observations of a color-loving Brooklyn designer
Something about working around all these digital masterminds at Studiomates has me going analog, as in cutting and pasting using actual scissors and glue. Of course I scan it all back into the computer so it really is digital in the end, but the process of pushing paper with my fingers instead of a mouse is fun! It feels like recess!
Studiomates + Muppets = Studiomuppets (or S’muppets for short).
It’s one of my fondest hopes to one day be walking down the street and pass a Muppet… on his way to work, or band practice, or where ever Muppets like to go. And upon seeing this Muppet, I simply smile and nod because passing a Muppet is NO BIG DEAL. They’re just here, among us. I believe with Muppets around, we would never run out of friendship, acceptance, music, laughter, or color. That’s the kind of world I want to live in.
The closest I’ve come to this, thus far, is to encourage my friends to dress as if they were Muppets. These are photos from the Friday before Halloween (or “Halloween Beer Friday” in Studiomates terms). The fact that I’m friends with people willing to so readily pretend to be Muppets means I must already live in a world where some pretty serious awesomeness abounds.
Vroom vroom.
I’ve been married for five years. Officially. As of yesterday. To commemorate the occasion, I purchased a poster of this image. It’s super heros of design Charles and Ray Eames. On a motorcycle.
Like Charles and Ray, Creighton and I both live and work together, yet the most fulfilling and intimate thing we do is create together. We are currently working on a new project. A side project, if you will. A personal one about our biggest passions. And it’s one of the most exciting endeavors I’ve embarked upon. Ever. (Yep, I drank bourbon at dinner. And yep, I’m pretty in love.)
You can read more about our relationship in this interview with iDsgn.
Happy Anniversary to Creighton! Happy Anniversary to me! I try not to take a single day for granted.
Creighton and I spent our morning with a documentary recommended by our friend Rachel: The Gleaners and I. Made by Agnès Varda around 2000, it’s French and quirky. It’s also insightful as hell.
Working with simple hand-held equipment and flirting with themes of love and mortality, Agnès traverses her country to examine the concept of gleaners, those who walk the fields after a harvest to salvage and make use of what’s left behind. The painting that inspired her journey is from 1857, but it’s the modern-day accounts of people who are still gleaning that really get you thinking about how much we waste. These intrepid souls don’t let grapes rot on the vine or copper tubing from old TVs go to the landfill. No way! And that’s a source of great pride for many modern-day gleaners.
We savored having Agnès introduce us to all these beautiful characters who can’t fathom why anyone would let good things be turned to trash. One particulary touching portrait was of a man with a master’s degree who chooses to eat what’s discarded from Paris’s bakeries and street markets while he works without pay to teach immigrants to read. And we loved her intimate portraits of artists who are inspired to work with ordinary, every-day discarded items.
As someone trying to understand her own obsession with nothing-new, this was a morning well spent. Nothing I’ve watched to date has gotten closer to the psychology of one person’s trash as another’s treasure. It’s treasure that provides, for some, the will to live, and for others, the ability to live as they choose.
It’s on Netflix Watch Instantly. I recommend wathing it. Instantly.
After spending the morning with Agnès and her friends, I couldn’t help but think of another documentary recently in theaters, Bill Cunningham New York. Bill has been photographing the style of the streets of New York for decades, and in this documentary, at age 84, he still takes off on his bike, wearing the functional blue smocks he purchases at the hardware store, and gets to it. Watch the documentary and you’ll marvel at the contrast between the complexity of his work and the modest simplicity of his lifestyle. He lives in what basically amounts to a closet with a cot because he’d rather have artistic freedom than money. Money, he explains, always has strings attached.
At the end of this one, you’ll want to hug everyone you see. You’ll thank goodness for the sheer knowledge that such a “happy and nice man” (as Roger Ebert put it) is able to not only exist but find his place in this crazy world.
Yesterday was about observing and absorbing. Today was about distilling and imagining. This evening, that was about reporting…
Each of the four Alabama Design Summit studios participated in a Pecha Kucha presentation tonight, and the results were inspiring. Our group chose to not only sum up the personal experience of our studio in working to solve for Alabama’s Nature Deficit Disorder, but to also attempt to capture the collective experience of what it means to be a part of this prototype in what will hopefully become a long line of Design for Good events.
We defined the problem and relayed our impressions, but we also chose to discuss Hope, Excitement, and a little something extra.
I have to make at least two trips to Mississippi per year: the first correlates with my mom’s loving demand for my presence at Christmas, and the second, for the past 10 years since I’ve lived in New York, has been related to the weddings and first borns of my best friends from elementary, junior-high, high-school and college (this sounds like a lot of different people, but when you’re me, it’s actually the same four fabulous ones). What to do now that they’re all married and well onto their second and third child?
Head South for some designin’!
You know what they say… It’s all fun and games until somebody tackles a major social issue.
Let me start by saying I’m in love with Yoxi. Yoxi (pronounced YO-see as in “YO, you gotta SEE this!”) is an organization creating competitions where teams get formed, solutions get found, fun gets had and change gets made. Check out how it works. Their last competition was based on the idea of reinventing fast food, and now, MUCH to my utter delight, they’ve turned their attention to trimming the waste of fashion. This is SO up my ally that when they asked me to speak at a Lower East Side party designed to promote this competition, I felt morally, ethically and nothing-new-wearingly obligated to get involved.
Ever wonder the origin of the phrase “take it with a grain of salt?” I recently did a bit of research* (meaning I Googled it), and here’s what I found out…
It originated in the first century with Pliney the Elder. Pliney led an amazing life, and he had a real knack for writing.** He wrote a great deal about philosophy and natural history. One of the subjects he wrote about was poison, for it seems that back in Ole’ Pliny’s day, a good deal of one’s energy was devoted to avoiding death by poison. Maybe it was poison slipped to you via some enemy, or maybe it was poison delivered via some piece of undercooked meat. Either way, dealing with poison must have been a fairly regular occurrence because Pliney had his own tried and true concoction to protect against this. He wrote:
Take two dried walnuts, two figs, and twenty leaves of rue; pound them all together, with the addition of a grain of salt; if a person takes this mixture fasting, he will be proof against all poisons for that day.
If I’m understanding this correctly, according to Pliney, if we grind the recommended nuts, figs and leaves together and take them on an empty stomach along with that magic grain of salt, we’ll be safe. Maybe it’s because it was the final ingredient, or maybe it’s because it seems so bizarrely precise that a single grain of anything could have an impact, but it’s the grain of salt we reference when we want a metaphor for protecting ourselves from any sentiment that could damage us, intentionally or not. It’s a fair warning, passed on to us through centuries of collective human wisdom, that what we say to each other can do just as much damage as poison, and that we might want to inoculate ourselves. It’s a reminder to take stock and make sure our priorities are straight and our convictions are internalized before considering another’s opinion. It’s quite likely the advice isn’t meant to do harm, but just because someone’s not an enemy doesn’t mean their sentiments aren’t careless or simply “undercooked.”
Maybe you’ve already seen this, but for the official Lucky So And So record, here’s my Talk about buying nothing new and the life lessons it’s provided me (in exactly 5 minutes and 25 seconds). I gave this on March 3, 2011 at TEDActive as a part of TEDYou, which is where conference attendees get to submit an idea for their own short Talk, and if selected, present on stage. I learned over 100 attendees submitted their ideas, and I seem to remember about 30 presentations. Being selected was accomplishment enough for me, and I NEVER expected my Talk to actually make it onto TED.com!
How does one learn their Talk is going live on the homepage of TED.com, a site visited by something like three-quarters of a million people daily? Well, I can only tell you my story…
Alternate titles for this post: Less Hang Ups and More Finishing or I Probably Owe You a Thank You Note or A Long Post on Perfectionism
I’m a perfectionist.
I know, I know that sounds sexy, doesn’t it? The word “perfect” is right there at the front of it. But much like being a super taster isn’t super (there’s no cape involved), being a perfectionist is not about actually being perfect. It’s more about the fear that nothing you do is ever going to be good enough. What “good enough” really means is unclear but that doesn’t keep you from obsessing over being it. Symptoms include stress, procrastination, stress over the procrastination, sense of worthlessness, sense of guilt, extreme sense of guilt over the sense of worthlessness, denial, zoning out, moodiness, hyper-distractability (wait, I think I see something shiny over there that has the potential to be be perfect), a special kind of passive agressivity that is only acceptable when directed at people who love you most, and stress.
My perfectionism means that if something I’m working on can’t be really super amazing, then I often end up deciding I’d rather just give up. Though “deciding” isn’t the right word. You don’t really “decide” not to finish a term paper. You just write and rewrite and start over again until you miss the deadline and then the extended deadline and end up with an “I” for incomplete. Sometimes I give up on things in the middle, and sometimes I give up before I even start. Are you thinking that it makes more sense to finish something and have it be average rather than not finish at all? I’d have to agree, but being a perfectionist is not about being rational. It’s about having a voice in my head; it’s a mean voice and it berates me for not being better. Oh you nasty, nasty Voice. That voice has almost kept this post from happening at least four separate times over the course of five days. Sometimes the Voice comes with its own series of chastising images…
