This. This will change the cycling world. I’ve long been complaining about the poor helmet options out there, especially for ladies. It’s hard to find the correct size and most people don’t even wear them correctly. It’s just dump design, period, with crap decoration on top of it. As if ladies must be enticed to wear helmets that have been feminized with some girly version of the logo (looking at you, Bern) or some child-like floral pattern, it’s patronizing and insulting. Smacks of dudes designing for what they think all women want, without actually bothering to ask any of us. But the invisible bike helmet is not about vanity, it’s just a better solution to the whole problem. By designers Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin, there’s 7+ years of research and funding that have gone into the project, which I hope will continue to grow. Right now it retails for $600 which isn’t exactly accessible and if it gets deployed then you need to buy new one (though I would imagine insurance would cover this cost), but fingers crossed this will change as word spreads. Seriously, watch the video if you haven’t already. It will take your breath away.

Via Swissmiss.

Interface Inspiration from 37signals on Vimeo.

These dudes are so brilliant it really grates my cheddar. I can’t wait to look for my own interface inspiration in real world objects. I wish more web designers would do things like this, I’m bored by the huge portions of the web that are just remixes of the same tired layouts.

Via Signal Vs. Noise.

Gush, gush, gush, awesome unicorns and sprinkles, gushing inspiration overload, tasty beer, hot dogs, gush. My brain is a mush of gush. I expected to have a blast of course, but I didn’t expect to be absolved of all my design angst and stress about what I do. I lost all of that and the desire to make took its place, which is priceless. Too bad we can’t go to these things all the time so this feeling never has to wear off! If you go to no other design festivals next year, make it WMC Fest. Come as you are learning & inspiration is the best kind if you ask me. Plus I can’t emphasize the cheap factor enough, best bang for your buck in living memory.

+ Gear, cards, and many Tattlys from the likes Jennifer Daniel, James White, Vaughn Fender, Joseph Hughes, To The Moon Studios, and Tuesday Bassen. Somehow I missed out on the festivale goody bag though, whoops. I did pick up the ticket for it, but I promptly lost it and got distracted by awesomeness at every turn so I never remembered to go back. Ditto for the photo booth too.

+ If you live in the Kent area you have to go to Hollo’s Papercraft. Man, what I wouldn’t give to have a place like this closer to Chicago. Aisles upon aisles of delicious papers, materials, party gear, art supplies at super duper prices. Same goes for Cleveland’s thrifting, I hear it’s some of the finest. We did stop at the used office supply shop on Detroit Avenue near the festival & found a few goodies. That’s where I found the wooden pushpins for $1!

+ Great talks over all, but there were a couple of designers who gave real estate tours of their work. I guess it bears repeating once again, you shouldn’t only show your portfolio when giving a talk. I know how to use google dudes, I can look your work up if I want to. Doing this is a lot like a looking at slides from someone else’s vacation; it’s boring after 10 minutes. Interspersing fart jokes between slides is cute at first, but it’s a crutch and doesn’t add any depth. Up your game. Plus, winging it up there is insulting to the speakers like me who lost more than a little sleep and a few tears while putting our talks together. Bravado is crap on stage. Bring the real, please.

+ Happy Dog has better hot dogs than all of Chicago (ok, almost, Hot Doug’s excluded).

+ I was sad that so many people left early! I know, I know extenuating circumstances blah-de-blah, they do happen. But unless you’re Austin Kleon with a pre-scheduled cross-country book tour or a similar airtight alibi I find it hard to buy other reasons for leaving early. Trekking all the way there only to miss out on learning is like cutting school at recess. Kate Bingaman-Burt’s final keynote brought the house down with a full standing ovation, I wouldn’t have missed that if you paid me. And in fact, I lost billable hours because this meant I had to take Monday off as well, but don’t care, worth it. This holds especially true for speakers & the designers who were displaying work. If you got a free pass to the conference or an honorarium for attending, you better bend over backward to attend everything you can.

+ Cleveland streetwear brand iLTHY blogged some of the street style from the fest, look how we love polka dots!

+ Jen Myers‘ talk on women developers was enlightening. Especially because it stirred quite the rumor mill, which is sign she gave a great talk. Engaging rumors online is a messy business, and generally not worth addressing, but in short, a few bros said her talk was nonsense and women don’t face discrimination when it comes to design or development. OH HA HA HA. HA. HA. Are we still here discussing this? Really? It’s actually probably better that I didn’t hear these things in person because I would not have been able to resist sticking my neck out. I wonder if this was stated in male-only company too. Pfffft. If you can’t or don’t say your opinion in front of the people you’re knocking it means you’re not giving us the chance to refute, and that right there is active discrimination. Congrats on proving that this inequity exists one more time.

+ Other people I got to hang out with who didn’t speak: Veronica & Beth Corzo-Duchardt, Jacqui Oakley & Poly Studio, Caroline Sewell, Jessi Arrington, Jason James, Troy DeShano, Mikey Burton, Fringe Focus, Max Temkin, Nick D, Jana Kinsman, Elaine Chernov, Mig Reyes & Kik McNally and all the rest of amazing Chicago designers who came and offered their support. It gave me much courage seeing so many friends in the audience while I was talking.

+ Finally a HUGE, huge thank you to Joseph Hughes & Jeff Finley for organizing this and giving me the chance to take the stage. You obviously know how to throw it down. It’s no small thing to create so much community motivation. You are the very heart of Cleveland.

+ Now for the trickier next step: recapping my actual talk. I said some important things and I want to make sure that even the people who went get a chance to take it in. Stay tuned!! It’s in the works, hopefully with video.

Other than the thinly-veiled hint or two, I’ve neglected to properly mention that (spoiler alert) I’m speaking at Weapons of Mass Creation in Cleveland this June. Further details about the event are still pretty murky at the moment, like uh, what exactly is going to come out of my mouth for the duration of 30 minutes (my vote’s on puppies!). And/or how Chad & I are getting there…At the moment it’s hard to say much else other than, hell yes, this is happening. And I’m really excited and trying my very best not to think about just how many awesome people are coming. (Real talk: it’s enough to make my brain melt. Go look at the line-up if you need more convincing.)

Every year there’s a fresh crop of conferences and seminars all touting to be the Awesomest Event to End All Events (at least since last year!). Most seem a bit grandiose like a traveling circus Freak Show promising thrills of the the century. It’s sometimes hard to believe they’ll really be so amazing, especially since most of them come with price tags that would make the world’s fattest lady seem small. That’s what’s so special about WMC Fest though, it’s as grassroots as they come. Huge effort has been poured into making it one of the most diverse design conferences around (did you check the line-up yet?) making it the type of high brow event that also manages to be come-as-you-are.

WMC takes this grassroots idea to genius with a sponsorship campaign on Kickstarter. It’s nicely produced and doesn’t feel sales-y. It’s just giving people another way to share in event, a small sense of ownership, even if they can’t go. Crowd-sourcing at its best right there, more funds for the funs. Might as well back the project if you’re thinking of going. Pledging $50 comes with the 3-day festival pass. You just bought your ticket in and made some people really freaking happy in the process, WIN!

If you’re already going, speak up and say hey would you! I can’t promise to bring puppies, but there are promises of awesome anyway, that I do know.

Oh, my dears. I’ve missed you. Thank you for being patient with me during my extended quietness here. I’ve been experimenting with my schedule & my billable hours, trying to find a better structure & schedule so I can bring home both the bacon and the blog. It’s been a tough process. And I’m slowly working out a re-design. This site’s been the same for almost four years now and I think that is a major part of my reluctance to write. The internet is different now than when I first created this site and doing some restructuring around here will do a lot in terms of re-investing my time. Never fear, I’m never going to pull the plug entirely, having a growing internet presence is too important to me personally & too important in terms of growing my business for that.

It’s funny, this process is so specific and personal. It’s like a ritual of sorts. I’ve been thinking a lot about the rituals of making things ever since my friend Vaughn Fender asked me to participate in the ninth issue of his online magazine, Peculiar Bliss. The theme of which is creative rituals. I didn’t even really think about what mine were until this topic came up, but now I can’t stop, and in some ways that’s kept me from producing here. Navel-gazing has diminishing returns after while…So here I am, consider this me getting over it. Jumping back in again, with a bang.

Vaughn’s done a lengthy interview with me on my process, background, and yes my rituals. The article also includes a whole bunch of my work that’s never been published anywhere, and my friend Julia Stotz was kind enough to take all the pictures of me. Ellen Hunter of Word Couture Consulting made sure I did my commas and grammar right. I owe major thanks to them for their hard work, you’re only as good as your fellow collaborators and these kids really threw down. Thank you friends, from the bottom of my heart.

Flip through the digital pages on ISSUU, Cargo Collective, or PDF. My piece starts on page 17, and there is plenty of other gorgeous illustration and photography on either side of the article as well. If you can take a few minutes to kick back and take this in, inspiration is sure to follow.

Have an excellent Friday! Next week is going to be a doozy over here. We’re talking WMC Fest, stories from our trip to Detroit, and a giveaway – which I never do, but this one is a unique one so I don’t think you’ll mind. :-)

It’s good to be back.

I didn’t think Pinterest was for me until one of my oldest friends, one who knows me better than almost anybody, called me out for not using it. As in, you’re crazy for not taking advantage of this resource…

That was six weeks ago and already it’s grown my traffic by a measurable amount (thanks, analytics). Better still, Pinterest – currently one of the fastest growing sites in the world – ranks as my #3 traffic source, right after organic google searches and direct visits. Pinterest is also ad-free at the moment, though there is the occasional and unintrusive sponsored/for sale pin. On Pinterest, there isn’t obsessive self-broadcasting and self-documentation; it’s just about curating and collecting cool stuff. The tone is more “isn’t this awesome?” rather than “look what I had for lunch.”

My friend, she was right.

Yet, I can’t unplug my brain from the rest of the negativity surrounding Pinterest. Snide pie charts mocking women who use Pinterest, wisecracks and reassertions against Pinterest are regularly cropping up in my feeds, and tech analysts and the media (Reuters + AOL, MSN Money) sure as heck don’t know what to make of the women flocking to this tool. And, as we know about online culture, these types of things can easily trigger and rapidly escalate to a place that is counterproductive. I’ve been watching this unravel, doing nothing with the hope it will blow over. I’m not doing nothing now.

Scoping out Pinterest’s home page, I totally understand the backlash. The topic is the day’s most popular content, pulled out of the context of that user’s particular stream. There’s no theme or structure otherwise. Individually, they aren’t inherently bothersome and most likely represent only a fraction of a user’s tastes. But put them together and collectively they are a hot mess of confusion, which doesn’t reflect the real experience of actually using the site, nor the amount of depth it offers. Instead it reads like a Barbie doll or a Cathy comic: exaggerated, out of proportion, and not indicative of reality. This makes it all too easy for the casual visitor to swiftly make their exit without need of return. Ew, indeed.

Still, every social network has its turn-offs. None is perfect; all have flaws and breakages. But it’s as though Pinterest must be bulletproof in order for it to be taken seriously. Which is silly. If any start-up waited until they were fully formed to launch and build users, there wouldn’t be any of them! That’s simply not how start-up culture works.

All of this boils down to the core idea that the site is somehow less worthwhile because women got to it first. It’s as if Pinterest needs a tagline: “No, really, it’s NOT just for women!” This conversation wouldn’t be happening if Pinterest’s early adopters were dudes, no doubt. Who knows if it would even still exist if Ben Silbermann & his team hadn’t decided to offer the first batch of invites to female design bloggers. Yet, he did and – stop the presses – it’s a big stinking deal because it’s never occurred to the world that a group of women can be early adopters of a technology. And as history tells us, women-folk bucking trends always seems to ruffle feathers.

Sure, Pinterest is dominated by women’s interests right now. Who says the site can’t grow and change? Who says there aren’t some open-minded guys out there who are willing to wade past the make-up tutorials and cupcake food porn to balance the playing field? Curating and sharing content is clearly not a behavior that will go away anytime soon, who knows, maybe Pinterest will fade into the background as similar sites like Gimme Bar and Dropmark emerge. (Both are still in beta, which means they are exclusive, still developing features, and can’t even begin to touch Pinterest’s growth yet.)

I don’t even really care how it plays out, I just don’t want it to be segregated and I don’t want to feel like I have to justify using a tool that is so obviously working for me & many others. Use it or don’t use it, but ragging on what doesn’t work for you is pretty declassé if you ask me. Capisce? Good. Now, how’s about we get back to getting inspired, making stuff, and sharing stuff shall we?

–
Like the eye candy? Well, there’s plenty more, I don’t think I need to tell you where. #1 is Tangerine Dream by Jim Lambie, pinned by Chloé Douglas of Plenty of Color, #2 is a vintage tattoo, pinned by My Love For You, #3 is vintage buttons pinned by Christen Carter.

Thanks to Elizabeth Giorgi at The Mary Sue for inspiring this and supplying many of the sources. And also to Kate Singleton for directing my attention to this in the first place. Hugs + high fives, sisters.