So, it’s been almost six months since we hatched the plan to greatly expand our product line and focus exclusively on jewelry. So much has happened since then! Due to the great success of our Kickstarter campaign, it was all made possible, and the new line is here. Check it out in our online store.

We’ll be launching our full new jewelry collection at the upcoming January 2011 New York Gift Fair. Come by our booth and get a first look at it in-person!

The new pieces have started rolling in, and we’re super excited about them.

Awkward Moment Cards – Now you can start uncomfortable conversations for a more comfortable price – also marked down from $15.00 to $9.00, for a set of 5. Get them here.

Dow Jones Hanky – One thing’s for sure, the economy still ain’t what it used to be. Hence why you’re loving this sale, right?! Well our beloved Dow Jones Hanky has also just become a little more accessible, down from $28.00 to $16.80. The perfect gift for the stock-market watcher in your life, available here.

Happy holidays everyone!

Money To Burn candle, $9.00 each

Awkward Moment Cards, $9.00 for a set of 5

Dow Jones Hanky, $16.80 each

We’ve been long-time admirers of Adrian Buckmaster and Deity Delgado’s work. He’s the photographer, she’s the stylist and make-up artist, and the scenes they make are magical. A little while back, we interviewed Adrian about how he got into photography, and he told us his inspiring story. This season, as Design Glut just launched a few new products and we were in serious need of new photos, we finally had an opportunity to work with them. It was such an awesome experience in creative collaboration that I thought I’d share some of the behind-the-scenes here.

We didn’t have a real concept for the shoot in mind, and Adrian talked us through many options. Finally, from the fog of vague ideas, a concrete plan emerged. Adrian has done several shoots with painted backdrops that blur the line between fantasy and reality, which we love. He even paints the backdrops himself! Talk about multi-talented.

Inspired by Adrian’s paintings, as well as Edward Gorey’s drawings and Alice in Wonderland, we came up with the concept for a painted backdrop of a huge present. A few days later, Adrian sent back photos of his full-scale interpretation. We were thrilled! He actually painted part of the giant present on the floor of the set, so that when the camera is the correct angle, it looks completely 3-dimensional. Look at how the present appears to be popping off the wall where the backdrop meets the floor. SO FREAKING AWESOME.

The backdrop literally set the stage for the whole shoot, and created a magical, surreal world. Here are the final images, featuring Liz and Kegan with the Balloon Necklace, Vanity Bookmark, Jar Tile, Money To Burn Candle, and World Links Necklace. Enjoy!

Kickstarter is an amazing platform to fundraise for creative projects, and we’re currently running a campaign to make our new jewelry line. As of tonight, we’re at 53% of our goal with just 9 days left to go. Eep, nerve wracking! If you like these designs and support Design Glut, please pre-order now so we can stay in business and keep bringing you awesomeness in the future! Click the link to see even more designs from our new line, as well as all the great rewards we’re offering everyone who contributes.

Pre-order select designs from the new collection on Kickstarter.

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.

We believe it’s the role of creatives to start the uncomfortable conversations that cause people to grow.

“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.” – Timothy Ferriss

Inspired by the quote above, we challenged a group of designers to create something which provokes an uncomfortable yet important conversation. Participating designers were given complete freedom with the type of object they created, the materials they used, and the topic of the conversation they set out to provoke.

As a result, we have ended up with a wonderfully broad body of work – housewares and furniture, jewelry and fashion, graphics and video. Still, everything exhibited here has one thing in common: the desire to make you uncomfortable. It’s your turn to judge how well they succeed.

- Design Glut, Curators

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

Pinch Bracelet

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

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

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

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

How did you two meet?

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

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

Filament Necklace

So how did an architecture project transition into designing jewelry?

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

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

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

What were they made out of?

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

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

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

Radiolara Necklace

When did Nervous System become more than a side project?

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

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

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

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

Where do you hope for your company to head?

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

Radiolara Brooch

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

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

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

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

So how did you get the word out about your first product?

I designed the “Handful of Plates” when I was in school in Holland. The plates were already in the press in Europe a lot before I graduated. Then I approached a manufacturer, and he wanted to pick it up right away. It was really easy, because he’d already seen the product and he knew it.

What’s your impression of US vs. European design? We’ve been asking a few people this question now, and it always seems to be a real hot-button issue.

I guess there’s a difference because there’s a cultural difference. I don’t think design is something that Americans grow up with. We do grow up with it. Especially in Holland. It’s such a designed country, it’s almost ridiculous, from the tiles, to signage to lampposts, post office boxes etc. So it’s going to be different. There’s a taste-level difference, and there’s a difference in understanding proportions, color, etc. There are good American designers and there is good American design, but there is less than there could be.

I think mostly it’s the design education in the US. Anyone can get into design school here. I don’t feel like the bar is very high. And it’s a different type of education, because of the amount of money it costs.

That was something interesting which came up when we interviewed Robert Langhorn, who teaches at Pratt. He mentioned how students here feel they have a certain entitlement to passing classes, because they’re paying so much money to attend.

Right. Teachers in the US are too afraid they’re going to offend someone. I think the first thing you need to learn is that any commentary on your design is not personal. It’s about your work. If everyone took everything that someone said personally, no one would function in this world. You shouldn’t be offended about that kind of criticism. You usually kind of get pissed off for about a second, and then you let it go.

Also, it seems like students get the chance to learn to have their own signature work. The schools kind of say, “Now you’re going to learn this,” and “Now you’re going to learn that.” The schedules are so tight students are always in school. They never have time for themselves to really think about their projects. Schools are open 24/7, so there’s no discipline enforced. There are no points when the school or the shop closes, so you have to stop working. Students just go 24/7. Which doesn’t teach you work ethic. It becomes this 24/7 thing.

I know I work a lot, but there’s a point where you just have to stop. My husband Jan works from 9 to 6 and then he’s done. The brain turns off, and he’s off looking for food or thinking about soccer or something else than working. And that’s much more what we learn to do in Holland. We had to – our school would close. It might seem like a little thing, but you actually learn to think very rationally and very quickly. You’re more orderly. You maybe even come to better conclusions about your designs, since you’re not constantly in front of your work. By pulling away ideas come as well.

I’m going to segue that into another question I have: Do you have any advice for someone trying to strike out on their own and start a business?

Yeah. Be honest to yourself. Figure out if you can really do it. If you can really push yourself to work every day. Maybe try freelancing first, and see how that goes. If you’re going to start on your own, you need capital. Or you need to know you have freelance jobs that can support you. Little gigs here and there that have nothing to do with your own stuff.

Living off royalties is hard. You need a lot of royalties to make it work. Another way is to sell your own pieces. But that isn’t easy right away, either, because you need to invest first. A lot of people have this romantic idea of working for yourself. But it’s not really like that.

Yes, I think you learn that really quickly.

In a certain sense it is, because you do set your own schedule. But you still have to call people between 9 and 6. And we work with Europe a lot, so we need to get things out as early in our day as possible. Even though you’re on your own, you are still going to end up on a schedule.

You also have to be honest about if you really have the skills to work on your own. Figure out what you’re really good at, and what your signature is. What you do and what you don’t do. Maybe you do it all. But there is always a certain way in which you do things.

I think in order to compete, you have to have something that you can sell as your strength, something to set you apart from the crowd.

Not necessarily. I think some people have good enough connections and they do well even though their work is not that interesting. There are always things out there which don’t seem competitive. There are these moments when you don’t really agree that someone’s design is that interesting or that innovative, but you still see it everywhere. Some people are just really, really good business people. Then again it probably is good that I don’t always like everything out there, then I would have nothing to design anymore and it would seem even more useless to design more objects.

What has been your biggest success?

About three years ago, the rings took off, and basically my normal life as a designer was over. The rings gained a lot of momentum and are still going. The glasses are also doing really well, but I think the rings were more innovative at the time they came out.

You’ve worked with manufacturers and distributors, as well as manufacturing and distributing your products on your own. What do you see as the pros and cons of each route?

You learn a lot when you do your own distribution and manufacturing. I did everything for the rings myself. Because of that experience, when I work with companies now, I know what’s going on behind the scenes. Or what’s not going on… If you’ve never sold your own stuff, it’s harder to understand the different cultures and how people buy or don’t buy. Another thing is that even though a store might be so prestigious and great, they’re often hard to deal with.

At the same time, if you don’t have to learn these lessons and you find manufacturers for everything, and you’re happy with the way everything goes, then by all means go that route. The pro of working with a manufacturer is you don’t have to do anything, and you get royalties. The cons are that you might miss out on learning some things.

Can you give us any details about what’s on the horizon for you?

Well, more products are coming out for the Dutch company that did the Treehooked. They asked us to do some new pieces. As well as an older piece that has finally been taken into production by another company. More soon on that. And we’ve been asked to do an interior for Art Basel in Miami as well as 5th Avenue for Christmas. As well as possibly consulting for a Design Centre in NYC.