 | It’s a Fashion Week frenzy and the celebs are out on a style hunt! Recently at London Fashion Week, some of the globe’s hottest and most fashionable female stars came to see London’s latest runway shows and showed up to show off their own impeccable style.
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We all have our methods for remembering to-do items — Mark Forster’s lined to-do list system, David Allen’s Getting Things Done, notifications on Google calendar, etc. — and these methods work as long as you use them consistently. Every six to eight months, I try out a new method to see if it works better for me than the last. And, after a couple days of using the new method, I usually make a few additions and subtractions and switch out components from other methods that I like better.
After years of auditioning the most popular to-do management methods (and a few obscure methods, as well), I’ve found that it’s incredibly obvious which methods are likely to be helpful and which ones are duds. For a method to be good at actually getting me to do my work, it has to have the following components:
When you are creating or adopting your perfect method for completing to-do items, keep these best practices in mind. Also, know what features are important to you and your work. If you must have a to-do list that can be shared with others, then add “sharing” to your list of best practices. Whatever method you use, be sure it’s the right method for you and that you keep using it.
Like this site? Buy Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week from Amazon.com today.
Regular readers will remember Chris Doyle’s Personal Identity Guidelines project from last year. His new work has a pop at a host of designer clichés
This Year I Will Try Not To is a collaboration with fellow designer Elliott Scott and was, the pair say, “born out of frustration, complacency and laziness. Most designers are seduced by design trends. They’re easy to appropriate, and even easier to imitate. The challenge is to innovate. To be new. We decided the best (and most enjoyable) approach was to identify and document the most common trends we felt we had to avoid. Before long we found ourselves with a checklist of DON’Ts and a new aim: to try to be new. We may fail, but we will try.”
In a series of set-ups, Doyle promises to avoid various clichés of designer life. The format itself conforms to current trends – it’s a loose-bound newsprint booklet with tastefully muted pallette and centred upper case type.
And, as a sly dig at himself, Doyle even promises that he will not “produce self-focused, inward looking, promotional work, for the sole purpose of industry recognition”.
And it has the obligatory Vimeo ‘making-of’ film
This Year I Will Try Not To is available here. Check out Michael Johnson’s feature for CR on why designers feel the need to put themselves at the centre of their work
Thanks to copywriter Mike Reed for Tweeting us about the project.
Speaking of the High Line and Michael Van Valkenburgh, although lots of cities have toyed with the idea of doing their own version of the incredibly popular New York, down and out-turned-destination experiment, like San Francisco with their Bay Bridge Park pie-in-the-sky ideas, Seattle wins the prize for not only trying to duplicate that model, but hiring one of the firms that put it into place. It’s been announced that James Corner Field Operations has beaten out Valkenburgh (along with two other firms) and won the commission as lead designer behind the city’s plan to develop and revitalize its central waterfront area (along with a team of other design firms, including the New York firm SHoP, which was brought into the Atlantic Yards fray last year). Although more landscape-based than building new buildings, for a city that’s sometimes been chided for being a little boring on the architectural front, despite its various efforts to the contrary, it’s a fantastic step in the right direction. Here’s a description of the project from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
The state Transportation Department plans to replace the aging viaduct with a deep-bore tunnel beneath downtown. After the viaduct is torn down, civic leaders envision developing a world-class waterfront with open public spaces, a tree-lined boulevard, and maybe beaches from which to launch kayaks or fly kites. The canvas will be more than nine acres of new public space along the shoreline and new Alaskan Way boulevard from King Street to Elliott and Western Avenues. It has potential to connect a chain of Seattle icons: Pike Place Market; the Seattle Aquarium; Pioneer Square; the sports stadiums and the Olympic Sculpture Park.
You can download James Corner’s firm’s Powerpoint presentation about the project, here (warning: it’s around 100meg).
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
 | Planning and organizing aren’t exactly gifts I was born with, but over the years I’ve figured out a few ways to trick my brain into believing that it enjoys calendars, painstakingly labeled document files, and tidy, well organized spaces. My secret? My calendars, planners, folders, pens, even my paperclips, all have to be colorful, chic and completely adorable. Seriously. Give me an awesome, leather bound planner and a hot pink Sharpie, and I will go nuts writing out my to-do lists and plotting family member’s birthdays throughout the year.I suppose I am a bit of an office supplies magpie, if you will. Some girls go nuts for diamonds, but Moleskine 18 Month Weekly Planners are this girl’s best friend. With students heading back to school and the new year rapidly approaching, now is the time to start getting organized! This has to be one of my favorite times of the year… when I am able to flip back through my weekly planner and see over a years worth of doodles, attended events and colorful checked-off to-do lists that make me feel oh-so accomplished. Even better? I get to start shopping for my 2011 calendar. I’ve been perusing the web and have found quite a few planners and journals (sometimes not having dates on the page can be ideal for never ending to-do lists) that tickle my fancy. Click through the slideshow and let me know which is your favorite! |
Une belle conception des bureaux imaginé par le studio Sprikk pour l’agence de conseil Yanno, basé à Utrecht aux Pays-Bas. Un environnement qui favorise la lumière naturelle avec des cabines et des structures en bois accueillant toutes les situations de travail, entres réunions et détente.
London Design Festival 2010: designer David Weatherhead presents a collection of desktop items made of folded steel at Variability in west London this week.
Called Standard Stationery, the collection includes a desk clock, book ends, letter racks, and pencil holders, powder-coated in bright colours.
Variability is an exhibition produced by Henny van Nistelrooy that explores the impact designers working on seemingly disparate projects can have on each others’ work.
See all our stories about the London Design Festival »
The information below is from Weatherhead:
Standard’ Stationery family
A family of brightly coloured stationery objects, each with a particular role, redefine the desktop.
Celebrating a variance in task, standard paper size, drafting and colour theory, the playful, multi functional family offers itself for work.
Bent steel, powder coat finish.
Self production available soon from www.good-d.com
Items in family:
Variability
3 Yeomans Row
London SW3 2AL
Brompton Design District
22-26 September
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| Ground by Michael Antrobus | Anything by Michael Sodeau and Suikosha | Bell by Industrial Facility |
Has it been more than nine months already? Back in the icy haze of early December, the planned September announcement of who would win the competition to design and develop the new grounds surrounding St. Louis’ iconic Gateway Arch seemed like but a distant, science-fiction-y future. But here we are. Although originally intended to be announced this Friday, word slipped out and so the organizers behind “Framing a Modern Masterpiece” were forced to make the statement early that landscape starchitect, Michael Van Valkenburgh, who is quickly becoming the next Frederick Olmsted, has won the competition (pdf). His plan, with help from a team that includes Steven Holl and New York’s High Line-adjacent designer James Carpenter, includes a massive new riverfront park as well as public gathering spots along the way (you can check it all out below in the video the team made for the competition). The project will continued to be documented through construction and the clock is now ticking for Valkenburgh, as St. Louis and the National Park Service is hoping to have everything finished by October 28th, 2015, the 50th anniversary of the completion of Eero Saarinen‘s Arch.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Une courte sélection des photographies de l’américain Ben Speckmann extrait de son portfolio. Entre portraits, série sur les animaux et compositions : il a déjà travaillé et collaboré pour Proximity Magazine, Time Out ou le New York Times. Plus d’images dans la suite.
 | Boy Crazy Man Eater
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
