Unlike most countries around the world, U.S. companies are not required to give employees time off. Despite working some of the longest hours in the world, we take very little vacation.  So let’s relish these days off.  We clearly deserve them.

Via *Good

Last week, Scott Wilson, a former Creative Director at Nike, posted his latest project,  The TikTok and LunaTik wristbands to Kickstarter.  The TikTok and LunaTik wristbands turns the iPod Nano into a wristwatch. When Wilson posted his project to KickStarter, his goal was to raise $15,000 in 30 days, in order to begin production.   However, in just three days, the project raised $180,000 and now, a week later nearly $285,000.

For those of you not familiar with Kickstarter, it’s a funding platform that allows artists, designers, filmmakers,  inventors and other creatives help make their ideas a reality by crowdsourcing the money needed to bring the project to life.  While there have been thousands of projects on the platform, Wilson’s project is the second highest earning project of all time on Kickstarter.  Wilson currently runs the Chicago-based design studio MINIMAL and clearly has other means to raise capital but chose Kickstarter, which really speaks to the power of the platform.  When asked about his choice he stated “there are other options out there but Kickstarter is by far the easiest and most well-architected experience at the moment. This type of funding platform is a game-changer and just the beginning in shifting more power back to the individual creative entrepreneur.”

You can support Wilson’s project and pre-order your kit here.

*Via CO Design

I recently picked up this sugar bowl and creamer from The Future Perfect and after seeing them in action over the weekend, it’s official, I’m in love.

Inspired by patterns found on dish cloths and tea towels, designer Gry Fage created the collection for Normann Copenhagen, which includes various plates, bowls, buttering boards, eggcups, a milk jug and a decanter.  If you aren’t lucky enough to live close enough to The Future Perfect, you can purchase them online here.

The bottom line is there’s no replacement for emotional connection. -Gadi Amit

Fast Company recently interviewed designer and founder of NewDealDesign, Gadi Amit, as part of their Masters of Design issue.  The interview is insightful, bold and thought provoking.  Enjoy!

Like musicians, we think through our hands,” says Gadi Amit, fondling three pieces of raw wood precariously bound together with masking tape. Amit has built his 22-year career designing award-winning technology devices for brands such as Dell, Palm, and Verizon; this year, he took top honors in the International Design Excellence Awards. Yet the 47-year-old industrial designer is curiously enamored of the power of craft. “Designers here are so computer minded; I say, ‘You guys have computer vertigo, go down to the shop,’ ” Amit says, referring to the windowless basement workshop of his San Francisco studio, NewDealDesign. “As you play and sculpt with foam and putty, you actually discover, versus a more analytical or cerebral approach. That it’s ambiguous and inaccurate is a good thing.”

Going analog isn’t Amit’s only unconventional stance. One of the brat pack spawned by Frog Design, he has become an unapologetic critic of the green-design movement. “In the sustainability crowd,” Amit says, “I feel that sometimes beauty is the first thing that takes a hit.” The “beauty” Amit is referring to isn’t some $20,000 chair enclosed in glass at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but well-built objects so lust-worthy that people will want to hold on to them forever — objects like his prize-winning Slingbox 700U, a media device no bigger than a piece of toast, stripped of a plastic skin in favor of waffled aluminum that is virtually 100% recyclable. “My theory,” says the Israeli native, “is that beauty is a very positive, visceral force that we should harness for sustainability.”

Over coffee in his studio’s loft, Amit talked about how computers are like animals, whether sex appeal trumps carbon footprint, and why buying a Prius may ultimately be an irresponsible act.

Fast Company: How did you end up designing technology?

I wanted to be a car designer, but the design school I went to [in Israel] is a very traditional European-craft type of art school, very much about creating furniture. Nearly antitechnology. But in 1985, I got to know the Macintosh, and I fell in love with it. It’s an intelligent object, and since then, I’ve only dealt with things that aren’t just docile objects; they have behaviors.

Some people view technology as cold, sterile. You don’t agree?

When I started playing with hard-core technology, I started to realize there is an architectural problem in putting together complex objects; like animals, they have organs. All these computers, these machines, have a brain, so you have to figure out where to put the brain, and the brain is usually next to the face, which is where you interact with people, so those are buttons and the screens. Then there’s the plumbing, the digestive system, and how you organize it. Much of the work we do today is essentially deciding whether an object has a body, a head, and four limbs, or a body, a head, and no limbs. It’s that fundamental.

You began your career in the Middle East but have spent most of it around Silicon Valley. You’ve seen a lot of shifts in design along the way.

The ’90s were the roaring age of product development meets design. It was basically the first time where the wide culture, not some geek enclave, met the digital age — the first mass distribution of cell phones, PDAs, Web appliances. The 2000s started with this nearly insane drive for all things Web. At the same time, China and Asia became a huge product-development force. Design became driven by a cult of personality, by a culture detached from delivering products for common people. The notion that some European superstar designer builds a chair that costs $20,000 has both a philosophical and a cultural richness, but it’s also related directly to the social indulgence of an economy going out of control.

When the economic crisis hit, was that the end of that era?

What happened in 2008 was not just an economic meltdown, it was a social realignment. If a designer in the ’70s opted to sell a chair that was a million units, a designer at the end of the ’90s or early 2000s wanted to sell two chairs that became a collector’s item. That ended in 2008 because the people who financed that were the guys who messed with our mortgages.

Check out the full interview here.

A few weeks ago a friend sent over a recipe for Brick Chicken with Mustard Greens from one of my favorite restaurants, Marlow and Sons.  The recipe was reprinted from a cookbook that had yet to launch, “The New Brooklyn Cookbook.”  Inspired, I ordered the cookbook last week and it just arrived.

Written and compiled by husband and wife team Brendan and Melissa Vaughan, “The New Brooklyn Cookbook,” gives well deserved nods to “old” Brooklyn (i.e Di Fara, Peter Luger and Nathan’s), but also focuses on the surge of new restaurants popping up in the area, transforming these less than desirable neighborhoods into culinary destinations for those who never had a reason to cross into the borough of Brooklyn. While I’m familiar with about half of the restaurants in the book, I was excited to discover the handful that were new to me including Northeast Kingdom, Aliseo Osteria del Borgo and The Grocery.   I can’t wait to explore some new Brooklyn territory and try more recipes from the book.

In addition to being a “cookbook,” the recipes are accompanied by gorgeous photography and a little background on each restaurant.   There is also a hand drawn map of the restaurants and interviews with food artisans like Jessamyn Waldman from Hot Bread Kitchen and Annie Novak from Eagle Street Rooftop Farms. You can buy the book here.

Yesterday I joined the crowds in Brooklyn and cheered on both friends and strangers at the NYC marathon, which is hands down one of the best reasons to live in NYC. It was an exceptionally beautiful day and the energy from both the runners and the crowd was nothing less then 150% contagious.  Congratulations to all of you who made it happen, particularly my friend Maureen who completed her second marathon!

image via flickr

UPDATE:  Check out this awesome two minute time lapse video

Days like this remind me of my Portland roots and have me yearning to curl up next to a fireplace and watch reruns.  But atlas, life calls and while my green Hunter Boots certainly do the trick, these Swims make the day feel slightly more cheery and my feet more stylish.  Their collection runs the gamut from galoshes to loafers and comes in just about every color possible.   And how can you not love their tag line, Seduce the Rain?