A throw back to the good ‘ole days of design school. I orchestrated a 2 hour charette for our production gurus along with F O R M O’s new Intern Intern (Angela) on Monday. Within that compressed time frame they were to concept new ideas for the DPS luxury  bags. The bags are a billboard for the brand and are utilized predominately in PR events to holster DPS property specific media such as books and brochures along with take-aways and gifts.

Afterwards, they posted their ideas onto the conference room wall and presented them to the entire team. I was very impressed and quite happy with the results. They questioned sizes, materials and colors and arrived at a range of ideas from complex and colorful to simple and elegant.  It warms my heart to know that a good charette still works wonderfully-Nice work!

I am very excited about this new Alpha project from Mozilla Labs. I just started using Ubiquity and the possibilities are very exciting. The ability to write new commands seems fairly straight forward so I can really imagine a very large library to subscribe to as the project grows. The below video is a great overview of the idea.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Working from a home studio has its advantages. This morning it took the form of a brilliant red/orange dragonfly that landed on the fig tree just outside my window. Mad dash to get the camera, makeshift tripod of a ladder, tin box and towel and I was able to capture this shot with my Nikon D5 / SIGMA DG 70-300mm lens. Thought I’d share.

I recently had a gallery reception at Tag Gallery in Santa Monica. This gallery is a collection of about 40 artists and not only provides an opportunity to show your work, but it is a great source of inspiration and collaboration. Each artist is responsible for their own show; from the signage on the windows to the hanging of the work to the mailing of invites. The gallery director drives PR and marketing support while the members all donate their time throughout the year for reception hosting and gallery sitting. I think it is a great example of how a community-based network of individuals can work towards the collective good of the group. Similar to what has happened with musicians leveraging the power of their fan base, vs. letting the labels dictate the when, where, how and what of their work. Not to mention a much more favorable split between artist and gallery, musician and label.