What Makes a Great Tea Shop
Recently, the tea shop up the street, the only tea shop of its kind in Austin, closed down its brick and mortar shop and is focusing its efforts online. I was surprised by my own mix of emotions: vexation and a lack of confidence in the owners’ commitment to running a successful tea shop and […]
Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose
I just watched a great TED talk from 2009 where Dan Pink makes the case for better models of incentives & punishments. This is helpful to understand. But the really interesting part is how leadership teams, business owners and entrepreueneurs implement it. Pink shows that traditional carrot & stick modes don’t work for out-of-the-box creative […]
Why Magazines are still relevant
I’m trying to decide which magazines (if any) I would like to subscribe to. But with shelves full of back issues of Vogue, Lucky and Azure magazine that I just can’t throw away, I wonder if this is the best use of money and space. After all, Google Reader provides way more content to […]
Copy-cat “Look and Feel”
I’m searching for the nearest health foods store and I find a shop called GNC which looks uncomfortably similar to GMC So my question is, Why would the health foods store want to emulate the look & feel of the branding for GMC, one of the largest, well-known car manufacturers in the world? Or was […]
The Potential of Pinterest
A friend and I were discussing our mutual love for and activity on Pinterest. The funny thing was that her experience to the site was limited to a mobile app and mine to a ‘desktop’ web experience. So, our experience and perspectives were quite unique. She showed me how she scrolls through images of pins from people […]
Case Study: Designing at Boarding School
My experience with a small international school in the NL started one cold November day in 2010. My husband (a teacher) was invited to have a chat about their opening in the English department and they hoped to recruit the pair of us as houseparents a struggling boarding house. Many discussions later, we agreed to […]
Can I move anywhere I want?
I’ve just returned from a fabulous year abroad in Europe and am trying to decide in which city I’ll be planting roots for awhile. In an article in the paper this morning I was reminded again of how promising Austin’s job market was and how resistant to unemployment it’s been during this recession (6.9%). But […]
Is Art/Design School for me? Advice for prospective students
A friend called me to ask about her daughter pursing a BFA in photography as a “major” change in her education. She’s unhappy with taking photojournalism at a liberal arts college and is “not a very good student”. Should she look into art school instead? she asks. I believe my answer to her is relevant […]
While browsing for new furniture…
What a clever and lively way to communicate “warehouse/shipping” for the Find us page. You make my design heart happy, vitra!
What if: America’s Top Graphic Designer
I’ve been catching up on my Project Runway (the season that happened while I was planning my wedding) and feeling quite inspired. Inspired that due to my youth, I’m more risk-tolerant and able to learn through failure. Thankful that I’ve been able to live my dream and go to school and be mentored under some […]