A writer and editor Cerentha Harris has long been drawn to good design - whether it be a great chair or an elegant website. After more than a decade as a journalist and magazine editor Cerentha finds herself happily ensconced in the online world of Herman Miller.
UK photographer Will Robson-Scott’s latest work, called In Dogs We Trust, concentrates on canines and their owners. While Robson-Scott was interested in exploring the affinity owner’s have with their dogs I was drawn to the series because many of the shots cover people in their home offices. It’s well worth a look – if not for the interesting workspaces then for the wonderful dogs.
New year, new you. If you’re still hoping to clean up your act in the new year, maybe some cheap/free apps will help you along your way. Theres nothing better than finding a well designed piece of software that can greatly improve your daily life on the computer by helping you organize information or achieve tasks easier than before. We’ve collected some of the most popular productivity apps that will hopefully do just that for you.
Dayone $9.99
What better time to start a journal than a turn of the new year? Dayone is a deceivingly sophisticated journal app for your computer and mobile applications. One of the biggest issues with keeping journals is making it easy enough to write in. Dayone has covered all the bases by integrating smart features like menu bar quick entry, reminder systems, calendar view, and more. It also has Dropbox integration for syncing.
Sparkbox $19.99
Forget iPhoto. Sparkbox proves to be the next best thing in image management. Some of the handy features includes the Safari Websnap extension integration. If there is a blog page full of images you want to save for later, in a single click you can have them all downloaded and ready to categorize in Sparkbox. There are also color-coded image searches, and a brilliant tagging/highlighting feature which allows you to annotate images with your thoughts. All of this comes packed in clean UI which will fit right in with other Mac software.
Designer Jared Fanning, whose work includes illustrations (see the chair above), maps and a wonderful collection of posters using quotes from Frank Lloyd Wright (below) shares his ideal home work space. He and his wife, a photographer, have joined the growing number of people embracing a more fluid worklife – one that would allow them to work from a tent or a beach house.
1. Well Appointed Desk for their coverage of the home office.
2. Dezeenscreen for their lovely video on the Sharing Plug – a new plug that offers a good solution to home office cable chaos.
3. Hongkiat for their post on 5o great work stations.
4. Unclutterer for their round up of organizing tips.
5. 20×200 for their great collection of affordable art. Perfect for sprucing up the home office.
6. MarketingTech Blog for their infographic on the rise of the mobile worker. We certainly aren’t alone!
7. Scientific America ran an interesting article in early January on the mobile worker and how technology is aiding the transition from office to home office.
8. Desire to Inspire for the crazy workspaces post.
9. Chictip has a good post on home office set ups.
10. The Selby for his coverage of Olaf Hajek’s home and home work space.
I love my Macbook Air. I love how thin and portable it is, I love the solid construction and the clean looks. I especially love how the flash storage makes it feel like a computer that’s twice as fast. But what I don’t love is the limited storage. Compared to a laptop with a hard drive, my internal storage space is about a sixth less. This means that I have to carefully manage my storage and constantly be on the look out to save space. Here are some tips and tricks I’ve learned to ensure that I optimize how I use my storage.
Always be curating new files. Whether we’re managing photos, (legally) downloading songs or starting a movie project, it’s easy to get lost in the plethora of files being created on our computer everyday. These files can build up over time, even long after we no longer need them. The trick to managing storage is being organized, know where files go after they’re downloaded or created. Have a good folder system going so new files are always being filed away. When it comes time to delete or back up data for more storage, we could simply move the entire folder instead of going through individual files.
The New Economics Foundation – a “think-and-do tank that inspires and demonstrates real economic well being” just released a report on our work habits lamenting the 40 hour work week as not only antiquated but untenable and perhaps detrimental to a growing economy. A 21 hour work week is more to their liking. As we move forward into this next decade it’s interesting to revisit the work-week debate.
Michael Coren over at Fast Company makes the case for a 21 hour work week. I certainly work far more hours than my part-time job demands. But for me there’s a real blur between work – creating this blog – and writing or reading about things that interest me. And for many of us isn’t that the perfect job: one that mirrors your personal interests? When I’m reading Dezeen online or flicking through the pages of Wallpaper or Elle Decor or reading the newspaper in the morning over breakfast – I’m learning and absorbing and everything I’ve taken in feeds my work. If I included all those hours how long would my work week be? How many hours do you work each work?
Over on Treehugger Lloyd Alter weighs in on this inventive new workspace from Zurich-based architecture firm NAU. The “Immersive Cocoon” is just an idea at this point but it’s a good one. A pod that stands alone within a room and does away with our dependency on the computer and mouse. You’ve got to wonder what kind of a chair we’d design for this sort of space!
What kind of technology will grace your home office desk five years from now? According to Kit Eaton over at Fast Company it wont be a laptop. While Intel is hard at work pushing the Ultrabook, Eaton argues that – the sleek MacBook Air is the peak of design in the laptop field. Intel are simply chasing the tail of John Ive’s Air. According to Eaton “the Utrabook isn’t the silver bullet to securing their future–they’re instead almost like a well-polished, perfectly refined full stop at the end of the design description of the device.”
It’s interesting to think of this technology at the end of its natural life. We are on the brink of the next wave and in my mind it has to be some kind of tablet type device. Although having spent the weekend without my laptop trying to work from our iPad I am much relieved to get back to this MacBook Pro. The tablets need to resolve their cumbersome typing problems. If they could fix that I’d blog from the iPad in a heartbeat!
Where we were this week…
1. Eric Fischer’s amazing Flickr site. Fischer captures people’s photo-taking habits (locals and tourists) on maps and publishes them to Flickr. The images are really beautiful. Below is a snapshot of Chicago – the blue denotes locals taking photographs, the red is tourists.
2. Core 77’s store for their Hand-Eye Supply spiral bound notebooks that are wrapped shut with a strip of elastic that doubles as a pen holder. Clever.
3. PSFK for their piece on Mercedes mobile workplaces…more on this next week!
4. SFMoma’s artist’s series lets you buy prints from young contemporary artists. The latest contributor is Jason Munn and his clean-lined graphic work would make a great addition to your home office.
5. Danish architects MLRP for their amazing mirror house. Part fun house, part sleek contemporary design.
6. Designer Seung Yong Song’s wonderful Object-O. A paper lantern perches on top of a chair – it’s the ultimate tiny home office.
7. Wallpaper for their W* House. Check out the study for some incredible home office accessories (yes, they have included our Airia desk)
8. W magazine wonderfully over the top House Tours series. Love this dark-walled library. I imagine you’d cosy up and get a lot of work done here!
9. Apartment Therapy – which has undergone a major redesign – for their coverage of digital decals for the home office.
10. Designboom for their online store selling original designs. Have a look at the 24k pencil. Nice accompaniment to the gold typewriter I covered yesterday.
The world’s first 24kt gold-plated typewriter has hit the stores. I came across Kasbah Mod’s golden gem on Fab.com. “I love typewriters. I love the tactile experience of writing with truly in-obsolete technology,” says Chase S. Gilbert, Co-Owner at Kasbah Mod. ”In these days of scatter-brain thinking and an obsession with Control V and Control C, the typewriter gives me equal parts freedom AND discipline.” How much is this golden beauty? $896 on Fab.
