I love paper. Love, love, love. While is why I needed to post right away after stumbling across these gorgeous paper templates. Vale Design created a mini-file folder template (above), while HowPack houses a treasure trove of packaging designs. Erin Vale suggests scanning fabrics and printing them along with the templates onto cardstock, which would also work well for any of the plain HowPack designs.
How do you spend your days? According to the American Time Use Survey in the New York Times, there are striking differences between time spent by the employed versus the unemployed.
On an average weekday, the unemployed sleep an hour more than their employed peers. They tidy the house, do laundry and yard work for more than two hours, twice as much as the employed. The unemployed also spend an extra hour in the classroom and an additional 70 minutes in front of the television.
With just under 10% of the U.S. population unemployed, that’s a lot of extra sleep and housework.
Good also has another great infographic on this subject.
When it comes to success, a high IQ is not the biggest determining factor — it’s grit.
The latest challenge for social scientists, who have spent decades developing hard research on intelligence, is understanding this vaguely defined characteristic centered around tenacity and perseverance called grit. Although IQ is somewhat correlated with achievement, not letting setbacks discourage you is what will help get you ahead.
What implications does it have when it comes to education? While the liberal arts teach us to be well-rounded individuals, achievement seems to requires single-minded goals and pursuits. Those who choose goals and stay with them fare better than those who constantly try new pursuits.
“I’d bet that there isn’t a single highly successful person who hasn’t depended on grit,” says Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania who helped pioneer the study of grit. “Nobody is talented enough to not have to work hard, and that’s what grit allows you to do.”
How do you sign off your emails?
Washington Post addresses the modern day quandary of how to say goodbye. In their research, most people sign off with ‘sincerely’ in their professional emails and ‘love’ when writing personal emails. Other sign-offs have their own connotations — ‘best’ can be denounced as frigid or overly warm, ‘cheers’ can seem too british, ‘xoxo’ brings you into Gossip Girls territory, and using acronyms like ‘arlyw’ and ‘s/f’ peg you as military.
For my own emails, I tend to use ‘thanks!’ or a variation thereof.
From Font Number 54 to Times New Roman to Starling, the Financial Times details typographer Mark Parker’s quest for the truth behind Microsoft Word’s default font.
Typography may present a genteel exterior, but it’s an art form punctuated by bitter rivalries and rampant plagiarism.
Willard Wigan is dyslexic and cannot read or white.
He’s overcome all these obstacles to create the world’s smallest sculptures, most of them smaller than the dot at the end of this sentence. (For instance, the ‘David’ replica above measures only five microns.) Viewing his art requires a microscope and deep breathing in open air may cause artwork inhalation. NPR has an interesting slideshow and an interview.
My mother told me that the smallest things can have the biggest impact.
Maria Kalman, who so delightfully illustrated the Elements of Style, has given us a blog tribute to Benjamin Franklin’s inventiveness on the New York Times website.
Everything is invented.
Language. Childhood. Careers.
Relationships. Religion.
Philosophy. The Future.
They are not there for the plucking.
They don’t exist in some natural state.
They must be invented by people.
And that, of course, is a great thing.
Go invent something.
That is the American message.
Electricity. Flight. The telephone.
Television. Computers.
Walking on the moon. It never stops.