A word from our sponsors...
These fine people, products, and services have sponsored kottke.org with the purchase of a Boost for Kickstarter. Find out about their projects below. If you'd like to schedule a Boost for your Kickstarter campaign, get in touch!
Let's get this out of the way right off the bat: I am not a coffee drinker. But literally everyone I know drinks coffee and many of them are, let's say, particular about the details. They talk brewing methods, check roast dates, chat about espresso machine maintenance, compare single origin espresso beans from different roasters, and converse for a surprisingly long time about crema. If this sounds like you, or someone you know, you might want to check out Crema.co — The Single-Origin Coffee Marketplace.
Crema.co is an online store for freshly roasted single-origin1 coffee beans. In the store, you'll be able to pick out beans from individual specialty roasters from around the world. Once you've made a selection, the roaster will roast your beans and send them out to you...no sitting around on the shelf, so you know they're super-fresh. The thing you'll likely use the most is the Brewlist feature. Brewlist is like a Netflix queue for coffee: you can add all different kinds of coffee you want to try from different roasters, set a delivery frequency, and you'll get a new bag of beans to enjoy every so often.
Right now, the team at Crema.co is busy building their site for a US launch this summer; some preview screenshots are available on the project page if you're interested in seeing their progress. They need your help in finishing the site up and launching, so head on over to Kickstarter to pre-order some single-origin coffee beans from Crema.co today.
After five years of writing & rewriting and backing almost 60 projects on Kickstarter, Martin McClellan has finally launched his own Kickstarter project for his debut novel, California Four O'Clock. What's the book about? It's a family drama about pin-up modeling set in California in 1955. But there's more to it than that, as McClellan writes:
It's about women and gender roles in the mid-century, and the types of women who bucked those roles. About queer identity in a time where the closet was nearly the only option. About the changing roles of painting and photography, at a time when pin-up painters were dying off, and glamour photographers were taking off. About California's car culture, and restaurant scene, and Los Angeles all ready for its transformation into the freeway capitol of the world.
You can get a taste for the flavor of the book with two excerpts: from Chapter III and Chapter X.
As a seasoned Kickstarter backer, McClellan is committed to delivering a quality product. He's commissioned artist Vicki Nerino to do the illustrations. The book will be available in a regular hardback edition and a special clothbound edition that comes in a custom slipcover and with a set of four signed prints by Nerino. Adam Lisagor, John Gruber, and Robin Sloan have already backed California Four O'Clock, how about you?
This is a first for me: last week I received an email from a peanut about his Kickstarter campaign, Pete Peanut and the Trouble with Birthdays. Pete wrote to tell me about the new book he is publishing with help from his friends, Sean Hewens, a designer and writer, and Mimi O Chun, a designer and artist.
I don't want to give too much away, but Pete's book tells of the problems he and his friends are having with birthdays. Where the book really shines, however, is in the photography that accompanies the text. Each of the miniature mid-century modern scenes of Pete's world was hand-crafted by Hewens & Chun and they look amazing. The style and aesthetic reminds me very favorably of Wes Anderson (particularly Fantastic Mr. Fox) and Kelli Anderson's work. The pair of them obviously have some serious design chops and an enviable attention to detail.
Kids are going to love this book, but in talking with Chun & Hewens, they wrote the book with adults in mind as well, with a similar crossover appeal as The Simpsons, Harry Potter, or the aforementioned Fantastic Mr. Fox. Sure, a story about anthropomorphic peanuts is cute and whimsical, but there's also irony, references to art & design, and themes like our society's preoccupation with aging and our celebration of the self.
The main reward for backing the campaign is a hardcover version of the book, but you should check out some of the other ones as well. Unfortunately, the hand-made miniature scenes from the book are all spoken for, but they've just added an amazing reward at the $35 level: a custom Viewmaster & reel that's synced to an audio version of the book. So check that out and much more on the Kickstarter page for Pete Peanut and the Trouble with Birthdays.
One of my favorite trends on Kickstarter is the popularity of projects offering long-lasting, American-made products. The self-starting DIY ethos of KS dovetails nicely with the idea that America can still produce high-quality, affordable goods. The demand is definitely out there as well; in the past, I've backed campaigns for hoodies, shoelaces, and men's underwear that have quickly blown past their goals. The Quarter Century Pant, launched earlier this month, continues this trend with American-made men's pants that come with a 25-year guarantee.
The folks behind the Quarter Century Pant have packed a lot into this campaign, so let's run over some of the high points. The pants are made in Los Angeles, CA out of high quality materials like 3-ply twill and "military grade copper" buttons and rivets...every aspect of these pants are heavy-duty. They are guaranteed to last 25 years, and if they break or wear out before then, you can send them back for repair, free of charge. They come in a variety of sizes (hemming is available for an extra fee) and in eight different colors. And they're selling the pants at wholesale pricing with no brand or retail markup (+ free US shipping), which works out to about the same price as a pair of chinos from J.Crew.
This is the fourth project from this experienced team; they've previously run three very successful projects offering American-made jeans, so you can be confident they'll deliver. So, order a pair or two of The Quarter Century Pants today.
By now, fitness tracking apps and devices for running and cycling are an established way of helping people achieve their fitness goals. The seamless tracking of steps or miles or calories, especially when done together with friends, can be powerful motivation in establishing healthy routines that might otherwise be difficult to initiate. A small team is bringing this same thinking to jumping rope. Meet Sophia, the smart jump rope.
The product consists of a durable jump rope with tracking and communication electronics embedded in the handle combined with a smartphone app. When you jump with the rope, the accelerometer and an optical sensor keep track of how much you jump. Then you can sync your phone to the rope via Bluetooth and pull your stats into the app. The app charts your workouts, but you can also use the arcade mode or challenge your friends from within the app for that extra motivation.
When watching the video, one detail jumped out at me: the team moved to Shenzhen in order to work more closely with their hardware manufacturer. That shows how dedicated they are in getting it right. The companion app seems similarly ambitious; it would be easier to leave out the challenge-a-friend feature, but it will be so much better with that peer motivation built in. So go check out Sophia on Kickstarter...there are still a few available at early bird pricing.
I like t-shirts. Maybe that's putting it mildly; I rarely wear anything other than a t-shirt. I'm mostly a plain white or simple colored tee guy at this point, but for many, t-shirts function like temporary personal billboards; whatever is printed on them is an expression of your personality and what you want to communicate to others. The Tic Tac Toe Tee is a more interactive version of the same: you can play an actual game of tic tac toe with it.
The shirt is pretty simple. It's a special light-weight Velcro playing area affixed to the front of a t-shirt with accompanying embroidered X and O Velcro playing pieces. Mikko Jarvenpaa thought up the idea for the shirt while traveling around the world. He was backpacking by himself, getting a bit lonely, and thought it would be a good way to connect with people. Jarvenpaa was inspired to put the Tic Tac Toe Tee up on Kickstarter after his hunch was proved correct; people stopped him and his friends wearing prototype shirts at parties, on the street, and in bars, wanting to play and buy their own.
The Tic Tac Toe Tee launched on Kickstarter today, so if you hurry, you can still get one of the 50 tees at the early bird price. And remember: if you can, try to go first and always play the center square.
Wyatt Hull is a designer and photographer who has had this idea kicking around in his head for a while: a wall calendar that uses the signs of the Zodiac (Capricorn, Libra, Pisces) as the "months". Hull has turned this idea into a labor-of-love personal project on Kickstarter, the Astrologicalendar.
I admit to being initially skeptical when I first heard about the project because the pseudoscience of horoscopes have given the Zodiac a bad name. But after trading emails with Hull and watching the video, I was persuaded because 1) this doesn't have anything to do with horoscopes (aside from the winking references to Mercury being in retrograde); 2) the Astrologicalendar simply trades one arbitrary measure of a year's time (the Gregorian calendar) for another (the Zodiac); and 3) and the calendar itself is a beautiful design object. The calendar runs from Aries 2015 (Mar 21) to Pisces 2016 (Mar 20) and each page features an aerial photograph taken by Hull superimposed with a simple star chart of the corresponding constellation...no woodcut fish or crabs to be seen.
In addition to single calendar orders, Hull is also offering bulk orders (2, 5, or 10 calendars at a time), signed 12x12" and 20x20" prints, and even a personalized calendar with custom photography and important dates. Astrologicalendar is a fun and unusual way of contemplating the passage of a year; head on over to Kickstarter and get yours today.
The idea behind the Flip Band is simple. It's a double-sided wristband you wear every day that reminds you to do just one thing, something important that you want to turn into a daily habit: call your folks, go for a run, do your homework, or brush your teeth. When you accomplish the task for that day, you simply flip over the band to the "feel good" green side. Mission accomplished! From the Kickstarter page:
Most people fail because they want to change too many things in their lives at once and as a result never really commit to any single change. Wearing a Flip Band forces you to focus on one change at a time. If you do this and end up forming one new good habit each month, you'll end up building 12 good habits per year... not bad.
I love the behavioral psychology at work here. When your task isn't done for the day, the unflipped band sits there on the end of your arm, gently taunting you as you're working or pecking away at your phone. And then after you've done the thing, the flipped band is a little victory medal that gives you warm fuzzies throughout the rest of your day. Flip Band reminds me a bit of the idea behind Jerry Seinfeld's joke-writing calendar hack: small actions done daily can add up bigtime if you're using a prominent mindfulness enforcer.
So head over to Kickstarter and order your Flip Band today.
Hundreds of millions of car tires are discarded every year into landfills all over the world or burned for their fuel value. A group from the Basque Country in Spain is trying to make better use of those used tires. TireFlops are fashionable flip flops with soles constructed from used tire treads.
Aside from the environmental upside, there are two additional reasons why used tire treads make good shoe soles. Tire companies have spent billions designing tires that are durable and maintain a good grip on the road. As it happens, I own a pair of sandals with tire tread soles and everything that video says about them is true: they don't slip easily when wet and the sole lasts forever...longer than the leather upper on my sandals has anyway. If I could wear flip flops1, I would easily buy a pair of these. I'll have to settle for the Maker kit to resole a pair of old shoes.
To match the quality of the tire tread soles, the TireFlops team has paired them with an elastic strap w/ more elasticity than normal straps and a grippy cushioning layer for extra comfort and safety in slippery conditions. There are several options available -- 8 different colors, volume discounts, a flip flop w/ double cushioning, a special limited-edition Kickstarter-green flip flop -- and lots of limited rewards left, so head on over to Kickstarter to check out TireFlops.
Since founding NYC-based Open in 1998, Scott Stowell has grown the company into an award-winning multi-disciplinary consulting/design/ad firm while maintaining a shoot-from-the-hip sense that design, ideas, and telling stories, even stories about brands, should be fun. Now Stowell and his Open team have taken all the work they've done, what they've learned doing it, and distilled it into Design for People, a book of "stories about how (and why) we all can work together to make things better".
I've noticed good designers are often good writers in a way that is straight-forward, clear, and succinct. The story for Design for People's Kickstarter page is a definite example of that, so I'll let Scott explain more about the project in his own words:
Open has clients like Etsy, Google, and Patagonia. Our work is in books and magazines. I won a National Design Award. That's all thanks to the people I've worked with, and you'll hear from them in this book. Design for People tells the stories of our biggest projects through interviews with clients, consultants, designers, interns, vendors-and regular people who use the stuff we make, including my Mom and Dad (and maybe you!). If you like to get into the details of how things work, Design for People is for you.
Being a designer is a fascinating job. We get to work with all kinds of people who do all kinds of things-and help solve their problems. That process is complicated, exhilarating, and fun. So is this book. Plenty of books are full of pretty pictures. Others have good stories. This one has both. So you'll hear what went wrong, how we fixed things -- and when we couldn't. Design for People will show you what it's like to work together to make things better. Then I hope you'll do the same.
I've seen some sample pages from the book in-progress and it's looking good. So head on over to Kickstarter and get yourself a copy of Design for People today.
Smartphones are great, aren't they? Aren't they?!? I mean, we can't keep our eyes and hands off of them, even in the presence of people we care about and want to talk to. Like so many previous technologies that enable greater communication, smartphones have become intrusive in certain situations. A small team from London is attempting to help people pay less attention to their phones while still giving them ways to keep on top of important notifications. Meet nudge, the wristband that lets you keep your phone in your pocket.
Here's how it works: you pair nudge with your phone, choose which types of notifications you want to receive (calls/texts from specific numbers, emails w/ keywords, calendar events, etc.), and nudge will let you know via a subtle light or vibration when you receive something you need to pay attention to, allowing you to blissfully ignore everything else. nudge can also act as a silent alarm, find your phone, or let you know if you've left your phone behind. The best named feature is the dedicated Shut Up Phone and Deal With It button that immediately silences your phone.
One of my all-time favorite tweets is from Scott Simpson: "My new standard of cool: when I'm hanging out with you, I never see your phone ever ever ever." nudge can help you stay Simpson-cool while not missing out on important stuff. There are still few of the nudge wristbands available at early bird pricing, so head on over to Kickstarter and check them out.
What if you could upgrade the experience of your current bike without buying a new one? That's what the team at iCradle is trying to do: enhance your biking experience with COBI, the World's Smartest Connected Biking System.
COBI is an integrated hardware & software system for bicycles that offers capabilities turn-by-turn directions, auto-dimming headlamp, brake light & turn signals, bell, phone charger, theft alarm, Spotify integration, etc., all controlled through your phone and simple handlebar control pad. They've even built an SDK so that bike makers can extend COBI's functionality. The Kickstarter video is only three minutes long and does a much better job showing the features than text can, so I'd urge you to watch it.
I asked COBI co-founder Heiko Schweickhardt why the team zeroed in on building a connected biking system. He replied that the team is committed to getting "more people to use their bicycles more often" and to make cycling quicker, safer, and more pleasurable. They believe technology can help make that happen. COBI launched on Kickstarter today and is already off to a great start, but early-bird pricing is still available, so get in there.
The Flio portable laptop stand is a classic scratch-your-own-itch product borne out of personal frustration. Vlad Butucariu is a graphic designer from Rotterdam, Netherlands. In the course of pursuing his work, Butucariu struggled to find a way to work on his laptop while out and about without wrecking his back and wrists. So he designed the Flio.
The attention to detail here is impressive; it's obviously a product thought up by a designer. The three pieces comprising the stand fit together with the compactness of an Ikea flat-packed bookshelf and take about five seconds to assemble into an ergonomic laptop stand with two different tilt angles. When disassembled, the pieces are held together with tiny magnets and the whole thing is thin enough to slide into your laptop bag. The Flio is constructed of wood, so it should age nicely. (Oh and while the video and Kickstarter page emphasize the laptop stand, they're also offering a Flio Mini for a smartphone or iPad.)
Butucariu has gotten his friends and colleagues hooked on the Flio and now he wants to offer it to everyone. So head on over Kickstarter and order a Flio or Flio Mini today.
At a conference recently, a friend of mine started talking about olive oil. According to my friend's partner, who had studied the olive oil industry, there are two main factors in choosing great extra virgin olive oil. First, you need to make sure it's genuine olive oil; some producers fraudulently substitute other oils. Second, you want your oil to be as fresh as possible. The Especially Puglia project is giving you a chance to buy fresh unadulterated olive oil straight from a family farm in the Puglia region of Italy.
The main reward on offer is the adoption of an olive tree, for which you get 3 liters of freshly pressed extra virgin olive oil, a ceramic bottle, and an adoption certificate. They've set an aggressive goal to get this oil shipped out in time for the holidays (but they caution against harvest and shipping delays, so grain of salt and all that), and the adoption option would make a great holiday gift. But you can also order a 250mL sample size if 3L is too much. And for the high rollers, you can travel to witness next year's harvest and stay in the family's B&B right on the farm.
I don't think I've ever had super fresh olive oil before, so I'm excited to try this out. The number of trees on the farm limits the quantity of olive oil available through this campaign, so pledge your support for Especially Puglia's fresh extra virgin olive oil before it's all gone.
Since the advent of the affordable digital camera in the late 1990s, there have been many efforts to solve the digital shoebox problem: what do you do with all the photos and videos that you take? How do you keep them safe? How can you enjoy them after you've taken them? Past attempts have been janky at best; the storage & backup issue has been addressed in many different ways, but organizing and displaying your digital memories is still largely an unsolved problem.
Fireside wants to change all that by addressing both issues with a single service. Their platform will suck in your photos from wherever they're stored and keep them safe, secure, and searchable in the cloud. Then, using contextual computing and machine learning, Fireside's system will curate and organize your photos and videos into playlists, not unlike what Pandora does for your music collection. For example, on your birthday, the service might show you photos of past birthday celebrations.
And then those playlists can be displayed on your computer, mobile device, or on Fireside's handsome digital picture frame, the SmartFrame. The SmartFrame is a 15" 1080p display that's been designed to seamlessly integrate into your environment, like a picture frame and not like computer monitor. Founder Andy Jagoe got the idea for Fireside from his experience as a new dad and it shows...this thing is the perfect product/service for families. So head over and check out Fireside on Kickstarter...introductory and early bird pricing on cloud service and SmartFrames is still available.
Kristian Tapaninaho is passionate about pizza. His first Kickstarter project was a small wood-fired pizza oven which was described by one reviewer as "the Macbook Air of pizza ovens". For his second project, Tapaninaho is keeping on the pizza theme with a set of three stacking bowls for proofing dough: the elegant & thoughtfully designed Uuni Stack.
Proofing (or proving) dough is the process of letting the dough rise before baking it, which adds flavor and gives your pizza crust a more airy texture. Uuni Stack makes proofing super easy and no-fuss; you don't have to bother with plastic wrap or filling your counter or fridge with every mixing bowl you own.
What I like best about Uuni Stack is how simple-yet-functional they are. Sure, you can use them for proofing dough if you're an avid at-home pizza maker (and I know plenty of people who are) but especially in a place like NYC, where kitchen counter space is at a premium, having stacking bowls around for prep and storage is super handy. Plus, the bowls' wooden top doubles as a cutting board. Order the Uuni Stack on Kickstarter today.
If you were to design the simplest possible radio, what features would you need to keep to still call your device a radio? In making The Public Radio, Brooklynites Zach Dunham and Spencer Wright kept only four features: an FM tuner, an antenna, a speaker, and a volume knob. No alarm function, no AM band, and no changing stations; The Public Radio ships tuned to your favorite radio station, the one you listen to 95% of the time anyway.
For an enclosure for this minimum viable radio, they went with something cheap, off-the-shelf, and très Brooklyn: a 250 mL mason jar. The pair used the jar when testing speakers on prototypes and decided to keep it as part of the radio's simple aesthetic. If you don't like the jar it ships with, you can replace it with something a little more your style -- a vintage blue wide-mouth quart Ball mason jar perhaps?
The Public Radio comes fully assembled, but it's also available in two additional DIY configurations: as a high-res download of the design files for those who want to fabricate their own from scratch and a fun Maker Kit option with all the necessary components you get to solder together. Order your Public Radio today on Kickstarter!
If you enjoy podcasts, there is no better time to be alive than the present day. But beyond the obvious culprits, it can be difficult to find good meaty podcasts about science and technology. Enter Relatively Prime, a podcast featuring storytelling about mathematics. The first series of 8 episodes was financed through Kickstarter a few years ago and now creator Samuel Hansen is back on Kickstarter to produce 8 more episodes about some of the most interesting stories in mathematics.
The first series, which you can subscribe to on iTunes and elsewhere, featured stories on how math can help with disaster relief, the decades-long struggle to construct a machine capable of playing a perfect game of checkers, a profile of extremely prolific mathematician and kottke.org favorite Paul Erdős, and an exploration of the similarities between mathematics and music. Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow called the checkers episode "one of the best technical documentaries I've heard".
For this second series, Hansen plans on covering topics like measuring the complexity of cities, using math to help with everyday decisions, and exploring whether it's possible to know all things in mathematics. If any of this sounds interesting, and you know it does, consider becoming a backer of Relatively Prime Series 2 on Kickstarter today.
If you've been reading this site for any significant amount of time at all, you're familiar with the XOXO festival, the latest installment of which just wrapped up in Portland to critical acclaim. One of XOXO's founders, Andy McMillan, is also the publisher of The Manual, a design journal about "why we design for the web the way we do". Launched on a certain crowdfunding site in 2011, The Manual team is now returning to Kickstarter and asking for your help in expanding the scope and availability of their publication.
Previously only available in print at a single price point, The Manual's plans include three main initiatives: 1) publishing their issues online, freely available and shared under a Creative Commons license; 2) offering ebook and audiobook editions of each issue; and 3) offering "pay if you want" subscriptions. In my mind, McMillan and his team are XOXO-ifying their publication by embracing the best qualities of the open web. And as past issues have included articles by some of web design's boldest-face names (like Karen McGrane, Frank Chimero, Ethan Marcotte, and Liz Danzico), they're bringing some serious firepower to the HTTParty. (Sorry.) And issue #4 will include writing by Paul Ford and Craig Mod. Come on!
Aaaaanyway, through their years of work with The Manual, the Build conference, and XOXO, McMillan and co. have shown how much they care about web design, fostering conversation and creativity, and the open web. Join me in backing the new era of The Manual on Kickstarter today.
The Affair is a London-based fashion brand that looks for inspiration in literature, producing t-shirts and prints inspired by notable books. But they've taken it up a notch for their newest collection on Kickstarter: 1984: Stealth Fashion for the Under-Surveillance Society. 1984 is a collection of durable fashion inspired by the workwear clothing of the George Orwell novel and our post-Snowden surveillance society. There's a Party Workshirt, Party Chinos, Outer Party Jacket (which I've got my eye on), and an Inner Party Blazer.
But the key to the collection is the UnPocket included with each piece. The UnPocket is a removable sleeve for your mobile device that renders it untrackable, allowing you to "go dark" when you're out and about. The pocket's material and design blocks out all cellular, WiFi, GPS, and RFID signals, effectively rendering your mobile phone invisible to the outside world, your own personal Faraday cage. They're also offering the UnPocket as a separate item for purchase, to slip into your own pocket, purse, or backpack. So check out the 1984 Kickstarter for details, pricing, and available styles.
And more...
The Simple Syrup Kit
Electric Objects: A Computer Made for Art
The Open Company emergency Go Bag
The Craft Your Own Bitters Kit
Electric Objects: A Computer Made for Art
Closer to Home: A Community Filmmaking Project
COINED: How Money is Changing
Organic Basics: Organic underwear on autopilot
Ride North: A moto-photographic journey from SF to Alaska
Monikers