Hasta La Ideas

L.A. bookstore Family brings their indie spirit to the East Coast with a month-long extravaganza of art, music and literature, sponsored by Absolut. Set in a 4,200-square-foot pop-up space in NYC’s TriBeCa neighborhood, Thirty Days NY features a host of daily festivities from some of the creative community’s finest.

Curated by Family‘s David Jacob Kramer and Sammy Harkham, the duo lined up an event to happen every day of the month for the next 30 days. A rotating cast of artists such as Matthew Thurber and Sumi Ink Club will be on location, conducting classes and letting visitors observe them at work. There will also be an exhibit of artists from the Los Angeles area by the King Kong gallery, with works from Ed Templeton, Geoff McFetridge and Rodarte.

The project delivers an assortment of interesting people and events (check out the site for a full schedule), among them a performance by Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, who will sign their newly released Sonic Youth art book “Sensational Fix” as well as “Kim Gordon: The Noise Paintings.” Gary Panter and Joshua White’s light shows accompany music performances, Lance Bangs will present Super-8 films and A.M. Homes and Art Spiegelman will deliver author readings and conversation.

Yesterday’s opening party felt like NYC’s official Spring warm-up with live sets by Aska, Brian Degraw of Gang Gang Dance, and White and Panter’s light show. Thirty Days NY runs through 7 May 2010, all events are free.

Started just five years ago, Elita‘s event series has already become a Milan Design Week tradition. This year’;s headquarters, the historic Franco Parenti theater, beautifully restored by Michele de Lucchi will host several of the music and cultural happenings. Several more take place elsewhere around town, thanks to an ever-growing community network of clubs and venues such as Tunnel, Magazzini Generali and Plastic.

With an incredibly rich and interesting program that includes 50 performances and 40 speakers, CH selected some of our favorite and most relevant events, highlighted below.

The Institute of European Design will promote a series of workshops and events with their students, including the Italian Laptop Orchestra (a real orchestra of computers reinterpreting Italian pop music classics), a live fiction writing experiment, and Expolab, a journey through local food from Italy’s Lombardia region.

GQ magazine opens 13 April 2010 with the eclectic designer Fabio Novembre presenting his new book, accompanied by readings from actors Filippo Timi and Stefania Rocca, and a surprise celebrity DJ set. Entrance is free, but requires online registration.

Designer Marc Lloyd will present the new Citroën CS3 in a conference called “Anti Retro. A Journey Into Car Design” on 15 April 2010.

Entirely dedicated to “The Next Made in Italy,” on 17 April 2010 The Renaissance Link will present a series of events related to the New Italian Renaissance with Francesco Morace, Giovanni Lanzone and Giulio Iacchetti, among others.

Sunday 18 April 2010 will begin with a brunch and is the most experimental day with Next Continet Africa—a host of Senegalese artists living in Berlin will propose a Utopian pan-African society where the Afro is the official currency. Also that day, Rock the Islam tackles how music can develop a real dialogue with the Arab nations and Western countries, and at flea market Il Grande Circo delle Pulci, shoppers can look for design and fashion items.

And of course, there’s the music. Underground and experimental sounds play starring roles, but the schedule makes room for acoustic and dance music as well. Performances that we want to check out include a musical exhibition by Shepard Fairey, the Italian emerging project Luci della Centrale Elettrica, Pantha du Prince, Mouse on Mars from Germany, Jon Hopkins with visuals and music from the U.K., the Body Music Room by Kilohertz, talks and videos for the American composer Arthur Russell, a piano solo performance by Gonzales, and a remarkable DJ set by The Chemical Brothers.

Elita Design Week Music and Arts Festival runs from 13-18 April 2010.

In the upscale São Paulo neighborhood of Higienopolis, Rojo Artspace inaugurates their newly-acquired digs with a show called “Born Into This” by Japanese-Brazilian graffiti artist Yusk Imai.

Housed in an ornate 1920s building on a quiet residential street, the new space actually belongs to Galeria 600, which underwent a major reform to house its new reincarnation.

Artgoers now enter the gallery space through a huge driveway into a pebble-filled back area set with shipping containers painted black that function as show spaces.

They’ll then be able to go inside the building to see additional artworks, and soon, check out books in a store on the mezzanine level that will feature Gestalten publications. Rojo struck up a partnership with the German-based publisher to showcase their lineup in Brazil, a collaboration with lots of promise for both parties and will hopefully utilize Rojo’s print component.

The space contains various rooms, which founder David Quiles Guillo says will allow Rojo to extend its art reach by hosting workshops and other cultural events.

“Born Into This” show runs through 8 May 2010.

Sharing release dates within weeks of each other, premises that promise success in business, and even covers with red-white-and-black color schemes, our colleague Scott Belsky’s book “
Making Ideas Happen” and “
Rework” have more than a little in common. The two—Belsky as the founder and CEO of Behance, a company devoted to enabling creative professionals, and Rework as the product of 37signals, also a creator of productivity-enhancing tools—both represent a new generation steeped in Internet culture and the fresh vision of capitalism that comes with it, but their approaches come across as markedly different.

While “Making Ideas Happen” represents Belsky’s tireless years of researching the techniques that make companies successful, Rework’s appeal comes from authors and 37signals founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson’ direct, mincing-no-words style, outlining the directives they’ve found to work. In lieu of reviews on each, we put together this side-by-side comparison of some of their core principles to see what we could glean. “Rework” sells from Amazon or Powell’s and you can pre-order “Making Ideas Happen” from Amazon or Powell’s.

1. Working

Much of Belsky’s mission is about getting people organized and finding ways to do it. His tips for staying focused involve stripping out work that isn’t goal-focused, creating rituals to “out-work” the competition to quote ad exec Roy Spence, and tailoring workspaces. Rework, on the other hand, flat out discourages workaholism, criticizing the atmosphere of guilt and burnouts that it creates.

2. Entrepreneurs

Fried and Hansson dismiss “entrepreneur” as a stale-sounding word that doesn’t really define what’s important. Instead, they encourage thinking of yourself as a “starter” as a way to get beyond the usual formulas and focus on the confidence necessary to go ahead. MIH positions entrepreneurship as both a way to make a business think longterm and to make them bravely take the plunge and embark on new ventures (i.e. be starters).

3. Love

What Rework defines as “scratching your own itch”—pursuing a curiosity, or taking something you already do further—Belsky looks at as a potential way to set yourself up for disappointment. He warns of the problems inherent to having a passion for something, advising to stay focused on the process in the face of outcomes that don’t reflect the original inspiration for it.

4. Culture

Citing Zappos as one of a few examples of how to keep work environments positive, MIH explains how the company actively fosters happiness as a way to authentically create the rah-rah attitude that’s core to the success of their service-based business. Fried and Hansson also recognize the importance of “truly standing for something,” cautioning against coming across as insincere when you’re not backing up the mission with “believing it and living it.”

5. Negativity

Both books recognize the value of saying no and embracing constraints. Belsky explains how embracing limits helps cut down on wasted efforts, while Rework describes cutting “ambition in half” as a way to more successfully execute. Rework goes so far as to suggest that saying no should be a default.

6. Action

Where MIH focuses on organizing work flow into actionable steps, Rework pushes the bolder moves, encouraging an attitude of “launch now” as a way to prioritize what needs to happen. Similarly, Belsky cites Seth Godin’s talk at The 99% Conference (an event we co-sponsor with Behance), which encouraged people to center their work around the proactive approach of “shipping.”

7. Meetings

Another point both books agree on is the problems inherent to meetings. Where Belsky advises dispensing with regularly-scheduled meetings, ending by going over “Action Steps,” and conducting them on the fly, Rework suggests setting timers, limiting the number of people who attend, setting agendas, and working from a problem.

8. Priorities

In MIH, Belsky offers tips that include keeping one list for more important items and others for less critical to-dos, picking five top projects, making daily “focus areas,” not spending too much time worrying, making sure to delegate critical tasks too, and creating a system to divvy up responsibilities appropriately. Fried and Hansson’s less structured approach advises tempering excitement with what actually needs to get done.

9. Inspiration

While Belsky’s focus is all about “overcoming the obstacles between vision and reality,” Rework ultimately encourages readers to act when the idea strikes to capitalize on the potential of getting “two week’s work dones in twenty-four hours” when under the spell of ideas.

Modern parents know that today’s children’s books, while often overlooked as serious literature, can convey rich, complex worlds that appeal to more than just the elementary school set. We looked around to find the latest that expand the genre best, picking “Tales from Outer Suburbia,” “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” “Puff” and “The Monster at the End of This Book” for their visually-rich and surprising stories. Much like the acclaimed “Where The Wild Things Are”, these books exemplify youth literature just as they transcend it.

Published in the U.S. last year, “Tales From Outer Suburbia” is a collection of short stories about the suburbs. But its strange rationale and amazing twists on text, font and reading, implode the neighborhood. Author Shaun Tan, an artist and illustrator from Australia, writes of entrancing and mysterious worlds much like Chris Van Allsburg’s classic “The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.”

In the title story, an exchange student’s strange habits are examined by his host family. Elsewhere, a grandfather recounts a treasure hunt for his wedding, a water buffalo dispenses advice, and forgotten poetry finds unexpected uses.

The triumph of Tales is Tan’s ability to write simple but not simplistic stories with visuals both postmodern and approachable. An heir to the Tristram Shandy technique of playing with readers’ expectations, the book also joins the ranks of the experimental “People of Paper” as a pioneer in recreating how to design and illustrate a book. Tan describes the relationship between illustration and words in his books, “The text and illustrations could operate as narratives in isolation, but happen to react in similar ways, opening new meanings from each other’s context.”

Tales, intended for kids 7-12, was an ALA Notable book as well as one of The New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books. You can read the story from it called “Eric” online via the Guardian, which also has an interview with Tan. It is available from Amazon.

Like Tales, “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” is an equally imaginative reconfiguration of narrative structure and passionate attention to illustrations. Inspired by groundbreaking French filmmaker George Méliès’s work, author and illustrator Brian Selznick says of his process, “I thought about what happens when you turn the page in a picture book, the way stories are told. Then I thought, what if I took parts of the text out and replaced them with images. So that the book itself was filled with sequences of silent movies.”

For this book (his fourth) Selznick photographed neighborhoods of Paris, aptly illustrating them into detailed black-and-white pencil and pen drawings to tell the story of Hugo Cabret. The narrative follows a young orphaned boy living in a train station, winding its numerous clocks, when he’s caught stealing a toy mouse, beginning the book’s journey.

Méliès was one of the first and major innovators of cinematic special effects, and serves as both character and major influence on Hugo Cabret, boy and book alike. Selznick often interrupts the text with his deft drawings to visually recount the adventures of Hugo—a refreshing approach to illustration that directs a slow, measured reading of the book.

With a film reportedly in the works—Martin Scorsese is slated to direct Ben Kingsley and Sacha Baron Cohen—”The Invention of Hugo Cabret” proves an enduring and popular tale. It won the prestigious Caldecott medal for the most distinguished American children’s books and continues to garner acclaim.

At 550 pages, the tome is for 9-12 year olds. Many illustrations and tightly woven plot make it a quick and breathless read and a wonderful introduction to novels, or a reminder of how good they can be. Hugo Cabret sells from Amazon.

Puff, like Hugo Cabret, uses a limited palette—black, white and red—to show the dreams of a small steam engine. (Click above image for detail.) Recently profiled by our friend Paper Tastebuds, the elegantly designed book, written and illustrated by William Wondriska, follows the exploits of a feisty steam engine.

The simple illustrations (click above for detail) infuse Puff’s world with fantasy and beauty as the little engine travels the world. Close cousin to Thomas the Tank Engine, Puff’s visual feast elevates the story into a sweet moment of self-discovery and adventure.

Wondriska wrote and illustrated many children’s books, though Puff remains his most popular. Puff was republished by Taiwanese bookseller Itis Editions, but remains a difficult find. Despite the years, Wondriska’s works are distinctly modern and hopefully will regain the attention they deserve.

“The Monster at the End of this Book” uses the classic picture book format to stage a funny and surprising drama. It recounts Sesame Street boy-wonder Grover’s adventures as a monster gets closer and closer.

It begins with Grover talking directly to the reader. He’s excited to be in this book but he’s also very worried about the monster at the end, as the title indicates. What will it be? How will it turn out? The book transforms the horror of dreaded anticipation into something comedic and poignant. A simple yet unexpected story, you can read it online.

For kids 4-8, “The Monster at the End of this Book” is also available in Sesame Street Story Vision with a read-along DVD. The newest incarnation of the series introduces Elmo in Another Monster at the End of This Book. Both sell from Amazon.