As a child my mother taught me how to create my own clothes and style. For my first career I was the HR Manager for Victoria’s Secret in the Mall of America. I have a degree in Fashion Marketing, the point I’m trying to make is I have a strong knowledge and passion for fashion and the consumer shopping experience. This month I participated in a retail market research study with the Intelligence Group.

The Intelligence Group, publisher of trendcentral, is a trend research and youth-focused consumer insights company dedicated to identifying emerging movements in popular culture and then translating that data and observations into relevant knowledge for companies, brands, and institutions.

For two weeks, The Intelligence Group had a forum of twenty-five young adults discussing fashion, creating style diaries, developing photo albums of interests, answering questions, sharing opinions, and doing fashion assignments. I was able to collaborate with people from California to Europe on a forum called Cassandra Speaks.

It’s here where we had an open forum to say and create anything we wanted that related to our interest in shopping, clothing and culture. By creating such a niche forum of hand-selected applicants with no limit to location, Trend Central is able to stay connected to the consumer. This allows them to stay ahead of emerging attitudes and cultural movements from all over the world.

I loved participating in this forum; I was actually disappointed when it was over, so were my given fashion assignments.

Schmap is a digital travel guide for 200 destinations throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The technology of Schmap Guides lets users: share trip itineraries, place reviews, and is conveniently available as a widget. This website syndicating more than 6 million maps a month with: content and event schedules for travel, sports and concert tours, to a fast-growing network of websites and blogs.

Technology has made this world much closer, making travelers more informed and safer then ever before. I have recently had one of my photos published on Schmap. While gazing from my desk in the Mill City Museum and I was able to capture the awe of an October snowstorm. Thanks Schamp for alwaying me to share, for more images, please view my flickr account.

At the 2010 Minneapolis fashion event, Voltage, I was honored to be stopped by the local Freestyle Fashion goddess Hollie Mae. HM has a long history in fashion, dance, modeling and now styling. HM is one of the few stylists to have direct influence on projects from start to finish. She takes direction and inspiration from her Art Director and brings new ideas to the table when needed.

Freestyle Fashion is sponsored by City Pages. The goal is to spot light Minneapolis street-fashion and culture. This is my second time stopped by the street-fashion police but hopefully not the last. STAY TUNED.

Public bicycle systems are actively operating in countries all over the world from Stockholm to Santiago, Montreal to Shanghai. There are 130 systems in almost every culture as well as climate.

The Minneapolis Bike Share Program, received a $1.75 million grant from Bike Walk Twin Cities, in the attempts to improve alternative transportation. The focus of this program is to:
Avoiding vehicular congestion
Reducing our carbon footprint
Less dependence on fossil fuels
More efficient movement from place to place
More opportunities for healthy physical activity
More interesting personal experiences interacting with the city
A growing affinity to make other changes in all modes of transportation
A sense of civic pride

The MN Bike Share Program will have 1,000 bikes that will be available in 80 secure, self-service kiosks throughout Downtown Minneapolis, the U of M Campus, and Uptown from April-November.

I’m always looking for opportunities to contribute and enrich our community meanwhile promoting smart environmental solutions. The MN Bike Share Program turned to Duffy & Partners where I was able assist with the development of the name, brand strategy, all design related elements and modeling in advertisements.

“The name, Nice Ride, pays homage to the cultural reference of ‘Minnesota Nice’, while also capturing the ‘nice’ traits of the program. It’s a nice way to get around town, it’s a nice way to be green, and it’s already part of the biking culture vernacular, as in ‘hey, nice ride!’” comments Joe Duffy

Watch for the Nice Ride kick-off event downtown Minneapolis at Peavey Plaza at noon on June 10^th, 2010.

In 2007, Minneapolis based furniture company Blu Dot was looking to perform a face-lift on their catalog design. The result was a narrative, allowing the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions, relying heavily on photography. They also saw a niche, seldom do you see people interacting with the furniture, making the styling seem unrealistic. Blu Dot’s mantra to the new catalog was: be fun, and slightly irreverent; there needed to be a life to it; it’s supposed to make you smile.

To do so they hired a fashion photographer to shoot furniture, Dan Monick. Dan Monick was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN. He graduated from Hampshire College with a BA in photography. For several years thereafter, he toured the country as drummer for various low rent rock bands, a lifestyle that afforded him plenty of opportunity to cultivate his love for something out of nothing philosophy. He now lives in Los Angeles and works as a photographer.

His work has been featured in numerous publications including Paper, Dwell, XXL, Rolling Stone, The Journal, Spin, Arkitip, Fader, and Vice. He also has a line of t-shirts produced by Blood Is The New Black.

Dan Monick truly made the catalog and shoot come to life. I was lucky enough to be a part of the 2007 photo—shoot and also making it to the 2009 catalog. It was an amazing experience to work with Blu Dot staff as well as Dan Monick. Dan would be able to have these amazing stream-of-consciousness, creating narratives for the models in order to extract the expression or mood  he wanted. Which, in turn made the furniture poses Blu Dot’s wanted narrative.

My goal on the ROBOTlove shoot was to make the photographs look as though there wasn’t a stylist involved, to portray familiarity to the consumers – a day in the life. The concept was to glimpse at where ROBOTlove adds just a little “LOVE” to your life.

There was little set design, it more about finding locations and using props on-hand to get the desired impression. We didn’t want anything too contrived. We wanted the consumer to envision their personal spaces not the one we are presenting.

The real secret to this shoot was the mastery of color, composition, style and design. In the ads, for instance, the focus should be on the text and logo, letting the atmosphere amplify the message.

Minneapolis based artist, Erin Currie has been bringing her imagination to life through paintings, prints, plush dolls and fashion since she can remember.

“I want people to see my work and imagine themselves running with Yetis through the forest or floating on clouds of balloons,” explains Erin.

Her explorations in characters are known as “Cursters.” Her plush doll designs are meticulously handcrafted with layering of rich fabrics, hand embroidery, as well as hand embellished faces resulting in one of a kind works of art.

December 12, 2009 at the Soo Visual Art Center, I was lucky enough to be a part of her first fashion show—Curster’s Dollmighty Fashion Show. The impeccable collection included breathtaking dresses, fanciful hats all inspired by military helmets, lacy sweaters, hand crafted tees, as well as hoodies and ornate mukluks. The line was a perfect mixture of style, including coquette, victorian princess and Tank Girl.

It’s every girls dream to dress like a doll for a day. I’m blessed to have had the opportunity. Thank you Erin.

Special thanks to Stephanie Colgan for the beautiful photos.

In the professional world, projects are successful completed through the efforts of teams: through leadership and collaboration, planning and innovation, structure and flexibility. For the last two years I have been assistant teaching a class at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) called Visualization Studio, teaching students skills to visuals problems and work together to find solutions.

Trying to understand that our thoughts, perceptions, memories, interests, and knowledge, are made up of mental images and models that we create and carry with us. These visualizations help us gain a sense of place, being and understanding. The visualizations we create in the class offers maps, explanations and narratives to the audiences we wish to communicate with.  They help us provide understanding to others in regards to needs in design. It’s how we explain these narratives to clients and coworkers to make a project come to its full potential.

While teaching these practices of visualizing the process of design and how to better communicate ideas, I learn something new from each class. It’s a struggle at first for groups of: designer, project managers, and web developers to come together and talk the same language. To be creative and talk about expectations, I see the similar problems semester after semester but never the same solution. This class is constant reminder of the energy around students that is irreplaceable and innovative.

On the back: I sewed in the symbol of the Red Cross as well as common cold text. This was my disguise, the scariest part of the virus, the wonder or mystery behind most cases of the pandemic. Is this viral or bacterial?

On the front: I had sewed a line of vials to display the toxicity of the illness as well as on the under shirt sewn in H1N1 text.

Accessories: I drank out of a beaker to display the scientific nature of the illness. To demonstrate the spread of the illness I printed 300 sticker labeled INFECTED. Throughout the evening I secretly distributed the stickers on partygoers. At the beginning of the evening I told people what the sticker meant (they were infected with the H1N1) so they could answer questions regarding the sticker. After a few hours I secretly infected others to cause curiosity. The result of the evening was exciting others were passing the virus around and so it spread.

Thanks Ben for the photos.

“A passionate hobby” is how Dan Graham explained his career at the Walker Art Center’s, Beyond lecture. A humble but accurate description of his work, you can see he doesn’t just make art – lives a designed life. Graham’s ability to live design gives him  a unique capability to be all encompassing: film, performance, photography, architecture, installation, print, and even writing.

The exhibition and lecture energized me! Graham’s ability to focus on the relationship between art, the viewer, the environment, and even an unknowing passer bye – was exhilarating. I like to believe it’s important as a viewer to understand your own element in observing or taking in art. He makes the viewer think about the ways in which each space, motion, concept, perspective, and sound affects behavior.

The Walker also took Graham’s motifs and concerns in mind while organizing this lecture. Graham not only shared the stage with curators and critiques but musicians. Japanther, a punk rock band from New York, introduced Dan Graham and also shared the spot light. Not only did the viewer of this lecture get to experience Graham’s humor, vast archive of artist knowledge, and work but his belief of the strong bond between art and under ground music. This was a well-rounded exhibition. I urge people to look at Dan Graham’s work.