italian architects david cirocchi and plinio vanni designed a new structure rooted in the water as housing for kite surfers in the lençois maranhenses in brazil. the project appears to the visitor like an oasis within white sheets of sand and sinuous blue shapes.

the three fragments by david cirocchi and plinio vanni appear to be separated but are actually united by the natural element: sand. the structures engrave the blue water. through a sandy descent, the visitors are lead down to the level of the seabed arriving at the courtyard that lights up the lodgings. these follow one, ending with a covered area that houses the common areas. the path climbs up to the level of the water above a sandy platform from which it is possible to start kitesurfing.

project info:

name: piaggesalse

designers: david cirocchi, plinio vanni

location: brazil

designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: yasmina karam | designboom

David Cirocchi

aug 23, 2021

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]]>Alistair StiegmannSat, 28 Aug 2021 20:29:07 +0000https://sub-tract.com/sublog/2021/8/28/nfts-elementary-of-course50768582e4b0782fde552849:55d9dfdee4b0e278070f2e50:612a963639f11c5710fcefabThis is the beginning of my NFT Artwork creation. I’ll be sharing more here, as I continue to learn and create. Test runs: Part I  

Evisen team riders are all unique and talented from Japan and abroad. The brand is based in Tokyo, but has close ties to Osaka, Sendai, and other major cities in Japan as well as appearing in international media. Pursuing the essence of skateboarding, Evisen produces skateboard decks and videos, as well as apparel collections that reflect skateboarders' originality.

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]]>Seiko 5 Sports EVISON SKATEBOARDS Limited EditionAlistair StiegmannTue, 24 Aug 2021 10:24:00 +0000https://sub-tract.com/sublog/2020/4/26/brainstorming-from-a-distance-how-distributed-teams-collaborate50768582e4b0782fde552849:55d9dfdee4b0e278070f2e50:5ea5604a2a97584d9972ed28We asked six creative leaders how they set the scene for creative exchanges and productive collaboration in the age of remote work and distributed teams. 

By Mia Pinjuh Illustration by Lorna Jameson

For many creative teams, a typical brainstorming session might mean a huddle around a whiteboard, or an impromptu back-and-forth over a coffee break. With remote work on the rise, the nature of group dynamics is changing and so must our collaboration methods.

We reached out to creative team leads to see how they are adapting to collaboration and brainstorming from a distance—still a necessity for any creative project. Some are WFH veterans with a well-developed workflow, others quickly adapting to leading remotely, but all are focused on connections and strong, clear communication. The creative leaders we spoke with shared insights into keeping their teams inspired, motivated, and on the same page. 

Build the structure for success

Structure, clarity, and consistency are keystones of remote work days. Each creative leader we spoke to had a specific routine in place that anchored their weeks and days. 

For Vida Cornelious, Chief Creative Officer at experiential agency Fake Love, this takes the form of a daily block of time to hear from every team member. “Setting a daily 15 minute morning team video check-in is a simple way to keep everyone connected and accountable. Promoting open dialogue for team members to share concerns, challenges or successes is a way to give everyone an equal voice.”

“Setting a daily 15 minute morning team video check-in is a simple way to keep everyone connected and accountable.” – Vida Cornelious, Chief Creative Officer at Fake Love

Roanne Adams, who helms the team at RoAndCo studio as Chief Creative Director, adopts a similar daily agenda. “Every morning we have a standing meeting so that we all align on what we’re working on. This little check-in helps set the stage for the day ahead.” She has also found that structure is imperative even for casual brainstorming. “Creativity needs limitations. So I find that having a clear creative brief and an account manager in attendance really helps usher the process along.”

Even with everyone remote, there are still ways to get everyone on the same page—literally. For John Koenig, Creative Director at World Famous, it means picking up the phone. “Chatting on the phone with my colleagues while everyone’s working on the same document is my favorite way to edit a piece of writing. There’s a simplicity of focus there that I find creatively stimulating.”

Mike Treff, President of Code and Theory, has found that his approach is rooted in two tenets. “We keep coming back to two core strategies for effective communication: preparation and transparency.” In fact, remote work has been a boon for his team’s productivity. “In many ways, this has helped us progress faster and more effectively—being remote constantly forces prioritization of time, effort, and activities,” he explains. “We’ve found that people come to meetings more prepared, on time, and having done the prep work needed to maximize the efficacy of the shared time.” 

Use “psychological shortcuts” 

For creatives new to working from home, it can be a challenge to create sustained focus in a space that usually signals that it’s time to switch off from work. Even if you don’t have the means to set up a home office, you can use environmental tricks to signal to your brain that it’s time to clock in and shift gears.

For Koenig, that means creating a space that matches the work mindset. “As someone who works remotely 90% of the time, I found myself incorporating touchstones of the Seattle office into my workspace in Minneapolis—from music and snacks to my desktop wallpaper—to help cement my desk as a place where work feels natural. It’s a psychological shortcut to get myself into a certain mood.”

Protect the quiet moments

If your creative process typically thrives on ambient studio sounds or the buzz of a bustling cafe, it can be tough to embrace the silence of working from home. But this unexpected pause can be an ally. Take the time to understand your innate creative rhythm, and build in the time you need for your mind to spin free and wander.

“I have my most creative ideas when I sit in silence.” – Roanne Adams, Chief Creative Director at RoAndCo 

Cornelious’ advice is to lean into those lulls. “Make peace with that silence and use it wisely. Schedule time for your brain to wander into a few ‘what if’ moments. Similarly, schedule creative time when you know your mind is most open to new ideas. Protect the time you need to think, and better thinking will emerge because of it.”

Adams knows that her creative process needs moments of uninterrupted calm. “I have my most creative ideas when I sit in silence, so if I have time and I know there is a creative brainstorm coming up in the schedule, I might close my eyes and meditate for a few minutes beforehand to clear my other thoughts out and get centered.”

Be your own editor 

It’s easy to feel untethered if you rely on creative sparring with your team to produce work. And it is true that some of us are more physically isolated than before. While challenging, this shift also brings with it the chance to hone your self-editing skills, and develop an independence that can supercharge your creative instincts. 

“We have to become better self editors. Walk away from your ideas, and come back to them with fresh eyes. Be critical and objective.” Cornelious recommends. “And when it is time to collaborate with others, you will be more open to new perspectives and approaches.”

Make it social 

Ideas thrive when teams feel connected and comfortable enough to share what’s on their mind. When it comes time to voice those fleeting thoughts or sparks that have great potential, a welcoming environment is crucial to the creative process. For remote teams, building team camaraderie that creates a sense of community and receptiveness where the best ideas can take flight is all the more vital.  

Stephanie Yung, Design Director at Smart Design, considers that every meeting starts with a chance to set the mood and strike the right note. “One simple way to stay connected is by starting off meetings with a quick ‘How is everyone doing today?’ This thoughtful question helps relax everyone and lets us more easily move onto the topic at hand.” Similarly, Koenig acknowledges this unusual time and asserts “it’s all the more important to let collaborative sessions be looser, chattier, and more digressive.” 

Some managers have opted to schedule a pressure release into their team’s week, like John Robson, Technology Director at Fuzzco. “We have a recurring Friday meeting where the whole team gets together on a Hangout and attempts to play a game. It’s been a lot of fun!” His team is also newly bonding over other shared interests. “We’ve found that a lot of us are spending more time cooking lately, so we’ve opened up a Slack channel for recipes and food-selfies. Things like that have really gone a long way to keep the positive energy flowing.”

And for Adams, some much-needed physical release is on the calendar daily. “We have a scheduled ‘5 minutes of movement’ everyday where we all call in and dance together.”

Embrace familiarity to connect with your creative spark 

While remote work may present obstacles for the uninitiated, it’s also a chance to see possibilities in new circumstances. With no commute, a safe, familiar space, and stretches of time alone, you could explore limits of your creativity and dig into more complex thinking that you wouldn’t otherwise have had space for in an office.  

“What we’ve learned is that even though you’re remote, you can feel closer to people in some ways.” – Stephanie Yung, Design Director at Smart Design

Yung echoed this sentiment in her experience conducting remote research with prototypes and stimuli through Smart Design’s human-centered design process. “It’s not the first time participants have expressed they are more comfortable having personal conversations in the comfort of their own home versus a more formal research facility. The nuance is that they are in a safer environment and feel more free to share real feelings even more than through in-home ethnographies. What we’ve learned is that even though you’re remote, you can feel closer to people in some ways.”

Outside of your usual work environment, you have new visual influences to explore. “Be inspired by your space or the view outside the window.” Cornelious says. “And consider more honestly what aspects of your creative craft need work, and adjust. Learn a new skill, collaborate with someone you normally don’t work with.” Let yourself adapt and observe in ways you don’t typically give yourself space to explore.

https://99u.adobe.com/articles/66322/brainstorming-from-a-distance-how-distributed-teams-collaborate

John Zeratsky

Everyone has their own “distraction kryptonite” — the thing that irresistibly pulls them away from spending their time on activities they care about. For some, it’s the aspirational images of Instagram. For others, it’s the global pulse of Twitter. Some find the lure of breaking news or niche discussion boards impossible to look away from.For me, it’s email.I know how lame that sounds. But here’s why: Since I no longer work at a big company, virtually every email I receive is intended for me. I never get copied on big threads or added to team updates. When an email appears in my inbox, there’s a good chance it contains good news — an invitation to speak or collaborate; an update on a project; a kind word from a reader.Email plays right into my natural human tendencies. Like all of us, I am compelled by unpredictable rewards, so I check my email again and again, like a gambler playing a slot machine. I care about what people think of me, so I’m drawn to messages that give me that information. And reciprocity bias helps to explain why, when someone gives me something (even an email), I feel an urge to give them something back (like a reply).On an average day, I get around 50–80 messages. It doesn’t sound like a ton, but I’m a solo entrepreneur, which means most of those messages require me to do something. It’s easy to get overwhelmed trying to stay on top of it all.I used to be a designer for tech companies, so when I mention my email problems to other techie friends, they tend to suggest technology-based solutions: “Have you tried Tempo?” they ask. “Spark? Newton? Superhuman? Mailbox? Boomerang?” Because I worked at Google for 10 years, many of them also point to the vast universe of Gmail features to try: priority inbox. Multiple inboxes. Filters. And then there’s the confusingly named and much-loved app Inbox, which Google shut down last year.The answer is yes. Whatever it is, I’ve probably tried it. And after running through that very long list of email-organization products, I’ve concluded that the best way to manage my inbox is to reject them all. More technology isn’t the solution to email overload. Better tactics are.Here are the everyday, low-tech tactics I use to stay responsive on email without going nuts.

I have a single, no-frills inbox

After countless experiments and conversations, I still like to look at my email in a single list of messages. Here’s a screenshot:Image: John ZeratskyGmail is known for its multiple-inbox capabilities — for example, one for promotional emails, one for social media notifications, one for everything else — but I’ve found that segmenting my incoming messages only adds to my inbox anxiety. We already have to check chats, DMs, Slack, missed calls, and that weird “secure messaging center” on our bank’s website. Do you really want to add to the overload with multiple inboxes?Beyond the gnawing sense of dread, there’s a very real problem that results from having too many inboxes: misplaced messages. The algorithm that automatically sorts our email is not as clever as we’d like to think, so it’s common to find that a real message from a real person ended up in the wrong inbox.It’s true that a single inbox requires a bit of effort to manage — you have to handle the sorting, filtering, and prioritization instead of letting software do it for you. But it’s better for your focus than the alternative. Far from freeing our minds to focus on the messages that matter, high-tech email tools often just give us more lists to check. Each fancy feature adds a layer of uncertainty and doubt, further fragmenting our attention.

I’ve removed email from my phone

If you struggle with email like I do, the single best thing you can do is remove email from your phone. When I had access to my inbox on the phone, I still wouldn’t deal with any of my emails; I’d just look at them and make mental notes to handle them later.And this habit — of checking email when you’re not in a position to do anything about it — creates attention residue, the inability to fully transition from one task to another, which in turn fragments our focus and causes anxiety.Yes, there are ways to set up your inbox so you see only the most urgent messages when you’re away from your computer. This would be a great option if it worked perfectly. But again, the AI that categorizes your email isn’t foolproof. And because you can’t be 100% sure that you’re seeing all the important messages when you look at your phone, you’re left wondering what you’re missing out on — the same psychology that drives habitual distraction.Plus, there are very few situations where it’s really necessary to see email on the go. It might be nice. It might make us feel important or responsible. But when we examine the truth, we usually find that those “urgent” messages can wait until we’re in front of a computer.

I schedule time for email

I don’t check email on my phone, but I do spend most of my day at a computer, which means temptation and access to email are always at hand. To combat that, I set strict boundaries for myself. I check email three times a day: Twice in the morning for quick reviews, and once in the afternoon for a longer session. To keep myself from letting email spill out into other parts of the day, I put my dedicated email time on my calendar:Image: John ZeratskyScheduling my email like this taps into the power of compartmentalization, a long word for a simple idea: Do one thing at a time, do it well, and then move on. The more I compartmentalize my time — in other words, the less I try to multitask — the better, happier, and less stressed I am.Research supports this approach. A study at the University of British Columbiashowed that people who check email just three times a day feel less stressed than people who check it all the time. This isn’t surprising — after all, reacting to incoming requests and problems is practically synonymous with stress. What was surprising about this particular study is that the infrequent email checkers became objectively better at email. They were more efficient, responding to the same number of messages in 20% less time.The researchers also noted that participants found it hard to “resist the temptation” of checking email more often. That’s why an email schedule is so useful — it allows you to outsource willpower to your calendar. It’s easier to resist checking email when you know you have a plan for dealing with it later. (And if you need more help, you can set up the app Freedom to enforce your schedule with an email lockout.)

I assign a purpose to each email session

There are a few mental models I’ve applied to keep myself on task during my dedicated email time. They’re admittedly goofy, but they work.The first is a strategy I call “fishing bear.” During my morning email checks, I imagine myself as, well, a fishing bear — standing on the bank of a river, reaching into the water to pluck out a tasty salmon here and there. I look for important and time-sensitive emails. If a message requires a quick reply, I write one. If it represents a chunk of work that needs to get done, I do it right away or put it on my calendar.But during these sessions, I am not trying to clear my inbox or “process” my email. That requires a different time of day and a different mindset.In the afternoon, my energy is lower, my creativity is zapped, and it’s a great time for what I call “munching cow.” Like an energy-efficient cow chewing on grass, I methodically work my way through my inbox. Starting at the bottom, I read each message and reply, archive, or pull it out of my inbox (more on that in a minute).When time is up, I do another quick fishing bear-style review of my inbox, just in case something important came in while I was munching away. (An important thing to note: I do not aim for inbox zero on a daily basis. I like to fully clear my inbox every week or two.)Of course, not every email can be handled in an efficient and methodical way. Some are so important and require so much effort that they require a different mindset to manage.

I recognize when an email isn’t just an email

Sometimes I find myself with an important email stuck to the bottom of my inbox. Because it’s important, I want to write a thoughtful response. But that takes time and focus, and my email sessions aren’t optimized for that kind of deep work.The perverse result is that the most important stuff in my inbox is the least likely to get a proper and timely response.I used to struggle with this a lot until I realized that some emails aren’t really emails. Feedback on a video. A partnership agreement. My proposal to a new speaking client. Emails about these things might land in my inbox, but the email isn’t the point. It’s just the delivery mechanism.Nowadays, when I see a project disguised as an email, I pull it out of my inbox. It’s no longer an email — it’s an activity to be scheduled. Or it goes on my might-do list. Or I make it my highlight for the following day. These tactics allow me to make time for this important work, and to give these projects the focus and attention they deserve.Over time, my low-tech approach to email has influenced the way I think of my productivity more broadly. As a former tech designer, I enjoy tinkering with and thinking about new products that might make my life easier, more efficient, or less stressful. But more often than not — whether it’s our workspaces, our tools, or our processes — it’s better to focus on improving habits and tactics. After all, technologies come and go, but we’re here to stay.

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]]>The Most Effective Way to Manage Your Inbox Is Also the EasiestIdeasOjingo DesignFri, 03 Aug 2012 13:26:44 +0000https://sub-tract.com/sublog/2012/8/3/a-site-that-helps-you-be-fckng-creative-1.html50768582e4b0782fde552849:55d9dfdee4b0e278070f2e50:55d9dfdee4b0e278070f2e8c

Feeling uninspired? Head over to HELP ME BE FCKNG CREATIVE, a somewhat-crude site developed by video & animation creatives Wooshii, that features crowd-sourced advice and thoughts on getting creative. 

Italy-based multidisciplinary practice Armin Blasbichler Studiocreated a stained-glass wooden door with PANTONE swatches, for a home. 

Called the ‘TIII: Inception Door’, the door is compiled from framed slides of PANTONE swatches, laminated glass, and a wood frame. 

When natural light streams through the stained glass, the hall gets filled with square patterns of various colors. 

On each swatch, the name of the color is handwritten to identify it in comparison to the surrounding environment.