a challenge.

Aurora: Getting press has been really helpful for us, and word of mouth. A lot of people have found their way to us, just by seeing or hearing a little something about us and becoming curious.

Anthony: We do everything by appointment here, because we have to, because we’re in a residential space. But if there’s any advice to give, it’s that we treat every appointment as if it’s the next big opportunity. You don’t know who’s walking in the door or where it will lead, and that’s exciting. We always try to put our best foot forward, no matter who it is. We want them to stay for an hour or two hours, and we want to see if there’s a way in which they can become a part of this.

I think that’s a good note to end the interview on – and we’re really looking forward to collaborating with you! Readers, stay tuned for an announcement very soon about our next event, in collaboration with Fair Folks.

How would you describe your design aesthetic and the way you think about design?

Since I’ve been on my own, and actually when I worked for a firm, I find that my designs are very much dictated by my clients. My clients are very savvy – they have a very strong sense of what they like. If they’re hiring a designer, it’s because design is important to them. The client always dictates the mood.

Which makes sense, because they’re going to be living there!

Of course. And then I put their ideas through my filter, and I help make their ideas more cohesive and functional. If they like this picture, and what it to feel that way, I make that work for them.

Is that what people give you? Pictures from magazines? How do they communicate what they’re feeling?

That’s what I ask them to do. It’s always best to start with pictures. With words, we might be visualizing completely different things, but with a picture we’re on the same page. I think it helps to look at a ton of different pictures and then try to communicate what we like about the pictures.

Could you walk me through working with a client? It starts with bringing pictures to the table. What happens next?

It depends on the scope of the job. I mostly do renovation work. I like to do big projects where we’re really going to change a space. I’ll do decorating jobs here and there, but most of the work I do has been more than that. We’ll figure out how the space needs to function, if there’s a bathroom or kitchen that needs to be updated, or rooms that need to be moved around. Then based on the pictures we’ll do floor plans and pick furniture that meets the mood and the needs.

That’s a nice segue into how I met you – at BKLYN Designs this year. Several of the furniture designers and makers you work with were there.

Right. I do a ton of custom work. I know exactly how I think something should look for my client. Once I get to know them and start to sense their needs and what they like, I find that’s it’s not easy to just go out and buy a pre-existing piece that I think will be right. So 95% of what I buy, I design.

Cool!

I found some really great artisans in Brooklyn – a lot of people that are younger and starting their own businesses, or maybe have been in business for five years. You know some of them – I work a lot with Uhuru and Matthew Fairbank. They are really passionate about their craft, and it’s been great to work with them. I’ll bring them a certain idea, and they’ll bring in their expertise. Those collaborations are one of my favorite parts of what I do.

How did you get into interior design? When did you know it’s what you wanted to do?

When I was in college, I interned at Black Book magazine, and when I graduated I worked there for two years. I kind of floated around there – I started in the art department, I worked in the fashion department… I knew I wanted to do something creative but I wasn’t sure exactly what. Eventually I figured out that publishing wasn’t for me, so I went back to school for interior design. It seemed like a flexible profession, and one where I could either work for a firm, or I could do it smaller on my own. And it was something I could still do if I left New York, whereas for fashion you really need to be here.

Can you describe how you transitioned from working for someone else to deciding to do your own thing? That’s always an exciting part of the story!

I always knew I wanted to start my own business, but I wasn’t expecting to do it so soon. I worked for different designers when I went back to school, but I’d really only been out and working full time for about a year. A friend of a friend called me because she had bought an apartment on the Upper West Side and wanted to gut it. She said, “I’ve met a bunch of interior designers, but they’re all older and they’re completely out of touch with what I want.”

My first reaction was, “I work for a firm and I don’t have time, sorry!” But I ended up just meeting her for coffee, and we got along really well, so I took on the project while I was working. Then I got another client, so I just quit my job! It was a leap of faith, and it’s been good. It’s been almost three years now.

What’s been the hardest part to learn about working for yourself?

The hardest part for me is that I’m not sure how I’m going to get my next client. I’ve worked well and gotten along really well with all my clients, but I never know where they’re going to come from – they come from the most unexpected places. I’m always scared that my projects are going to end and I’m not going to have any more work, but it hasn’t happened yet!

It’s definitely a rollercoaster! Now that you’ve been in this a few years, what advice do you have for creatives that want to strike out on their own?

You need to go into it knowing that it’s not going to be easy. But if your really want to do it, I think you can make it work no matter what. If you stick with it long enough, it will work.

What’s been your proudest moment along the way?

I’ve just started completing some of my bigger projects. I take easily two years to do one job. When you’re working on something that long, having a project wrapped up and photographed is amazing! And seeing my clients satisfied. I know they’re putting a lot of faith in me, and hearing them say that it looks great and they’re really happy is the best feeling.

See more at laurensterndesign.com

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!

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.

How did this start?

James: Well it was easy to find each other, because we’re brother and sister, so that was a previous relationship… We’ve always been really close. We cooperate well. And we decided that we wanted to do something together professionally.

Why Paperless Post? Where did the idea come from?

James: We threw some ideas around, but we came to this one because we decided that there was no online option for designing and sending a meaningful note – something that expresses your look and your style. That’s a big part of how people have communicated for a long time, but it’s not one that’s caught up with the internet until now. The people who love us are are people who really get what’s great about nice paper.

Alexa: We wanted to create a platform for more meaningful communication online, both aesthetically and emotionally. And we want to give people a centralized archive of all these really important communications from years of their life.

Like a box of letters.

Alexa: Yes, exactly. I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, but I always save birthday cards. That’s basically the only kind of paper card I get anymore, because it comes with a physical gift. The experience of going back through all these old cards is really powerful. Each one of them represents the person that wrote it, because they chose this paper and they wrote these words and it was to you. It has a meaning that transcends the time when it was written. We want to make that for the online world.

James: Bringing texture to the flatness of email is our big idea. We’re giving people the tools to create and manage the communication that actually matters to them online, in an emotional way.

That’s really cool. When did you launch?

James: We launched our public beta on April 17th of 2009, but we started thinking about this business about 2 years ago. I was a sophomore in college, and Alexa was one year out.

Alexa: We took this risk and it was really scary. But I remember James saying to me once – a lot of times the scariest things that you do, if they work out, they’re better than you expected. You really couldn’t have imagined what happens.

Do you guys have a business background?

Alexa: We didn’t have a business background, but now we do! If you have a goal in mind, and you want to achieve that goal really, really, really badly, then you do everything that you need to do to make it happen. The limitations that building a viable business sets can actually be a really good thing for creativity.

Definitely. I think that’s important. If you could do anything in the world, you wouldn’t know where to start.

Alexa: No, you wouldn’t. And what you would make probably wouldn’t be that awesome, because it would be all about you.

Have you seen a good response so far? What has it been like?

Alexa: Yeah, it’s been incredible. We’ve grown by a multiple of 10 in terms of users and revenue in the past 4 months. What people like most is the aesthetics. If you read the reactions from users, it’s just all about design. A really important part of the site is our design tool. It allows you to choose a paper, choose a motif, set the type, and word the invitation. There are defaults set in so that there is some guidance for people who don’t feel comfortable really getting into the whole design process. But then, a lot of people who use us really do have a vision of what they want this to look like. The products that come out of these user accounts are really amazingly reflective of those people who make them. They’re really different.

How have you gotten the word out about your service? How has this spread?

James: It’s been a lot of viral growth. People receive these invitations and notice that it’s different from anything they’ve ever seen before on their computer screen. They say, “What is this?” and go to our home page and create an account and end up sending an invitation to new people, who continue the same process.

Alexa: 600,000 invitations have been sent so far.

What’s been your happiest moment with all this?

James: One of them was definitely when an article about our company was published in the New York Times, in the style section, in June. The piece was really positive, and it was the realization of a lot of work on our end.

Alexa: One of the moments that I can think of is on Mother’s Day, when we saw that all these people from different places were going on our site to basically jerry-rig invitations to send a Mother’s Day card to their moms. We saw that this idea of aesthetics that we started with, doesn’t just relate to invitations. It relates to all these other kinds of messages that people want to send each other. Watching the users take our products in their own direction – that made me really happy.

So what’s next?

Alexa: We’re adding announcements now, and we’ll be adding a bunch of other products this fall. Maybe you don’t have a party coming up, but you want to send a thank-you note to your friend’s mom.

James: Or you want to announce that you graduated from college, or that you had a baby.

One last question – what advice do you have for people who want to start their own business?

Alexa: I would say just do it. And you better really be committed to succeeding, and you better make sure you choose the right idea, meaning that you care about it. And that you have people you trust.

James: You need willpower and commitment.

Alexa: And determination. Be ready to do whatever you have to do, that’s legal and being a good person, to get there. Seriously. If you feel that way then you’re ahead of a lot of people.