Hasta La Ideas

pimg src=http://www.productdose.com/images/products/draft_5155.gif
alt= //ppfont face=arial,helvetica,sans-serif size=2I keep thinking about replacing my backpack for a messenger bag. It’s been a few years now and I still can’t bring myself to toss my trusty Jansport. I think I’ll wait a little longer. As handsome as this jacquard fabric lined interior bag is it’s not enough to dash my piggy bank upon the rocks of style. (I had to look up jacquard for this one. Had no idea how intricate the weaving process is. The threading of a Jacquard loom is so labor intensive that many looms are threaded only once.)br //font/p

Design Glut who recently wrote the Insiders Guide to the New York Gift Fair for core caught up with Jan van der Lande of Kikkerland to get the background on how they started and more importantly, how to get such a company to carry your design product.

How do you pick new products to represent?

It has to fit the Kikkerland image. What we really do is take ordinary products and utensils that people use and give a contemporary twist to them. Most of the time designers come to us with a design they’ve created. If it fits with what we’re doing in a certain section of the company (Home, Kitchen, Bar, Toy, etc…), and we think it’s something new and different, then we take it on.

What is your advice for designers that would like to approach you with an idea?

Learn as you go, and try to visit as many trade shows as possible. A lot of times designers just sit at home and get so wrapped up in their work. They don’t realize that they’re working on something that’s already been thought of, or maybe even already put into production. If they knew the market and saw what was already out there, they would be more cutting edge.

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If you’re not a subscriber to Fast Company magazine, I wanted to call your attention to a terrific article in this month’s issue “Six Tools to Help Tackle Overflowing Email” by Robert Scoble.

Five of the tips are exclusively for Outlook users. Since I don’t use Outlook, I haven’t been looking at tips for this system as I work my way through my 2009 new year’s resolution. However, I know that many of our readers are on Microsoft systems and could greatly benefit from Scoble’s advice:

If I were going to recommend only one tool, ClearContext (clearcontext.com; free for personal use, $90 per seat for project management) offers the most immediate productivity gains. The Outlook add-on looks at who you’re replying to and how often, then automatically prioritizes the messages. It color-codes the most pressing ones, graying out mass emails.

The article even provided some insight for us non-Outlooker users:

As much as I like these tools, the best way to improve your email experience is to follow the advice I gave those Cisco employees: Take some conversations elsewhere. If you need to write a press release or a report, and 10 other people need to modify or approve it, you’re much better off using an online word-processing tool such as Google Docs or Adobe’s Buzzword. One email invites everyone to join the collaborative workspace, then everyone can make changes or leave notes on the document itself. No revision tracking. No full inbox.

Thank you to reader Laura for first bringing this gem to our attention.

Patrick O’Brien is an independent filmmaker. He created The Patrick O’Brien Foundation in 2006 to raise awareness for ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) and his movie about battling the disease. 100% of the proceeds from this collection will be donated to The Patrick O’Brien Foundation to help raise the finishing funds for Patrick’s film documenting his battle with ALS.

Check out the shirts here.

pimg src=http://www.productdose.com/images/products/draft_5156.gif
alt= //ppWe’ve all had those lapses. When we lean too far one way and catastrophe occurs. The burst chair from a href=http://www.olivertilbury.com/Oliver Tibury/a helps you save face, and bum, by having so many legs you’ll always have a leg to sit on. Sort of the poor man’s insurance. Necessity is the mother of invention. Especially in these hard times. |via a href=http://szymon.tumblr.com/post/39780729/oliver-tilburyInspire/a|br //p