#it's fun to contribute as a lead artist to this project to have something tangible to work on while still unemployed

[smash-chu]

I should share this illustration i made for Return to Paradise, the viva piñata fan game project~ With and without the logo✨

[la-jolie-mln-posts]

What is a brand? For most of us it’s a line of apparel, a type of smart phone or your favorite cereal. But a brand goes way beyond just products and extends to people. Some of you will remember the Apple ad that showcased a Bill Gates type (guy in a jacket and tie, looking dull and corporate) against a Steve Jobs type (hip, casual, smart). You get the point. And, so did the audience — Microsoft blah, Apple, cool. It worked!

Who are some of the most visible people with personal brands? Kim Kardashian comes to mind. But if you are interviewing for an executive position at one of the top 5 consulting firms, hers is not the brand image you want to bring to your first Zoom call or in-person interview.

Oprah Winfrey owns her personal brand. She welcomed discussion about body image, embraced her own and never lost her credibility. She dressed for her position, for the occasion and for her image. She never looks sloppy. She’s crossed the Rubicon from entertainment icon to business mogul, but never lost the Oprah brand.

Princess Kate Middleton is a princess, mom and leading figure in the world of outreach to children in need. As her style has evolved, she’s been able to communicate her brand through personal acts and personal style that remains young and hip.

Today women head some of the biggest U.S. corporations.  Here’s just a few….

Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube Lynsi Snyder, CEO, of In-N-Out Burger Marillyn Hewson, CEO of Lockheed Martin Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors Whitney Wolfe Herd of CEO of Bumble

They may not have the same instantaneous brand recognition as the Kardashians, Oprah or Princess Kate, but to achieve the positions they have on the highly competitive playing fields in which they operate, they all had to create something unique — a personal brand.

Branding with the 4 “P’s’

It’s a familiar strategy for experienced marketers. Let’s say you’re launching a new brand of lipstick or changing a trusted brand with new packaging or a new message. You start by thinking through your brand strategy using the 4 P’s:

Product: A product can be either a tangible good or a service that fulfills a particular need for consumers. Whether your product is a brand of potato chips, a household item like dishwasher soap, a hotel chain or a university, it’s essential that you have a clear grasp of what makes it unique before you can successfully market it.

Price: Once the product offering is established, you can make pricing decisions. Price determinations will impact profit margins, supply, demand and marketing strategy. Products and brands may need to be positioned differently based on varying price points.

Promotion:  Once product and price are established, it’s time to promote it. Promotion looks at the many ways advertisers market to consumers and includes includes: advertising, public relations, social media, emails, search engine marketing, videos and more.

Place: Successful brands are all about putting the right product, at the right price, at the right place, at the right time. The mission is to convert interested consumers into actual customers. Today, the initial place potential clients engage is online.                            

Now, create your own brand using the 4 P’s

You are the PRODUCT, so begin by evaluating what makes you special. Ask yourself: Q. Are you dressing for your body? A. If you’re curvy and you love yoga pants, make sure you purchase high-quality yoga pants that aren’t see-through when you stretch or bend over. And consider the occasion before wearing them. If you’re going for a sophisticated look, slim fitting trouser pants may be a better fit. - If you have big chest, go for a v-neckline time. - No matter what the occasion: job interview, business trip, night out with friends or going to your kid’s soccer game, the items you pull together should communicate the same message. “There goes Susan; she always looks fabulous.”

Q. What colors work best for you? A. Navy or black works on just about everyone; here’s a few ways to make it yours: - If you’re going for a job interview, neutral is best. But a pop of color is a great way to express your personal brand. Whether a lush pink shirt under a dark blazer, a red velvet shirt with a black sweater, a dress accessorized with a fun pair of sneakers (only if you can pull off the look), or fun pair of pumps, your signature brand will emerge as you try things out and focus in on what works for you. - Hair can be a fantastic branding tool. If you’ve been blessed with a gorgeous mop, go with it. Hair is one of our best weapons. If you want to call out your inner artiste or you play in a rock band, pink or blue hair is okay. But it’s definitely not for everyone. Some work places, like design agencies, hair salons and big tech firms are amenable to this look. But if you work in a bank or a law firm, probably not. If you simply have to try it, there are always extensions. Remember, the look has to work on you. If you can pull off something like this, go for it…

Let’s talk about PRICE

What PRICE are you willing to accept for your talent, your contribution, your value, and your time? When I worked in marketing at a big corporation in my late 20′s, I met a woman who was hired to be a copywriter. She was actually a former agency owner and had a lot more to offer. The guy who hired her put her in a huge, open office setting where she wrote copy for retail projects such as in-store banners and such. She left after 2 weeks, but she also left an impression.

So, he called her back to see what it would take to hire her. She was polite, but firm. She said, “I’ll need my own office. I want to be paid twice the hourly fee you paid me, and I want to bring in my own creative talent (writers and designers) to work with.”

Done. She got what she asked for. Why? Because she knew what she was her value and had the confidence to ask for it.

Promoting yourself is a tricky business

PROMOTION today is about establishing your online presence. As we’ve seen lately, the cancel culture is a force to be reckoned with. And by that, I mean be careful with the topics you choose to address. It’s easy to be mocked, doxed and dropped from social media — all it takes is one wrong comment.

According to Forbes, “Your personal brand should be an easy daily filter that you create content and reach out to your audience with.” The article quotes Jason Wu, founder of CoinState. “Be the master of your craft, skillset or industry before starting a personal brand. Then your content will amplify who you are.”

In other words, avoid mistakes like the one made by Olivia Jade. She’s the daughter of actress Lori Loughlin who did prison time for getting her kids into college through false claims and a financial bribe. Olivia was a successful online fashion and culture blogger until her mother’s deceit landed on her. Then she made the mistake of using her social media platform to say that she really wasn’t at USC to attend classes. In the end, she lost followers, endorsements and a lot more.

The point? Have some experience under your belt before promoting your personal brand.

Have you found your PLACE?

It’s pointless to tell digital natives to avoid social media until they achieve some maturity. But, as the story above illustrates, social platforms are eternal, and establishing a trashy personal brand while young can come back to haunt you. So, parents need to keep a watchful eye on how kids are promoting themselves, knowing that colleges look carefully at this content.

When it comes to establishing a personal brand, there are tons of articles out there on how to do this. You can spend a day on Google and find lists like this:

What motivates me? What am I good at? What is unique about my personality, talents and style? What do I excel at? What bores me to tears? What do others say drew me to them?

All good and well. But here are a few constants we all encounter on the road to the true self:

Failure happens. You will lose jobs, face financial insecurity and have to reinvent your career. Some of the most successful women I’ve met in my life have transformed themselves as a result of loss. It’s only failure if you don’t get back up and re-start your engine.

La Jolie MLN launching in April 2021

Follow our journey on Instagram or Facebook La.Jolie.MLN

Website coming soon

: www.lajolie-mln.com

We would love to hear from you.  Let us know your thoughts and any topics you would want to hear about.   blog@lajolie-mln.com 

Next blog Jan 31: Doing Business By Doing Good

About Daisy Malek-Shadid

As a little girl, I would be asked what I want to be when I grow up.  I would confidently reply, I want to be a clothing designer and a respected leader.  Fast forward 30 years, after working in the corporate world, traveling, getting married and having children, the aspirations of my youth inspire me today.  I want to create clothes that make women feel both feminine and powerful, beautiful and strong, sophisticated and elevated. It takes a moment to make a first impression.  Dressing well sets the tone, so one can own that moment.  

It is important to La Jolie MLN to give back to the community, to women who don’t have the same opportunity as others. And, for that reason, 10% of every purchase will go toward our goal to donate 100 dresses to Dress for Success, a non-for-profit organization that supports underprivileged women to achieve economic independence by providing various services - one of them professional attire for interviews and new employment.  For more information about “Dress for Success” please visit their website at dressforsuccess.org.

[kkb285elladoyle]

Evaluation of idea

1. Client brief

How does my creative concept respond to, and activate the site?

Pirate is a direct response to the maritime history of the area as well as the Indigenous history. Water transport is key symbol that links the past (both pre and post colonisation) with the present. the integration of wharf timber in the structure is an aesthetic link to the wider precinct. 

Does it reflect the client’s objectives, vision and brand?

EDQ requested an immersive, unique, creative and sustainable project that activates Maritime Green and I believe that Pirate meets these criteria. Pirate creatively connects form and function with the structure integrating seats within the wooden shipwreck design creating an immersive experience. The use of steel  recycled wharf timber creates a long lasting durable and environmentally sustainable structure that requires minimal maintenance.  The brief also refers requests that the creative concept be a reflection of the Indigenous history of the site which is achieve with plans to commission a Turrubal artist to create artwork for and potentially engrave a design into the mast. As well as this, the interior of the structure with include a plaque with information and history detailing the history of shipwrecks as a means of transport for Aboriginal groups in the 1800s. These plaque will also include a QR code to an AR experiencing which will model a traditional 19 century whaleboat.

The competitive pillars I believe Pirate meet most is expansive engagement and industrious character. In particular I feel my design resonates most with is the quotes ‘ Northshore takes the fun and creativity outdoors’ and ‘ from wharf to warehouse, Northshore’s architecture is a tangible link to our industrial and nautical heritage’.

Pirate also refers itself to the ‘immerse yourself’ tagline 

Does it fill a need at Northshore and if so how?

 A essential facet of successful tactical and creative placemaking is engaging community members and reflects the history of the site which I believe EDQ should consider in their development of Maritime Green. I believe my design cohesively blends Indigenous artwork and maritime history in a free whimsy picturesque way.

What value does it add to Northshore?

Currently the Northshore precinct does not host any Indigenous artist and I believe it would beneficial at community engagement for EDQ to commission a local artist in order to create something that reflects the history and culture of Northshore. Other recreational spaces in the area do not reflect Indigenous history or culture and I believe this is an opportunity for Maritime Green to establish a unique selling point in comparison to other sites such as Hercules Street Park.

2. Originality 

Does my concept engage with and draw attention to Northshore’s distinctive features (geographic, historical, physical, cultural, etc.)

Yes. The use of a boat as a symbol directly signify the geographical connotations to the river and well as the maritime history of Northshore. The use of the wharf timber will act as a common material language connecting it aesthetically with other locations with the Northshore precinct. Similar comments can also be made by the use of red, yellow and blue on the mast ties in with the colour story and branding of Eat Street. It engages with Indigenous history through the artwork on the mast and the plaques on the interior of the wreck. 

How does my concept compare to existing creative projects (through research identify similar projects at Northshore, in Queensland, interstate and overseas)

This is answered in the blog post ‘Originality of concept’  

Does the client need me to produce my project (i.e. what is my creative contribution?)

EDQ will not require me to produce the physical design but I would like to lead the development and implementation. In particular my creative contribution would be through prototyping and briefing and liaising with a Indigenous artist. 

Can my project be produced by people not working in the creative sector?

Partially yes. Once given the outlines and prototypes non creatives can produce the wooden boat structure, however the sail/mast will require direct input of the artist. 

3. Audience engagement, ethics and diversity

What is the demographic at Northshore and who are it’s key stakeholders?

Stakeholder map

Who is my target audience? how does my project actively engage, sustain and grow this audience? 

My key audience is local tourist and new resident as I believe there is nothing like Pirate in Brisbane. The use of colours in connotation to Northshore brings a sense of vibrancy to the space. This vibrancy and large scale makes widening appeal to younger adults is more likely to be shared online. This appearance on popular social media platforms can provide free self sufficient marketing through word of mouth and potential media interest. Young adults are more likely to engage with QR codes which increases digital footprint. 

How can I engage local Indigenous and culturally diverse communities effectively and ethically? 

I hope to commission a Turrubal artist on this project for the mast. The way to engage ethical and effectively include:

Ensuring I give a clear brief but allow opportunity for creative license

Recognise and attribute the work through signage

Allow time for consultation and recognise the limited time and resources often afforded to Indigenous artist 

Why would visitors want to visit Northshore to engage with my project?

Hamilton as a suburb does not offer many if not any free adult recreational spaces and I believe that Maritime Green has the opportunity to capitalise on this. The scale and colour of Pirate is visually striking. This coupled with the interactivity of the structures makes it perfect for selfies and increasing social media traction which would thus drive more followers. 

4. Feasibility, Sustainability & Enduring Significance

Does my concept fall within the clients budget and timeframe?

Yes. The estimated budget is $67,348.6 and it is made with durable materials that will weather well. 

Is my project a one-off, or can it be refreshed, adapted, delivered in stages or multiple occasions?

The physical structure will be a one-off design. I feel as though reiterative designs while fresh can lend themselves to environmental and economic instability especially as an outdoor placemaking technique.  

It is sustainable (environmentally and economically) and withstand the test of time?

Yes. I have chosen my materials as they will weather well and are durable. The structure will also be self sufficient utlising holes in the wood as light in the inside of the structure. As well as this the wood will be recycled wharf timber. 

As the brief request that Maritime Green be used Monday-Friday during the day I want to harness the sun as a source of light within holes in the boat to illuminate the plaques in the interior as opposed to LED lights.

What are the skills, research, consultations etc. needed to develop this idea?

Indigenous art skills, steel work, budget research, 3D Modelling skills and Augmented Reality (AR) skills. 

[conartist23]

HEADS UP, I GET A LITTLE WORDY

In the first half of this year, I was invited to contribute to a WicDiv zine that unfortunately fell apart. For these 2 pages, I fulfilled the role of both artist and writer (article and editor notes) (because clearly I’m a low-key control freak)

I don’t usually explain my intentions, and I think it’s fun when there’s something to unpack in creativity. But I’m going to touch on some points, in broad strokes.

So, after the jump, my musings, and a full transcript in case its hard to read (with tumblr resolution it probably will be)

The brief itself dictated it would be an in world magazine, we’d be making articles and art as if the gods were real. As such, I leaned toward merchandise, because that felt tangible and novel.

So, first up, Persephone Perfume. Probably sparked by a loose name connection (which I touch on in the editors notes). Visually, it speaks to an important meta-element of WicDiv, decapitation. Logically, it was a way to work in a likeness, so the product was identifiable, rather than some disconnected motif. Storms and Pomegranates are tied to the myth of her namesake.

Next, the Camden market shoddy reality of the not at all unnerving perfume head. In a rare dalliance with comedy, my mind went to knock-offs. What’s more tragic than a t-shirt adorned by Spider-man, Shrek and Darth Vader with the words Justice League… A failed product. So, rather than be the misguided but honest result of sweatshop labour, it’s a semi legitimate venture. I say semi, not to make you laugh, but because I imagined merchandising from the gods being a licensing nightmare. It didn’t make sense for me, to have the gods be hands on with trinkets, branded mugs etc. So, what started as a product defined by the corporate machine, soon began to unravel, design problems leading them from idealistic proof to unsatisfying reality. So, the pineapple headed, generic featured toby mug from hell, ended up being abandoned, with swathes of it turning up at markets across the uk, in a desperate last ditch attempt to make something. Watch me hardly touch on this pseudo world building in the tiny paragraph I gave myself. More god merch as easter eggs.

Woden graffiti. At the time, his identity was a mystery, and technically, in world, still would be. Not much else to say other than I enjoyed writing the banter, which stemmed from me actually not really knowing what Woden did (cue headfirst dive back into the comics). Rip is written on the wall, because, everyone fucking dies in Wic Div.

Finally, an image of the underground, because it’s London af. Originally, the train lights were more eye like, to dubiously suggest The Morrigan. It’s not really a visual associated with her, couple that with being ridiculously large, I moved against it. Instead, it’s the shadows cast, you can make out the outline of The Morrigan with a crow. I toyed with touching on will o’ the wisps, to further root in folklore, but efficiency of words and all that. I applied homemade filters, messed with the colours, all to push an analogue fuzziness.

My persefumone joke. Says it all really. I am a bad person and I don’t remotely care. Crimes against comedy ☑︎

With all this said, it’s up to you if I’m using the word jaunt legitimately or ironically…

THE TRANSCRIPT

We managed to get our hands on the full page ad of the pretentiously named “Pom”. This proposed persephone perfume, promised perfection it was not permitted to provide. The product ran into a lot of problems, and went dark for a while. But nothing, could save us from that steely gaze that follows you around the room. It’s back, not quite as fresh, in our segment “spotted in the wild”.

Spotted in the Wild

[see left] Discovered at Camden Market this weekend, a fantastic likeness of dear Persephone.

Wait till you get those proofs back before you run the ads eh?

Heads up (I know, I know, I’m so witty), apparently this one contains chemicals unsanctioned by most known governments… that’s adult speak for this shit is poison. Sounds like someone’s been reading the Hades playbook and wants to invite you all for a jaunt in the underworld. Stay clear of this one.

Unless you want to use the head as an ornament… then pour it out and place it on the mantel. Classy.

Everyone’s favourite Woden? Someone’s favourite? Probably? What is it he does exactly? I don’t know… I love my job don’t fire me.

[EDITOR’S NOTE : Woden is a producer, as in he makes. The job is indifferent to you frankly. I, on the other hand, think you’re…. ok. You’re safe. For now. ]

Thank the gods! ;) praying emoji. Tell me, oh benevolent overlord, in your infinite wisdom, is that huginn or munnin?

[EDITOR’S NOTE : Dont. Push. It.]

Another day, another eagle-eyed (or should that be crow uhurr hurr) reader claiming to have photo evidence of the ever elusive Morrigan.

“Evidence”.

Well… at least the potato that captured such classics as 'alien autopsy 56' and 'bigfoot goes on holiday' survives to this day.

Don’t tell them it’s the lights of an oncoming train okay? Leave a little magic in the world will you? For me?

[EDITOR’S NOTE: How did he not make a perfume/Persephone joke. Persefumone. Forgive me. I am deeply sorry.]

I enjoyed what I did, working to an outline, deadlines. I don’t think I’ll be doing a zine in the immediate future, I’m concentrating on my own projects, particularly on ways to avoid, you know, actually doing them.

You read all that? Want a hug? I know, that boy sure does chat shit. He’s gone now, he can’t hurt you anymore.

[lpstuff]

Touching Space

After a few casual conversations with Tom Kitching (MSSL Astrophysicist and Euclid Science Lead) last winter, an exciting project was finally executed at the Euclid 2019 Meeting in Helsinki 4-7 June. I had queried whether it was possible to place something on the spacecraft that reflected on the humanity who had made it. He agreed that the telescope is an angular, technical looking object that doesn’t necessarily convey anything about the ‘soft’ aspects of astrophysics: human curiosity, need to communicate, and our urgent need to explore deeper and deeper into the cosmos. If ‘someone’ found the craft in years to come, well after it’s predicted six year lifespan, what would it say about the humans who made it?

The idea gathered momentum within the Euclid team so he encouraged me to ask the people in charge at ESA, during my visit in January 2018, if they would be open to a proposal for an ‘aesthetic intervention’ on the spacecraft. At that point I invited Tom to collaborate with me on the project, feeling it would have better support from ESA with his involvement. However, equally important, by combining our varied skills, surely more exciting and well-considered ideas might emerge. What a wonderful thing, to brainstorm with an astrophysicist.

ESA were surprisingly positive about the proposition so we got together for a few thinking sessions over the next few months. Setting out the criteria wasn’t as easy as I imagined. Who was our audience, what were we trying to communicate? Could it be poetry, drawing, an event or reflect life on earth? How do we represent the huge collective effort of the international mission team? Deciding that it should be visual, include a galaxy (Euclid is a galaxy hunter) and possibly be collaborative helped. We considered how mankind has always left its mark on the environment and cave paintings came to mind. After one intense brainstorming session it just seemed to pop out at us – a large collaborative fingertip painting of a spiral galaxy.

I wrote up an initial proposal and got to work planning a test session at the lab to see how the idea might work. Materials were explored in my studio and Tom gave the proposal a more refined approach, including well-written selling points such as ‘provide the Euclid community with a tangible, and personal relationship with spacecraft’. On 22 May I ran a creative session at the lab with about 20 people joining in the fun of finger painting… and it was really fun, and noticeably, enthusiasm was building about the idea. I provided an image of M51 The whirlpool Galaxy as an example. At half the intended size, small improvements could be made to achieve a larger, better version but the shape (guided by light pencil marks) emerged quite easily and would condense well if reduced. There was a surge of hope. I felt his could really work and successfully represent the spirit of the Euclid Mission – each fingerprint seemed to carry the energy of its contributor.

Using the images from the taster session to illustrate the proposal, we finalised the text and sent it off to Giuseppe Racca, Rene Laureijs and the Euclid Science Team only a week before the Euclid Consortium meeting where we proposed it should be made. I didn’t want them to feel pushed into a corner but in hindsight the momentum worked for us.

Tom had arranged for me to attend the conference and the lab covered the expenses – I hadn’t budgeted for this in my Arts Council England grant. Sam (my filmmaking son and assistant) insisted I film the workshop so he tutored me on the equipment and we bought an extra tripod for a still camera to record the progression of the painting. What a lot I had to carry… and think about. I was invited to speak at the Thursday plenary session about the intersection of art and science and the residency at MSSL. More to prepare during an unusually busy time that included designing a poster for my brother and attending to the set up of two exhibitions in London.

I had to get up at 4am to make the flight but setting up the afternoon before the workshop seemed wise. The Finlandia Hall was wonderful (designed by modernist architect Alvar Aalto) and had plenty of space. The spacious lobby and coat check had ample room at one end to set up cameras, a double sized table for our A0 paper, a cleaning area with sponges for dirty fingers and an easily wiped stone tiled floor. I had two glass tiles to spread the pre-prepared paint on and the drawing was securely taped to the table. But could I get participants to take part when they were on the floors above?

By 8.30am the next morning (scientists start earlier than artists) I was making final preparations and began my enthusiastic overtures to snag participants and begin filming. It was such a high-energy day and gradually the painting gained momentum: at first reluctant, the attendees dribbled in then, by 2pm, and a few announcements, there were crowds around the table and an infectious, jolly atmosphere prevailed. Although I explained how to make the marks, it was fascinating to see their reactions to paint: some wanted to make lots of marks, some noticeably enjoyed the feel of the paint and others took a few minutes to decide where to press their finger. I think all of them were smiling when they left the table.

Juggling intereacting with people and filming used every bit of available energy I had. I haven’t worked that hard in a long time. It’s possible that at least 250 people contributed to the artwork. By late morning Giuseppe Racca confirmed that they would find a place for it on the Euclid Mission my smile became permanent. Also, the news motivated more people to take part, making the image fuller in detail and texture. It’s a human emotion to desire your mark be left in space and not many get the chance.

I’ve now taken the artwork back to MSSL for the team there to contribute to, fortunately Sam was around to film it this time. It will be photographed and photo-shopped to create the graphic artwork for etching on to the satellite. Also at the next stage, Tom will encode it (like a QR code) and we’ll discuss what the link information will be (will aliens read this or just curious humans?). ESA will confirm later where it will be placed but there are a few ideas being mooted already. I’ll enjoy seeing how the film comes together – I’ll get in touch with the communications team at ESA and discuss how it might be used. It would be amazing to go to Italy to see it being applied to the spacecraft – a hope to far?

[ceciliacao0531-blog]

STEAM Career (Every Job is a STEAM Job)

Read more here: https://www.makeblock.com/official-blog/236641.html

From our affinity for social media and our close friendship with smart devices, we live in a STEAM-related world. STEAM industries are woven closely into every strand of our lives. It’s not hard to image that STEAM occupations are among some of the most in-demand and best-paid STEAM job nowadays.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists some STEAM careers that may spark your and your kids’ interest.

Software developer, applications developer

You can almost do anything through apps on your mobile devices these days, and that probably explains why software and applications developers are so in demand. It’s projected that, by 2026, the total number of software developers in the U.S. is likely to be three times the current number, reaching more than 1 million. The median annual wage of a software developer in 2016 was $100,080.

Electrical/Mechanical engineer

Engineering makes it possible for people to live more easily and comfortably. By 2026, the total projected number of electrical engineers will reach over 200,000, and for mechanical engineers, the total number might reach more than 300,000. The 2016 median annual wages were $94,210 and $84,190, respectively.

Data Scientist

Data science is an interdisciplinary area. It combines data analysis, statistics, and machine learning and such related fields to obtain knowledge of data. Data scientist deals with large volume of data from various resources by conducting independent research. According to the United States of Labor Statistics, the employment of data scientist in 2016 is expected to rise 19 percent. According to University of Wisconsin, the median starting salary for a data scientist remains at $95,000.

That said, it doesn’t mean everybody should chase after a STEAM job if it’s not where their passions lie. The world we live in only gets better the more different talents, backgrounds, and interests contribute to it. However, STEAM education is something that everyone needs in one way or another, potentially benefiting greatly from it.

It is true that STEAM focuses on science, technology, engineering, arts, and math, but STEAM education teaches people more than just those subjects. More importantly, STEAM education provides a different kind of training because it asks students to use their creative skills and gets them thinking within a different context, which can be universally beneficial for people in other industries than STEAM alone.

According to a 2014 Census Bureau report, 74 percent of graduates from STEM programs were employed outside their fields.

In other words, STEAM is a set of skills that everyone can use on a daily basis no matter what industry they are in. Nowadays, with more and more traditionally non-tech fields incorporating STEAM to improve their operations and increase efficiency, it is becoming true that—in reality—every job is a STEAM job.

Interior Designer

The interior design field provides a really good example.

Many people tend to view interior design as an occupation that only requires some artistic qualifications. In fact, interior designers use STEAM knowledge throughout their design process. It takes more than an artistic sense; it also takes knowledge of material science, psychology, and math to be a good interior designer.

Modern interior designers have to know where their materials come from, what they are made of, and how these chemicals and elements will impact homeowners. In the meantime, interior designers’ choices of materials can also have a huge impact on the environment. To be able to achieve all these, designers need to be very knowledgeable about material science.

Psychology plays an important role in interior design as well. According to Dawn Chapnick of Dawn Chapnick Designs, “[Interior design psychology] is a direct study of the relationship between an environment and how that environment affects the behavior of its inhabitants, with the aim of maximizing the positive effects of this relationship.” It means that colors, symmetry, room size, and geometry, to name a few factors, can all affect people mentally, and interior designers are responsible for understanding the tricks to create positivity.

STEAM would not be the same without math and neither would interior design. Designers need to make both quick estimates and detailed and accurate calculations to show their clients they know what they are doing and win clients’ trust. In addition, interior design incorporates some advanced mathematical concepts, such as Golden Ratio, in order to make sure the design is both practically and aesthetically pleasing.

hospitality industry

Another example that can lend support to our point is the traditional hospitality industry. This industry fully embraces technology and people with talents in a STEAM background. Data analysis is used to help people in the industry understand customers’ needs better. The traditional hospitality industry invests in a great deal of energy-saving technology to lower their operational costs and increase their social footprint. Without the support of STEAM, it would not be possible to make all these things happen.

There are many examples of STEAM being used across all industries, and we can’t emphasize enough how important STEAM can be for your or your children’s careers. However, the question really boils down to this: How can we best prepare our youngsters for STEAM job in the classrooms?

In Classroom Jobs

The good news is that there are indeed some things we can encourage students to do in the classroom to pique their interest in STEAM. For example, assigning classroom jobs is a good way to help students get a feel for the types of STEAM work available and how the different types of education come together to complete a project. Using role play for each group project, teachers can have each person in the group play someone with a different type of STEAM career. For instance, one group could consist of a graphic designer, creating the artwork for the finished presentation, a product designer who provides the sequence of the presentation to the graphic designer, and one conservator who curates each element for the product designer. Through such classroom practices, students get to experience STEAM by doing it.

Another, easier way to help students get a feel for STEAM is to partner with companies and organizations in various STEAM industries and invite them to come into the classroom. There, the companies can do presentations regarding the STEAM careers they represent and how STEAM education can lay a foundation for whatever careers the students want to pursue.

It’s probably easiest to promote STEAM at school with the help of teachers and varieties of programs and practices. At home, parents with limited resources and experience might find it more challenging to teach their kids STEAM. Coding robots offer a very effective solution to this problem.

Childhood researchers and educators believe that, for children in the early foundational years to learn STEAM, it’s critical to engage them in the STEAM learning process in a fun and tangible way. Coding robots are rapidly growing in popularity as an ideal way to meet this requirement. Coding robots make it possible for children to learn to code as they play with their toys. Meanwhile, coding robots bring software engineering (computer programming) and hardware product development together to offer the more comprehensive engineering aspect of STEAM to children.

Codey Rocky by MakeBlock is specially designed to lead children into the world of avant-garde technology with its built-in AI and IoT functionalities. It incorporates mBlock, a software that supports both block-based and Python programming, and gives children a playful and innovative way to create dot-matrix animations and design games.

If your kids show an interest in art, the Neuron Artistic Kit is what you are looking for. The kit includes six supplementary cases where kids can build creations and bring them to life by easily coding the eight programmable electronic blocks. By manipulating different parts, children are able to create a ukulele, cloud lantern, magical drum, and more.

We believe that STEAM education can help children explore their potential and open up a whole new world to them that will benefit them tremendously for the rest of their lives.

[aion-rsa]

Top New Science Fiction Books in December 2020

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Looking for space opera or alternate Earths? Here are some of the science fiction books we’re most excited about and/or are currently consuming…

Join the Den of Geek Book Club!

Top New Science Fiction Books in December 2020

The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2020 Edition by Rich Horton

Type: Short story collection Publisher: Prime Books Release date: Dec. 22 (Kindle)

Den of Geek says: It’s that time of year. Year’s best anthologies are here. This one draws from stories previously published in the genre’s top magazines, like Analog, Asimov’s, and Clarkesworld.

Publisher’s summary: This eleventh volume of the year’s best science fiction and fantasy features twenty-six stories by some of the genre’s greatest authors, including Marie Brennan, Maurice Broaddus, John Crowley, Theodora Goss, Xia Jia, John Kessel, Kelly LInk, Sam J. Miller, Michael Swanwick, Fran Wilde, E. Lily Yu, and many others. 

Buy The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2020 Edition by Rich Horton.

Gallowglass by S.J. Morden

Type: Novel Publisher: Gollancz Release date: Dec. 10 Den of Geek says: We’re taking a chance on this one. It’s one of those SF paperbacks that sometimes get lost in the churn and probably won’t end up with much marketing. But the author’s science background and the sense of a vivid understanding of just how big space is adds to the good vibes. Publisher’s summary: The year is 2069, and the earth is in flux. Whole nations are being wiped off the map by climate change. Desperate for new resources, the space race has exploded back into life. 

Corporations seek ever greater profits off-world. They offer immense rewards to anyone who can claim space’s resources in their name. The bounty on a single asteroid rivals the GDP of entire countries, so every trick, legal or not, is used to win. 

Jack, the scion of a shipping magnate, is desperate to escape earth and joins a team chasing down an asteroid. But the ship he’s on is full of desperate people – each one needing the riches claiming the asteroid will bring them, and they’re willing to do anything if it means getting there first. 

Because in Space, there are no prizes for coming second.It’s all or nothing: riches beyond measure, or dying alone in the dark.

Buy Gallowglass by S.J. Morden.

Doctor Who: All Flesh is Grass by Una McCormack

Type: Novel Publisher: BBC Digital Release date: Dec. 10 Den of Geek says: We’re going out on another limb. Tie-in novels can be tricky recommendations. What if you don’t know the source material? What if you don’t know what happened in 154 other books? But Doctor Who’s episodic nature (the story about the last creature alive on a living world) and fan-pleasing fun (multiple doctors) mean this one might be a good balance for people who love Doctor Who or only vaguely know what a Dalek is and are curious. Publisher’s summary: A wasteland. A dead world… No, there is a biodome, rising from the ash. Here, life teems and flourishes, with strange and lush plants, and many-winged insects with bright carapaces – and one solitary sentient creature, who spends its days watering the plants, talking to the insects, and tending this lonely garden. This is Inyit, the Last of the Kotturuh. In All Flesh is Grass we are transported back to The Dark Times. The Tenth Doctor has sworn to stop the Kotturuh, ending Death and bringing Life to the universe. But his plan is unravelling – instead of bringing Life, nothing has changed and all around him people are dying. Death is everywhere. Now he must confront his former selves – one in league with their greatest nemesis and the other manning a ship of the undead… Buy Doctor Who: All Flesh is Grass by Una McCormack.

Top New Science Fiction Books in November 2020

From A Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back 

Type: Short story collection Publisher: Del Rey  Release date: Nov. 10

Den of Geek says: A collection of 40 Star Wars stories spanning The Empire Strikes Back and beyond, this is a smorgasbord of different authors, styles, takes, and genres within the movie saga. 

Publisher’s summary: On May 21, 1980, Star Wars became a true saga with the release of The Empire Strikes Back. In honor of the fortieth anniversary, forty storytellers re-create an iconic scene from The Empire Strikes Back through the eyes of a supporting character, from heroes and villains, to droids and creatures. From a Certain Point of View features contributions by bestselling authors and trendsetting artists.

Buy From A Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back.

Stillicide by Cynan Jones

Type: Short story collection  Publisher: Catapult Release date: Nov. 17

Den of Geek says: Literary fiction publisher Catapult crosses over into science fiction with this print release of a highly acclaimed series of climate fables written for radio.

Publisher’s summary: Water is commodified. The Water Train that serves the city increasingly at risk of sabotage.

As news breaks that construction of a gigantic Ice Dock will displace more people than first thought, protestors take to the streets and the lives of several individuals begin to interlock. A nurse on the brink of an affair. A boy who follows a stray dog out of the city. A woman who lies dying. And her husband, a marksman: a man forged by his past and fearful of the future, who weighs in his hands the possibility of death against the possibility of life.

From one of the most celebrated writers of his generation, Stillicide is a moving story of love and loss and the will to survive, and a powerful glimpse of the tangible future.

Buy Stillicide by Cynan Jones. 

Nucleation by Kimberly Unger

Type: Novel  Publisher: Tachyon Publications Release date: Nov. 13

Den of Geek says: Virtual reality meets aliens in a space opera packed with ideas about wormhole travel and first contact. 

Publisher’s summary: Helen Vectorvich just botched first contact. And she did it in both virtual reality and outer space.

Only the most elite Far Reaches deep-space pilots get to run waldos: robots controlled from thousands of lightyears away via neural integration and quantum entanglement. Helen and her navigator were heading the construction of a wormhole gate that would connect Earth to the stars . . . until a routine system check turned deadly.

As nasty rumors swarm around her, and overeager junior pilots jockey to take her place, Helen makes a startling discovery: microscopic alien life is devouring their corporate equipment. Is the Scale just mindless, extra-terrestrial bacteria? Or is it working―and killing―with a purpose?

While Helen struggles to get back into the pilot’s chair, and to communicate with the Scale, someone―or something―is trying to sabotage the Far Reaches project once and for all. They’ll have to get through Helen first.

Buy Nucleation by Kimberly Unger. 

Top New Science Fiction Books in October 2020

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Type: Novel Publisher: Orbit  Release date: Oct. 6 

Den of Geek says: Robinson’s intricate eco-thriller-flavored SF novels have proved prescient in a world of droughts and fires. His latest novel leans in to make a statement about both humanity and science in the face of climate change. 

Publisher’s summary: The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us — and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.

It is a novel both immediate and impactful, desperate and hopeful in equal measure, and it is one of the most powerful and original books on climate change ever written.

Buy The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.

To Hold Up The Sky by Cixin Liu

Type: Short story collection Publisher: Tor Books Release date: Oct. 20 

Den of Geek says: Cixin Liu engages with both hard science and the human heart in a short story collection from a master novelist. 

Publisher’s summary:  In To Hold Up the Sky, Cixin Liu takes us across time and space, from a rural mountain community where elementary students must use physicas to prevent an alien invasion; to coal mines in northern China where new technology will either save lives of unleash a fire that will burn for centuries; to a time very much like our own, when superstring computers predict our every move; to 10,000 years in the future, when humanity is finally able to begin anew; to the very collapse of the universe itself.

Written between 1999 and 2017 and never before published in English, these stories came into being during decades of major change in China and will take you across time and space through the eyes of one of science fiction’s most visionary writers. 

Buy To Hold Up The Sky by Cixin Liu.

Seven of Infinities by Aliette de Bodard

Type: Novella Publisher: Subterranean Release date: Oct. 31

Den of Geek says: Aliette de Bodard’s Xuyan series is a creative blend of hard science fiction and space opera based on a network of space stations. A story from the point of view of a living starship who is also a trickster sounds like it’ll fit right in. 

Publisher’s summary: Vân is a scholar from a poor background, eking out a living in the orbitals of the Scattered Pearls Belt as a tutor to a rich family, while hiding the illegal artificial mem-implant she manufactured as a student. Sunless Woods is a mindship and not just any mindship, but a notorious thief and a master of disguise. She’s come to the Belt to retire, but is drawn to Vân’s resolute integrity. When a mysterious corpse is found in the quarters of Vân’s student, Vân and Sunless Woods find themselves following a trail of greed and murder that will lead them from teahouses and ascetic havens to the wreck of a mindship and to the devastating secrets they’ve kept from each other.

Buy Seven of Infinities by Aliette de Bodard.

Top New Science Fiction Books September 2020

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots 

Type: Novel Publisher: William Morrow Release date: Sept. 22 

 Den of Geek says: This next-level meta take on superheroes looks witty and biting. But what really makes it stand out is the character’s predicament: she’s a laid-off henchman going from bad job to worse, struggling with her own moral code along the way. 

Publisher’s summary: Anna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help and she needs a job. Working for a monster lurking beneath the surface of the world isn’t glamorous. But is it really worse than working for an oil conglomerate or an insurance company? In this economy?

 As a temp, she’s just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called “hero” leaves her badly injured.  And, to her horror, compared to the other bodies strewn about, she’s the lucky one.

So, of course, then she gets laid off.

With no money and no mobility, with only her anger and internet research acumen, she discovers her suffering at the hands of a hero is far from unique. When people start listening to the story that her data tells, she realizes she might not be as powerless as she thinks.

Because the key to everything is data: knowing how to collate it, how to manipulate it, and how to weaponize it. By tallying up the human cost these caped forces of nature wreak upon the world, she discovers that the line between good and evil is mostly marketing.  And with social media and viral videos, she can control that appearance.

It’s not too long before she’s employed once more, this time by one of the worst villains on earth. As she becomes an increasingly valuable lieutenant, she might just save the world.

A sharp, witty, modern debut, Hench explores the individual cost of justice through a fascinating mix of Millennial office politics, heroism measured through data science, body horror, and a profound misunderstanding of quantum mechanics. 

Buy Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots on Amazon.

Divergence (The Foreigner Universe) by C.J. Cherryh  

Type: Novel Publisher: DAW Release date: Sept. 8 

Den of Geek says: Why, you might rightly ask, would we recommend #21 in a series? This is because C.J. Cherryh is a master at what she does: slow, meticulous space opera with engaging characters and a transporting sense of completeness to its world of diplomatic clashes between humans and aliens. Really, we recommend you start at #1, Foreigner, if you haven’t read the series before. And if you have, this September is a real occasion.  Publisher’s summary: The overthrow of the atevi head of state, Tabini-aiji, and the several moves of enemies even since his restoration, have prompted major changes in the Assassins’ Guild, which has since worked to root out its seditious elements—a clandestine group they call the Shadow Guild. With the Assassins now rid of internal corruption, with the birth of Tabini’s second child, and with the appointment of an heir, stability seems to have returned to the atevi world. Humans and atevi share the space station in peaceful cooperation, humans and atevi share the planet as they have for centuries, and the humans’ island enclave is preparing to welcome 5000 human refugees from a remote station now dismantled, and to do that in unprecedented cooperation with the atevi mainland.

In general Bren Cameron, Tabini-aiji’s personal representative, returning home to the atevi capital after securing that critical agreement, was ready to take a well-earned rest—until Tabini’s grandmother claimed his services on a train trip to the smallest, most remote and least significant of the provinces, snowy Hasjuran—a move concerning which Tabini-aiji gave Bren a private instruction: protect her. Advise her.

Advise her—perhaps. As for protection, she has a trainload of high-level Guild. But since the aiji-dowager has also invited a dangerously independent young warlord, Machigi, and a young man who may be the heir to Ajuri, a key northern province—the natural question is why the dowager is taking this ill-assorted pair to Hasjuran and what on this earth she may be up to. 

With a Shadow Guild attack on the train station, it has become clear that others have questions, too. Hasjuran, on its mountain height, overlooks the Marid, a district that is part of the atevi nation only in name—a district in which Machigi is one major player, and where the Shadow Guild retains a major stronghold.

Protect her? Ilisidi is hellbent on settling scores with the Shadow Guild, and her reasons for this trip and this company now become clear.  One human diplomat and his own bodyguard suddenly seem a very small force to defend her from what she is setting in motion.

Buy Divergence by C.J. Cherryh on Amazon.

An Unnatural Life by Erin K. Wagner 

Type: Novella  Publisher: Tor Release date: Sept. 15 

Den of Geek says: Putting a robot on trial is an old concept in science fiction: just look at Star Trek. This novella looks like an entry in the contemporary conversation with this pleasingly retro concept. Publisher’s summary: The cybernetic organism known as 812-3 is in prison, convicted of murdering a human worker but he claims that he did not do it. With the evidence stacked against him, his lawyer, Aiya Ritsehrer, must determine grounds for an appeal and uncover the true facts of the case.

But with artificial life-forms having only recently been awarded legal rights on Earth, the military complex on Europa is resistant to the implementation of these same rights on the Jovian moon.

Aiya must battle against her own prejudices and that of her new paymasters, to secure a fair trial for her charge, while navigating her own interpersonal drama, before it’s too late.

Buy An Unnatural Life by Erin K. Wagner on Amazon.

Top New Science Fiction Books August 2020

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir 

Type: Novel Publisher: Tor Release date: Aug. 4

Den of Geek says: Muir’s necromancers in space have gained an enthusiastic following for their irreverent tone and wild gothic magic. 

Publisher’s summary: She answered the Emperor’s call.

She arrived with her arts, her wits, and her only friend.

In victory, her world has turned to ash.

After rocking the cosmos with her deathly debut, Tamsyn Muir continues the story of the penumbral Ninth House in Harrow the Ninth, a mind-twisting puzzle box of mystery, murder, magic, and mayhem. Nothing is as it seems in the halls of the Emperor, and the fate of the galaxy rests on one woman’s shoulders.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, last necromancer of the Ninth House, has been drafted by her Emperor to fight an unwinnable war. Side-by-side with a detested rival, Harrow must perfect her skills and become an angel of undeath ― but her health is failing, her sword makes her nauseous, and even her mind is threatening to betray her. 

Sealed in the gothic gloom of the Emperor’s Mithraeum with three unfriendly teachers, hunted by the mad ghost of a murdered planet, Harrow must confront two unwelcome questions: is somebody trying to kill her? And if they succeeded, would the universe be better off?

Buy Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir on Amazon.

The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky 

Type: Novel Publisher: Orbit Release date: Aug. 18

Den of Geek says: Portal fantasy of a sort, backed by hard science fiction from the author of the award-winning Children of Time, this novel looks inventive, rigorous, and adventurous. 

Publisher’s summary: They thought we were safe. They were wrong.

Four years ago, two girls went looking for monsters on Bodmin Moor. Only one came back.

Lee thought she’d lost Mal, but now she’s miraculously returned. But what happened that day on the moors? And where has she been all this time? Mal’s reappearance hasn’t gone unnoticed by MI5 officers either, and Lee isn’t the only one with questions.

Julian Sabreur is investigating an attack on top physicist Kay Amal Khan. This leads Julian to clash with agents of an unknown power – and they may or may not be human. His only clue is grainy footage, showing a woman who supposedly died on Bodmin Moor.

Dr Khan’s research was theoretical; then she found cracks between our world and parallel Earths. Now these cracks are widening, revealing extraordinary creatures. And as the doors crash open, anything could come through.

Buy The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky on Amazon.

Seven Devils by Laura Lam and Elizabeth May 

Type: Novel  Publisher: DAW Release date: Aug. 4

Den of Geek says:  This ensemble cast space opera fits nicely into the “Expanse” model of adventure stories with enough political detail and blood to make you feel like you could walk into the far-future world. An early review calls it “epic, if occasionally bumpy.” 

Publisher’s summary: When Eris faked her death, she thought she had left her old life as the heir to the galaxy’s most ruthless empire behind. But her recruitment by the Novantaen Resistance, an organization opposed to the empire’s voracious expansion, throws her right back into the fray.

Eris has been assigned a new mission: to infiltrate a spaceship ferrying deadly cargo and return the intelligence gathered to the Resistance. But her partner for the mission, mechanic and hotshot pilot Cloelia, bears an old grudge against Eris, making an already difficult infiltration even more complicated.

When they find the ship, they discover more than they bargained for: three fugitives with firsthand knowledge of the corrupt empire’s inner workings.

Together, these women possess the knowledge and capabilities to bring the empire to its knees. But the clock is ticking: the new heir to the empire plans to disrupt a peace summit with the only remaining alien empire, ensuring the empire’s continued expansion. If they can find a way to stop him, they will save the galaxy. If they can’t, millions may die.

Buy Seven Devils by Laura Lam and Elizabeth May on Amazon.

Top New Science Fiction Books July 2020 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott 

Type: Novel  Publisher: Tor Books Release date: July 7 

Den of Geek says: Kate Elliott’s long career in fantasy has proven her a master of world-building. It has a heck of a tagline: “female Alexander the Great in space.” This series promises strong science fiction action. 

Publisher’s summary: Princess Sun has finally come of age.

Growing up in the shadow of her mother, Eirene, has been no easy task. The legendary queen-marshal did what everyone thought impossible: expel the invaders and build Chaonia into a magnificent republic, one to be respected―and feared.

But the cutthroat ambassador corps and conniving noble houses have never ceased to scheme―and they have plans that need Sun to be removed as heir, or better yet, dead.

To survive, the princess must rely on her wits and companions: her biggest rival, her secret lover, and a dangerous prisoner of war.

Take the brilliance and cunning courage of Princess Leia―add in a dazzling futuristic setting where pop culture and propaganda are one and the same―and hold on tight:

Buy The Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott on Amazon.

Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis 

Type: Novel  Publisher: St Martin’s Press Release date: July 21 

Den of Geek says: Lindsay Ellis is known primarily as a YouTube pop culture critic. She excels at explaining why pop culture works or doesn’t work, as well as adding context to day’s top headlines. Her first book sounds like a mix between Arrival and The X-Files, set in the early 2000s. 

Publisher’s summary: The alternate history first contact adventure Axiom’s End is an extraordinary debut from Hugo finalist and video essayist Lindsay Ellis. 

Truth is a human right.

It’s fall 2007. A well-timed leak has revealed that the US government might have engaged in first contact. Cora Sabino is doing everything she can to avoid the whole mess, since the force driving the controversy is her whistleblower father. Even though Cora hasn’t spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the Internet, the paparazzi, and the government―and with him in hiding, that attention is on her. She neither knows nor cares whether her father’s leaks are a hoax, and wants nothing to do with him―until she learns just how deeply entrenched her family is in the cover-up, and that an extraterrestrial presence has been on Earth for decades.

Realizing the extent to which both she and the public have been lied to, she sets out to gather as much information as she can, and finds that the best way for her to uncover the truth is not as a whistleblower, but as an intermediary. The alien presence has been completely uncommunicative until she convinces one of them that she can act as their interpreter, becoming the first and only human vessel of communication. Their otherworldly connection will change everything she thought she knew about being human―and could unleash a force more sinister than she ever imagined.

Buy Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis on Amazon.

The Relentless Moon (Lady Astronauts) by Mary Robinette Kowal 

Type: Novel  Publisher: Tor Books Release date: July 14 

Den of Geek says: The Lady Astronaut series tackles sexism (lots and lots of sexism) in an alternate world where the space race is hurried along by the arrival of a meteor strike. It has gained a lot of fans for its determined characters and convincing alternate history. 

Publisher’s summary: The Earth is coming to the boiling point as the climate disaster of the Meteor strike becomes more and more clear, but the political situation is already overheated. Riots and sabotage plague the space program. The IAC’s goal of getting as many people as possible off Earth before it becomes uninhabitable is being threatened. 

Elma York is on her way to Mars, but the Moon colony is still being established. Her friend and fellow Lady Astronaut Nicole Wargin is thrilled to be one of those pioneer settlers, using her considerable flight and political skills to keep the program on track. But she is less happy that her husband, the Governor of Kansas, is considering a run for President.

Buy The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal on Amazon.

The post Top New Science Fiction Books in December 2020 appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2XcymUP

[anniversary-magazine]

Q+A with Photographer Bastiaan Woudt — Where Creativity Arises

Bastiaan Woudt is a self-taught photographer from the Netherlands who started his own practice five years ago. With no experience or any formal training, he has developed a strong personal signature that manifests itself throughout a broad range of subjects. His style can refer to significant periods, such as Surrealism and the documentary photography of the 60s and 70s, while maintaining a contemporary edge that makes his work truly unique. We recently had the opportunity to exchange with Bastiaan Woudt on the origin of his artistic expression, his approach to new concepts and ideas, as well as how intuition plays an essential role in his photography.

Elda Oreto (EO), Bastiaan Woudt (BW)

EO: You started your career as a photographer in 2009, buying a camera to take pictures of your firstborn son. Then, in 2011, you rented a studio from a photographer and began your journey as a self-taught artist. It seems to me that intuition played a crucial role in your life. I believe that personal experiences and artistic research are united and that one contributes to the other. How do you combine intuition and preparation in your photographic practice?

BW: Intuition is the best part of my process. I am relying on my ability to create while enjoying the quest. Preparation is only a small part and mainly has to do with the practical matters. Making sure everything is ready for a shoot and that the atmosphere is perfect. Preparing for what is to be created is something I seldom do. I think that everything should arise during the shoot. Only then, you create work that surprises you.

EO: The Mukono Project bears the name of a city in Uganda, where the Marie-Stella-Maris Foundation has contributed to establishing a clean drinkable water system. For this project, you have made portraits of people whose life revolves around this well. How can a photograph tell a story about a subject without exploiting it?

BW: During a project in countries like Uganda, I never focus on the bad, painful, or piteous sides of a community. I'm not a documentary photographer who wants to show what kind of miserable situations people live in. I'm not looking for a sad child who tells a story of hunger, thirst, or poverty. In a project like this, I try to seek out the beauty of mankind. To find the small, tangible moments and to photograph people with self-confidence and pride. Even in countries like Uganda, and areas like Mukono, where people have to walk miles for ( contaminated) drinking water, there is something beautiful to find. An innocent child who, despite everything, dresses beautifully with a dress and pearl necklace. The beauty of a hand that washes itself. A group of children who are playing in the lake. The photographs are almost like a talisman, a bringer of happiness and hope. 

EO: Does analog photography influence your creative process differently than digital photography?

BW: Although my work always has an analog feel, I still shoot digitally. I have fallen in love with the aesthetics of old photography, but the working method, cost, speed, and ease of digital photography make it possible for me to create so much work. I could never trade digital photography for analog, but I do shoot with analog cameras—more for fun. I would do a series of polaroids at the end of a shoot or use my old Hasselblad at home on a Sunday morning. The process remains magical, but I'm glad I don't have to do that every day. 

EO: I believe that a decisive meeting for you was the one you had with Roy Kahmann of the Kahmann Gallery in Amsterdam. Can you tell me how this relationship helped you grow artistically?

BW: I met Roy a couple of years ago while I was assisting another photographer, from whom I eventually bought my studio. We got to talk, I was able to show some work, and one thing led to another. At that moment he told me that he saw something in me, but that it hadn't revealed enough yet. He proposed to guide me, coach me. This meant that I just had to do what I was doing, but that I could come to him with the result, discuss what I had done. We looked at the images together, he made selections and explained why he had chosen them. A lot out of intuition, but often with good reason. Slowly but surely, a signature began to emerge, that "unique signature" that every beginning photographer is looking for. Eventually, after two years, I was asked to join the Kahmann Gallery. 

EO: The work of photographers Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Man Ray, and Bill Brandt has influenced your artistic development in various ways, leading you to a combination of still life, portrait, and landscape photography. Do you believe that a clear separation should be made between genres in photography? Or, on the contrary, are the borders made to be crossed?

BW: No. The borders are made to be crossed for sure. I don't like being boxed. I shoot a lot of people, so am I a portrait photographer? What if I make a landscape series? Am I a landscape photographer? I think I am a photographer, an artist. Someone who, regardless of the subject, makes my best, unique visual representation of what I see at that moment. A face, a tree, a body, or a bucket. It has to affect me. And to categorize it, to cast it in a genre, I think it's a shame. Isn't it true that a landscape can also be a portrait? And a naked body can be a landscape? 

EO: In 2016, you were awarded the Van Vlissingen Art Foundation award, which led you to develop the Karawan project. Between the portraits and landscapes you have captured, I feel like there is always something ancient and visionary. Could you tell us more about the story behind this project and how it came to life?

BW: Karawan was shot as a result of winning the Van Vlissingen Art Foundation Grant 2017. I was able to travel Morocco for two weeks, together with filmmaker Jelmar van Belle, to make new work. My choice of Morocco was based on the diversity of the land, culture, and people who live there. For two weeks, I tried to capture everything that came my way. As a child, I was fascinated with the thousand and one night stories and tried to find that atmosphere. What a beautiful country, Morocco is. I hope to be able to work there more in the future. 

EO: In a previous interview, I read that what you miss the most in digital photography is imperfect. This notion played a crucial role in Surrealists and photographers such as Avedon and Penn. This made me think about the French philosopher Jean Luc Nancy, who, in his book Corpus, describes the body as "beyond language." In some of the portraits you created, it seems like you try to repeat this dynamic through the digital medium. How did you achieve this result?

BW: Imperfection makes your mind think, wander, and explore. A perfect image can be boring. Personally, I find it exciting when a picture is out of focus. When a movement is really a movement, instead of a perfectly frozen moment. Don't get me wrong, the latter can also be beautiful, and that's what I sometimes use in my image. But deep inside, imperfection touches me most. You leave something to the imagination, the viewer has to look again, and think about why that choice was made. Technically it's the same as 50, 80, 100 years ago. Now we just have the power of photoshop. That doesn't mean I'm adding imperfection later. I shoot it on camera, but I can amplify it on the computer. 

EO: On different occasions, you said that in a certain sense, it makes no difference for you whether the subject of the photograph is a naked woman or a still life or a landscape; a landscape can be as disturbing as a nude in abstraction. Then, why does a more significant part of your research or work focuses on nudity?

BW: I think it's a combination of my love for the naked human body and the phase in my career where I work a lot in the studio and want to work with people. The human body, and especially the female body, can be so beautiful and pure. In an era where sex is often what comes to mind when seeing a naked body, many people forget that our body in itself is art: the lines, the texture, the vulnerability. Maybe I have more focus on that now, and that I will eventually go a different way for a while. But I will photograph nudes for the rest of my life. 

EO: You seem to give much importance to meeting a specific subject in person, before initiating a new project. Could you please tell us more about this process and about the notion of spontaneity within your work?

BW: Spontaneity is the cornerstone of my work. I like to go into a shoot without a plan. Seeing what happens, letting the interaction between photographer and subject run free. I think that with spontaneity, the best ideas arise. An encounter which aims to take pictures should not be stuck to preconceived plans. It all has to emerge within the moment.

 EO: A curved shape, the line of a hat, the gaze of a profile lost in thoughts, the mystical curve of a hill; I feel like many elements of your work tend to return to the essential. Your images often move towards me as a dreamlike world and then transform into another nature, another shape. In addition to photography, who or what influences your artistic approach?

BW: I get my inspiration from all kinds of art forms: sculptures, painters, the old masters of painting, charcoal drawings, music, films, magazines. It can't be said that one person or direction inspires me the most. Sometimes it's the little things in life: a lady with a big hat waiting in the street, a reflection in the mirror at the hairdresser. These are moments that I record, enjoy, and then unconsciously take with me during the creation of new images. I never see anything and think I have to make that too. They are characteristics, pieces of different moments. 

EO: The two last questions are a ritual. Any future or dream projects?

BW: I'm always busy. At the end of 2019, I made a long trip through Nepal, during which I went off the grid for a month with a team of Porters, guides, and a cook. During this trip, we walked up to almost 6000 meters. A beautiful project is the result of that trip; an exhibition will open later this year, and a book will be published. As soon as all that is done, I will be ready to think about the next project. In the current situation, where flying and traveling is not easy, it might be a little closer to home. Unless a cure is found for that time. Let's hope so. 

EO: Any book recommendations?

BW: My love for photography originated in books, so I am a real photobook collector. A title that always stays with me and which I always enjoy reading is Révélations by Javier Viver. Also, I'm a big fan of interior architecture and design. I really enjoy Vincent van Duysen - Works 2009-2018. But of course, I could not recommend my latest book, "Hidden" enough. Available directly through my webshop! ;) 

All images © Bastiaan Woudt

[michaelfallcon]

The Essential Sprudge 2018 Holiday Gift Guide

It’s here! The 2018 holiday season is finally here, and with it, a swarm of gift guides great and cheap, big and small, for you and not even remotely for you at all.

Here at Sprudge holiday gift guides are a long-running tradition, dating back to the internet’s earlier, simpler, arguably less evil times. To kick the Guidesapalooza off this year, we tapped three of our favorite regular contributors: Jenn Chen, Zac Cadwalader, and Anna Brones. We asked them some very simple questions: What moves you? What coffee gifts would you give to a loved one? Does this spark joy?

Read on to find out, and happy holiday-ing from all of us at Sprudge.

Image by Sam Lee.

Handmade Mug and Dripper by Sam Lee

There is something particular about drinking coffee out of a handmade mug, something that helps to turn it from routine into ritual. San Francisco-based artist and ceramicist Sam Lee creates beautiful everyday objects, including those made for making and drinking coffee, and I love her style. Her work is simple yet stunning, like in the V60 dripper, glazed to balance the texture of both the smooth glaze and the rough ceramic. Any morning would be made just a little more beautiful with Lee’s work in it. – Anna Brones

Photo courtesy Umeshiso.

Rainbow Cupping Spoon

Born out of a desire to empower themselves and other marginalized folks in the industry at the cupping table, Umeko Motoyoshi created the Rainbow Spoon project. Their store, Umeshiso, has a wide array of pins, cupping spoons, and stickers for your favorite coffee professional. Sold as a single spoon or a set of six, these rainbow spoons offer a perfect bowl depth for a dip and slurp. The spoons are offered on a sliding scale basis to reflect the store’s inclusive mission. Choose to pay the at-cost fee or a few dollars more to contribute back into the project. – Jenn Chen

Terroir Coffee Chocolate and Coffee Blossom Honey

Coffee gifts don’t always have to be coffee. They can also be chocolate and honey. Coffee chocolate and coffee honey. From Terroir—the sister company of Onyx Coffee Lab—comes two tasty sweets cultivated on actual coffee farms. The cacao comes from one of three origins—Colombia, Uganda, and Guatemala—and each bean-to-bar dark chocolate is made with coffee from the same farm. The honey is from Finca El Apiario in Guatemala, produced by bees who only pollinate coffee blossoms. Not only are these products really tasty (I eat the honey on my morning yogurt daily), they are also providing auxiliary revenue streams for the farmers producing them. It’s a great coffee gift for non-coffee people that brings in additional money to the coffeelands. Win win win. – Zac Cadwalader

Image via Snow Peak.

Field Barista kit from Snow Peak

There’s a clear intersection between outdoor lovers and coffee drinkers, and Japanese lifestyle brand Snow Peak caters to the nature enthusiasts who want to ensure that their coffee game is as strong outside as it is at home. The brand’s Field Barista kit is the ultimate in outdoor coffee brewing setup, including a dripper, grinder, and kettle. You don’t have to opt for the entire set, each piece can be purchased separately. The dripper is cone shaped—which will keep your filters from collapsing—and disassembles to fit in a small bag, and the grinder’s handle easily folds down, which makes packing easier. The weight of the kit makes it geared at the kind adventures that include a base camp, or just a morning coffee brew in the local park, as opposed to journeys where weight is a consideration, but if you’ve got the whole set, you just might start to prefer brewing in your backyard to your kitchen counter. – Anna Brones

Photo courtesy Standart.

Standart Subscription

Creative types will appreciate an annual subscription (four issues) to Standart, a beautiful independent print magazine (and 2017 Sprudgie Award winner) dedicated to the art of coffee. The stories, illustrations, and photographs within its pages cover a wide range of global issues and perspectives. You’ll just as easily read a profile with a barista champion right after a piece exploring tasseography, the art of reading tea and coffee leaves. Content is at the forefront in Standart and there’s something for everyone. The subscription is available globally and comes with a bag of coffee roasted exclusively for subscribers. – Jenn Chen

Courtesy of Agate Publishing

Craft Coffee: A Manual

Getting into coffee can be intimidating. It feels like there is an entire lexicon to memorize just to learn how to make a pour-over. Luckily, there is Craft Coffee: A Manual by Jessica Easto. Easto is “not a coffee person,” as she described to Sprudge in our interview with her earlier this year, and that’s the perspective she brings to the pages of Craft Coffee. With the help of her husband and “coffee person” Andreas Willhoff, Easto covers just about everything you need to know to get started on your coffee journey, including: brewing basics, equipment, processing, and step-by-step guides for making coffee with 10 different brewing devices. It’s all the coffee info, none of the intimidation. – Zac Cadwalader

Image by Lindsey Shea.

Ebb Filter by GDS Cloth Goods

Coffee is a product that centers around origin, but while we focus on where our coffee comes from, we don’t always apply the same principles to our brewing equipment. For the coffee drinker who cares about how things are made and where they’re from, Ebb Filter is the perfect gift. This reusable filter is made from organic cotton grown in Texas, processed and woven into fabric in the Carolinas and sewn into final product the Bay Area by GDS Cloth Goods. The filters come in a variety of sizes to fit all types of brew methods, and are wrapped in biodegradable packaging. – Anna Brones

Courtesy of Melodrip

Melodrip

Buying gadgets for a coffee tinkerer can be a tall order because 1) geeky gear is often prohibitively expensive and 2) what even is that thing and how does it make coffee? For those wanting to gift something brewing-related that won’t break the bank, look no further than the Melodrip. Essentially just a dispersion screen on a stick, the Melodrip allows you to drastically cut down on the amount of agitation in the brewing process, which leads to a cleaner cup of coffee, according to the creators. After a successful Kickstarter campaign (of which I backed with my own actual dollars), the Melodrip is now in full production and available for purchase for a cool $45. – Zac Cadwalader

Photo courtesy IWCA.

Charitable Donation

A thoughtful gift for the coffee lover who doesn’t want any physical products, a charitable donation in their name goes a long way to supporting the communities who create your morning brew. Did you know that over 80% of women newly diagnosed with cervical cancer live in developing countries and that 70% of coffee farm laborers are women? Grounds for Health provides cervical cancer screenings at coffee farms. For a more general contribution to the coffeelands, the International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA) works in 22 countries to empower women at the local community level. And if you’d like to invest in the next generation of farmers, Coffee Kids works with young farmers on business training and seed capital. – Jenn Chen

via It’s A Mod, Mod, Mod, Mod World

Commandante Hand Grinder

I have more hand grinders than I care to mention in polite company, but whenever I go out of town and need a way to pulverize some whole beans, the Commandante manual grinder is always the one I bring with me. Besides being one of the most aesthetically pleasing grinders on the market—just look at all that wood grain!—the German-engineered Commandante is the perfect mix of portable and dependable, making it the ideal suitcase (or day pack) companion. At $250, this isn’t exactly a small gift, but, speaking from opinion here, it’s worth every penny. – Zac Cadwalader

Coffee Isn’t Rocket Science by Sebastien Racineux and Chung-Leng Tran

Have you ever been asked by friends and family how to make better coffee at home? Get them this book. Coffee Isn’t Rocket Science by Sebastien Racineux and Chung-Leng Tran (both co-owners of Hexagone Cafe in Paris) is a well-rounded guide to better understanding and making coffee. For the newly coffee acquainted, it’s a helpful tool for navigating the world of coffee, the kind of book that can always be kept close to the coffee brewing equipment. And for well-versed coffee lovers, it’s a fun resource to include in your coffee library, particular for those moments when you forget some of the basic details of the drink you love. – Anna Brones

Kaffe Box Subscription

Sometimes the best coffee gift is simply just coffee. For those who want to gift coffee but don’t know what is “good,” a subscription is always a solid place to start. As an American who makes primarily filter coffee, I have yet to find a subscription service more up my alley than Norway’s Kaffe Box. Each month, the subscription service works with a different Scandinavian roaster to deliver light-roasted coffee directly to your doorstep. Past roasters include big names like Tim Wendelboe, La Cabra, The Coffee Collective, and Koppi as well as lesser-known micro-roasters like Jacobsen og Svart, Nord, and Talor & Jorgen. To me, this is THE subscription service for lighter-roast filter coffee drinkers. But if you are buying for someone who is an espresso drinker or likes more developed coffees, Trade Coffee is where I would start. – Zac Cadwalader

Via Seal Press.

“So You Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo

A New York Times bestseller and book that transcends any industry lines, “So You Want to Talk About Race” is a must-read for the well-meaning ally. The book isn’t about coffee, yet like any industry built on colonialism and capitalism, race is inextricably tied to coffee. Oluo breaks down key concepts in a straightforward manner and provides the reader with tangible ways to talk about race. This is a great place to start for those who find themselves saying things like, “But what can I do?” and “I don’t know what that means” after listening to the Black Coffee podcast episodes. – Jenn Chen

The post The Essential Sprudge 2018 Holiday Gift Guide appeared first on Sprudge.

The Essential Sprudge 2018 Holiday Gift Guide published first on https://medium.com/@LinLinCoffee

[mrwilliamcharley]

The Essential Sprudge 2018 Holiday Gift Guide

It’s here! The 2018 holiday season is finally here, and with it, a swarm of gift guides great and cheap, big and small, for you and not even remotely for you at all.

Here at Sprudge holiday gift guides are a long-running tradition, dating back to the internet’s earlier, simpler, arguably less evil times. To kick the Guidesapalooza off this year, we tapped three of our favorite regular contributors: Jenn Chen, Zac Cadwalader, and Anna Brones. We asked them some very simple questions: What moves you? What coffee gifts would you give to a loved one? Does this spark joy?

Read on to find out, and happy holiday-ing from all of us at Sprudge.

Image by Sam Lee.

Handmade Mug and Dripper by Sam Lee

There is something particular about drinking coffee out of a handmade mug, something that helps to turn it from routine into ritual. San Francisco-based artist and ceramicist Sam Lee creates beautiful everyday objects, including those made for making and drinking coffee, and I love her style. Her work is simple yet stunning, like in the V60 dripper, glazed to balance the texture of both the smooth glaze and the rough ceramic. Any morning would be made just a little more beautiful with Lee’s work in it. – Anna Brones

Photo courtesy Umeshiso.

Rainbow Cupping Spoon

Born out of a desire to empower themselves and other marginalized folks in the industry at the cupping table, Umeko Motoyoshi created the Rainbow Spoon project. Their store, Umeshiso, has a wide array of pins, cupping spoons, and stickers for your favorite coffee professional. Sold as a single spoon or a set of six, these rainbow spoons offer a perfect bowl depth for a dip and slurp. The spoons are offered on a sliding scale basis to reflect the store’s inclusive mission. Choose to pay the at-cost fee or a few dollars more to contribute back into the project. – Jenn Chen

Terroir Coffee Chocolate and Coffee Blossom Honey

Coffee gifts don’t always have to be coffee. They can also be chocolate and honey. Coffee chocolate and coffee honey. From Terroir—the sister company of Onyx Coffee Lab—comes two tasty sweets cultivated on actual coffee farms. The cacao comes from one of three origins—Colombia, Uganda, and Guatemala—and each bean-to-bar dark chocolate is made with coffee from the same farm. The honey is from Finca El Apiario in Guatemala, produced by bees who only pollinate coffee blossoms. Not only are these products really tasty (I eat the honey on my morning yogurt daily), they are also providing auxiliary revenue streams for the farmers producing them. It’s a great coffee gift for non-coffee people that brings in additional money to the coffeelands. Win win win. – Zac Cadwalader

Image via Snow Peak.

Field Barista kit from Snow Peak

There’s a clear intersection between outdoor lovers and coffee drinkers, and Japanese lifestyle brand Snow Peak caters to the nature enthusiasts who want to ensure that their coffee game is as strong outside as it is at home. The brand’s Field Barista kit is the ultimate in outdoor coffee brewing setup, including a dripper, grinder, and kettle. You don’t have to opt for the entire set, each piece can be purchased separately. The dripper is cone shaped—which will keep your filters from collapsing—and disassembles to fit in a small bag, and the grinder’s handle easily folds down, which makes packing easier. The weight of the kit makes it geared at the kind adventures that include a base camp, or just a morning coffee brew in the local park, as opposed to journeys where weight is a consideration, but if you’ve got the whole set, you just might start to prefer brewing in your backyard to your kitchen counter. – Anna Brones

Photo courtesy Standart.

Standart Subscription

Creative types will appreciate an annual subscription (four issues) to Standart, a beautiful independent print magazine (and 2017 Sprudgie Award winner) dedicated to the art of coffee. The stories, illustrations, and photographs within its pages cover a wide range of global issues and perspectives. You’ll just as easily read a profile with a barista champion right after a piece exploring tasseography, the art of reading tea and coffee leaves. Content is at the forefront in Standart and there’s something for everyone. The subscription is available globally and comes with a bag of coffee roasted exclusively for subscribers. – Jenn Chen

Courtesy of Agate Publishing

Craft Coffee: A Manual

Getting into coffee can be intimidating. It feels like there is an entire lexicon to memorize just to learn how to make a pour-over. Luckily, there is Craft Coffee: A Manual by Jessica Easto. Easto is “not a coffee person,” as she described to Sprudge in our interview with her earlier this year, and that’s the perspective she brings to the pages of Craft Coffee. With the help of her husband and “coffee person” Andreas Willhoff, Easto covers just about everything you need to know to get started on your coffee journey, including: brewing basics, equipment, processing, and step-by-step guides for making coffee with 10 different brewing devices. It’s all the coffee info, none of the intimidation. – Zac Cadwalader

Image by Lindsey Shea.

Ebb Filter by GDS Cloth Goods

Coffee is a product that centers around origin, but while we focus on where our coffee comes from, we don’t always apply the same principles to our brewing equipment. For the coffee drinker who cares about how things are made and where they’re from, Ebb Filter is the perfect gift. This reusable filter is made from organic cotton grown in Texas, processed and woven into fabric in the Carolinas and sewn into final product the Bay Area by GDS Cloth Goods. The filters come in a variety of sizes to fit all types of brew methods, and are wrapped in biodegradable packaging. – Anna Brones

Courtesy of Melodrip

Melodrip

Buying gadgets for a coffee tinkerer can be a tall order because 1) geeky gear is often prohibitively expensive and 2) what even is that thing and how does it make coffee? For those wanting to gift something brewing-related that won’t break the bank, look no further than the Melodrip. Essentially just a dispersion screen on a stick, the Melodrip allows you to drastically cut down on the amount of agitation in the brewing process, which leads to a cleaner cup of coffee, according to the creators. After a successful Kickstarter campaign (of which I backed with my own actual dollars), the Melodrip is now in full production and available for purchase for a cool $45. – Zac Cadwalader

Photo courtesy IWCA.

Charitable Donation

A thoughtful gift for the coffee lover who doesn’t want any physical products, a charitable donation in their name goes a long way to supporting the communities who create your morning brew. Did you know that over 80% of women newly diagnosed with cervical cancer live in developing countries and that 70% of coffee farm laborers are women? Grounds for Health provides cervical cancer screenings at coffee farms. For a more general contribution to the coffeelands, the International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA) works in 22 countries to empower women at the local community level. And if you’d like to invest in the next generation of farmers, Coffee Kids works with young farmers on business training and seed capital. – Jenn Chen

via It’s A Mod, Mod, Mod, Mod World

Commandante Hand Grinder

I have more hand grinders than I care to mention in polite company, but whenever I go out of town and need a way to pulverize some whole beans, the Commandante manual grinder is always the one I bring with me. Besides being one of the most aesthetically pleasing grinders on the market—just look at all that wood grain!—the German-engineered Commandante is the perfect mix of portable and dependable, making it the ideal suitcase (or day pack) companion. At $250, this isn’t exactly a small gift, but, speaking from opinion here, it’s worth every penny. – Zac Cadwalader

Coffee Isn’t Rocket Science by Sebastien Racineux and Chung-Leng Tran

Have you ever been asked by friends and family how to make better coffee at home? Get them this book. Coffee Isn’t Rocket Science by Sebastien Racineux and Chung-Leng Tran (both co-owners of Hexagone Cafe in Paris) is a well-rounded guide to better understanding and making coffee. For the newly coffee acquainted, it’s a helpful tool for navigating the world of coffee, the kind of book that can always be kept close to the coffee brewing equipment. And for well-versed coffee lovers, it’s a fun resource to include in your coffee library, particular for those moments when you forget some of the basic details of the drink you love. – Anna Brones

Kaffe Box Subscription

Sometimes the best coffee gift is simply just coffee. For those who want to gift coffee but don’t know what is “good,” a subscription is always a solid place to start. As an American who makes primarily filter coffee, I have yet to find a subscription service more up my alley than Norway’s Kaffe Box. Each month, the subscription service works with a different Scandinavian roaster to deliver light-roasted coffee directly to your doorstep. Past roasters include big names like Tim Wendelboe, La Cabra, The Coffee Collective, and Koppi as well as lesser-known micro-roasters like Jacobsen og Svart, Nord, and Talor & Jorgen. To me, this is THE subscription service for lighter-roast filter coffee drinkers. But if you are buying for someone who is an espresso drinker or likes more developed coffees, Trade Coffee is where I would start. – Zac Cadwalader

Via Seal Press.

“So You Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo

A New York Times bestseller and book that transcends any industry lines, “So You Want to Talk About Race” is a must-read for the well-meaning ally. The book isn’t about coffee, yet like any industry built on colonialism and capitalism, race is inextricably tied to coffee. Oluo breaks down key concepts in a straightforward manner and provides the reader with tangible ways to talk about race. This is a great place to start for those who find themselves saying things like, “But what can I do?” and “I don’t know what that means” after listening to the Black Coffee podcast episodes. – Jenn Chen

The post The Essential Sprudge 2018 Holiday Gift Guide appeared first on Sprudge.

from Sprudge https://ift.tt/2r5Levs

[vitalusartdirection]

10 Weeks of Vitalus

Hey everyone. I’m Haley Sullivan, a junior currently studying Animation at DePaul University, and I am the art director for the production of Vitalus (working title). I want to talk a bit about how this game started, our recent 10-week independent study at DePaul, and where we’re looking to go this summer and beyond.

The game began as a simple idea: “let’s make a game about space.” Those throwaway words said over dinner at Cheesecake factory a year ago, slowly formed into something more real. This pet project grew to encompass myself, our lead programmer Greg Mendez-Weeks, our screenwriter Quinton Goins, and our sound designer Matt Nicolay. We tossed around ideas for mechanics, settling on our modular gun concept, and played with ideas for mysterious dark gods, planets without death, trying to find the theme that would be most fun to play. We met a few times over the summer, but didn’t get much done with our lack of solid direction. I spent a few weeks trying to animate a 3D walk cycle on a model with no controls and no IKs, completely ignorant of the base concepts of 3D animation at the time.

Fast forward to this winter. I’d taken 3D Animation and knew my way around a walk cycle, and everyone’s skills had improved by a class or two. We’d decided to make things official and do an independent study in the spring. Greg and I spent Global Game Jam weekend working on the game, roughing in code and compiling an art bible for style and character looks. Our biggest problem, finding artists to round out the team, solved itself almost overnight. Cole Funck joined the team almost immediately after hearing my pitch for a game involving a gun that can use anything as ammo, and Natalie-Wyatt Aldana and Kendrick Suenaga soon followed. Suddenly, we’d snagged three of the best 3D artists in the animation program and the only two game art students I knew of. Sweet.

In the final weeks of winter quarter, we began pre production. The independent study was formalized when Will Meyers signed on as mentor, and we all got to know each other through weekly meetings. Quinton worked on story and developed the personality of our main character, washed-up spaceship janitor Thea, and somehow along the way we picked up her sidekick, robot space lawyer Theo. The four of us artists worked to sketch out character and environment designs, getting to know one another and our respective styles. By spring break, we slogged through pages of 3D art and game art references to nail down our art style and visual mood.

The independent study kicked off, and pre production continued. Nat, Cole, Kendrick and I collaborated on all aspects of environment, creature and character sketches, and weapon concepts, discussing them each week and choosing the best ones. I focused heavily on designing Thea and Theo for several weeks, but didn’t make much progress; I passed Thea along to Nat while continuing work on Theo. Eventually, we concluded that Theo wasn’t working visually or narratively, and he ended up in the trash for the time being. The art team split apart into our preferred areas of work around this time, with Nat working on Thea as I mentioned, Cole taking over the gun, and Kendrick leading our environment.

The core tenets of our game include the mod gun, interplanetary travel, and a self-aware sense of humor that led to the creation of our first planet, Fridgerator. Fridgerator is a place where each part of the world is made up of food, with the inhabitants living in giant refrigerators that terraform the planet to a chill 40 degrees. Our first area, intended to serve as our demo, will be the Breadery, an environment of living dough balls that get cooked into fully-baked creatures by heated geysers and heating coil runoffs. Cole has already modeled several fun characters for the area, such as the pita lizard and dough ball, and Kendrick has bread golems and other beasts to follow.

I spent the last several weeks of the quarter on our big bad, the Worm. The Worm will be the catalyst for all evil in this star system, and the final boss only defeatable by using mods found throughout the planets. I designed, modeled, and rigged it, while Quinton will use IK splines in Unreal Engine 4 to do movement and AI attack systems. I also started experimenting within Unreal to learn how materials and shaders work, as I haven’t previously worked with the engine.

This story is not without its struggles. This is the first game I’ve worked on and the first game for several on our team, my first time acting as art director, and the most 3D work I’ve ever attempted to do. I’ve only just started this journey, but slowly and surely I’m making progress in each of these areas. My inexperience shows in our slow progress, the time it takes to get the hang of overseeing and executing every aspect of a project like this. One of our biggest challenges as a team is that of overall vision, and making sure all seven of us are unified to some degree on each decision, no easy task. At the start of the project, we were all over the place in terms of story, mechanics, tone, and style, but many hours of frustration and discussion have brought us to the same chapter of this book, if not the same page. I’ve learned that my job is not to do everything on my own or make every choice, but to encourage my super talented team members to make their best work and ensure their voices are heard throughout development, while doing the best I can in the areas I want to improve on and contribute to.

Moving forwards into summer, we’re still aiming towards getting a functional demo for playtesting and testing assets. My job now is to take stock of our progress thus far, and work with my team to set more concrete, realistic goals for the summer, while continuing my Worm and materials research. My focus is on implementation, learning the engine, and getting some visuals out there to get this project somewhere tangible to keep our motivation in high gear. I really trust my team, I’m into everything created so far, and I’m excited to see where we can go from here.

Until next time.

Haley

[cellerityweb]

Building a Lean Team: Part I

A functioning team is the essential foundation of success, but building such a team can be hard. Guido Schmidt from Digamore took the time to share some valuable advice that might help you in doing so.

Digamore is a start-up with currently ten people working on the mobile F2P game »Football Empire«, a genre-mix of building-up strategy and a football manager game.

Myself, I have been in the industry for over 15 years now and I have seen my fair share of projects, teams, deadlines and tough decisions. Starting out as a programmer I transitioned to game design relatively quickly, since I had a knack for knowing what was fun in a game and what wasn’t. Working on the »ANNO« and »The Settlers« franchise I eventually moved to a lead position, guiding and managing teams in various projects.

The premise of Football Empire was a unique opportunity. When I joined the company, I was the first guy on the team. We had a rough idea of what we wanted to do and basically nothing else. Everything, from deciding which technology to use, which people to hire and what features to put into the game was pretty much open. A blank slate, if you will, which is good on one side but problematic on the other, because working without constraints and requirements will always lead to something the stakeholders do not want.

One of the first things we did was to scan the market for our potential competitors and determine how we can attack them. How we did this exactly and how this influenced the design decisions, however, is a story for another time. What we’re focusing on today is how we planned to set up our team, the sort of working process we implemented and how we fostered a team culture of respect, ownership and motivation.

Our Goals

What are the goals when hiring a team? Well, obviously, there are things that every mana- ger and CEO wants from a team. Things like:

– a fast team – a team that is efficiently using its resources – a team that produces high-quality code – a self-organizing team – a self-improving team – a highly motivated team – a team with passion – and – finally – a team which delivers on time and budget

Which is fine, as all these things are good and correct and you should strive to create teams which achieve exactly these goals. There are, however, more things you need to consider. Things you learn when you are working in the industry for more than just a couple of years. All of these things are equally if not more important than the standard goals. On the other hand, things you do NOT want to have in your team are …

– … a shadow hierarchy where you have an »official« way of taking decisions in your project while, in the end the guys with the most dominant personality (or skilled manipulators) de-facto take the real decisions. For example, when producers are taking design decisions instead of trusting their design specialists. Or when artists impose requirements on the engine, which lead to heavy performance issues. – … hidden efforts – when the planned tasks in your project plan do not reflect all the things that actually need to be done. Programmers, for example, having to set up their workstations, their toolchain or build-servers. Or artists having to conduct a lot of interviews for hiring more artists. There are a lot of things that do not find their way into the project plan and thus give a false impression on how fast the team can perform. – … unclear responsibilities – when it is unclear who has the last say in specific subject matters. Will the implementation of a new animation system be decided by the Lead Engine Coder, the Lead Animator or the Creative Director? During development, there a lot of tough decisions and calls to make, and it is not always clear who has to make the final call. – … responsibilities without power – when people are given areas of responsibility but not the power to actually make the necessary decisions. For example, putting an animator in charge of the quality of animations in your game without allowing him to make any calls on the implementation quality from a coding side, it might result in him having to use gimped tools and therefore a shabby implementation. – … a lack of transparency – hiding information from the team, not discussing uncomfortable issues and generally keeping the team on a »need to know« basis. For example, never showing your team the current state of a project in relation to the deadline it has. Or the artists having no idea what the game design team is currently working on, therefore not being able to intervene when a design decision is made that will cause the necessary effort on the artist’s side to explode.

Digamore’s upcoming title »Football Empire« combines building-up strategy with »Football Manager« gameplay..

Given all that, we wanted to implement a very clear and easy-to-understand area of responsibility combined with a very transparent and efficient work process.

How to achieve that

So now that we know what we want, how do we achieve it? This should be pretty straightforward, right? We hire the people, write up our goals and show them to the team and tell them the following:

You guys need to … – … be very fast and efficient! – … produce high quality code! – … be self-organizing and self-improving! – … be highly motivated and have passion for game development! – … get »on board«! – and ultimately: you guys have to trust each other in order to provide a stellar performance

I have seen this happening over and over again … but human beings just don’t work that way. You can’t simply order your team members to trust each other. Trust needs to grow and people need to experience first-hand that they can rely on the other person. They need to see for themselves that plans is predicted correctly. And people need to understand the benefit they have from producing, management and the work process they are using.

Only if people have been working together for some time and have gone through one or two hardships, trust begins to grow. And only if the managers and team members are really reliable and putting effort into fostering this kind of trust. In any other case the team will start to develop barriers between departments and even between specific team members. This will then result in a broken communication flow, since people don’t talk to people they don’t trust and don’t like. When you have a team where information does not flow easily and freely, it’s a very big indicator that there is a huge underlying problem.

What did we plan to do?

In the beginning, we spent a lot of time thinking about how to set up our work process and environment so that the guys we were going to hire could prosper in. We then defined four points which were of special importance to us:

Game Vision Everyone on our team should understand what kind of game we are making.

Team culture Everyone should contribute to a positive and constructive atmosphere.

Clear responsibilities Everyone needs to understand who is responsible for which part of the Project.

Improving the work process Everyone should be able to put forward improvements to the work process.

Game Vision

Having a clear and well elaborated vision of your game is key to a lot of things, for example: – defining your unique selling proposition – prioritizing your work – avoiding feature-creep during the development process – getting the team to understand what kind of game they are working on – getting the marketing department to understand how they can sell the game

I made it a personal requirement to ensure that every team member could explain the vision of the game at any time. Even if I called them at 3am in the morning, they would have to be able to tell me what kind of game we are making (not that I did such a thing, but you get the idea).

Having a physical representation of all tasks boosts a sense of achievement.

This included a welcome meeting with every new team member where I showed and explained the vision and the rationale behind our major design decisions. Also, in irregular intervals, we showed the team a project status update to visualize where we were in the bigger context and where the journey was going. And every time a major design decision had been taken, one of the key components was always to keep the whole team informed by creating an according presentation, plus rounds for asking questions and discussions.

It takes a lot of time and effort to keep everyone informed, but the benefits are well worth the time. Just to name a few: – People develop a better understanding of the status and outlook of the Project. – People gain confidence when they can see what has actually been achieved so far. – Seeing the current state and the outlook fosters ambition within the team – even leading to voluntary overtime and higher motivation! – People can better comprehend and see the reasons behind hard design decisions (for example, if some features need to be cut). – People will identify themselves better with the project, if they understand what they are working on. – People can forward ideas the management might not have considered before.

We didn’t, however, even stop there. Just having a game vision is not enough. You want to base all your design tasks on the actual sentences of the vision statement. That way, every sentence really matters – we structured it like this:

– Every “task” is part of a “user story”. – Every “user story” is part of an “EPIC”. – Every “EPIC” is part of a “sentence of the vision statement”.

Every single sentence in your vision statement has tangible effects on your project. Plus, you can trace every task back to the game vision, ensuring that every task is within your framework plan. It also helps to understand what it means to make changes to the vision. You can easily see all the repercussions such a decision has on a project.

Pushing this structure further, we then put these user stories into »JIRA« (note: JIRA is a proprietary issue tracking product, developed by Atlassian. It provides bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management functions). Ultimately, when discussing the status and plan for the day in the daily stand-up meeting, tasks and stories have a real relevance and show the state of stories in context of the whole project.

This ensures that everyone understands how the current task someone working on is related to the rest of the project. People can then quickly sum up what they are working on, so that the rest of the team can spot any implications this task may have on their own work, clarify any new dependencies or other problems and discuss and solve them right after the meeting.

Team Culture

Having our vision in place was a good start. Next, we had to ensure a positive and constructive team culture. We needed to make it an accordingly relevant topic in the first place, so we defined it as »important!«.

The project’s task structure that derived from the game visio

We told all the guys that we wanted to have a good team culture and that we were going to put a strong emphasis on it. Basically, we defined a positive team culture as the basis for all the rest. Without a good foundation, no work process, no planning, no management and no organization will be sustainable in the long run.

We set up guidelines on what we expected and how we wanted to treat each other, e.g. during discussions.

Basic rules like: – Everyone is respecting the other person(s). – We do not interrupt each other when discussing. – We keep discussions on an objective level, not an emotional one. – We listen actively. – We do not impose. – We accept calls from people responsible for their subject matter. – We stop discussing if these rules are violated, and everyone calms down before we are   going to continue.

As we communicated these guidelines, everyone agreed that having and emphasising these points is a good thing. Additionally, I implemented monthly employee talks. I basically reserved 30 minutes of my time every month for every team member. I would invite them into a meeting room – just the two of us – and ask them two questions: 1. How are you? 2. Is there anything important you have on your mind right now?

The rationale behind these meetings was to provide a platform for everyone within the team to talk about issues, problems or anything they had on their plate – stuff which you are not talking about in public. I have often heard managers saying »Hey, my door is always open, you can come by whenever you want!« The problem here is, that people have to take the initiative. Often, they don’t regard their problems as important enough to do so, other times they just can’t get themselves to make the first step. Or maybe they feel like the offer is not meant seriously. Anyway, talks just don’t happen in that kind of situation. That’s why I invite and ask them myself. I provide an environment where they can tell me what bothers them. And I do this on an optional basis. People can tell me »Everything’s fine, I’m super happy« and the meeting will be over in five minutes.

On the other hand, if there are serious issues, I will take as much time as is required to understand and solve these problems as soon and quickly as possible. Never leave them lingering – follow up and solve them. Then, and only then, will people realize that they can trust you and that things will improve when they talk to you.

Eventually we also visualized our team culture – which is nice, but not necessary – like this (right page, top): »Team culture is something you have to live and breathe, and it must be supported from the top management. Within a company, team culture always flows from the top to the bottom.«

Responsibilities

With having the two major pillars in place, we set out to elaborate all of the team’s responsibilities. The main motivation behind it was to create a safe environment for the team to grow their trust in. Like a scaffolding which would eventually become less and less important. We wanted crystal-clear structures in terms of responsibilities and privileges. What are all the tasks and areas of work we have in our project? Who is going to be responsible for the delivered quality? And when we make someone responsible for a certain area, we must also grant him the authority to actually take decisions.

So, we set up a big wiki page which detailed all the relevant areas of work. You can see some examples of it on the picture in the lower right. Additionally, we added detailed descriptions to some areas where we felt that just naming them is not enough to understand what exactly is expected. Once defined and worked out with the according members of the team, we presented the current state to the whole team and officially introduced all the people and their respective areas of responsibility. But it had to be a »living model«, because responsibilities can shift. When new people are hired or colleagues leave the company, new areas of work can be created or removed.

Digamore settled in some modern office space right in the heart of Cologne.

People should also be able to check on the structure of responsibilities and privileges easily and quickly. It was very important for us to be able to pinpoint whose decision it was in the end, when we were debating difficult calls during development.

Part II follows tomorrow.

About the Author:

  Guido Schmidt is Project Lead at Digamore Entertainment GmbH

Guido is an industry veteran with more than 15 years of experience. He worked on the »Anno« and »The Settlers« franchise (e.g. »Anno 1404« and »The Settlers Online«) and is now responsible for the upcoming Football Empire.

@LinkedIn

The post Building a Lean Team: Part I appeared first on Making Games.

Building a Lean Team: Part I published first on https://thetruthspypage.tumblr.com/