Pets in the Office?

Home office that is. Our family is considering a pet. Since I work from home now it seems a perfect time to take the plunge. The kids are certainly old enough and the house is big enough. But the landlord has said no to a dog. They finally agreed to a cat. Do you share a home office with a pet? Send me you pics and help me get inspired (cerentha_harris@hermanmiller.com). We aren’t sure what kind of cat to get and will more than likely end up at a shelter but in the meantime I’d love to see who sleeps on your keyboard! I came across the tabby above on Lyra – a blog devoted to Lyra the cat.

Home Office Day

May 18 is Home Office Day in Switzerland. At least, it is now. The first Home Office Day was launched this month. Listen to a really interesting interviews with Home Office spokesperson Barbara Josef  and a couple of Microsoft people who work from home. Microsoft was one of the Day’s sponsors. It sounds like all the issues that arise here in the States around working from home also resonate with the Swiss. Wonder if Home Office Day will take off here?

Above is a home office in a concrete prefab house designed by architect Felix Oesch. It’s located outside of Zurich in Eglisau, Switzerland. Via Trendir.

Unplggd: Affordable Speakers Let You Listen While You Work

“Usually when we hear the term ‘audiophile,’ we tend to immediately think ‘overpriced audio gear.’ Surprisingly, this isn’t the case with Dayton B652 6-1/2″ 2-Way bookshelf speakers. Somehow, some way, it manages to deliver sound that’s surprisingly decent, all for a ridiculously affordable price of $25 a pair.

The speakers are about 12 inches tall, 7 inches wide, and 7 inches deep. Pretty much perfect for the kitchen sound system if we ever saw one.

According to a friend of a friend over at Cnet, one of the most annoying sacrifices you’ll have to make is dealing with the spring clips for the speaker wire, though we personally don’t see it as much of a problem if the sound is as good as they make it out to be.

If you’re looking for some geeky audiophile speaker talk on the sound quality, you can check out their write-up on the speakers over here. But if you’re going to take the plunge, you’ll be needing a receiver or some sort of amp to drive the passive speakers. Just pick one up from your local thrift store and you’ve got yourself an instant little makeshift stereo system.

You can read more reviews on the speakers over here. Shipping starts at around $11.

[Via Cnet]

By Anthony”

The Playlist: Writer Lizzie Garrett Mettler

Can anyone keep up with freelance writer Lizzie Garrett Mettler? Between contributing to the The Los Angeles Times’ Home section, producing a column for Bon Appétit, and blogging regularly at DESIGNwatcher, she’s just launched a new blog, Tomboy Style. We convinced her to take a breather and tell us about the music that keeps her moving. Take a listen at the results.

What do you listen to while you work? It depends on the day, but usually I need something with a solid beat (which I know my neighbor doesn’t appreciate). In the afternoon, I tend to want to chill out a bit more and listen to some softer tunes.

How do you listen? I typically listen to music on iTunes with speakers connected to my computer, but I do have a turntable in the office that gets some use as well. Elton John’s “Honky Chateau” has been in heavy rotation on the record player lately.

Where do you find music recommendations? I find new music in a variety of channels like movies, magazines, and friends.

If your work was a song, what would it be? I’d like to think that it’d be “Express Yourself” by Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band. But it would probably be more accurately akin to any other song in existence, like, say, “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses, “Welcome to the Working Week” by Elvis Costello, or “S.O.S.” by ABBA.

Read on for Lizzie’s Playlist

Read more

Unplggd: Colorful Keys for the Mac

“Inspired by Christopher Delorenzo’s cute as heck keyboard sticker set, Etsy user openandclose makes his sweet-tooth quite apparent when it comes to vinyls and keyboards with his very own variations of CMYK and alphabet animal stickers for the Macbook Pro.

Made from Avery MPI vinyls (which are supposedly easier to remove than your normal everyday stickers), these colorful laptop key customizers will surely garner of few looks of curiosity and make that beautiful Macbook design feel like it’s yours again.

Our main issue is for any recent MBP owner; you’ve got backlit keys. These (obviously) will make that feature moot. So unless you’ve got one of the older Macbooks without the feature, we suggest purchasing with caution.

Grab them for $15 per set over at Etsy.

[Via Technabob]

By Anthony.”

Five Fabulous: Letter Openers

1. Scissor Paper Knife, $36.54 Employing this sleek, black-plated steel opener made of a scissors branch might make you wish you got more mail. Get it: Culture Label

2. Half Moon Letter Opener, $40 This award-winning design of satin polished stainless steel makes slicing open your bills a bit more bearable. Get it: Canoe

3. Paper Knife, $16 Produced in Japan by Hayashi Cutlery, this unfussy opener is available in three basic hues. Get it: Emmo

4. Envelope Opener, $12 Designer Singgih Kartono’s quest to achieve functionality and absolute simplicity shows in this handcrafted piece of mahogany and sonokeling wood. Get it: Areaware

5. Benbecula Paper Knife, $86 Created in 1961 by Enzo Mari, this stainless-steel letter opener is a prime example of the Italian master designer’s skills. Get it: Nova 68

Images linked to their sources within the numbered text

ICFF: And the Winner is…

Kevin, an undergraduate at Yale won today’s give away of the Klein Reid tops. He looks pretty happy about it! The other two winners are Matt (below), a student at Kendall, and Mary (bottom), a kitchen specialist. There’s still one more set to give away. Stop by tomorrow and leave your business card for a chance to win.

ICFF: Top 5 Favorites

Gregg VanderKooi, Herman Miller’s Classics product manager traveled up and down every aisle of ICFF this morning to give you a taste of what lies beyond the wall’s of Herman Miller’s booth. Here are Gregg’s Top 5 Favorite pieces.

1. Nina D’Amario, “Parachute: Kinetic Color Wheel System” “I like the way the color wheel is explored in this really simple design. The discs slip together and are held by magnets and you look at it from different angles and color changes. The blue and yellow make green, red and yellow orange. Plus Nina thought through the packaging of the toy which uses a minimum of plastic. It’s a really great piece. The humanitarian side of the design is also really cool – the idea is to support communities that don’t have access to educational systems – it’s a toy and way of learning. ” (This is part of the Herman Miller/Pratt collaboration called “Empathy for Culture” where students explored culture and created designs that showed what they’d learned over a semester.)

2. Suberra, “High Density Cork Composite” “It’s taking such a simple material and using it in a new way. You think of a cork being associated with wine and liquids and here you use it is a bench top, or cutting block or even a sink.”

3. Martin Blum, Black + Blum, “Box Appetit Lunchbox” “I liked this lunchbox so much I bought two! Really nice design, sustainable material, easy to clean. There are really cool design aspects to it – like the knife/fork – should we call it a kfife? It’s a fork with a serrated edge for cutting. ”

4. Scot Herbst,”Zen Wagon” “There’s such a big market out there for well designed children’s pieces and I think this one sits in that niche really well. It’s well-crafted, uses sustainable, low-toxic materials and uses bent plywood – which of course we are always interested in seeing.”

5. Philippe Starck, “Parrot Zikmu Speakers” ‘These are so cool. It’s a really simple design that executed beautifully. It’s moved beyond the box speaker and created a stand alone object that functions as a piece of art as well as a speaker.”

Inspiration: Designer Jason Munn

Jason Munn is the name behind the award winning one-man studio known as The Small Stakes. Jason’s work has been featured in many of the top design magazines and is part of the permanent collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Jason’s client list includes Patagonia, Wired and New York Times magazine to name a few. He is also well known in the world of concert posters. Since 2003 he has been designing for indie rock’s hottest bands including The Pixies, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, The Flaming Lips and many more. Over 150 of these posters are featured in a book titled The Small Stakes-Music Posters which was recently released by Chronicle Books. Jason spoke to us about his home studio and the challenges he faced transitioning from a traditional office setting.

How long have you been working from home? I’ve been working from home full time for about the past seven years, before this I had been working in a couple different design studios. My first home/studio was a studio apartment, which became more and more challenging because there was not any type of separation between anything. Now we live in a two bedroom house, the second bedroom acts as my studio space

What challenges did you face transitioning from working in a design firm to a home based office? The biggest drawback for me about working from home versus in a design firm is the lack of communication or feedback while you are working on project. More and more I miss that aspect of a studio. Dirk Fowler, another designer and friend of mine who also works from home often send images of what we are working on back and forth to get feedback or advice from each other.

Working in a home setting, it’s easy to get distracted. Do you have any tips for staying focused on projects? I try to stick to a routine, but will be the first to admit I can have a hard time doing that. My wife has been back in school the last couple years, so she is often working late, so I’ll often do the same. When I’m stuck or in the thinking process during a project I tend to work in chunks of time and find myself walking around the block to take a break. I think the distractions of working in a firm versus working at home probably balance out, in the long run I feel I have less distractions. I do miss the commute to work a little bit, I used to walk to work and that was perfect for starting the day. Now if I have any errands or anything like that I typically do them first thing in the morning, so that  becomes my commute.

Is there anything you would like to change in your workspace? As you can see I keep things pretty sparse and I often have the tendency to want to get rid of things rather than acquire them. I’m happy to have my own room to work out of versus having everything in the studio apartment. We also have a small room below the house that acts as the poster storage and shipping area, our shipping area used to be the kitchen in the studio apartment. I would like to try working from a space outside my house, maybe a shared space with a couple other designers. We’ll see, it hasn’t been a priority yet.

ICFF: Airstream, Metropolis Magazine and Emily Pilloton

Check out Emily Pilloton’s Design Revolution Road Show. The exhibition is held in a refurbished Airstream and covers design that empowers people. There’s a great interview with Emily inside the trailer on Metropolis’ site. Yves Behar, who designed the Leaf and Ardea lights for Herman Miller, has two pieces included in the exhibition – his XO laptop and Y Water (the bottles double as children’s blocks).