Announcing Crowdstorms

Senior year is in full swing and I have a lot of pots on the stove. The time has finally come to start publicizing one of the most exciting projects I have in the works, which is a comprehensive and (hopefully) unique web service that I will be building with my good friend, Josh.

The name of the project is Crowdstorms, and it will be a tool that helps designers, illustrators, writers, and other creatives form and develop ideas. It will use the power of words and people’s unique associations with them to fuel the creative process and encourage unconventional solutions to visual problems. Details are still fuzzy, but the site will allow users to create “topics” and then ask the community to populate them. It will carefully track all of the relationships different people form between words and ideas, building an associative reference tool unlike anything currently available.

I will keep this blog updated with the major news concerning Crowdstorms, but for all the behind the scenes action, check out the development blog Josh and I are maintaining. If you are interested in the private beta, sign up to be notified when it is available.

Social Design & Design by Committee

I had the opportunity to watch (a couple of times, actually) the documentary Citizen Architect almost a month ago. I have been stewing over the film, as well as social design in general, ever since, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts and perhaps start one of them fancy internet discussion things.

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Never Pick a Fight…

“Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel.”

Mark Twain (via Best Made Projects)

Making Connections

I have always been captivated by the culture and community of Craigslist. I am glad to announce a new ongoing project of mine, which takes advantage of the infamous “missed connections” section on the popular classifieds website.

For those of you uninitiated to the splendor that is “Missed Connections,” it is a section of the personal ads that is dedicated to the little connections we make with strangers on the street everyday. Say you see an attractive person everyday on your commute to work, or buy coffee from some hottie at your local cafe, but don’t have the nerve to say something. Missed Connections is a place where you can post these interests, in the hopes that the person you are talking about somehow finds your posting, feels the same way, and gets in contact with you: a romantic shot in the dark, an amorous hail-mary. I have decided to try my best to drastically increase the chances that these people actually get connected with each other by extending the message from a mere online posting in a niche section of Craigslist to a series of small, targeted print campaigns.

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