Black Collar Café

In the last 15 years, laptops and the internet have fueled a new generation of freelancers, telecommuters and entrepreneurs.  Many have turned to home offices, cafes and occasionally, executive suites, while they hammer away at the next Google, the next Amazon or the next TiVo.  While most love the freedom and flexibility of being on their own and being their own boss, some miss the camaraderie and creativity of an office environment.  Unfortunately there is large financial and logistical jump from the home/cafe space to leasing your own office, so a new school of thought is jumping in to fill that void, “coworking”. Deemed “a cooperative for the modern age” by the International Herald Tribune, coworking sites are cropping up around the country and across the globe.  These spaces are often outfitted with just the simplest of trappings, workers renting simple desks, WiFi connections and an almost mandatory caffeine source.  Armed with laptops and cellphones, this highly mobile workforce comes together to share ideas, talents and resources. Sound like something you’d be interested in? See if there is a coworking space near you. Different coworking sites offer different flavors, but the common ethos remains the same: a space where independents, entrepreneurs and creatives can assemble to stoke the flames of the next big idea.

Being in the image business, I’m always keeping an eye out for cutting edge work and spend a lot of time looking at other photographers’ work and new commercial campaigns coming down the pipe.  Often the most breathtaking work is met with a “How’d they do that!?!?!” and the answer in reality  is quite often “in post”.  Digital imaging retouching is an art-form all in itself, and I’ve stumbled across a great one in Christophe Huet. The site features plenty of great visuals, some of which you may recognize from recent campaigns, but one of the most engaging features is the Making Of section, featuring step-by-step illustrations of the different stages of the retouching process.  Fascinating.

I’m not one for urban living, I’d be left longing for greenspace that urban centers always have in short supply.  But even where space is not at a premium, I wish the thrust of today’s architecture more often focused where modern design intersects with efficient use of space, and smart.space by design firm Avro | Ko is brimming with plenty of both.

Adam Kalkin’s Quik House format has been adapted by Illy Cafe as a temporary installation, the Illy Cafe Push Button House, in NYC’s Time Warner Center for the month of December.  Formed from recycled shipping containers, modified to serve a higher purpose (hence “upcycling”), the one-off installation transforms at a push of a button to a fully-functioning, brilliantly designed cafe space in under 90 seconds.

Welcome to the FLOWmarket, a conceptual store created by Mads Hagstroem.  The FLOWmarket was created to showcase “scarcity goods, imbalances in the 3 FLOW dimensions (individual, collective and environmental flows) transformed in to physical products.” Sound weird? It is, but it’s also thought-provoking and the exhibit as a whole is rather fetching.  The site is quite interesting, but try to catch the exhibit at one of it’s installations worldwide.

I read a lot of magazines, probably too many. To the point that it’s a separate line on my Schedule C. I really enjoy British mags, there’s something about British writing that is far superior to their American counterparts. Maybe it’s the slightly wider world view, not being the world’s 500 pound gorilla. I happened across a new one recently while walking through Dulles, Monocle. Official tagline is “Briefings on global affairs, business, design and culture,” all brought to you by Wallpaper founder Tyler Brulé. Pick it up (if you can find it) and take a read.

Something that caught my attention today…

excerpted from Arena Magazine, penned by Andrew Mueller

“It would be a worthwhile, and overdue, maneuver for people to disdain most things they’re encouraged to regard as fun, and experiment instead with such disregarded virtues as probity, courtesy and application. It might actually make them happy.

For the wretched reality of the hedonist, invariably, is the they’re attention-seekings dickheads who want everyone to believe they’re having an enviably fantastic time, in order to compensate for the loneliness and boredom eating them alive from the inside.

The solution is not the imposition of a regime of Cromwellian abstemiousness - however appealing that may seem as one trudges through the wreckage of a Friday night in any high street. It is, rather, a collective discovery of the fact that having things, be they flat-screen televisions or prolific sex lives, does not engender a fraction of the satisfaction of doing things, or making things. Anything great human beings have done has been an act of creation, not consumption.

Though few corporations would profit from encouraging people to write things, build things, learn things, think of things, accomplish things - or failing all that, to sit around quietly with friends and discuss stuff- the challenge of confronting the ennui we sublimate in idiotic distractions is worth rising to. Living for today only increases the likelihood of tomorrow being just as bloody awful.”

I like Denmark. I like Scandinavia in general. (full disclosure: I’ve never spent a winter there, that might temper my affection) I’ll probably end up writing a lot about scandinavian design. I was in CPH this summer and stopped in on Hotel Fox for a few days. They gave 60 young artists complete creative control over each of the 60 rooms. Wild results…and a restaurante that pairs menus with…wait for it…cocktails. What’s not to like? A great hotel in a great city. Another solid find from Tablet Hotels, I’m rarely dissapointed. Make travel fun again.

Working long hours can be tedious, at least now you can do it in style…with maybe a goldfish to keep you company. Welcome to MILK.

Black Collar Worker (BCW) | n. blak col•lar werk•er | - an offspring of the white collar realm and a member of the not-starving-artist class. Always clad in requisite black shirt, black trousers, and iPod, the Black Collar Worker is educated in the arts and the art of the deal. Profession: advertising, architecture, design, marketing, photography, PR, the BCW prefers the 9pm-5am over the 9am-5pm.