SKAGGS Blog - Experience

Since we finished Amy Helfand's portfolio website in the nick of time for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, Elspeth and I decided to pop over to the Jacob Javits Center and take a look at her artwork booth.

It was cool to see the rugs up close–we had been working with Amy's images in digital format for a couple of…

What level of commitment does it take to see a project through from concept to execution? Passion, commitment and even–sometimes–a trip to the Emergency Room!

Regular readers of this blog will know that as part of my involvement with nurturing talented young designers on American and Icelandic shores, I am often asked to lend my expertise and experience to teaching undergraduates the basics of branding and design.

Recently Bradley and I had the pleasure of hanging out with artist Amy Helfand and her canine companion Jengo at her Redhook-based studio.

Jengo’s a big dog, but still a puppy! We’ll be working with Amy to update her identity and to create a new website which will showcase her artwork.

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Burlesque artiste Little Brooklyn with John Leavitt and Syd Bernstein.

One for the Pigeon Fanciers

What better venue than the “Crossroads of the World” to host the latest burlesque drawing session from Dr Sketchy? Last night as Jessica, Nicole, Robbie and I stepped out from the office to brave the storm I checked to see if Molly Crabapple had rescheduled her impromptu burlesque drawing session due to the torrential rain.

When I found out that we were taking a last minute business trip to the 300k population filled land of Fire and Ice, I was truly blown away. In all honesty the only thing I knew about Iceland were Vikings, the eternal daylight in the summer, the everlasting darkness in the winter and of course the cold. We touched down in Reykjavik…

It was an honor to be asked by the University of Iceland to teach a class on marketing and communications with an emphasis on developing a grassroots campaign. My goal was to show my students the foundations of a successful campaign, and how marketing must be targeted to reach each generation. As the class learned, there’s a big difference between a Baby Boomer audience and Generation X —…

I’ve dreamed about Japan and Tokyo almost all of my design conscious life. To me it seemed like the ultimate neon lighted, old mixed with new, technologically advanced metropolis. Last week, I took the trip of a lifetime to Tokyo with my good friend Jenna G, who was also on tour with the Qemists.
The 14 hour flight with…

Fubiz turned me on to these beguiling images by Parisian illustrator Jules Julien [note—not work safe]. Does this work imply that within a consumerist culture, we are soon defined by the products we consume? Or that globalization leads to the loss of cultural identity?

Consider just how many brand services and products each of us consume every single day. This…

And me too, and me too…

that’s the attitude and service we received from FedEx Kinkos’s while hiring them for a paid “test run” of poster for our client. Meanwhile, they’ve potentially lost a 1/2 million dollar job due to lack of managing their custumer service and quality control. I recently read that “Kinkos’s wasn’t doing too great…” I wonder why?

In an age where smaller businesses are ruling the…

TOTO’s quest to show you just how much water you could be saving using their High Efficiency Toilets brings the infamous water bottles to New York City just in time for ICFF.

Please join us on May 19th in celebrating totology — TOTO’s commitment to innovation and sustainability. From 6pm-9pm at the TOTO Gallery, 25 Mercer Street, NY 10013. RSVP to marketing[at]totousa.com or 888.232.8916

Attendees…

I’m all about random designer luxury goods. Not so much the handbags, umbrellas and cell phone cases. More like KVD’s Chanel Surfboard and my Mark Jacobs Bean Bags (courtesy of Cara). I see them not as luxury goods - but more like works of fashion art. When I came across Peter Gronquist’s latest exhibition at the Gallery 1998 in LA, I positively leapt out of my chair…

Ahhh Tribeca, home to the Tribeca Film Festival, The Odeon, a celebrity or two, SKAGGS and now one of the coolest and sexiest buildings I’ve seen in a long time. Construction has begun on a 20-story residential tower on 5 Franklin Place  and is designed by Dutch architect Ben van Berkel of UNStudio.

It doesn’t look like much now, but the renderings are absolutely gorgeous.…

Science Machine from Chad Pugh on Vimeo.
How long does it take to create a complex illustration? Chad Pugh documented the process and put it all together in a very cool video. 

The video is a condensed time lapse of screenshots over a several month period. Total physical drawing time is close to 40…

It’s been a well-travelled month for the SKAGGS team—we’ve been everywhere from Texas to San Francisco, Atlanta to Reykjavik! And after the photo-shoots, lunch meetings and general city-hopping, we’re taking a breather to fill you in on our latest adventure at KBIS in Chicago.

KBIS is the annual expo internationally recognized as the gold standard for the Kitchen and Bathroom industry, and once again SKAGGS…

With their decadent confetti made of diced dollar bills (totaling a hundred dollars) to their S*** From Paris (a company dedicated in collecting, recycling and selling Parisian dog defections), it’s kind of difficult to describe what they do. I guess you could say that French duo Ivan Duval and Jean Sebastien Ides are in the business of ideas. They create/invent wonderfully quirky but well designed products, some of which is…