Blog – Page 2 – ShiftFWD

Jul 19

Conclusions from a Failed Kickstarter Campaign

By admin Kickstarter 11 Comments

As Koldo detailed in his last post, there are many reasons why we are personally content with the journey we went through to get our Kickstarter campaign together even though we didn’t get it funded.

However, there are many assumptions that we made that had we known before we started, we would not have attempted to fund our campaign through Kickstarter. We’ve gathered stats and other details that we hope will be helpful for anyone else thinking of attempting funding of their own campaign on Kickstarter.

Apart from Kickstarter, there are, of course, likely other secondary reasons why we could have done better, but my main objective today is to focus on what stats we have and the conclusions we might make from those.

I will place the details and stats first and follow-up with our conclusions based on the data we have at this moment.

Jul 03

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Lavender, UNO, and Seafood Cream

By admin Daily Life, Epokka Products No Comments

The weather has continued to surprise us in the best way.

Since the summer began, everyday I’ve been enjoying my morning coffee time sitting on our porch and taking notes about whatever comes to mind in my Epokka’s UNO Idea Book System. Right now, the lavender out in front of our house is blooming in all its glory!

The lavender scent was mixed with the fresh breeze from the sea.

Koldo said it reminded him of Spain and every time he says that he then has to cook up some Spanish food.

Today, Koldo prepared a delicious cold cream of fish and seafood dish.

We’ll be spending the rest of the day gearing up for this year’s 4th of July fun. How about you?

Jul 02

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Birthday Fun

By admin Creative Combo, Daily Life, Tradition No Comments

Not that we need any real excuse to have fun, but I have to say that my birthday was pretty delicious this year. I turned 32, which was not in any way angst-filled and is in fact, a lovely age to turn. And we had some real sun for the first time in a few weeks, glorious sun. And a lot of food, glorious food.

For lunch I asked Koldo to cook me Huevos Estrellados, which is a popular Madrilean signature dish from Casa Lucio, one of the most well-known Spanish restaurants usually frequented by Hollywood stars.

This recipe, by the way, is also very popular at Javier Bardem’s restaurant La Bardemcilla in Madrid.

It’s very simple, yet spectacular. It consists of potatoes fried in extra virgin olive oil, eggs, and jamon Iberico (although sadly he had to use Italian prosciutto because it is the closest thing we can find in this area).

Koldo and I often talk about the fact that sometimes the most beautiful dishes are the most simple ones. No special decoration, just an exhibition of a few beautiful ingredients in all their glory.

Later we went to the park and enjoyed the sun. I just had to wear my new birthday shoes, of course.

In the evening, we had an intimate gathering with a petit comité, who made the day particularly special.

We decided to maintain the simple theme and make some organic tomato, basil, and mozarella skewers with Spanish olive oil.

Koldo always reminds me that the general rule of thumb to a great dish is to keep the ingredient list as simple as you can, but use the very best ingredients you can find.

I’m happy to say, everything was a hit!

We had various types of sandwiches to choose from; homemade pâté, Spanish blue cheese with cranberries, cream cheese with pecans, Alaskan salmon cream, and smoked turkey with vegetables.

Koldo made crunchy mozzarella meatballs. I could swear they were made with little pieces of heaven.

Finally, we had the most gorgeous Black Forest cake ever. I mean, just look at this thing!

It was a beautiful day.

—-

Credits:
Photography: Naomi Niles
Cooking: Koldo Barroso

Jun 28

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UPPERCASE Magazine Steal

By admin Week Love No Comments

Look what we got in the mail! We regularly buy just a few select magazines and publications, but I really do look forward to getting these in particular.

It’s rare to see the level of quality and care that UPPERCASE magazine has. When you see it, you can just feel that it was designed with love. Make no mistake, making something with this level of attention is difficult. The layout is sublime, the images and featured works are beautiful, the stories are carefully curated, and the printing quality and paper is just amazing. Getting little extras from designers and shops with the issues is like the cherry on top.

Speaking of cherries, I thought the little scratch & sniff cherries on the cover of issue number 17 was so cute and unexpected.

These little touches of care and UPPERCASE’S focus on supporting the creative community make the magazines well worth the price, in my opinion.

Pure delight and love, plain and simple.

We were sad to hear that due to unexpected circumstances, UPPERCASE has to move their headquarters. In order to raise funds for the move, they are offering a big sale of their back issues and books until Sunday. If you get to the shop on time, you can get many of the back issues 50% off, which is quite a steal indeed.

Visit their shop here to get yours.

Jun 24

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How I Use My Duo for UX Design Work

By admin Epokka Products No Comments

I thought for today’s post it might be helpful to show one of our Epokka notebook systems in action. While they can be used for pretty much anything you’d like (we call them Idea Books because we think they are perfect for that), I personally have different ones for different things.

For example, when I’m working on a client’s project doing the user experience strategy work, I find it handy to have a system for each project with one Idea Book for notes and another for Diagrams and Wireframe Ideas.

Here is a project I’m currently working on. In the first notebook, I have outlined some initial ideas for the main user personas. I like to have a loosely structured format first (general personality type stuff, then some keywords, and then goals or services that apply to them).

The good thing about this is that I can do as many as I need quickly and then later flesh them out before I put them into a more formal presentation format.

For the wireframes, I do a similar type of process. I often like to do several very fast wireframes on paper just to get an idea of what I think might work best. They are generally not at all neat and tidy, as you can see. Sometimes ideas come quickly, so it’s important to me that I don’t get bogged down in small details and measuring proportions or I might lose an idea. After I get a few I like, then I go through the same process of fleshing them out formally.

So, there you have it! One DUO, one part of the UX process.

Jun 23

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WEEKEND CREATIVE COMBO: SPANISH CAROUSEL

By admin Creative Combo No Comments

Yesterday, we needed to celebrate that we raised the first $1000 at our Kickstarter campaign for Epokka. And for us, there’s nothing better than a good Spanish red wine and cheese. We just received a package in the mail with cheese that my family sent from Madrid.

Wonderful Manchego cured sheep cheese! And we bought a bottle of Lan, one of our favorite Spanish red wines, in Trader Joe’s.

It was a wonderful evening, listening to Flamenco music on the porch and talking about new ideas for Epokka. It was a carousel of toasts to all the beautiful people who are helping Epokka’s dream come true. To you!

Jun 21

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Ceramic Designs and Other Things We Loved This Week

By admin Week Love No Comments

This week, Naomi and me have received a shower of inspiration from a group of artist friends who are now taking the online course ‘Make Art That Sells’ at Lilla Rogers Studio School. They have all worked on an assignment for plate decoration and… the results are diverse and all exuberant and outstanding!

I love this type of decorations! In the 80’s, I earned a life for a while creating ceramic pieces. I took a course on typical Spanish ceramics decoration and worked on pottery, plates and tiles decoration. This awakened my love for what in my country is a long tradition. I specially love the Spanish styles from Talavera, Fajalauza and Teruel, which pieces you can positively see at every Spanish home.

After the conquest of America, the Spanish styles influenced the ceramics in South-America, especially the style from Valencia. Many centuries later, these decorative styles were a huge inspiration to Mary Blair, The Eames, and other mid-century modern artists.

Here are a few samples of the terrific work from several artists at Lilla Rogers Studio School. I love the Mediterranean and Hispanic feel from all of these works, the colorful vibe and spring exuberance. They make me feel like cooking paella on a sunny Sunday morning!

Design by Gillian Martin.

Design by Sarah Walsh.

Design by Flora Chang.

Design by Lisa Firke.

Design by Beegee Tolpa.

Design by Jill Howarth.

Design by Tammie Bennett.

This week, Naomi and I were watching at Archive.org an amazing documentary from 1956 by cartoon artist John Sutherland Productions. “Your Safety First” is a commission from the Automobile Manufacturers of America and it portrays the history of cars from the past to the future in the year 2000. Of course, the car is portrayed as an irreplaceable part of our lives.

Something that I learned when I first moved to Washington is that, unlike in Europe, here you can’t survive without a car!

Just like other futuristic cartoons at the time, such as The Jetsons and some Disney short films, the way that our present times are portrayed is pretty funny. Some things are prophetic and other couldn’t be more wrong. Here are a few examples:

4 hour work day
Computerized homes
3D televisions and newspapers with sense of smell
Intelligent cars that drive themselves
A social media driving system to communicate between vehicles

All this looks pretty cool, I mean, it’s great that we can now enjoy modern technology. But Naomi and I keep wondering if humanity is developing the new possibilities in the right direction…

We are aware of how much harm the automobile industry has caused to American society. To increase the consumption of oil, cities have been designed and re-designed, taking away the neighborhood life and shopping facilities from people, making walking habits almost impossible in most cities. For a European person like me, who is used to doing all the shopping in 1/2 mile radius and talking to all my neighbors and shop vendors, this way of life is a disgrace.

Hopefully, today things are starting to change. Young generations are turning their backs to the car. They realize that the American dream of freedom based in mobility is not for them and retrofitting suburbia is a reality.

Naomi and I are not against modern technology, that’s for sure. But we think it could serve us in a more organic and humanistic way. It needs to be in tune with what the potential of humanity is: a future based in the synergy between humans and nature.

For this reason, when we started Epokka we decided that we wanted to create products that would keep us in touch with our inner core. Electronics devices can be very handy for some things, but there’s nothing better than paper and pencil to concentrate on the creative experience without interference and distractions.

Jun 18

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Epokka promo video

By admin Epokka Products, Kickstarter No Comments

Here is the promo video that we have created to launch Kickstarter’s campaign for Epokka. Our resources were very limited to produce it so since the very first day, we decided to make the best multi-creative experience of it. Everything has been produced in house by us: illustration, photography, animation, music, etc…

After 6 months of work during weekends and nights, we can say that it has been the most fulfilling and beautiful experience that we have lived together. Multi-creativity is such a miraculous gift and it can really change your life for better and bring so much happiness and joy! We want to share this with you, invite you all to let yourself go and open your heart to it.

We’d be so honored if you could take a couple minutes check out our project and have a look at the video.
If you feel your friends would like to know about this, please share it in your whereabouts. We are very grateful for your support!

Jun 15

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How can you embrace multi-creativity?

By admin Creativity 2 Comments

Koldo at a drawing contest, 10 years old

How can you embrace the multi-creative side of you and not feel guilty about it? We all have heard the saying “Jack of all trades”. It implies that using your talent in different things is wasting it. But, at the end of the day, it’s nothing but a judgmental demagogic argument that dramatist Robert Greene wrote about his rival William Shakespeare to discredit him as a writer, pointing out that an actor couldn’t be also a writer. Ha!

When it comes to feeling guilty about multi-creativity, I can do nothing but speak for myself: it took me 45 years to accept that I’m a multi-creative person and there’s nothing wrong with that.

My father was a talented painter who used to copy art as a hobby, so it’s logical that at a very early age all the attention was on my drawing skills. I started taking art classes at 6 and I wanted to be Walt Disney. But, just like any other kid, I enjoyed being creative in as many ways as possible: writing stories, acting, making up games…

It was not until I was a teenager that I was conscious that I loved to do so many different things: painting, drawing comics, playing music, publishing fanzines, writing stories and lyrics…

My teenage years were a very exciting time working with different types of artists. I mostly worked as a visual artist painting illustrations, comics and album covers, and got my first job at a design studio. But, at the same time, I also worked both professionally and as an amateur in numerous different creative activities: poetry, storytelling, crafts, sculpture, music, stage design, etc…

Then, at 22, I decided to pursue a career as children’s book illustrator. I forced myself to fit the market and consequently I burnt myself out as an artist and illustrator. The passion I used to feel for the work was extinguished and I felt sad and empty as never before.

I had always been mad crazy about music and for a long time I had been involved in various music projects. So, for the next decade, I dropped the pencils and brushes to concentrate on music. I had the privilege of working with numerous excellent musicians on several projects of progressive, traditional, jazz and electronic music and I also produced a solo album with their help. It was a very exciting time! But all that glitters is not gold…

To convince myself that I was becoming a real musician, I completely buried my love for visual art and didn’t touch a pencil for years. I didn’t feel validated because I didn’t go to music school and that made me a very insecure person. For awhile, I didn’t even want people to know that I used to be a visual artist. I thought exclusivity would give me extra points. Oh, how wrong I was!

There was no need at all to kill the artist side of me to become a better musician. There was no need to be ashamed about not having been a trained musician beginning when I was a kid in order to experience music. Because that’s what creativity is all about: the act of love for experiencing it. But took me many years to understand this.

All the time, society and media praise the success of artists in a particular creative field. But very rarely recognizes the value of multi-creativity. Is a fact that most renowned artists are knowledgeably creative in other activities, but they’re not usually recognized for it. Robert Greene’s sentence keeps hitting us in our society: “stay in one parcel or you will lose the gas”. The social and political system wants a world of specialized workers who can only be good at one thing and can be easily controlled. And it seems that nobody wants to be surrounded by people who change and evolve.

Did you ever feel your friends and family turn their backs on you when you discovered a new side of you?

It’s easier to have our friends labelled, so we don’t need to wonder about their eventual eccentricities. We don’t like surprises. We want them to fit the reality that we have created for them. But this way, at an early age we are all denying our human essence to be curious creatures, to explore life, to be creative and transform and grow along with the universe.

Thanks to my wife Naomi, I discovered and recovered my passion for visual arts. With her support, I started exploring very different styles and subjects as an artist and illustrator. Then, again, I hit the same wall: publishers, agents and artist friends would keep telling me that my portfolio was too diverse. They thought I was making their job to sell my work too difficult. I regretted that I had been so experimental; that it was not a clever decision for my career. So I tried to be a good boy and stick just to one thing. And once again, it turned into frustration, disillusion and sadness, because my eagerness to explore was always bigger than my wish to fit the mold.

Early this year, Naomi and I talked about many things related with our values and inner being. She happened to go through a similar frustrating experience for the last few years, after having worked as a web and graphic designer, UX designer and conversion optimization consultant. We were very fortunate to have each other and be in the same page when it comes to growing together.

So for the last years we thought a lot about what multi-creativity means to us. We realized it was time to quit feeling guilty of having an itch for different creative trades and we decided to embrace multi-creativy. We gave ourselves permission to experience creativity at it’s full dimension. And we thought we could also help other people like us by creating tools and techniques to promote multi-creativity. We imagined TRIO: an Idea Book System that helps to use your creativity in three different areas. Then a new epoch started for us: Epokka was born.

Jun 09

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Weekend Creative Combo: Celebratory Chocolate

By admin Creative Combo, News No Comments

Yesterday Koldo and I wrapped up the shooting of our promo video for our Epokka’s Kickstarter campaign. It’s for the introduction of the video and was a challenge for us to put together because neither one of us is accustomed to getting in front of the camera. There were several technical difficulties with the audio and such, but in the end we pulled through and are as happy as we’re going to get with it, moving past the discomfort of seeing ourselves on video.

After we shot the video, we decided to celebrate with low-carb chocolate cream puffs in our favorite pastel colors. Perfect ending to a good day! Just don’t ask me what happened after that!

—
Credits:
Set Design: Koldo Barroso and Naomi Niles
Photography: Naomi Niles

Jun 07

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Vintage Cookbooks and Other Things We Loved This Week

By admin Week Love No Comments

Who in the U.S. doesn’t have an old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook somewhere about? When we first moved to the U.S., we saw an old one from the 1968 in Goodwill and I couldn’t resist taking it home.

Oh, the traditions and the weird ideas! Strangely, some of the coloring in the photos seem to make the food look rather unappealing. Never you mind, you go on with your pretty French macarons and we’ll be over here with our cocktail wiener tree.

Speaking of cookbooks, how great is this mid-century modern cooking flickr pool we found of not only snapshots of old recipes, but photos of recipes people have cooked themselves?

Pass me a wiener?

Another joy to find was this amazing roundup of beautiful bookboards on Design Mom. It’s probably no surprise that we share a common love of books around here.

I believe my favorite is the Alexander Girard cover, but it’s a tough decision!

Every once in awhile you find something so timeless that you’re not sure if it’s actually vintage or modern. That’s how I felt when I first saw these gorgeous scans from The First Book of Language, 1962, courtesy of Present and Correct.

Oh, Scandinavian design! You light up my heart and make me want to play! Do they have something in the water over there or what? Nina Invoirm is having a sale over at her shop right now on her wonderful charming ceramic pieces.

I wouldn’t want to use these, just put them up on pretty shelves and look at them.

—
Credits:
First cookbook photo: Naomi Niles
Second cookbook photo: Vintage Midcentury
Alexander girard cover photo: Alison Moore
Book of Language Scan: Present and Correct
Ceramics Photo: Nina Invoirm

Jun 06

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Creativity and the Feminine Cycle

By admin Creativity No Comments

When I think of the act of creating something, I think about it like an inherently feminine type of process. Think about these metaphors for a moment:

I’m gestating ideas
I’m giving birth to this business
This product is my baby
I’m nurturing my creativity
I’m going to found a startup incubator
It’s baking in the oven (possibly a reference to “bun in the oven“)

Now, of course I’m not saying that men are not as creative as women or that it’s a character trait. We’re all born creative and we all have facets of ourselves that are masculine and feminine.

What I would like to briefly explore today, however, is how a woman can attune herself to the creative process in a more organic way so that fits with her natural cycles and all the ups and downs and ebbs and flows that come with it.

One of the biggest issues with the culture we live in is that we’re always expected to be “on”. This is highly detrimental to creativity because it doesn’t give us the space we need to reflect and create. If you look past the tech world, the past decade there haven’t been many cultural shifts catalyzed by creations like art, music, the written word, and design. Being constantly on is hard and stressful on everyone, but I believe it can especially be hard on a woman because there are certain moments when it’s just more difficult to be in this “on” state.

When a woman is going through menstruation, due to hormonal shifts, it is the time when her left and right brain hemispheres are most actively in congruence with one another. Since creativity has so much to do with connecting different types of ideas, this might be a match made in heaven for birthing new things. It seems that neuroscience has caught up with what many ancient traditions have already known!

This time is perfect for daydreaming, a little downtime, scheming, connecting dots, and creating art, but it’s not great for things that need a lot of heavy-duty action or communication.

I know I find this true in myself. I especially dislike talking on the phone a few of those days. I feel a little cloudy-headed for proper communication and if I’m honest, there aren’t many things I’d rather do than go sit in the park with my pen and DUO and daydream. With chocolate.

It makes me wonder if there are certain other moments when we can more finely tune our creative process to our own natural ebbs and flow. I’d personally like to learn how to better listen to myself and embrace the natural cycle more instead of pushing and fighting it.

How about you? Have you noticed your creative endeavors being influenced by cycles?

—

Credits:
Photography by Naomi Niles

Jun 04

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Creativity involves any type of creative inspiration and expression

Do I need to be an artist to be multi-creative?

By admin Creativity No Comments

When someone says ‘creative people’ we immediately think of people like Pablo Picasso, Walt Disney, Steven Spielberg, Coco Chanel… I mean, we think of artists who are renowned and specialized in one particular profession. That’s the type of value that our society applauds and rewards. So, if we decide we want to follow the creative path, specialization should be our goal. But that’s nothing but an erratic social stereotype that has nothing to do with our real potential as human beings. There are unlimited ways to be creative, so why should we limit ourselves to one way for the rest of our lives?

And what is more important: there’s no human way not to be creative. Neuroscience knows today that we constantly use both teh rational and creative hemispheres of the brain, especially when we make decisions and solve any sort of problem, so creativity is at work all the time. We are all born with this unique gift to be creative in multiple and unlimited ways. But our Western culture and educative system prunes our creative branches and then puts them into little labeled boxes.

Do you remember being asked ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’. What a terrible castration for a kid who cannot even conceive of limits to his beautiful and multiple stream of creation and experimentation!

You don’t need to be an artist, a designer, a writer or a movie director to be creative. Scientists, educators, cooks, computer programmers, handymen, homemakers and house hubbies… everyone in their essence are creative people. Every time you solve a problem, be small or big, you’re being creative. Just think of how many creative things you do in a day and that will give you the answer to if you are a creative person.

When Naomi and I started conceiving of the first tools for multi-creativity, we didn’t think of an specific type of creative person because we are all creative people. There are no creative and non creative people. There are people who are conscious about their creative skills and nurture them and people who are not. We would like that our Epokka tools help everyone to develop their creativity, no matter the way they use them.

That’s why we decided to start with simple materials that could be used by all kinds of creative activities: design, science, architecture, poetry, philosophy, art, thoughts, and, to summarize; anything inventive and constructive that you can think of.

In my next post I will talk about how can you embrace multi-creativity and will share with you a story about Naomi’s and my long journey to reach where we are now.

—

Credits:
Video still from promo video by Naomi Niles and Koldo Barroso, featuring Epokka’s TRIO Idea Book.

Jun 03

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Custom Color Combinations for the Idea Book Systems

By admin Product Development No Comments

We are going to offer an option on our Epokka’s Kickstarter to allow a few people to make their own bookcloth color combinations. We thought it would be a fun option for those adventurous and particular souls out there!

Koldo and I spent a few hours yesterday carefully curating and working with the distributors to come up with what we think are the most interesting range of colors to choose from: Six choices for the main outside cloth and seven choices for the front cover. No matter how you choose, you can’t help but come up with something lovely.

—

Credits:
Photography: Naomi Niles.
Album cover design: unkown.

May 31

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What is multi-creativity?

By admin Creativity One Comment

What is multi-creativity?

Do I need to be an artist to be multi-creative?

Am I a multi-creative person?

How can I embrace multi-creativity?

Naomi and I have been asking ourselves these and other similar questions for a long time. The answers that we obtained were the seeds of the dream that we are now putting to life. We’d like to share them with you in this and a series of forthcoming posts.

There is no such thing as ‘multi-creativity’. Our brain makes no difference between creative professions and creative tasks. It’s all part of the same string of expansive movement: an impulse of constant transformation which mirrors the creative universe we are part of. The universe expands, destroys and creates. So does our mind.

If all creativity is multi-creativity, why to use this word at all? Only for practical reasons. Sadly, the original sense of creativity has been erased in our culture, so we need to remember it’s ‘multiple’ condition in order to understand it and reclaim it.

When Naomi and I first thought of tools to promote and reinforce the act of multi-creativity, we were very clear that we wanted to focus on products that would help everyone develop their multiple forms of creativity, rather than making tools only for certain types of creative professions. That’s why we’ve designed three different types of idea books (dot grid, lined and sketch) that can be used to multiple ways to work with creative ideas, including creative writing, designing, and drawing.

And we wanted tools that would work in tune with the natural creative process. So we have designed a set of Idea Books that can work together as part of the same Idea System. This way, you can easily work with different types of creativity ideas and/or also easily switch from one to the other. Just what we’ve been missing all these years!

In the next posts, we will both talk more about what means to be a multi-creative and about the journey that we made to get here. A rather long and winding road…

Image Credits:
Photography: Naomi Niles
Illustration: Koldo Barroso

May 29

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Meet me at the candy shoppe

By admin Creativity, Multi-Creatives 3 Comments

I’ve been fascinated lately with candy. Why is it so pretty and why does that make you want to eat it more? Why is it so fun? Is it a nice remnant from our childhood? Or are there designers behind the scenes, carefully crafting eye-pleasing colors and shapes that make it irresistible?

All I know is, whoever came up with the term “eye candy” to name all things lovely, nailed it!

I don’t eat very much candy (dietary reasons), but every once in a while I like to go to the bins and get a little bag full of various pretty items.

Until the next time I make a trip to the candy shoppe, I will satisfy my candy cravings with these adorable shoes I bought last week. When I saw them, I immediately thought “Oh, candy for the eyes!” and low-and-behold, ModCloth was thinking the same thing because they call them “Candy Shop Quartet Shoe“.

My favorite thing about them is the mint and vanilla combination. I’ve been on a mint kick lately, loving anything and everything mint in sight. One of the things both Koldo and I like to do is keep small records of the little things we like in our Epokka Idea Books. Something about sketching ideas out keeps them fresh in the mind for later. Candy! Mint! Fresh!

I’ve also been deeply in love with this storefront for Barton’s Bonbonniere. I wouldn’t say no to having a storefront like this, even if it wasn’t for a candy store. Actually, that’s a lie.

I’d be thrilled to have a store like this!

Alvin Lustig was the graphic design consultant and you can certainly see his influence on the work. Lustig happens to be one of our design heroes, so it was a pleasant surprise to find out that he contributed to this. It’s too bad that he passed away at such a young age and that this store no longer exists.

Why do the good things have to go? If you’re lucky, you might find one of the light fixtures someday on Ebay for a few grand though.

Here’s some more eye candy from Barton’s Bonbonniere for you to nibble on.

bartons-tin-2

Ok, I’m curious! What was your favorite type of candy when you were a kid? And what’s it now?

————–

Photo Credits:
Shoes and Notebook: Naomi Niles
Storefront Share: Sandiv 999
First Tin: Karen Horton
Second Tin: julielion

May 01

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Final Idea Notebook Prototypes

By admin Design, Prototype No Comments

When we finished the final Epokka prototypes for our new idea books, the first thing I thought is that I wanted to eat them. Is that weird?

While I didn’t get as far as to actually taste them or nibble on the corners (it was a close call), I do have to say that using them is a lot of fun. If cupcakes had a serious competitor, these would probably be it.

Yesterday we put together a short video so you can better see what they will look like in their final format. We have a dot grid idea book, a lined idea book, and a sketch idea book with blank pages. What’s your favorite type of notebook?

We hope everyone enjoys them as much as we do (actual nibbling not recommended)!

Apr 30

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A DIY multi-creative video for Epokka

By admin Workshop No Comments

When we first discussed the promo video for our Epokka campaign, which will be showcased at Kickstarter in a couple of weeks, we were very clear about doing everything in-house: videography, design, arts & crafts, illustration, music, etc. This is the advantage of experiencing a creative life, but what is more important: we can have fun with every step in the process.

We spent the last weekend shooting a couple of scenes and set two different stages: one with a landscape and another with a decorative mobile. It’s been magical to see the whole thing coming alive!

Apr 24

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A home for our products

By admin Workshop No Comments

Painting, cutting, setting, placing, testing… We are starting to shoot the promotional video for Epokka this weekend. So these are the kind of cha-cha-cha movements going on at our studio right now.

We are creating props and decoration and Koldo is creating a beautiful scenery with illustrations for the video and photo shooting. It’s very intense, but extremely fun and fulfilling. It’s beautiful to create a little world within a world for our products. It’s like creating a home for their little ‘paper souls’.

Apr 19

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Nostalgia

By admin Creativity, Multi-Creatives No Comments

One of the things that drives our design decisions is nostalgia. You may have noticed that we are influenced by things from the past. From the curious and fun to playful and charming.

Both Koldo and I are the nostalgic types and feel that a large part of creativity is approaching your project with a child-like curiosity and sense of wonder. When you were a kid, I bet you didn’t worry about getting everything just perfect or if something was very practical. You just tried it and if it didn’t work, that was ok, you just tried something else!

This is the feeling we want people to have when they use our products. That it’s ok to have fun again. In fact, it’s more than ok. It’s encouraged!

To honor our own pasts, we’ve started a Pinterest board with some of our favorite objects from our childhood. Things that we created fun stuff with or that made us think about and understand our world just a little better.

Koldo’s also added several items from Spain from his childhood. I think it’s fascinating to see how Mid-Century design developed in Spain. It has its own special charm. It’s also funny to see that Koldo and I shared some of the same objects even though we were over a decade and many miles apart.

The book above is one passed down to me from my mother. It was a little short on instructions, but long on fun and creative ideas to make things with simple objects like paper and wood. I made several projects from the book with big DIY love.

You can find the board here.

What special objects do you remember from your childhood?